As I’ve sat here on the plane to Thailand, God and I have been talking. And come to think of it, He’s been doing most of the talking, which is a strange and beautiful change of pace in my prayer life. I’ve been thinking about Haiti. To be completely transparent with you guys, Haiti was not my favorite place to be. Did it have its amazing attributes? Yes. We had an amazing contact and place to stay and were very blessed. I made some amazing relationships. And God taught me SO much. But as a whole, Haiti was such an oppressive place for my spirit.
I feel convicted that I haven’t been completely honest in relaying my experiences. I want you guys to know what actually happened. So let me try.
Haiti is dark. If there was a thesis statement to this entry, that would be it. The crazy thing is that as we drove at night through Port Au Prince to our town, I could feel it. I mean literally and tangibly feel it. The 14 of us rode in complete silence as we soaked in and battled the darkness all around us. The air was thick with dirt and smoke. One of my friends even took a picture with the flash on, and it looked like it was snowing. It smelled like a sweet burnt coffee, trash, and plastic. I remember making eye contact with a woman in another car as we were stopped next to her. To my surprise, I saw no life. No joy. It just felt empty. So I prayed. I prayed and sang worship because it was the only defense my spirit knew to do.
I later found out more of the reason behind the darkness. If you were to have asked me after my first week in Haiti why it was such a dark place, I might have told you about the poverty. It was obvious that it was relevant as the majority of the “houses” were made of sticks and ripped tarps that you might call a tent. It was obvious during the hurricane when a family of a mother and her 4 children died in a mudslide because a tent was all they had to protect them from the elements. It was obvious as child after child chased after our car with their hands out, begging for anything we had to offer. But my spirit told me that this wasn’t the reason behind the darkness, but rather a side effect of something deeper.
It’s voodoo. I know this may sound weird, because it was weird to me; but it’s everywhere in Haiti. Not even twenty years ago, it was the nation’s national religion and they have colleges and universities just like we have in the states. Witch doctors are on every corner, and for just a small fee, you can have whatever your heart desires.
I know it sounds weird, but let me try to put it into perspective. Just a couple of weeks before we got to our town, an 8-year-old boy was sacrificed in a voodoo ritual. Drowned in a lake with the okay of his own father because he desired something; most likely great wealth or the death of someone else. The following few days another boy was drowned. Same lake, same story.
Before work every day, if anyone owns a shop you can find them throwing a bucket of water over their doorstep. Not to make it clean and look nice, but to wash a dust that people curse them with. If you want to stay in business in Haiti, you better live in fear and clean off your porch.
Even the children are aware. You will come across several children with scars on their faces or chest. My ignorant first assumption is that they probably just fell. But again, there’s more in Haiti than just surface assumptions. Along with the witch doctors that give wealth and death, there are women witch doctors that live in jealousy of beautiful children. Parents will cut their children with knives, so that they won’t be cursed and killed literally for being too precious. They also will feed their children the blood of a chicken. Tony described seeing a new mother holding her new baby and feeding it blood straight from a chicken to protect the baby. They live in fear.
This is the secret culture in Haiti that you don’t hear about. Had I not been informed by my brother in Christ, Tony, I would have gone the entire month just feeling the oppression but not understanding what I was feeling. I wouldn’t have understood what the Haitian people go through every day. I’m sorry I can’t sparkle up this story. I’m sorry I can’t tell you that it’s okay and that child sacrifices are uncommon. But I would rather tell you a truth that disturbs you and moves you into action than one that’s convenient to hear. But all this being said, God still brings such a hope. All that will be written in blog 2.
