A Trip to Haiti

My wife and I finished a year-and-a-half-long adoption process last May, at which time twin two-year-old Haitian girls became our daughters. Because the political/economic conditions in Haiti are so unstable (tens of Americans were kidnapped there last year), we had hoped to avoid traveling there. As it turned out, it was necessary to go to get one of the two, so I flew to Port Au Prince last May to pick her up.

In case anyone is unaware, Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. A little over 8 and a quarter million people live there. Haiti has a 50% literacy rate and about 50% of its population has access to treated drinking water. The average life expectancy is 53 (in the U.S. it’s 77) and the number of children who die in childbirth is 70 out of every 1,000 (in the U.S. it’s about 6 out of every 1,000).

My plan after landing in Port Au Prince was to stay at the airport. I’m no security expert, but I was thinking white people make for conspicuous targets. I didn’t plan on any site seeing; I had a morning flight in and an afternoon flight out on the same day. The arrival and departure terminals are separate, so I had to exit the one and walk down a crowded public street to the other. I met the Haitian lady from the orphanage in front of the terminal. She presented our new daughter to me and we walked together toward the other terminal. One might expect great elation at the first sight of our daughter. Those emotions came later, but at the time I was thinking, “Nobody shoot the white boy! Nobody shoot the white boy!” We got close to the departure terminal and I was eager to get inside. Before getting to the entrance, however, she stopped next to the van she’d come in and asked what time my flight left. I told her it was that afternoon, and she replied with a thick accent, “You’re too early. You’re too early. You come with us.” Knowing that a trip through Port Au Prince would significantly increase my chances of becoming another statistic on the U.S. State Department’s travel warning page, (which places Haiti on the same list as Iraq) and being the assertive, no-nonsense kind of guy I am, I looked at her politely and said, “Well…ok.” The driver nodded hello. I delicately placed the floppy 16 pound two-year-old on the seat next to me, and off we went.

We drove down major roads and back streets. There is no public sanitation in Haiti. One scene I cannot forget is a line of trash paralleling a major commercial four lane. It was maybe two feet high and thirty yards long, like a garbage fence, and it was common place. In the same vicinity there was a shanty town—little shacks of cinder block, some pieced together with all kinds of miscellaneous materials. In the center of the compound was a rectangular squalid green pool. The edges of it were lined with trash, like seaweed washed up on a beach. I saw people walking in between the shacks holding buckets, and was sure that that pool or one of similar quality was the main water source for many. All this shed new light on the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Also, about three times in heavy traffic, we came up behind a U.N. personnel carrier with soldiers standing in the back holding automatic rifles. Haiti has no domestic police force to speak of, so a few thousand U.N. troops are assigned there to keep all hell from breaking loose.

As for our daughters, one was healthier than the other. Both were past their second birthday at their homecoming and neither could walk. They also both had bald spots on the backs of their heads, presumably from extended time lying in a crib and rocking themselves to sleep, which I’m sure was no fault of the outnumbered caretakers. The orphanage they came from keeps about 70 kids, and about 4 or 5 a year die, usually from diseases Americans have never heard of because they’re caused by bad water or lack of medicine—non-realities for us.

But our two are thriving now. It’s amazing what love and calories will do. God is good!

MM