Preparing for Haiti

So, here I am five days away from heading to Haiti. I have so many different emotions flooding through me; excitement, fear, exhaustion, impatience. At one point I love not knowing what to expect, what I am going to encounter, who I am going to encounter and on the other hand I am terrified. I am terrified that I have no control over the situation, terrified that I won’t experience or see things that I think I am going to experience. I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity; it is not very common that your boss will pay for your entire trip so that you will have the chance to see firsthand the work that your organization does.  I am not necessarily worried about leaving home, I have done it before and this trip is very short compared to the others. Of course, I will miss my family, Chad, and most of all, Sadie. I have never been away from her and not had any means of contact. I know she is just a dog, but she is my baby.

I feel like I am prepared as much as I can be. I have read everything I can find about the different schools from work and have done my own research on the country of Haiti itself and different issues, problems, challenges, and great things about the country.  Overall, all the courses that we have taken so far are going to be beneficial for me while in Haiti. Specifically, the qualitative research methods class is going to be so valuable. Since I am doing my fieldwork at the same time, the different approaches that have been talked about throughout the course are going to be very beneficial during my stay in Haiti. I have a feeling that I will be exhausted when I return home, mostly because my stay is a lot shorter than everyone else going abroad I want to make sure I can capture a lot of really important and tangible information that I can then translate into my thesis.

I am excited that we are finally starting to work on this aspect of the degree as well as petrified. The thesis project is one of the main reasons why I wanted to do the ICD Program, but now that it is here I don’t want to mess this up and I am putting a lot of pressure on myself. I don’t know where the thesis will go from here and even what my exact topic will be. I know that my passion is universal education so it will stem from that in some form. I want to be able to visit the different schools we support and make a connection, to really understand what everyday life is like in Haiti. I am never going to be Haitian, I know that, but I don’t want me being an outsider to influence me to not be as engaged as I could be. I plan on bringing my camera, an audio recorder, and journal. I just want to absorb as much as I can.

I want to be vulnerable; I want to at least get a glimpse of what life is like from Haitians themselves. Some of the most amazing learning experiences I have had are when I let myself be vulnerable. I feel strongly that the only way in which we are ever going to have peace in the world is if we are all vulnerable and allow ourselves to discover the beauty of others. We tend to shrug away from things that are different and unknown and see them as shady, but once we allow ourselves to open up we start to realize how similar we all really are. We all want the same things in life; love, compassion, and acceptance.