On Kindness

Lewis (fellow doctoral student and researcher recently returned to Haiti) brought to my attention that in my efforts to keep this blog impersonal that I tend not to write some of the really amazing things have happened here. The focus on the social level rather than the personal level leads to me omitting beautiful moments. Let me recount the small story of my birthday. It was my fourth day in Port-au-Prince and I was starting to hang around the camp more. Darly was showing me around and left me with his brother James and some friends at Twenty's tent, where people regularly kick it in the shade of the porch he constructed. That was the first time I met Billy or Twenty, both of whom have become friends and intermediaries in for my research. We all started talking, and Billy told me about the frustrations of being a college student who couldn't afford to go back to school because of all that he lost in the quake. No jobs, no vision of the future. Sometimes in camp people don't find the means to eat everyday. During our conversation, it came out that that day was my birthday. Really? Today's your birthday? Congratulations! What do you want? You want some cookies? What kind of soda to you want? I was soon handed a cold bottle of soda and people feted the first day of a new year of my life. I tried to pay for it, but they were having none of it. Minutes before we were discuss the frustrations of poverty and feeling of hunger, and yet even with nothing they found a gift to give to a stranger. I was warmed and astonished by this small act of generosity. That soda I think is the best birthday present I have ever received. A few weeks later, I am still warmed but not longer astonished. People with so little grasp the importance of sharing. I have entered a stranger's house for just a few minutes and already the matron had begun cooking me a small bit to eat. In the house where I am living with Sandra, I am regularly humbled by the grace of her hospitality and selflessness. I have definitely learned a thing or two about acts of kindness from Haiti. I just hope when I go back to the States I will know how to to justice to that knowledge through action and not just through recounting little stories like this one. I hope it infiltrates me.