Morehouse College '13
Economics Major, Philosophy Minor
East Atlanta, Georgia
Jeffrey.Williams.J@gmail.com
Day 1
You know how they say “stop and smell the roses?” Well my phone won’t get signal, my Galaxy Tab has a dead battery, and my laptop only has 23% of battery left. So I decided to push off on the immediate attention I usually give these things, and relax a bit.
We arrived at the Pape Beach House after an elucidating ride from the airport. Turns out that Haiti’s airport is sponsored by American Airlines, and they’ve set rules that hinder the efficiency and effectiveness that the airport can provide--It wasn’t just any airport. As we rode home Jacques explained that this was normal in Haiti. As we rode past many marketplaces and various small businesses, he pointed out the conventionality of street merchants in Haiti. It’s just as pervasive as the typical hustle in the hood. When all goes bad—sell something.
We saw many Haitians on their hustle in the airport. We experienced many desperate Haitians asking to carry our boxes, and asking for a monetary reward after their good deed was performed. One guy was satisfied with a simple exchange of love. He addressed me as “Mon Frere”, meaning my brother in Creole, then he went back to his hustle.
Even the government has their hustles as well. Have you heard of a 120% tax on imported goods? (Jaques made clear the importance of not letting the officials check your bags upon arrival to avoid these taxes.)—that wouldn’t fly in America.
Jaques mother has the most luxurious hustle of hustles I’ve heard here so far. I overheard Jaques telling Dr. Cole that his mother has retired from her affiliations with childhood education and shifted her focus to landscaping and real estate. Nice right? Not to mention she owns this beach house with a beautiful view and welcoming butlers and maids.
Arriving at the beach house, I actually realized that all my devices weren’t ready to play so I decided to relax a bit on the shore. It was then that I realized I was in a truly beautiful place. Imagine smoking a beady on the shore of Haiti, with the sounds of waves crashing on rocks and the wind crashing against the beautiful melodies that soar from the valves of Vinson’s trumpet. Imagine the beautiful sounds of trash talk over skipped rocks whilst your legs are immersed in the warm blue water of the Caribbean Sea. Imagine the sound of a group of college kids marking this night as the night we began our endeavors to save the world… Then imagine the impact that we plan to leave here next Friday.
I’m excited… See you tomorrow!
Day 2
So we’re headed towards the Pape Beach House from Gonaives, Haiti. There we took pictures and toured the city briefly. We even stopped to all get some Sugar Cane—delicious. My favorite part so far, ironically, happens to be the ride back from Gonaives. Suddenly, Zeke shared his epiphany elucidating the importance of the timing of this trip financially for students. Given Morehouse’s distribution structure of refund checks, some students get their checks before Spring Break and some, unfortunately, get theirs after Spring Break.
What this trip could do is make those on the trip aware how much better they are, help them grow an appreciation for the once unappreciated, and ultimately give others a newer perspective. We arrived at the conclusion that your mindset and values are all dependent upon your cultural capital; that encompasses the culture, social norms & conventions, level of open-minded-ness surrounding you, and, of course, your government. Sarah Casiano made a poignant comment that actually may help us all. She said “there is a difference when you are forced to do something and when you have the choice to do something.” Vinson corroborated by bringing up the arduous tasks of “forced laborers” in Haiti’s history. We realized that we only use maybe… 70% of our potential. But what if we pushed ourselves mentally to the extremes of our tasks? Imagine what more we could accomplish... Like Vinson said “it’s a different type of strength.”
Day 3
Ahhhh…. What better way to start your day than to be blessed by the sight of the sunrise, a wild man on a jet ski, and my beautiful brothers and sisters reading, writing and swimming. Well… my day started a bit better; my girl and I stayed up since 11 PM last night talking about nothing. But it was the most apposite nothingness filled with “I love you”s and “I miss you more”s. I told her that Haiti was a peasant’s paradise, and that she was the completing piece to my fantasy. As I watched the sunrise this morning and took pictures with her and Bel (house dog), we humorously joked around with my camera but seriously we expressed our infatuation with each other’s presence, and further expressed our despondence with each other’s absence. After all the love-and smiles-and humor-and… teasing was done, we had to flip the Skype call and split towards our days. Currently, I’m smoking a Haitian cigarette and rapping about today’s planned ventures. It’s about to be some big things popping. Stay tuned…
Day 4
Honestly, I don’t know where to start. To pick up where I left off, we had a compensation-debrief for the one we missed yesterday. There we exchanged so much information about Haiti can be saved economically and morally. We really delve into the issues of the lack of capitalization on exportation of valuable goods (rice, bananas), the missing middle class, and the shadism here.
