Haiti Trip Blog

            Let me start off by saying that no matter how sophisticated the language is that I throw into this, I could never do justice to the raw emotions that I experienced during my week in Haiti. It is not something that you can easily describe; to really understand you have to experience what Haiti is for yourself. Out of all of the things I witnessed in Haiti this could not be truer for the immense levels of poverty that our group encountered. One does not have to look far to know what I mean. In Haiti the only way to get rid of garbage is to burn it, but before that happens many people go out scavenging for anything that they can sell just to make enough money for that day.

“For many people a successful day is one where you get to eat,” –Dr. McQueen.  

Coming from a family in which I was taught “you take it you eat it, we don’t waste food,” it is really upsetting that here in America I could be in a position where wasting food is possible while many people in Haiti are extremely malnourished. On the compound that we were stationed out of during our trip’s duration there was a clinic that saw 60 people a day. One of the patients that was seen was a 21-year-old mother that weighed only 75 lbs. This was just one instance in a pattern that developed over the course of the week in which I would encounter something in Haiti that was in need of improvement, something so commonplace in America that we don’t even think about how much we take it for granted. Another instance of this is our public school system and how available it is for everyone. In Haiti public school is not free and many families cannot afford to send their kids to public school because they need their kids to work in order to bring in enough money for them to survive. There is also a sense of foreboding due to the fact that concrete walls surround most of the important buildings with barbed wire on top if they can afford it; otherwise the people use broken bottles as a substitute. One of the most shocking experiences that I encountered in Haiti was how people reacted to the situations that they found themselves in. No matter how grim their situation was they were confidant that the next life was going to be better and that God was going to provide them with what they needed. The point I am trying to make is that my time in Haiti was an eye opening experience that I will keep in my thoughts for a long time, and will certainly never forget. The things I saw and the people I met are going to serve me as motivation for my career.