As we write this letter to you it is important for you to know that we are just back from a "wonderfully disturbing" Trip of Perspective to Haiti. Even as we unpack our bags and try to sort through our feelings, we felt it essential to share something of our learning with you. Something incredibly significant happened to us, in us, with us as we encountered and fell in love with some very special people.

We must begin by responding to a frequently asked question: "Why do you go on Trips of Perspective to places like Haiti and India?" Sometimes people say, "Wouldn't it be MORE effective and a better use of money to simply send the money you use for such a trip to various agencies seeking to help the suffering poor of Haiti?"

So, why do we go? To learn from the Haitian people about life, and about the Gospel of Jesus Christ! We go to learn about this remarkable country, to stand in solidarity with the poorest of the poor, and to experience our inability to fix it. As Richard Rohr stated it,

"...in the final analysis we live our way into a new kind of thinking. We have always thought we could think our way into a new way of life. You have to run with your own feet to some place where you haven't been before -- to a new place. You have to leave the world where you have everything under control. You have to leave the world where everybody likes you. You have to head into a world where you are poor and powerless. And there you'll be converted despite yourself." 1

We go on our Trips of Perspective not to fix the problems, to have answers, or to even make a difference. We go to be present, to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti, to confront our real powerlessness in the face of dire need, and be transformed.

We go knowing that we will perform our most important service when we return home through the life choices we make in response to this experience, and by sharing what we have learned with others in an effort to promote local and global compassion, justice and peace.

We spend our time learning about the life of Haitian people, their culture, their joy, their hunger, and their suffering. We also meet with ex-patriots who have spent years working for justice alongside the oppressed.

Out of our twenty-six trips to Haiti, this was the most wonderful trip of all. And it was the most disturbing. Wonderful because our group of eight encountered some of the most beautiful and loving people you would ever want to meet. Wonderful because we were able to talk with some of the key leaders in the Haitian society: all the way from people living in humble shanties in Cite Soleil and in bamboo huts in Lasource on the Island of Lagonave, to clergy, to people working for peace and justice, to the US Ambassador, and to former President Aristide.

It was disturbing because we learned that the seasonal rains on the island of Lagonave are not falling, bringing drought and hunger to the island. At the same time a recent US government study was brought to our awareness which stated that over one third of all Americans are overweight. Another study from the University of Minnesota estimated that over thirty percent of all American dogs and cats are also overweight. In contrast, reporters returning from the northwestern region of Haiti tell of starving people so hungry they are forced to eat their emaciated dogs and donkeys, and school children in Port-au-Prince swallowing stones to assuage hunger pangs due to poverty.

What are we to do? We may have a little extra flesh we would be happy to give away. But this won't end hunger and starvation in Haiti. Sending food to Haiti is not the solution, either. Food aid is a band-aid that often hides the causes of hunger while destroying the incentive for local farmers to produce food. The causes of hunger in Haiti are many and complex. However, most causes are linked to a famine of certain resources that are abundantly available in all industrialized societies.

It was disturbing to be reminded that in the US and other Western countries, opportunities for education are so abundant that many students have the luxury of taking school for granted. By contrast, in Haiti only about 1% of the population graduates from high school. Most Haitian farmers are illiterate and have no access to the sort of practical training that would help them manage their limited resources better.

While we frequently feel inundated with junk mail and other printed materials, and do not have time to read the books on our shelves ... by contrast, in Haiti, the vast majority of schools simply have no books to offer their students. NONE! If students have books, it is because they have bought them themselves.

It was disturbing to realize that consumer debt is considered by many economists to be the biggest threat to the health of the US economy. Do you have a credit card? Have you ever taken out a bank loan? Judging by the numbers of people in debt, credit may be too easily available in the United States. In Haiti, however, the vast majority of the population has access to no credit except through local loan sharks who charge up to 50 per cent interest per month. 2

In a conversation with our US Ambassador, William Swing, he observed "Everything in Haiti is broken, except the people."

From President Aristide we learned, "The richest nations in the world spend only 0.3% of their GNP to help countries such as Haiti. 20% of the people control 85% of the wealth of the world, while the bottom 20% of the world's population control just 1.4% of the world's wealth. So we say, if we, the poor don't work together to move slowly but surely from misery to poverty, they will not come here and do it for us. We don't want to criticize the rich people! We don't want to blame them. We just want to see how the rich and poor, in the name of their faith, for those who believe in God, can work together to do something to change this situation."

We learned that the ultimate cause of hunger is a famine of different kind -- a famine of justice and compassion. We also learned that we just don't get it and it is in this place of not getting it that transformation happens.

On the last morning of our time in Haiti, we asked our group, "What is the one thought, phrase, feeling that won't let go of you?" One of the participants responded with, "I just don't get it! I just don't get it!" That pretty well summed up our learning.

