It is hard to believe we are a full 10 days into the month of April, 2016 already, and we've done anything but slow down here at Be Like Brit! Having returned later in the week from a trip to the United States, working at the Be Like Brit office in Worcester and holding lots of meetings with current and potential partners, supporters, and donors, I was exhausted when I rolled back up the hill. More than 8 nights away from my own bed and the comforts of what is now my home, I was anxious to get back to some sense of normalcy, whatever that may be here in Haiti.
In what is truly a rare occurrence, I arrived in the middle of a Britisionary Group staying and working with BLB in the community as opposed to being here from the beginning of a group's arrival. Cherylann and Bernie had successfully brought the group in to Haiti this time, and our local staff is more than competent in welcoming our visitors, hosting them appropriately, and seeing that things are in order for a successful week. While I normally am available to groups from their arrival through orientation and throughout their week, this was a unique instance where I arrived on day 5 of their trip! Typically, groups have a lot of questions for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time around the lunch and dinner table discussing our work here in Haiti, answering questions and offering my own insights into the how, the why, the what next sorts of questions that Haiti begs of people. Last night, in fact, a group of us sat up until well past midnight, sharing stories of our lives and our experiences in Haiti, at home, and around the world. It was a great way to catch up with the members of this incredible group.
This incredible group hailed, like so many of our groups, from Massachusetts - many from Paxton, in fact, as our good friend Katie Siemen from Paxton Dental organized the group with two major items on their agenda: Build a home for a family in need, and see 66 children and many more staff for dental cleanings, restorations, and extractions as necessary. No easy feat, but the group was motivated behind their fearless leader, Cherylann, and the results were truly impressive!
While I was dealing with the late season wintery weather mix that arrived with a vengeance in New England this past week, our group here was enjoying the heavy downpours that are so typical during this rainy season. While the mud and the rain are almost always problematic, we and almost everyone else in Haiti relies on these rains to water their very thirsty gardens. Whether growing items for consumption or to bring to a market, a dry rainy season means bad news for everyone: Increased food prices, limited availability and variety of healthy fruits and vegetables, and an economic hit that may resonate much farther than the immediate impact on one's bottom line. Thus, while we bemoaned the rains a bit, the group reflected with great sensitivity on how important these rains were - and even more so, how important the building of a safe and secure shelter really is.
The family of Nico, one of our overnight caregivers and long-term employees, was the beneficiary of the house this week. Together with his mother and sister, Nico like so many others called a ramshackle, flimsy and vulnerable structure 'home'. When the group first traveled to the work site, they were amazed at just how basic and vulnerable these homes really are, and while seemingly simple, the value of the modest home they would construct through Be Like Brit for this new family became pointedly clear. Shelter as a basic human need (remember Maslow?) really is the minimum that people need in order to aspire to meeting all of their other needs. You can see the house "before" in the background of this photo...
You know, nothing upsets me more than when people criticize the "voluntourism" industry in such broad generalizations and without a real comprehensive assessment on the good, bad, and indifferent of them. Sure, it's true that local laborers could build these houses without a group flying to Haiti to do it, but the reality is, unless you or someone you know is willing to hand over the money to an organization in order to build it, we need volunteers to come not for the physical act of building a home in and of itself. That's secondary to the primary objective. That's the hook that gets people here, to be quite honest. What these articles making their way around the internet and on facebook and other places fail to recognize or even address is the long-term goals of short-term volunteer experiences. Done correctly, these trips create a genuine vested interest in a cause, in a country, which is fortified for years to come. The one-week long 'hug an orphan tours' of the world, I agree, can be damaging. But it isn't fair to say that that's the model everyone follows and that everyone is just so egregiously careless that they fail to consider the implications of these kinds of trips.
