“Lord, give me the courage to accept the things that I cannot change. Please, give me the strength to let go.”
As I reflect on the current situation in Haiti with a mayhem that’s been present for far too long, a common denominator lies at the center of it all: Division. Divide to conquer is the oldest trick in the book since the dawn of time. This tactic has worked and it continues to work today everywhere in the world, especially in Haiti.
Sometimes, I feel emotionally drained by the sight and by the thought of so much poverty and misery that it hurts my soul to the core. Then I feel frustrated, I want to shout, I want to cry. I get upset. But I get upset at who? Blame game… Some start blaming God, the government, the bourgeoisie, the gangs, the diaspora, the international community, NGOs, the Church, Voodoo… It’s always everybody else’s fault. Are we doomed? Are we cursed? “Sa nou fè n’ap peye?”*
Few of my Haitian fellows point their finger inward. What is the personal responsibility in all of it? Are we all guilty? No, we aren’t. I spare the children that don’t know any better and the teenagers that without proper training and opportunities will not face adulthood as they should making them bound to repeat the cycle of poverty.
Bare with me, this is not an analysis of development of some sort. People have written too much on our issues for me to waste each other’s time by repeating existing literature. But hear me out for a moment: A COLLECTIVE WILL TO CLIMB OUT OF POVERTY IS THE SOLUTION. I used to read and hear people talk about unity as our way out but the more I thought about it I started to think that it was cheesy. I don’t need to be lovy dovy with my neighbor to exercise some basic civic rights like keeping the volume of my radio down at certain time of the night or not throwing my trash in the streets of my neighborhood. But then again, individualistic mindset is at the root of the pain. A collective vision is what makes a revolution. This is the driving factor to freedom from socio-economic oppression.
So, to give our nation a collective will, we need to start with a mass campaign of unity in the schools, in the workspaces and in every single community. I say BRING BACK CIVIC EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS. Let’s re-learn to love our country and to care enough to be engaged in its development. Identity crisis, carelessness and passivity are all signs of a weak patriotism that makes Haiti’s development THEIR problem and not OUR problem.
So when I came to the realization that there is a clear agenda for us to NOT progress with a non-existent political will for the country to move forward: I understood that the Haitian people was trapped, trapped in a cycle of division, poverty, misery and violence UNLESS the people, MY PEOPLE, break out of it by having a collective vision. We must unite and stand strong behind our current activists and the young leaders to encourage them. Because it takes courage to speak up and to lead: This virtue is not given to all of us.
Until we feed a collective goal, we will remain dirt poor as a nation and it took me a minute to realize this. Unity will never be cheesy because a handful of people does not make a country but millions. So, I finally made peace with myself to accept the collective fate. I will contribute my 2 cents to help as many of my fellow Haitians as I can. And to the vast majority that I will not reach, I am sorry, I truly am. I am only human and can only do so much. I cannot force my people to break their shackles if they don’t want to.
*Creole idiom that translates into: Are we ripping what we sowed?
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