We don't get poverty! There is nothing redemptive about not having enough food, clothing, medical attention, water or shelter.

We don't get violence -- be it violence in the form of street gangs, domestic quarrels, oppression of one group by another, and/or the violence done by the wealthy and powerful as they exploit the resources of countries and people who are unable to defend themselves.

We don't get why it is okay for multi-national corporations to pay $2.40 (US) a day to Haitian employees for 10 hours of labor in deplorable conditions just because there are other people in the world who are willing to work for that same starvation wage! While a free market may be the most productive answer for Haiti's horrible economy, it also needs to be fair!

We also don't get why there is such a discrepancy between the rich and poor in our world. Why do some people earn millions each year for their work (such as Michael D. Eisner, the CEO of Walt Disney Company, earning $204.2 million in 1996; or the estimated $80 million Tiger Woods will receive for endorsements; or the $1 million TV Comedian Steinfeld receives per episode) while the average annual income of most of people living in the two-thirds world is less than $125?

We don't get why money has such a hold on us and why we always seem to need more of nearly everything.

We don't get why we as a nation protect people like Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, a man responsible for thousands of brutal deaths in Haiti as he led a violent paramilitary group during the recent military dictatorship. Emmanuel now lives in the US, and the US government decided NOT to send him back to Haiti to stand trial for his crimes. He now lives in New York with his mother. Worse yet, we don't get why we (the United States Government) train soldiers from many two-third world countries in the School of the Americas in Georgia, to carry out atrocities against their own people via torture and murder.

We don't get why we waste so much food. On July 1st, a study was released that revealed that North Americans routinely toss away one fourth of the nation's total food supply. If just 5% of that wasted food was recovered, it could feed an estimated 4 million people. This news came to us as we were living with the images of the starving people on Lagonave. We just don't get it.

As we shared the vivid images and disturbing stories with our friends and journey partners, a wise mentor helped us understand why this trip was so significant.

"Sometimes we are most open to conversion and transformation when we don't get it, when we cannot figure it out. We have to give it over. It is beyond our control, beyond our fixing, beyond our repair. The fact that we don't get it could be the best news of all. Because in not getting it we are opened up to a new way of seeing, a new way of hearing, and possibly a new way of living." 3

As Thomas Merton stated, perhaps the place to begin "is to get rid of the illusion that we know the answer." 4 Perhaps transformation can happen when we stay with the questions, with the confusion, with the "not getting it."

It is a humbling experience to acknowledge the reality of the situation facing two thirds of the world's people, the truth of what we see, and then coming to realize that "I am part of the problem." As much as we (Dale and Esther) may want to point fingers of judgement at others (i.e. multinational corporations, people more affluent that we, and governments), we also must acknowledge how our way of living (our affluence) is made possible by the low wages paid to people sewing our clothes in sweat shops. It is also true that much of the food we eat is grown on farms located in other parts of the world by families that barely make a profit or no profit at all, and struggle just to survive. We must acknowledge that we use too much of other people's resources for our own comfort.

For us, the hope lies in our ability to be disturbed: to see with new eyes, to hear with new ears, and to read the gospel with a broken heart. For us, the hope lies in our not being able to let go of the pain; staying with the pain until transformation happens and our whole way of being, our whole way of living begins to change.

We close this letter with some words from the pen of George Johnson, words that we have found to be especially helpful in our search for understanding of what happened to us in Haiti.

"Most of us are more comfortable with answers than with questions. We prefer closures rather than paradox. There is security with certainty. When faced with a problem we generally approach it with the assumption that information, insight, and proper action will bring satisfactory solutions. We want to fix things right now. In a success-oriented culture, living with ambiguity is not a sign of stability or progress.

"However, the reality of a broken world and the variety of analyses of root causes often lead to ambiguity rather than certainty. What we thought, believed, assumed, or followed is suddenly brought into question. It isn't as clear-cut and simple as we were led to believe. Sometimes long-held assumptions are discovered to be inadequate if not false! Receiving more information unsettles us rather than making things clear and easy.

... It should not surprise us that our journey into the lives of those who cry for help will be discomforting. It is important during this time to be centered in the gospel, the good news that Jesus accepts us, understand us, and forgives us. It also is important to remember that Jesus' compassion for the poor and the biblical commitment to justice and righteousness is not ambiguous. This can help to hold us on course as we struggle through the mixed messages we hear and the disturbing feelings." 5

by Esther Armstrong and Dale Stitt

This article from Journey Into Freedom, 11th ed., July 1997, p. 1-4 is used with permission of the authors. Copyright Journey Into Freedom

Journey Into Freedom publishes a newsletter, sponsors workshops, silent retreats and Trips of Perspective into two-thirds of the world Haiti, India and Africa. Contact them by 503 244-4728, fax 503 977-9612, PO Box 12626, Portland OR 97212-0626

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