*insert clever blog title here*

Tanbou prete pa janm fè bon dans:A borrowed drum never makes good dancing
-Haitian Proverb

The story of Haiti’s history cannot be told easily. Sure, you can memorize important dates and events, but it is in the untold story where we can find the hope and pain of this country.

I was walking with a group of friends along a street in a rough part of Port-au-Prince. We were going to visit a church, one of many that we had the pleasure of visiting. This particular church is on a steep hillside that overlooks the city and the ocean. In many senses it was a beautiful location, when looking far away. As you focus on the immediate surroundings, the extreme poverty is everywhere. Sewage drips down the streets as children play with kites made from trash. The group stopped and looked over the city. One of the pastors was rattling off statistics and then mentioned something about Haiti being a 3rd World country. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as I am not a fan of this particular term. “You mean ‘developing’ country, right?” I said, attempting to correct him. “No, look around…this is 3rd World. There is no development here.”

After that visit we went to a church in Cite Soleil, a slum city that the UN recently called “the most dangerous place on Earth”. Slight exaggeration, but I can see where they would get the idea (Wikipedia “Cite Soleil” and reads the first two paragraphs). Don’t worry, Mom, I was completely safe-ish. In Cite Soleil we visited a church that has been in the middle of the violence for some time. Once, three people were killed in front of the church and they just continued with the service. In this area, many churches were shut down out of fear. This one stayed open. The pastor then started talking about things that the community, and others like it, needed from Christians. It wasn’t bigger churches with better music. It wasn’t week long vacation bible schools. It wasn’t 3 point sermons with a creative spiritual “to-do” list. It wasn’t money, aid, charity, or donations.

He called for the body of Christ to be as much about social development as it is about spiritual development. This struck me, since it was something I had been recently thinking. I heard something from a missionary that disturbed me on a very deep level. “There is no hope for Haiti, but the good news is the amount of churches is growing.” How can we pretend to love our neighbor while letting the quality of their life deteriorate? How can we preach to those in hunger? In most cases, the avenues of spiritual issues and social issues never intersect. I wonder what life would look like if we lived on the corner of that intersection.

Here are some other things I have been up to…
-saw a voodoo ritual in Haiti in the street
-Got stopped by a cop at one in the morning. He wanted a bribe or else he would throw me in jail. I told him about my two brothers who are cops, and how much I respect his noble profession. He let me go.
-Saw the Columbus’ house
-Bit into some bread that was given to me that had maggots in it, and out of respect ate the entire piece. I should have done the old “pretend-to-take-a-drink-and-spit-out-the-food-in-the-cup” trick that got me through so many meals growing up. I always drank milk at dinner because it wasn’t clear and could hide vegetables. Sorry mom.
-Went to the ocean and then had some ice cream
-Almost got in a fatal car accident because a guy was going the wrong way on the highway. That is an example of Dominican driving
-Felt like I was in a car chase scene from James Bond as the car I was in slammed, screeched, and swerved around the oncoming car *see above*. That is an example of Dominican driving.
-Learned some Spanish
-Learned some Dominican
-Learned that Spanish and Dominican are two different languages.