This is Haiti

For my last summer as a student - ever - I took the opportunity to visit Haiti for 5 weeks and administer questionnaires about the experiences of people with disabilities. Team Canada Healing Hands performed the first round of surveys in 2009 and embarked upon a second round of data after the earthquake for a current needs assessment.

These past few weeks here have been quite the immersion. For starters, did you know that Haiti is in the Caribbean? I know, geographically, that is obvious. However, it's attached to the Dominican Republic where people travel for spring break and other vacations. Yet, somehow I didn't expect to see the tropical beauty prevalent in Haiti. I expected poverty, broken houses, potholed roads, hungry people. I did not expect banana, mango and breadfruit trees everywhere, beautiful mountains, lots of geckos and white sand beaches.

Of course, there is still poverty, broken houses, potholed roads and hungry people. As one of the many people who saw pictures of the devastation immediately after the January 2010 earthquake and almost nothing since, I was shocked by how much progress has been made. Except in the poorest areas much of the rubble has been cleared. Construction is taking place everywhere - maybe not construction that I would feel safe standing - let alone sleeping - in, but construction nonetheless. People are busily selling anything that can be sold. Sure, there are beggars, but even Canada has beggars.

This is not to downplay Haiti's struggles in anyway. Haiti is known to be the poorest country in the western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. This is to demonstrate that Haitians are people who live in a poor country which was recently devastated by a natural disaster, on top of historical devastation of the more man-made variety.

The vast majority of Haitians I have met are friendly and open to answering my questions. Some have mentioned to me their lack of optimism for governmental change due to corruption. Others have talked about the varieties of aid-workers who flocked to Haiti in 2010. I've been told that they can tell who actually cares and who cares more for the salary and perks of an aid job. The big differences being that those who care come to Haiti with skills they can offer, take time to learn the language, and speak to Haitians about their lives. Interesting that there would be anyone who came to Haiti to "help" yet has no skills to offer, hasn't taken time to learn a few words and hasn't asked the Haitians about their lives and how they can work together?

The point is simply to remind those of us lucky enough to live in a safe, developed country with educational and job opportunities that while it is easy to look at a poor country such as Haiti and either judge them for their poverty or feel sorry for them, that Haitians need neither judgement nor pity. What Haitians want, so far as they've told me at least, is a chance for their children to go to school, jobs for themselves so they can provide for their families and have improved access to food, water and maybe some nonessential items like nice clothing and furniture. Haitians want to be treated with dignity and respected as persons. While each of these desires is quite reasonable, achieving those will require commitment from those in power and collaboration among the many aid workers here to help. Such a reasonable desire perhaps looks a lot less reasonable when achieving it requires the collaboration of powerful individuals.