Haiti Trip: Day 2 (en route to Haiti by road)
Fortune smiles upon us, though Fate lays a challenging path.
Last night all seven us of, David, Charles, Jeremiah, Johnny, Jesus, Marly, and myself sat down all together for the first time and talked. We needed that talk as a group of strangers meeting for the first time to engage in politically and socially tricky work – not to mention the security concerns around the work we’re about to engage in.
We had a long and intense conversation. Our group of seven contains two white folks and 5 people of color. We’re all people of privillege from the United States. We’re all on this trip because we are in solidarity with Hatian brothers and sisters, but we are all in different stations of life and have different skill sets that we’ve brought along. A lot of moving parts.
The way that we conversed honestly with each other last night was inspiring. This is a grassroots effort and there was no pre-established hierarchy or structure – still I would say that we found it easy to talk about difficult things while being cool and civil and patient with each other. Inspiring.
GREEN SHIRTS
David has unified his grassroots effort with a Hatian phrase, “L’Union fait la force.” A literal French translation would call that “a union makes strength.” in other words, “strength in unity.” And that is the underlying philosophy behind David’s work as he explained it to us last night. He and his crew brought along with them green t-shirts that have this phrase on them in yellow. Each of us 7 has one to wear.
The thing is that when we are all together in these green shirts and khaki’s, the casual observer (or someone fed up with the lack of respect and real aid coming to assist them) might mistake us for one of those western aid entities backed by institutions and blind to the social aspects around assisting Hatian people.
We talked about the phenomenon in length as a group. It was obvious none of us was here to continue in that wack tradition. We are here to work and to help.
