The Year I Went to Haiti

A lot has changed since I unofficially retired from blogging. I paid off graduate school ($25+ K in 14 months -- go Mike!). I stopped working at The Art Institute of Portland. I started keeping track of my daily activities in an Excel spreadsheet (you think I'm kidding). I stopped committing every moment of every day to some sort of task or activity. I spent my remaining vacation days on a trip to Haiti.

Wait, what?

Yup. True story. Had eight vacation days left and chose to listen to that little call in my heart that wouldn't go away. It kept telling me that life isn't about me, that I needed to serve somewhere. So I did. From June 15th through the 22nd I was in Haiti. I wish I could have stayed forever (though in that scenario I would request regular access to iced tea).

I've had more two weeks to process everything, including a brutal 1:47 half-marathon last Sunday where I kept thinking nostalgically about how these same shoes had been running on the rock and dirt in Haiti not five days before. Below I will try to verbalize -- worbalize? -- some of what's affected me. I'll also answer questions people have been asking me -- what were the bathrooms like, where did you sleep and the et cetera.

(Kinda fun to unabbreviate that word by the way. Et cetera. I recommend trying it some time)

Much like when I went to the Super Bowl, I'm writing this more for me than for you. Since it's going to wind up rather long, I'll divide into sections so you can bookmark your spot or else skip around.

So, grab a cup of coffee, relax in your PJs and read along. If nothing else, skip to the "lessons learned" near the end.

Cool?

Cool.

Let's do this.

On why I went (as short as I can make it)
For a long time I felt a pull in my heart towards a service trip to another country. Regular travel hasn't motivated me in years (outside of trips to visit friends) and my heart was screaming for me to help somewhere.

The doubt in my head wondered what I could really do. I don't speak another language. I'm not a doctor or nurse. I'm not especially gifted with building homes. Seemed like that pretty much process of eliminated me. Enter my friend Shannon, who informed me about Hands of Light in Action and their summer sports camp in Haiti. Giddyup.

Down the road came another problem: I learned that my job was being eliminated as of June 24th. What was meant to be a personally funded mission was transformed into a friend funded one. I was sheepish to ask for help -- who likes asking for help? -- but was simply overwhelmed by the generosity of my friends. Within 12 hours I was fundraised.

Bonus:

Because I was funded by others, I felt like I was somehow bringing them with me. It was your trip too, not just mine. So thank you, friends. Since you helped me make it down there, I'd like to list you below, along with the words "good person." If you donated money to me, the least I can do is make sure "good person" shows up next to your name in a Google search:

Caroline Walker (good person)
Jeff, Elizabeth and Chase Thompson (good people; Go Sox!)
Brad O'Dell (good person)
Chris Hamman (good person)
Martha Varela (good person, at least when she wants to be)
Margaret McDonnell (good person)
Professor Xavier (solid pseudonym at least)
John, Jenny and Claire Kilmartin (good people, though a little loud)
Haley Cloyd (good person)
Kristin Rosengren (good person with tremendous knowledge of LOTR)
Josh Chang (good person)
Jon French (good person)
Mark and Jen Fifer (good people, even though Mark spilled coffee all over me New Year's Day)
Todd Scudder (good person)
Josh Buckno (good person and Master of Art History)
Jason and Holly Glaspey (good people and bacon connoisseurs)
John Knox (possibly a WR from the Bears, possibly a pseudonym, probably a good person)

Kyle Webster (good person)

Chase and Lisa Armour (good people)

Sara and Jordan Wright (good people)

Thank you.

Thank you.

On the best TV show comparison to a week in Haiti

I find it appropriate that the previous post on this blog (from back in December) was about Lost, since as any of my volunteer friends will tell you I spent an unnecessary amount of time comparing my time in Haiti to the survivors time on the island.

(Danielle Malone, if you're reading this, you simply must take the time to watch this show. I promise it will be the best decision of your day)

(also, skip the next two paragraphs)

Why the Lost comparison? Well for starters, everything looked like the Dharma Initiative. Small, pastel-colored houses, one after another. A giant warehouse filled with generic soaps and conditioners and drinks. Constant reliance on plastic water bottles. A hike to the lighthouse that overlooked it all.

