About two months ago, a good friend invited me to go on a missionary trip to Port Au Prince, Haiti with him for four days. My response was an immediate yes. Why would I turn down the chance to go to a place with 80 degree temperatures when we are averaging about 15 as a high in Chicago?

This was not the only reason I agreed to go, of course. I had never been out of the United States before, not even in Canada or Mexico, so going to a country like Haiti sounded like it would be a great opportunity to see how people in other places lived. Also, being the Christian I am, a trip to Haiti was a good way to help those who really need some aid in the company of missionaries who knew exactly how to do it.
As the date of the trip slowly approached, I got more and more prepared. Before I knew it, I was at the airport with my one carry-on bag. With no hassle from airport security, we boarded the plane, and flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. After another six hours, we boarded yet another plane, and we were on our way to Haiti.

I knew Haiti was a very poor country, and the earthquake in 2010 had done nothing to improve matters. I had heard that it was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and according to the IMF, it is the 20th poorest country in the world. Hearing those statistics is one thing, but seeing the actual poverty and devastation as we were flying over the island is completely different. Here in America, there are poor parts of every big city, but if you keep driving, you will eventually get back to a better neighborhood. This didn’t happen when I was looking out of the plane window. When I first saw some of the tightly packed shacks topped with tin roofs, I thought, “Oh, so that must be the really bad area,” but the stretch of shiny sheet metal in every direction seemed to never end. The only refuge was when we finally hit the dusty runway, and the army of shacks were all around us.

But the fun was only beginning. The inside of the airport was basically like those in the U.S., but there were very few stores and restaurants. After the regular hassle with the baggage and security checkpoints, we went outside. In the states, when you walk out of the airport, you see tons of cars and taxis. Here, there were just people, and what looked to be security officers, standing relaxed with their shotguns. Everyone seemed to be looking at us newcomers until we got to the parking lot. There were about ten of us now, and we all piled into two vehicles to head to where we would be staying.

Here in Chicago, everyone talks about bad road conditions, and all of the potholes drivers have to dodge just to go a few miles. So you can get a picture of how the road in Haiti was the entire drive, imagine the worst road you have ever been on. Now, picture dumping 10 tons of boulders along the entire road, and then letting the Hulk loose for a few hours. Add a beach load of sand, and Christmas season traffic, and you have the normal road situation in Haiti.
After about half an hour, we reached the place of our lodging. It was a two story yellow building that we would call a standard house, but in Haitian standards, was a mansion. Surrounding the entire property was a cement wall about 8 feet high, with an additional foot of barbed wire on top. The only way into the property was a three inch-thick, twelve foot wide, 9 foot high sliding steel door with a smaller door inside it, locked with a deadbolt.
By the way, they said that where we were was, comparatively, a low-crime area.

After we unloaded all of our baggage and supplies, we made a beeline for the church building, where the missionaries held a service every Sunday. I thought that getting to see how people from other cultures did church would be a very interesting experience, but if I’m going to be honest, then I have to say that after two hours of not understanding a single word of what was being said anywhere in the room, I was a little aggravated. This is when it dawned on me that the missionary group I was a part of, besides my friend and I, was all Korean. The two languages they were most comfortable with were Korean and Creole, the main language of the Haitian people. With a few exceptions, everyone of my immediate company, whether missionary or native, knew English only as a second language, if they knew it at all.

Nevertheless, we were all able to communicate well enough to get through each day of the trip. In our own group, there were some other high school students who knew English well, as well as a handful of adults who knew enough for us to get by. When we were working with the Haitians, there was always one educated boy who was willing to work with us, and had been taught enough English for him to serve as a mediator between us and the people.

