The move from the Dominican Republic to Haiti was a big transition. As soon as you cross the border, the change is very prominent. The D.R. has a good lot of trees and vegetation. Many areas in Haiti are barren. Another change was the spiritual atmosphere. As soon as we pulled into Port Au Prince, a strong sense of spiritual darkness fell over me and several other people on the bus.
While we spent a lot of time on the G.O. compound and not a whole lot of time out in the city, I was still able to glean some profound things about Haitian culture:
-There is a lot of occult practice in Haiti.
According to Joe, one of the full-time missionaries with Global Outreach, the majority of people on the island practice some form of voodoo or witchcraft, and there is a ton of overlap between occult practitioners and people who practice some form of Christian religion, particularly Roman Catholicism. While staying at pastor Forge’s house, we drove by, what he called, a “Catholic Voodoo” church. As strange as that sounds, it’s relatively common in Haiti. While touring Port Au Prince we saw a gathering around the remains of an old church building, praying and shouting out loudly. According to our tour guide, it was a voodoo church gathering, and they were praying, not to God, but to the large marble crucifix in the church yard. According to him, they literally believe that the cross itself has power to make their situation better.
-The Christian community in Haiti is very conservative.
A young man at Pastor Forge’s house pointed out my eyebrow piercing and said, “God does not want you to have that.” There is an automatic association between tattoos and piercings and living outside of God’s will, even more so than in extremely conservative circles in the States.
On the compound, the Haitian workers were divided on strict gender lines. All the men did hard labor. All the women wore long work dresses and did things like laundry and cleaning.
-Many Haitians have a much skewed view of Americans.
Many Haitians have animosity towards Americans. They believe that the reason they are so poor is because America is holding out on them, that if America just threw more and more money in Haiti’s direction, all their problems would be fixed. The truth is, the States have been sending money, from government aid and personal charity, for upwards of 70 years I’m told. More and more money and relief goes each year, yet things get worse and worse in Haiti. The problem is there is so much corruption in the government and there isn’t good infrastructure to get the aid where it needs to go.
Even when there is no animosity, Haitians see Americans and the first thing they tend to think is, “You’re here to give me something.” I heard many kids say things like, “Hey you American! Give me five dollars!” Many kids wanted my watch, even though it’s plastic watch from Wal-Mart. One kid even told me to give him my shoes, even though he already had shoes and my shoes wouldn’t have fit him.
-Haitians are desperate people.
They seek after hand-outs from Americans because they need whatever they can get. This desperation has turned into a kind of “survival of the fittest” mentality: do whatever you can to get whatever you can, because if you don’t get it, someone else will. I posted a blog earlier about distributing food in a tent city. Here’s a link to a blog with a video that my teammate made that’ll give you a better idea of what I’m talking about here and what happened that day; please watch this:
[Note: If you are following me and April, I highly recommend following Colby (colbygardner.theworldrace.org) as well. He makes a ton of great videos and, as his teammates, April and I are in a lot of them. Even those that we aren’t in are relevant to the ministry that we’re doing.]
