I am in Haiti.

I came here a few days ago with Curtis Honeycutt (one of WND’s Board Members) and Kerry Snyder (Grace Community Church’s high school pastor).  Our mission for this one-week trip is the same as it always is with World Next Door… to see what life is really like in this place, and to see what God is doing here.

Me checking out the striking countryside in Haiti. (Click for a larger version of the panorama!)

Hosting us for our time in-country is Nehemiah Vision Ministries, an organization dedicated to bringing the village of Chambrun out of extreme poverty.  Through an orphanage, an elementary school and a medical clinic, they are slowly fighting back the poverty that has gripped their community (more on that in upcoming articles).

NVM is working in a country that is by far the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.  Although Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, it might as well be half a world away.

The Land

One of the many barren hillsides in Haiti.

The crazy thing is, Haiti is a Caribbean island.  It should be lush and beautiful, with tropical jungles covering every mountain and sandy white beaches along every coast.  The people living here should be feasting on fruit and fish and crops grown in rich soil.

But since coming here to Haiti, I’ve realized the truth.  The land is desolate.  The people are starving.  And the world has turned its back on this tiny nation sitting right at the doorstep of America.

One of the first things I noticed upon arriving in Haiti was the lack of trees.  As we went on an errand with Pastor Esperandieu Pierre that took us half-way around the country, I was shocked to realize that every mountain-top is completely bare.

I am not exaggerating.  All of the trees are gone.  In 1923, over two thirds of Haiti was covered in forest.  By 2006, less than 2% was.

Deforestation by loggers and poor locals looking for firewood has left the hills bald. Brown streams of dirt and mud flow down from each hillside, evidence of the massive erosion that now causes so much flooding in the lowlands.

As we drove around the country, all I could think about was what the island once looked like.  I imagined the hills alive with vegetation and wildlife. Understandably, the whole thing got me really upset.

The Economy

But deforestation isn’t the only thing that has blown me away here.  As far as industry goes, it’s clear that Haiti has fallen prey to the same upended priorities that have so devastated many developing nations in Africa and East Asia.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

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Because of a lack of capital investment in industry here, Haitians are left working long hours in sweatshops to manufacture things like baseballs and t-shirts for the U.S. while their children kick around rolled up plastic bags and depend on donated clothing to get by.

Just the other day, Pastor Pierre made the startling (and bitterly ironic) realization that the school uniforms worn by the kids at NVM were manufactured here in Haiti, sent to the U.S. for packaging, and “donated” right back to where they started.

The People

But the most shocking and disheartening thing for me was digging deeper into the makeup of the population.  Seeing the people of Haiti was a constant reminder to me of past injustices that still manage to claw their way into the present.

First of all, there were the people I didn’t see.  Native Americans.  Hispaniola, like every other Caribbean island, was once home to native tribes.  Until European settlers arrived, they lived in a relatively peaceful balance with the land.

This scene could just as easily be in Senegal or Guinea...

However, as settlements began to spring up and trade began to increase, the natives started dying off from unfamiliar diseases and brutal living conditions.  Today, though you can still find a few of their decedents in neighboring Dominican Republic, Haitian Natives have been almost completely wiped out.

But then there are the people you do see.  The vast majority of the population…  People of West African descent.

As I met more and more people in Haiti, it became obvious to me.  Facial features, physical build, even a few cultural similarities… They all had what I have come to understand as West African characteristics.

And how did West Africans end up in the Caribbean?  The answer, of course, is slavery.  The overwhelming majority of Haitians are direct descendents of captured slaves.  Their great-great-great grandparents, captured by French merchants and brought to the New World to work the fields, fought for, and eventually gained, their independence in 1804.

But imagine a brand new nation comprised of largely uneducated ex-slaves from many different tribes and speaking many different languages.  They didn’t have an easy road ahead of them…

That is why I am so deeply moved and troubled by the poverty I see here.  I am standing at the other end of that road, witnessing the direct influence of 200 year old injustices.

The Road Ahead

Smiles at NVM's school. These kids have a real hope for the future!

Now, with all of that super depressing stuff I just learned, it would make sense for me to just roll up into a ball and give in to hopelessness.  But I won’t.

I won’t because of the other things I’ve seen here.  Hope.  Life.  Joy!

Against all odds, the Kingdom of God is breaking through.  I am baffled to see it, but chains of generational poverty are actually shattering.  Organizations like Nehemiah Vision Ministries are taking root and giving impoverished villages a chance to succeed.

Over the next few articles, Curtis and I will try to capture what we have seen and experienced here in Haiti.  As we bring you with us through our experience, we hope that you will begin to see, as we have, that for a country at America’s doorstep, the injustices of the past don’t have to play out in the present…