Also, because we were with a Korean group, we ate traditional Korean cuisine. Even so, they used fresh ingredients from Haiti, including some of the best tasting mango, papaya, banana, and pineapple that I have ever eaten in my life. Although, with that great tasting food came some of the dishes that an average American teen like me had not eaten before, let alone heard of. One of these was a dish called kimchi, a dish that was basically spiced-up onion, celery, and some other unidentifiable ingredients that was on the table for every meal during the entire trip. Other interesting things I got to try include anchovies, eel, lobster eggs, and, believe it or not, lobster brain. I’ll save you the time of reading what my tongue thought of some of those foods.

As far as places where we visited to help people, we basically went to three places in three days: a very poor town, an orphanage, and a prison. In each place, we distributed bread, water, and clothing, but my experiences in each location were very different.

The village we went to was built around a little stream. Not one of those beautiful clear streams we think of flowing on tropical islands, but a river of garbage, flowing as far as the eye could see in either direction. Under the solid layer of trash was water so black that it looked as if someone had thrown hundreds of thousands of ink cartridges of black Sharpies in it. Just the sight of this poverty was bad enough, but it was accompanied by smell so bad, that four days later, when I got home, my dad and my sister could still smell the stench on the clothes I wore that day through my suitcase.

Yet, running around everywhere were a bunch of little kids, as happy as could be. They would run up to us, and practically fight for a spot to hold my hand as we walked to the building we were going to work out of for that day. They kept looking up at me, only smiling at me after I smiled at them, letting them know I was friendly. While they were enjoying my presence, I was staring at their filthy clothes, and dirty bare feet. I had seen pictures of extreme poverty; now I was literally in it.

My job there was to print and distribute the pictures my friend took of the people there. To you, that probably sounds like the most mediocre job in the world, but to a Haitian, a picture is practically the equivalent of a flat-screen T.V. for us. As soon as they saw themselves in the picture, their faces went from sad and dark to bright and happy. Once a majority of them had their pictures, they were laughing with each other, pointing at their own and other’s, treasuring items that we think of as petty.

The next day, when we visited an orphanage run by the mission, the children there were much better off. They had school uniforms, and could speak a little English. Two little boys, probably in 3rd grade, started asking me all these questions in broken English, I could hardly keep up. So, they improvised, and brought me to one of their whiteboards, and told me to write down all the answers. Pretty soon, they brought my friend in to do the same thing. Then, another class of kids, slightly older, called us in, and demanded that we teach them English by writing statements in both Spanish and Creole and translating them. That was definitely an experience.

Finally, on Wednesday, we went to a prison. All we did here was hand out food, water, and some t-shirts, while some of the group sang. I was not given the responsibility to help, so I joined in and sang the old hymns in English that the rest of the group was singing in Korean. While doing so, I got to look through some of the doors and bar windows of the jail. I observed that the cells were basically the size of bedrooms, and held about 20 inmates each. The prison was divided into two halves, with only two exit points with locked metal doors, manned with four armed guards. Even so, the inmates did not cause any trouble, making this, ironically, the most peaceful aid giving of the trip.
We did not only work our butts off, though; we were also able to see some amazing sights. After we visited the orphanage, we went to a rocky beach where the water was the clearest I had ever seen. I took off my shoes, waded in a little bit, and just stared out into the ocean. I was only thinking one thought: how could such a poor country have such paradise-looking locations? I thought this same thing again the next day, when, after a very bumpy ride up a high mountain, we got a view of the entire city of Port Au Prince. Grey tin roofs covered most of the land in view, yet around them were the most amazing mountains, and a beautiful ocean coast. The contrast between the ugly mass of sheet metal and the breath-taking geography is more than I could possibly put into words.

So, looking back on the whole of the trip, I can say that it was one of the greatest experiences of my life thus far, and I have a feeling it will stay in the top ten. Even though it was for less than a week, the memories of those people, and how they live will stay with me. It has already started to change the way I think about my life, and the problems I face. It has altered my perspective, and made me realize that most if not all of what I complain about doesn’t even come up on the radar for the average Haitian. I still am processing a lot of what I observed, but I can say that, if given the chance, I would go back.

But I probably wouldn’t eat the lobster brains.