I say “shadism” because I feel like the term “racism” is not befitting of the nature of the frivolous feud between the light skinned and dark skinned Haitians. The turmoil in Haiti begins with the shadism. If you consider how many people here lack empathy, the ideals of communion & interdependence, and a love for all humanity, you’d see that it all has its roots in the shadism here. It’s as if it is a concrete wall between the two realities.
After the debrief we swam around for a while—enjoying the beautiful day on the shore. It was here that I unveiled my newfound appreciation for the natural. I feel as if the more I am in tune with nature, the more I am in tune with reality. Conversely, the more I am in tune with the world, the more I am in tune with the illusion. I began to covet this appreciation so much that I found joy in my first ever Jellyfish sting. …beautiful.
After the swim we walked across the street to a children’s orphanage. To see the smiles on those faces from simple acts of love confirmed that this trip was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. We found ourselves sharing songs with the children to playing soccer later with the locals; we had a blast! After that fun was had we carried back on over to the Pape Beach House for the funnest party you’d imagine with a mixed age group and a beach, lol. We saw Dr. Cole get funky. We saw Jaques mother getting down. We saw Gant grab a nice Haitian cougar and danced all night with her on the patio. The rest of us were… well—coons. We were “SHAH!”ing for days, slow winding like the waves, and fellowshipping like the good ‘ol days. Eventually we got tired and sat down for a bonfire debrief. It was here that we exchanged a myriad of ideas, opinions, and motivational pieces on the progression of not only Haiti, but the rest of the world as well. I’m glad that I could sense the commitment towards the progression in the group, because I’m definitely holding everyone accountable to their forecasted plans for progression. It’s beautiful to see hope manifest…
After the debrief we all parted our ways, and Zeke pulled me over to give me the realest of insights I needed to hear. I’m hesitant to share the insight, but know it helped. Now I am writing to you from the beach chair and soothing waves of the dark waters to say ‘Good Night Mi Amor.”
Day 5
Today I woke up running, and never found the finish line. I woke up late for breakfast, and barely made it to do community service this morning. But I made it and put in work when I got there—in fact, EVERYONE was putting in work, diligently. We laid the foundation for the rock & cement barrier that would keep the orphans and animals owned by the orphanage away from the very dangerous road (there’s no speed limit, driving age, or organizing rules). While we we’re doing so we created a human-rock-transportation-chain and moves those rocks with so much energy, teamwork, and fun! That experience alone has allowed us all to strengthen our bonds with each other. It reminded me so much of the arduous tasks I’ve endured in Two-A-Days in high school football. In fact, we used many phrases that were used in sports that we’ve grown up playing. “C’mon coach!”, “Where you at Eugene!”, “I put on for my team!”, “Let me see you Keys!”, and my favorite, “No excuses!” were all said with so much compelling passion it made the whole group go harder regardless if the phrase was directed towards you or not.
We also sung old Negro Spirituals as we dug the foundation. Aundray Gant and I were singing
Amen, We Shall Overcome, and
Way in the Water and engendered a bubbly nostalgic feeling that I could only feel vicariously before. While we were digging we took periodic breaks and drunk water. On one break particular, I saw Sarah playing
Ring Around the Rosie with five little boys and girls. That was the most significant thing one could see given the social conditions Haiti. The Shade-ism here is paradoxically so frivolous and controlling that it’s sickening, but the most vomitous part is the realization of the simplicity of the solution, which is so simple. However, one has to revisit Nathaniel’s statement when he referred to the poor as being behind mentally 80 years, and Jaque mentioning that a lot of Haitians never even go to school; this shows why the solution may have never been ubiquitously embraced throughout Haiti.
Day 6
Here, everyday is like a box of crayons; you wake up with the visual of a beautiful piece of art, but never know what crayons what will lead you there. Today’s portrait was not painted by beautiful strokes of various endeavors, yet it was painted with the poignancy of simple-ness. Our agenda entailed getting dressed, going to eat, being lectured (which are always very informative), and serve. It just so turns out that today was the last day of CARNIVALE and Jaque’s Aunt, Maggie’s, birthday. So we turned up!, and had a hell of a good time! There aren’t many parties like the ones we’ve had here on the beach…
Day 7
Hey family… Sorry I’ve been missing for some time. It’s been some internal conflicts I’ve been dealing with, and I couldn’t write effectively while those thoughts were still churning in my head—I tried. But as of now I’m on the plane headed to Miami from Port-Au-Prince listening to Wiz Khalifa’s This Plane, and it brings me back to a question Jasmine asked me about right before we boarded: “How are you feeling right now?”
