I'm Not Bougie

Hands raised singing "Men Anpil Chay Pa Lou" which is a Hatian proverb that means, 'With many hands, the burden is light'

As many of you know, I went to Haiti for two weeks with Habitat for Humanity. The goal of the organization is to make sure that everyone across the globe has safe, affordable housing and over the summer, Habitat began forming the first team of volunteers to head back into Haiti since the earthquake that ravaged the country on January 12th, 2010. The epicenter of the 7.0 earthquake was near the town of Léogâne, which is 16 miles west of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. In order to get to Léogâne, we first had to fly into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and then drive by bus across the border into Haiti. As the first team, we didn’t know what to expect but we were all prepared to be flexible and to take the experience in stride. It took over an hour to cross the border and in total about 8 hours to get to Port-au-Prince where a demonstration was taking place and hindered us from being able to visit the Presidential Palace which, visually, for many represented the level of destruction that was caused by this natural disaster. We stayed at a Christian Mission that was close to the build site and made it convenient to go back and forth on a daily basis. The goal for our team was to see how quickly a team could construct two houses. Later this year, there will be a Jimmy Cater build with 400 volunteers and Habitat wanted to ensure that the construction could be completed with a certain number of volunteers and within the time frame of their visit. The land that we were constructing on had been where many displaced families had set up their tents after the earthquake. The community members told us stories about how they lost everything when the earthquake hit and how they couldn’t stay where they were and picked up what was left of their belonging and started walking until they found some land to set up their tents on. Once the plan for the neighborhood had been established, they were moved to the other side of the road so that Habitat could clear the land and start constructing. This is my 6th Habitat build and I’m never prepared for the things I see. Everyday we drove through their neighborhood and all you could see were rows and rows of tattered tents. As someone who works in the news business and followed the story closely for over a year, I was still unprepared for what I saw. All of the ‘aid’ that we sent hadn’t done much to help the people who survived the storm. A year a half later, families were still in tents, still had no clean, running water and there were large amounts of debris that still had yet to be cleared. It reminded me of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. On one of my trips down there, we were gutting houses and piles of debris remained on the streets for months. I also had the impression that the tents that were sent to the Haitian people after the earthquake were providing a livable, safe shelter for those who were displaced, but one look at the ‘tent cities’ made it obvious that this was not the case. One of the community members explained that the tents don’t keep out the rain when there’s a storm. It rains quite often in Haiti and the tents would flood and be unsafe for people to stay in. Then there’s the unbearable heat; the tents get so hot that it’s impossible to stay inside of them on most days so they didn’t provide much shelter to anyone. These tents that were supposed to provide relief are actually unlivable for the people that they’re supposed to help. During a town hall style meeting that we had with the community, I got very emotional hearing their stories and seeing how they’ve perservered through it all. One of the woman used a translator to tell me that, “Mwen renmen-li anpil..Mwen sent-li andan po mwen” which translated to “I like her a lot. I feel her in my skin.” This bond we created grew over the week that I was there. She showed me her home (tent) and introduced me to her son. We chatted everyday on the work site and she brought me a watermelon to show me that she appreciated me being there. Interacting with the community and working alongside future homeowners renewed my team’s commitment to get the two houses completely built as quickly as possible. We were successful in our goal to have 2 houses constructed before we left and after we finished building on the last day, the community members came over to the finished houses to surprise us with a going away party and to thank us for the work that we doing. We all prayed together, sang together and blessed their new homes. They brought us gifts and baskets of fruit and it meant so much to me because these people had lost everything… everything! And they still found a way to express their thanks to us and bring us tokens of appreciation. This trip was a life changing experience. It’s always a blessing to be able to see how other people live in other parts of the world so that I always keep what’s important in perspective. The Haitian people may have lost physical possessions, but it didn’t change who they were, their love for one another and their love for their country. Haiti will forever be in me and I pray for those that I met while I was there. With the houses that I built side by side, hand in hand, I hope that I’ve left a positive mark in their hearts and as they’ve left in mine.