Perhaps that is why I am so passionate about our Britsionary program - because I truly believe we've been exhaustingly sensitive and mindful of these effects and of the potential negatives that can happen when local talent is ignored, foreign ideas come in and are imposed, and people disappear with their photos and their memories. That is why we are so eager to sit up until midnight, or one, or two in the morning talking enthusiastically with our volunteers about how we specifically and exactly do not do what these scathing, hit-and-run articles popping up on the internet suggest is the rule, rather than the exception. I take great offense in suggesting that models like ours are, without exception, harmful.
It’s true that the reactions and responses to these sorts of trips often invoke a sincere but ultimately commonplace response: “This is life-changing.” Guess what? For your typical American or developed-country teenager, or concerned citizen who has never taken part in this kind of trip, it is a life-changing experience, and it should be. The first time a volunteer travels outside of their home country to an entirely new place, strange with customs they don’t understand, a language they don’t speak, and conditions they have never seen before, they feel it. It may be fleeting, but at that moment in time, in that volunteer’s subjective reality, that which they are a part of and a witness to is indeed life-changing. You may roll your eyes at this sort of casual observation and you may instead pretend that you and your own experiences abroad make you some kind of an expert, but the reality is that first experiences in life often bring out significant reactions. This should be no different, and in fact it should be expected that people respond that way. It doesn’t make these trips self-fulfillment trips just because some people may become fulfilled in the process. Fulfillment is a byproduct of service, of humility, of social responsibility. Selfies aside, a blunder doesn’t undo the value of a good act.
All of that said, it was clear to me that this group was having such a profound experience, and in our accelerated conversations because of my mid-week arrival to Haiti, I was able to see that and feel that in our conversations. The work of our dental team in Katie and Ana is invaluable. Sure, dental services exist in-country, but they are lacking in competence, in safety, in supplies, and in accessibility. Our children receive quality, consistent dental care of a first-world quality thanks to the tireless efforts and work of Dr. Scott Siemen and his wife, Katie Siemen, and everyone they've been able to connect to Be Like Brit. Our children have developed trusting relationships with them as a result, and our Medical Britsionary program garners repeat clinicians who are mindful of consistency and quality of care across the board. This is how we are raising the bar and raising the standard in the developing world. In just one very significant way.
While Katie and Ana worked tirelessly on the house by day, by afternoon they were buried in our clinic, a hot, cramped space with necessary equipment yet a far cry from the comforts of their professional offices in the United States. Hours hunched over the examination table or dental chair made for sore backs and swollen feet. Our group, at the same time, worked tirelessly to make up for lost time on a delayed departure from Boston, thanks to mother nature's late-season 'gotcha' snow. And each night, this same group of compassionate, genuine, and sincere people gathered to process their days. They asked questions; they sought to understand. They sought to collaborate with, rather than to impose upon others. They were the epitome of what it means to be informed, conscious global citizens.
Caught in the Rain became a theme for the week - and not only did it represent how Haiti sort of seeps in to your psyche and gets under your fingernails, so to speak, but it became symbolic in many ways, a metaphor for the difficult life that is the norm for so many people, overwhelmingly. The rain, while refreshing at times, can also bring great danger with it. Flooding, exposure to elements, the simple cough and cold that can be fatal in a place like this. The rain is that paradox, that dichotomy that is Haiti...
Thanks to our group and the local labor hired to work alongside them, as colleagues, as equals, as people from two different worlds working together to learn from each other - our group learning how to adjust to a resource poor setting; how to take shelter in the shade of a mango tree while working in the sun, or our Haitian staff, learning how to cut a 2X4 more safely, how to level a cement floor and protect it from those rains - this collaboration, this collective effort is by design strengthening the capacities and the compassion in both Britsionarys and Haitians alike. We are proud of our model, and we will always take pride in the work we do, the values we embrace, and the results produced through this call to action, to social responsibility, and to making a lasting difference - calling attention to a cause and creating a collaborative experience so that our volunteers fall in love with Haiti in the same way that Britney did, and in the same way that we have.