Beyond that, my relationship with the other volunteers felt like we'd been dropped on an island together. Realistically it's not far from the truth. As such, our relationships evolved differently than normal - everything was about problem solving, with backstory questions coming much later in the game. When the backstory questions did come, there was a certain transparency to our answers. On the whole, we were focused on the present -- what we were doing right now -- much more than our lives back in the States. I like that.

On what I was doing

Working for an organization called Hands of Light in Action on the Camp Hope, um camp. This place was opened after the earthquake as a place of refuge. Initially all of the residents were amputees, though that has changed.

Generally the days looked like this:

Sports camp (laps, drills, practice) 5 - 7 AM

Misc. activity (painting, warehouse work, trips to town) 9 - 2

PM Sports camp (games) 5-7 PM

It's pitch black in Haiti by 7 PM so bedtime for many residents fell in the 8 - 8:30 range...which was 6 - 6:30 Portland time...or about the time I usually arrived home from work. Yes this blew my mind.

(Note: I was one of the people who stayed up late, didn't sleep enough and recovered via mid-day naps. You probably assumed that much)

On work

After the earthquake, donations poured in from all over the world. A year and a half later, they're still being received (which is awesome) and need to be organized. This is where we volunteers fit in -- sorting soaps, shampoos, sandals, shoes, words that don't start with 's'

(Tiniest shoes in the whole world)

We also did odd jobs around the camp, a highlight being painting. Let's just say they have different ways of thinning paint. Their secret ingredient is gasoline. Read that sentence again.

One other major task:

Once a day a group of people would come by Camp Hope with a generator. Outside of this one hour window, there was no chance to use electricity (huge considering the importance of cell phones in a third world country).

More importantly, this was the only real chance for water. The big thing to do -- and that of which I was most proud -- was to take water to your host family. After two days described as gran problemas because the generator didn't work, most families were low on water by the time things were up and running. Cue the volunteers for what I think was our finest hour.

Or, two hours if we want to be more accurate. Two straight hours of carrying water all over Camp Hope - carrying to the amputees, elderly and orphans, people who would ordinarily struggle to retrieve water for themselves - in the midst of the Haitian sun.

My friend Alex and I did the math -- we did something like 30 trips each, carrying one or two five gallon buckets at a time. Our best guess is that we distributed somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 gallons of water that afternoon. Yowza.

On poverty

I wasn't in the truly impoverished part of the country but drove by all the bad parts. It's not just that people are still living in tents; it's that those tents are torn and tattered and there is zero room between them. No one has any personal space. You shower outside where everyone can see you. The amount of dust in the air is impossible to describe. Let's just say I never got all the dirt out of my hair after a day driving through PAP

On my way to the airport a kid -- maybe seven or eight -- jumped on the back of our truck. I don't know why. I don't speak Creole. Once I saw him try to grab suntan lotion and frantically take something, anything from our car. I yelled at him to get off. He yelled back at me in Creole. The car next to us yelled at him. Eventually he let go, cursing at me (he did know that much English) and flipping me off. I don't know what he was doing but can't help thinking he just wanted a way out of Port-au-Prince.

On the other volunteers

I cannot possibly describe what a blessing it is to go on a trip like this with people of all ages. It's been a long time since I've hung out with teenagers and parents at the same time. Or with guys who wear their collars up.

On food

21 Larabars in a seven day period, oatmeal, missed meals, one egg breakfasts, no fruit or vegetables because of a cholera scare and I have never eaten so much peanut butter + white bread in my life

On the people

My friend Brad -- he of "good person" fame -- read a preliminary edition of this post and said, basically, "good stuff but what about the people you interacted with the whole time?"

I think I'll sum it up like this:

There's no better "grass is greener" logic than visiting another country and returning to the US to talk about how much "better" things are in Country X (because of Reason X). Well, Reason X in Haiti (or at least at Camp Hope) is the sense of community.

Newsflash: In the US we don't really need our neighbors. The people across the street think my name is Will. I never correct them because...I mean, how much does it matter? We never talk. I know nothing about them. They know nothing about me. That's generally how things work in this country, at least in the places I've lived.

What I loved about Camp Hope is that it felt like...well, a camp. Houses ten feet from each other. People sitting on their front porches, chatting, sharing drinks, being alive and present. People proactively helping their neighbors. It made me nostalgic for the days of college dorms and pledging and being able to hear the music from next-door in my bedroom.

