The perception of what a family is has always been something that’s come easily for me. I grew up with two parents who’ve been married for almost 30 years now and two older brothers. I don’t know of any four people who receive calls from me daily and still claim to love me besides them. I’ve always been close with my siblings, whether it’s been covering each other’s lies to our parents, talking about relationship issues, or even simply just all gathering around the big screen TV with our Broncos jerseys and a cracked beer in our hands to watch America’s greatest game; football. I thought we had each other’s backs and I understood what family meant, but I never fully understood these concepts until my trip to Haiti. This trip didn’t necessarily disprove my idea of family, but rather brought a new meaning to it; universal.

      My idea of a family originates in the U.S. and have never grown to know anything different. Through traveling to Haiti, and hopefully continuing to other parts of the world, I finally got to experience not only a different way of life, but that of culture and family. The Haitians really showed a reliance on siblings. The way I got to portray these kids and their family base was from very little information and experiences, but yet were very clear. Most mothers and fathers send their kids off on their own into the villages to go get them water, food, but mainly to work for them. At a young age, they start doing these tasks, whereas in America, children are very protected and most commonly don’t start doing public things by themselves until around the age of 13. With that, Haitian kids learn to rely off of one another for the simple fact that there parents may not only be working, cooking, and cleaning.

      The main difference I’ve found between the two cultures is the Haitians are simply just trying to survive, while Americans are trying to prosper. Pictured below are three brothers that I caught in action. The boy in the middle had gotten hurt in a game of fútbol (soccer) so his older brothers carried him back to their house like so. I’m not saying that siblings in America don’t lean on each other every now and again for support, but I feel as though it’s shown more here in the Haitian culture. Another example of this that a lot of us students were able to experience was when at the end of a work day, we had leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so we decided to give them to the kids that hung out at our work site all day. We gave them all a half of a piece, but when the kids actually had them, they pulled them into halves again to give to the other kids, whether it was there friend or sibling because they knew there wasn’t enough for everyone. It’s crazy to me how these kids aren’t even in school yet and are performing the concept of sharing without even realizing it, while sharing is one of the main things teachers teach their students in pre-k in the U.S. and yet kids still struggle with it. It’s just crazy to me. I truly found joy in the midst of the sadness. I mean at the end of the day, family is all they really have.