Haiti Journals - PART 1

Join me... won't you?
I wrote A LOT while I was living in villages on my recent trip to Haiti. I read a lot too. Anyway, I thought that I would share some of my journal entries with you, a little at a time.

Let's begin right now...

March 8 - 2005 - Miami International Airport - 10:58am
"...I count 12 skirt-wearing, bun-loving, holiness folk off to my left. Most of them are white as tissue though one just arrived, glowing a golden-brown. Her hair seems shorter than the others. Her clothes are more appealing and stylish. She has color. She has life. She has music about her. A tone of sorts. When she arrived, it was as though she had not seen her peers in quite some time; a reunion of sorts. Perhaps that is the case.

I wonder why they are going to Haiti? Is it to love? Is it to evangelize? Is it to indoctrinate? Is it to run from authority back home? Who could know without asking?

I sometimes wonder about we missionaries. Are we truly selfless creatures? Or are we perhaps power mongers instead? Haiti is a country that is relatively free of law. In her most rural parts, it is a potential Island Of Doctor Moreau. An American could saunter in, set up shop, feed a few people, and claim to be Christ Almighty. In Haiti, where desperation is the base experience, you could sell a lit stick of dynamite if it came with a scrap of bread. And that's nearly the gospel truth.

In this sense, if there is not a genuine passion to sweat and toil one's self into obsoletion, then perhaps the goal is more sinister. Perhaps the inner motivation is to own slaves. And we control them by what they may and may not have. And they act predictably, as desperate people do. And we yo-yo them closer... then yo-yo them further.

I don't care what a missionary tells you... we own our consorts... if only by their hope. They gladly give themselves and then... we enslave them with hope, or at least... we may.

Call a man a pagan while dangling his only hope for food in front of his face and he will repent and be baptized. He will sing in the choir. He will adopt your precious doctrines.

But let us be warned... no man can truly own another.
And if we behave as though we do... then by any of our lofty doctrines... we will be damned.

Oh and, by the way, those folks I was observing... they're apostolic in persuasion; here to hop a plane and hug orphans for a week. Pretty cool. May there be no strings attached.

Who could have known without asking?
So I asked."