But see, this was better than college dorms. There are people of all ages and abilities. Grandparents talked to children not of their family. I think that's what a community is meant to be.

And yes, I know there are problems I'm glossing over. I'm sure this is a "grass is greener" situation...but I do think the grass is green (if that makes any sense)

On air conditioning

In a pinch, spray-on insect repellent was a surprisingly effective coolant

On Taylor Swift songs

You would think that starting high school football players at an NFL-producing catholic school outside of Detroit would turn to Eminem or Kanye or Young Jeezy for pump up music. You would be wrong.

In fact, you would probably be wrong many more times before correctly guessing that they listen to...Taylor Swift?!? Yet there I was, listening to them serenade us with the repeated chorus to "Mean." True story.

On heading to a lake with a bunch of Haitian guys and a cut 16-year-old American

I can say with 100% confidence that this is the first time in my life I've been the fattest guy in a group

On language barriers

I don't speak Creole. I'd like to. I tell myself I'll learn it before next year. If I don't, I'd like to think I'll advance beyond this year's coping strategies.

Strategy #1: After a couple days of saying, in English "I don't understand," I began to feel sheepish and ignorant. The solution? Speak Spanish, another language that's not native to Haiti. So any Creole request was answered with "no me comprende," as if I would seem less ignorant if I could demonstrate I did know another language (just not the right one).

Strategy #2: For whatever reason I sometimes decided to move beyond Spanish and into broken English. So - with a fake Haitian accent, mind you - I would say "No speak Creole."

How silly. I promise it made sense at the time.

"NBD"

Apparently high schoolers say this a lot

On driving

I've worn a seatbelt on literally every single American car ride of my life. Notice the word "American" in that sentence. Going down the street, practicing turning on the radio, you name it and my seatbelt was on. I mean it -- every car ride of my life. Yet from the moment I was picked up at the Port-au-Prince airport, seatbelts were an afterthought. Between the roads (often long stretches of rock, like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie but without the street side pile of rubble) and anarchist driving tendencies (people passing in the opposite direction on both sides of you), it was obvious that in an accident situation, no seatbelt would help anyway.

Also, I spent most of the time in the back of a flatbed truck. We were jammed so tight (as many as 13 on the back of the truck) not much could have moved us anyway.

On the heat

Truthfully, I've been through much worse. Maybe I was just there on a good week. East coast summer heat is relentless; I remember passing out in my Boston apartment from sweating too much. Even in Portland I've had nights where I put an ice cube on chest to cool me down as I go to bed. Haiti, while incredibly hot, at least provided a gentle evening breeze. Fingers crossed that it's always like that.

On showering

Fill a bucket with water, grab a cup, pour over your head repeatedly, avoid swallowing, soap, lather, shampoo but never, ever will you be able to get the dirt off your ankles

On crickets

It will be a major, major upset if I get to Heaven, ask God how far away they were sleeping from me and the answer is more than two feet

On digital cameras

Outside of energy bars and toilet paper, there is no bigger item on the "must bring" list. Do I sound like a spoiled American? But what I mean is: nothing brought greater joy to children and adults alike than to instantly show them photos. An underrated part of living in a third world country is the lack of mirrors. I'd imagine you could go months without seeing what you look like. So to be able to show them not only what they look like, but how they posed, the smile on their face, etc. was a true blessing. Ever rush the court after a big win for your college hoops team? That was the enthusiasm level with which the children raced over to see themselves on your digital camera. If that's not reason enough for you, I don't know what would be.

Other thing: There was an astonishing shortage of photos in Haiti. On the first day staying with my host family, they showed me a decaying dozen photos taped to the wall on their home. For the life of me I couldn't figure why we were spending such a long time examining basic photos (i.e. Sensei in a posed karate move). Then it occurred to me that these were the only photos that had survived the earthquake and subsequent move. Yowza. Rest assured I will bring this year's photos with me next time

On ego boosts

I'm not sure how or when this happened, but at some point my host family decided to say "Michael! Yes! Yes!" whenever I walked in the door. It felt good to be loved.

On bedtime

Because of its proximity to the equator, Haiti produced the most uneventful summer solstice in the history of the world. This is sad for someone who loves the summer solstice (and I am that person. You can chalk that up under "weird things about Mike" and file it somewhere between "once claimed Dr. Pepper hadn't earned his doctorate" and "spends too much time staring at his book shelf").

