crumbs of h.a.i.t.i

-When did you eat last time?
-I don’t remember…
-Yesterday?
-No..
- The day before yesterday?-no..
Sometimes they eat once a week, sometimes, if they are lucky, twice. With millions of Euros NGO spend in Haiti, Haitians still don’t have food.
I went to Haiti last summer to teach English in a school in one of the most destroyed and poor districts of Port-au-Prince. Some of my students were saying “It’s a pity we don’t have school on Sundays, we don’t eat that day”. The only food they ate was at school. I went to meet their families. They did not go to school. They did not eat. “If we are lucky, if we find something…” There were pigs and goats searching garbage piles for food but I never saw people. I wondered where and how they look for food.
The kindness of neighbors, strangers, of those who know, who survived together… “if” somebody comes and shares uncooked rice, on Sundays after church. “if” some lost “whites” take pity (which is the worst definition of the feeling arisen) and buy a week’s supply of rice.. Rice, rice, always and only plain rice, exported from the United States of America, Haitian’s savior and best friend.. Haiti once had amazing rice plantations up north, but now they are all disappeared, not because of the Earthquake, no! Just because American rice is cheaper.
Haiti is a paradise, an island with incredible beaches, forests and mountains, first independent colony in history and a country of amazing absolutely life-loving and happy people. But going there for tourism would feel like having a picnic in the cemetery. Going there to work for NGO and gain 5000 USD/month would feel like dancing with the dead bodies while the families are watching. The biggest reward is not a day on the beach, and not salary accumulating in European banks, but a smile of a child, a plate of plain rice shared with a family who have not been eating for a couple of days..