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.