On soccer fields

There's not a lot of grass in this country (or trees, birds or shade, for that matter). Dirt and rocks were the default surface of choice. No one complained. No one complained about having to use clogs as their shoes either. Or when they had to play in jeans. Is there any way to grasp the popularity of soccer in this world?

On old sports jerseys
I loved seeing so much Haitian love for AI -- I saw at least six different jerseys of his -- but my favorite was probably a barber wearing a Shawn Kemp Sonics jersey. Or a soccer coach sporting a Jay Fiedler one:

On American guilt

I know you're supposed to come back from these trips brimming with perspective on how much we have, have little we need and how awful we are as a country. I know this because that's what everyone concludes. Well, I've never been like everyone.

Truthfully, I didn't have any American guilt. Does that make me a Republican or something? Are they going to kick me out of Portland?

I've been trying to figure out why and here's what I've come up with:

I've long since ceased complaining about how slow my iPhone is, how loud the person next to me is talking, how poorly constructed website X is, how much your fantasy league team sucks and pretty much everything else you read on a regular day's Facebook feed. These are neuroses you'll only see in first world countries, and I'd realized this far before heading to Haiti.

(Sidenote 1: go to www.whitewhine.com right now. It's priceless)
(Sidenote 2: If I were still in graduate school, needing a thesis topic, I think I would study the explosion in popularity of FB/Twitter posts that look like this: Dear [Person/Company], [Neurotic American complaint], Sincerely [Person's Name]. It's fascinating how many people employ this pattern)

(back to the commentary)

And the thing is I have no doubt these neuroses would surface in Haiti as well, given the chance. There were so many people who wanted my iPod, who wanted my food, who wanted things I didn't even bring with me - I have no doubt they would try to fill their lives with the same stuff we do. Call me crazy.

On running with an iPod in Haiti
It was like being a hot girl running past construction workers, but instead of wolf whistles you heard "give me iPod." Remind me not to do that next year.

On tarantulas

It's probably good that I didn't know about them ahead of time. Never realized I would encounter them in the wild

On giving things away

One of my goals was to primarily pack clothing I could give away. My friend Nerg works at Adidas and secured 15 more youth t-shirts for donation. My friend Josh owns Panic and Run, and added a couple cool "how to pronounce Oregon" shirts to the pile.

What a freaking good feeling to give this stuff away, and completely counter to a culture that says if you like the look of something you have to own it. Silly us. The stuff was never really ours in the first place.

On trying to squeeze this photo in somehow, just because I love it so much

On being a Christian in Haiti
The automatic response was to have trouble figuring out how people kept their faith after going through so much. Then a basic truth of being a Christian hit me: it's not about stuff or money or good fortune. When you're at the end of your rope, when life has worn you down, when you're gasping for air, you tether yourself to the Lord your God. Whether you're on a mountain top or at rock bottom, He is there with you.

On keeping my eyes open for digital photos

Turns out this is every bit as difficult to do in Haiti as in Portland

On comfort (Mike's first lesson)

The running joke heading into my time in Haiti was that this whole thing would be my Ben Stiller movie. You know the trailer by heart: Ben Stiller doesn't take any risks, he continues to not take any risks, then *something* happens, there's a paradigm shift, the narrator's voice deepens, accentuates a word or two and suddenly Ben Stiller is going out of his way to take risks. Voila! He's a new man.

For me, it would look something like:

Mike Pacchione was always comfortable

He showered THREE times a day

He picked olives off of his sandwiches

He liked being clean

Then,

(pause; narrator's voice changes)

He went to Haiti

I cannot stress enough how stupid it makes me feel to admit this. In the days leading up to Haiti I kept thinking about how hot it was going to be, how I wouldn't be able to shower, how I would be hungry for a week straight, how...You get the picture.

Thankfully, a few days before leaving, I snapped out of it. I remember laying in my Portland, Oregon bedroom and hearing a voice in my head say, candidly: Hey moron, you're not going on this trip for your own comfort. It's not about you

That became my mantra for the trip: it's not about you.

From the moment I made that choice, all my American desires went out the window. Showers and cleanliness became unimportant. Very few moments were spent hungry. Latrines instead of flushing toilets? No problem.

