Comfort in Uncomfortable Places

After a few road bumps during my first week here, I feel like I am finally beginning to settle in and get rather comfortable here. This weekend I had a little more free time to explore Port-au-Prince. After unsuccessfully trying to walk down to the ocean (thanks to private property on the waterfront and no roads), I walked around what looked like it was at one point the central business district of the city. Although I don’t think Port-au-Prince was ever a thriving developed city or a center of trade, you could tell that tourism did use to exist here. The dilapidated buildings near the waterfront still housed broken signs of airline companies who once flew people in and out of Haiti. The architecture was also notably different from the area where I live about a 20 minute walk away. At one corner, a building about seven stories tall shockingly still exists despite surely being battered by hurricanes throughout the years. It is rumored that one of only two banks with an ATM in Haiti was located there—unfortunately it was closed because it was Sunday. Streets were packed with cars on blocks for repairs and what seemed like a more bustling marketplace as compared to my street where people mainly just sell food on the street. Even more than usual, we were met with stares and hollers indicating just how few non-Haitians make their way down to that part of the city.

The current lack of tourism is, to me, again one of the sad externalities of both Haiti’s troubled history and the West’s quick judgment on safety. Cruise ships once landed on the shores of Haiti and hotels housed visitors seeking the beauty of the palm trees and mountains. Today, one cruise ship occasionally docks at a private beach on the north side of the country. Not only is this beach heavily guarded and completely separated from Haitian people or culture, but Royal Caribbean Cruise Line doesn’t even tell cruisers that the beach is in Haiti—simply identifying it as Labadee (the beach’s name).

Now I’m certainly not arguing that cruises or tourists are all good for a country. They bring with them some degree of exploitation of locals whether it be through low wages the tourist companies pay or the general Americanization of a great Caribbean culture. But at the same time, tourism can be a huge source of income—something of which Haiti has almost none. The economy here is largely driven by remittances from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States rather than any huge export or service industry. Tourism in Haiti, like many other Caribbean countries, can ultimately help increase the capacity of the government through tax revenue, thus allowing them to provide better services to the citizens.

As I mentioned above, a large explanation for this lack of visitors can be attributed to Haiti’s past. Grave instability of the government has led to a plethora of problems from dictatorships to coup d’états. Similarly natural disasters, deforestation, and poverty have spawned incidents like the food riots of 2008 which garner international media attention, rightly scaring away tourists. Outside of these incidents, however, seems to be a large rush to judgment on the part of Westerners—from the media to the US government to individuals—that Haiti is permeated by despair and danger.

Before deciding to travel here, I read the US State Department’s website which recommends avoiding all travel to Haiti thanks to kidnapping, torture, and murder of Americans. It cites that fact that 26 Americans were kidnapped in Haiti last year. What it fails to tell you is that a majority of these victims were released safely. It also fails to take into context the nature of cities in general. P-au-P is a city of nearly 3 million people, which naturally finds crime in its sprawling city limits. In comparison, in 2008, over 1,000 people were kidnapped in Phoenix, Arizona, but we don’t hear of travel warnings there. Always erring on the side of extreme caution, travel websites also scare visitors away from Haiti despite the numerous smaller, very safe beachside towns which I’m sure would be ready to house a few visitors in order to put food on the table.

Yes, as you can tell through my previous posts, Haiti is certainly a place of grave poverty and above-average danger. The risks, however, can be mitigated through smart travel practices, and as thousands of Americans have discovered, you CAN live a safe life here. When we let fear overtake us, it simply makes the problems worse. I saw nearly the exact same thing when I spent the whole last year in Camden, NJ. Ranked every year as one of America’s most dangerous cities, the city does have a higher than average crime rate. But as I discovered, it also has thousands of caring, productive, good people—much more good than bad. I came into Camden with a fear of safety, but I left a year later with it feeling like home. Camden is so stigmatized and stereotyped by suburban whites that it makes development and poverty reduction nearly impossible. How can you “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps” when so many people are pushing back down on you? How can you grow a city like Camden or a country like Haiti when everyone else just wants to avoid it?

Until we step outside our comfort zone, we can’t see these places aren’t as bad as they are portrayed. I encourage you all to step outside of your preconceived notions and see a situation from the other side. It can make a huge difference in how you view the world—and I truly believe new viewpoints can create new realities.