…I told her that this departure was bittersweet. On one hand, I’m reminded of the beautiful smiles that were on the faces of Haitians as we drove away. Then thinking deeper into it, I can’t say that I’m satisfied with the magnitude of our impact—but you can’t save the world in one week. I’m glad that Jaques created this opportunity because it truly changed my life. The comraderie amongst the group reminded me so much of an Ancient school of thought. We all have similar ideals ansd dreams and we exchange them ALL THE TIME to build better ideas that could have a better impact on our world. But what I love so much about this group is that the school of thought I’m reminded of is Paideia—an ancient Athenian ideal that encouraged the community to spread the wisdom through love. I think it may be appropriate for me to mention that I’m crying at the moment. The beauty of the comraderie just shows me how feasible my dream really is. I am instransigent on the goal of saving the world, and to be around people who not only believe in me but also believe the same thing is something I would have never gotten anywhere else . I love these guys….
Yesterday as we climbed the mountain, I led the group and tried to covertly push them to a new level mentally, but that was quickly done away with when I realized that many of my brothers and sisters couldn’t physically push as hard as I was attempting to go. So despite me leading the group up the mountain, I made sure that I was one of the last to come down. You really learn to appreciate the bond we all share and make a lot of uncanny sacrifices. Like, Christopher Keys… He has a torn ACL in his right leg, and the liklihood of him making it up
Ol’ Pruny Ass (esoteric joke with Seth) was slim. But Keys saddled up, and LED the middle group with no complaints and a lot of determination. That determination exuded throughout the whole climb, top to bottom, and influenced the rest of the group to go harder. Even when it got hard to stick together and fatigue seemed to overshadow our prudence, Vinson stepped up and reminded us how important it was to stick together. When we got to the top we claimed our victory because we epitomized Haiti’s mantra, “Strength in Unity.” We were making so much noise that we began to see people that weren’t a part of the group walking towards us… Turns out that there was village up there!
This village had the most beautiful Haitian female I’ve seen thus far, and the most loving strangers I’ve ever encountered. They walked us through their village and I took note of the how
natural the village was. IT showed me how much we don’t need many things to be happy—in fact, I now think having less makes you happier because you focus more on what makes you and your loved ones important, and ignore the urge to capitalize on desires to bring about that source of importance. Dr. Bryant Marks talked about making sure your source of importance was rooted in the right place last night in a discussion to help us all grasp our identities better and to find our purpose in life. But while I was in the village I wondered off down a random hill and came across the most beautiful picture of the
natural ever: two cows eating grass and chickens racing each other across the plain. I grabbed a seat on a rock, sparked a Cremme Il Faut, and observed this setting. While sitting there a baby cow rubbed its nose across my right shoulder… It showed me that love is ubiquitous amongst all ranks of life, and should shared the same way.
…The flight is about to land, and I have to go but know that I have found the secret to leadership here in Haiti: genuine love. I hope that everyone that read this entry took note of the love shared amongst the group, and how it pervaded throughout the little parts of the country we touched. I hope that the whole world can get off this habit of gravitating towards self consciousness and greed and focus more on interdepence and love.
I'm in Miami BAAAAAAYBEEEEH!!
What this trip could do is make those on the trip aware how much better they are, help them grow an appreciation for the once unappreciated, and ultimately give others a newer perspective. We arrived at the conclusion that your mindset and values are all dependent upon your cultural capital; that encompasses the culture, social norms & conventions, level of open-minded-ness surrounding you, and, of course, your government. Sarah Casiano made a poignant comment that actually may help us all. She said “there is a difference when you are forced to do something and when you have the choice to do something.” Vinson corroborated by bringing up the arduous tasks of “forced laborers” in Haiti’s history. We realized that we only use maybe… 70% of our potential. But what if we pushed ourselves mentally to the extremes of our tasks? Imagine what more we could accomplish... Like Vinson said “it’s a different type of strength.”
Today I woke up running, and never found the finish line. I woke up late for breakfast, and barely made it to do community service this morning. But I made it and put in work when I got there—in fact, EVERYONE was putting in work, diligently. We laid the foundation for the rock & cement barrier that would keep the orphans and animals owned by the orphanage away from the very dangerous road (there’s no speed limit, driving age, or organizing rules). While we we’re doing so we created a human-rock-transportation-chain and moves those rocks with so much energy, teamwork, and fun! That experience alone has allowed us all to strengthen our bonds with each other. It reminded me so much of the arduous tasks I’ve endured in Two-A-Days in high school football. In fact, we used many phrases that were used in sports that we’ve grown up playing. “C’mon coach!”, “Where you at Eugene!”, “I put on for my team!”, “Let me see you Keys!”, and my favorite, “No excuses!” were all said with so much compelling passion it made the whole group go harder regardless if the phrase was directed towards you or not. 