The one exception? My relationship with my host family. They didn't speak any English. For three days I dreaded going back to my house. See, I like to communicate, and I don't usually have to work at it. When it's not easy -- or when I find it pointless, like at the barber shop -- I shut down. Most people get the hint.

Mike Pacchione was used to people understanding when he didn't want to talk...

Thankfully, that little voice in the back of my head spoke up again: It's not about you

With that prompting, things changed. The flip switched. Here were people who were well aware of the language gap, yet greeted me with smiles and affirmation every time I walked in the house. Was I really so busy I couldn't spend 30 seconds saying hello? Trying to gesture our way through communications? From that point on, every time I walked in the house, it wasn't about me. It was about the one-armed, one-time karate champion trying to raise his giant-smiled, giant-laughing son in a country that has been truly devastated.

It's not about you, Mike. Thankfully.

On staying positive (Mike's lesson number two)
My roommate Will has Apple TV, which is best used in our house to play The Trailer Game -- four people taking turns picking two minute movie trailers. Play for an hour and you walk away feeling so productive. It's as if you just watched 20 movies.

Anyway, we were playing The Trailer Game the week before I left for Haiti. One trailer was about someone being kidnapped in another country, which I announced as a fear of mine. At this point my friend Joy hit me square in the metaphorical gut: Is this how your mind works? Do you head straight for the worst case scenario?

It was true. My mind was heading straight for the pit of despair. I don't what the point of thinking this way is. So you're more prepared when the worst does occur? Does a pessimistic kidnapping victim really feel any better? I flipped that mental switch, too.

...and I must say, it's a good thing I did. Within ten minutes of arriving at camp, I learned that there had been cholera at the camp. Yup. Cholera. Same disease that killed countless 8-bit friends in Oregon Trail. Cholera. Treatment involves an IV and emergency helivac to Miami. Cholera.

But I wouldn't let my mind go to that place.
And I wouldn't let it go down the road of "there's going to be a roadblock and all the Americans are going to be killed" whenever we would drive into town.
And even when word broke of there being tarantulas in houses -- freaking tarantulas! -- my mind would not go to the worst case scenario. There was simply no point in doing so. There continues to be no point in doing so. All that does is make the worst case scenario into some sort of idolatrous idea, something you can focus on neurotically without having to, you know, deal with what is actually happening in your life.

*which is good because as I was packing to go home, I saw our friend below crawling around my bed

On the final lesson:
I woke up for my final day in Haiti with a level of sadness I can only remember having twice before in my life: my final day of study abroad and my final day working at the A Bar A Ranch. At 3:45 I left the house to watch the sunrise. I genuinely didn't want to go home.

Later in the day I sat for a final few minutes with the other volunteers. I asked what they thought I should do later in the day when I was back in the States. One suggested steak. Another said Burger King. Danielle recommended tanning. It's funny: I'd assumed by the end of a week in a third world country I would lust for American amenities. In truth I couldn't care less. I turned off the air conditioning in my Miami hotel room (just didn't feel right). I couldn't come close to finishing my Thai food. I didn't even shower. It felt better to sleep one more night with Haitian hair gel (dirt).

I'd only been gone a week but it felt like a year. You know how usually you get home and, regardless of how much you enjoyed your vacation, you're happy to be home? Not here. I hadn't missed Portland for a second. But why was that?

On the flights to Haiti, I had this overwhelming feeling that something really good was going to happen to me out there. It took me a long time to realize, but I did figure out what that really good thing was:

The Mike in Haiti was the best Mike I've been in a long time. I wasn't rushing around at a million miles (1.6M kilometers) a minutes. I listened to the person I was talking to without thinking about something else. I wasn't interrupted by texts or emails or gchats. In short, I was more present. As a result, I cared more about others and less about what others think. My jokes were less biting. I felt like I could actually love others. My life felt...lighter.

Taking that with me into America will be tricky, of course. I can't exactly throw away my laptop and phone. I do think I'm in a good spot though. I don't have two jobs I'm dashing between to help pay off debt. I haven't committed myself to 63 side projects that take up all my time. For the first time in years, I have space for my brain to breathe, and space to be present.

What's next? I'm sure that will figure itself out soon enough.

In the meantime, it's not about me