Haiti Post Earthquake

First impressions...

I was in Haiti 3 times in 2009 and the last time was 3 weeks before the earthquake happened. This is the first time I have been to Haiti since the earthquake so I thought I would record some of my first impressions this time around. Honestly Haiti seems in many ways the same. A friend made a joke the other day that people new to Haiti come down here and point to a building and say look at what the earthquake did. But they are really just pointing to an unfinished building that looked that way for years before the earthquake.

This is not to minimize the impact of the earthquake. Everyone I know was effected. Everyone had a relative die. Literally every single day for the past two weeks I have learned of another friend whose mom or dad or child died on January 12th. Everyone is also displaced now. My first day back in Haiti I took a walk to the "slum" that I hung out in last summer. I knew that one house had fallen down, but I was totally unprepared to see the place practically leveled to the ground. Where there used to be a small cornfield is now a field of dirt covered in tents. Even people whose homes did not fall down are sleeping in tents for fear of another earthquake. Some missionaries are even still sleeping in tents out of fear of another big earthquake which is supposedly coming sometime.

I never want to be one of those people who only reports on the sadness or hopelessness of a place. So many stories from Haiti and Africa make the places sound like hell on earth. In truth there is TONS of joy here. Haitians are fun, goofy, and vibrant people. Sometimes I think only in Haiti could people make jokes or laugh about an event that caused them so much pain. Sometimes when a loud truck goes by or a fan vibrates against a door all the Haitians will run outside, fearful that another earthquake is happening. They get outside and realize that it wasn't an earthquake and immediately collapse in laughter and begin to mock each other for the way they ran from a fan. Its terror and then hysterical laughter right next to each other.

I am going to try to write about Haiti the way I experience it... which for the most part is joy filled days and once in a while almost crippling moments of sadness.