Up From the Darkness the Change Arose

The day was dark. You'd think it would be light. On a day like this. You just expect the sun to touch the mountains you are flying over. The sun however, on this day was not shining. I looked around the plane. I saw a few faces I recognized. Mostly I just saw humans for miles. Faces and names I'll never know by heart. So I close my eyes and slip my headphones back on. What is playing?. Could be anything. The music and melodies are going right through my ears and into the highway locked inside my head. Looking outside again I see the clouds parting ways. My breathing begins to slow as I see what is to come around the next island. Our destination is upon us. It's still dark. The mid day sun should be high and mighty, but it's nowhere to be found. Stepping off a plane into a foreign place will never cease to amaze me. Each time I've set foot onto a new country. I can pinpoint the feeling and the moment. It's one of those things that stays etched in your memory. Maybe it's because of the distinct change you feel in your bones each time your eyes see some thing they've only imagined.

When I travel, I tend to keep to myself. I enjoy the company of others. I do. I also seem to stay locked in my mind when I travel. Upon arriving in a third world country for the first time. A few things come quickly pouring into your mind. You are battling constantly. Battling with how to show emotion. Do you show it right away in the presence of many. Do you just wait and get behind a closed door and begin to hammer away at said closed door with your fist. Do you grin and bare it. Do you close your eyes and hope that the view gets better. These are all questions and thoughts in my mind while driving through the streets of Port Au Prince. The suffering is immense. The distress is immense. The feelings you have in your chest are immense. People tell you of these things in years past. They warn you of what you'll see if you go to these places. They warn you through pictures, letters, and even in well made documentaries. These warnings challenge you to take the journey. Pushing your heart and mind to a place of guilt. As we drove through this ravaged city. I could only feel guilt. Not only a heavy guilt for myself, but also a heavy guilt for mankind. I found myself wishing I didn't have to represent a tribe and throw my own blame around. Wishing only to be a human and nothing more. A human that is largely responsible for the sights just before my eyes.

Haiti is a place of great beauty. People might tell you this your whole life. Maybe you will see this beauty for your self. Maybe you won't. On this day. The one in which I am describing. I had the chance to see this beauty first hand. Piled in the back of a make shift toyota taxi with 10 middle aged men. I looked beyond the destruction and into some thing unexplainable. Face after face after face after face after face. Each one changing in color and in length. These faces were changing at the pace of our speed. Changing my mind ever so slightly as we passed them by. Who am I?. I thought this over and over as we drove through the torrid streets. Who am I to be here now? And what can I do? Why am I doing this? Why am I really here? These are questions that don't leave you on that first drive. I would like to think I would make such a trip with the best of intentions. Intentions of making a difference. Intentions of growing older and wiser as I learn about a different culture. I have not the answers for my decision to make the journey. I've been given more opportunities in this life than the average man. I've thrown away more opportunities than the average man. I'm an american born and raised. What do I really know about life other than what I've been fed my whole life. I don't know how I even arrived in Haiti. My life spinning wildly in and out of space over the last few years. All of the sudden it's a new decade and I'm in Haiti.

I didn't think I was a naive boy walking into his first foreign country when I set foot on that soil. I just new I wasn't ready for the majority of what was to come. Upon visiting the city slums, their isn't much to do other than find a corner to hide. As we walked through the area of haiti in which took the most earthquake damage. It's crippling. There is no safe way to put it. It's just crippling to your soul. Homes and homes stacked atop each other. Destruction on a scale never comprehended. All of the sudden these documentaries are coming to life and coming full circle. Hands outstretched. As the people watch us wealthy americans walk by. They can only look at us with a look that says "could you please take me out of this". Again, who am I?. Just a lucky kid really. Some times I think maybe the kids there in Haiti are the lucky ones. Not being tempted with the things I've been tempted with. Maybe living there amongst those people would have raised me up better. These people with there big smiles and little complaining, only breed more questions in my mind. They make me wonder how happy am I? and What is real happiness?. I couldn't tell you at this point.

Kids playing soccer. Of course. That's what they tell you you'll see when you go. What they don't tell you is this. These kids will ask you to play soccer with them. They will treat you upon first visit as a brother. You will begin to know there names. You will begin to hear their stories. You will begin to fall in Love. Fall in love with big ideas. Ideas of taking them far from harms way. Soon you discover you can't do much. Much in the way of changing the reality they see each day. I found many a corner to hide in upon my first journey through town. Corners I can still see in my mind. Corners I strayed to so I could break down my mind. Let it out. Some people say crying helps your mind and heart. Others say it shows weakness. Weakness is all I knew at the time. I'm still a child inside. I always will be. Seeing these children in this reality and seeing their parents feel guilt for this reality. Well, that's more than I can bare.

You want to scream. You want answers. In fact I'd like to have some fucking answers right now. I wish I could open a book, or open a window in the sky. Some thing that could show me why all of this is happening in and to our world. People seem to have answers for these things I witnessed. I'm here to say, I have no answer for 300,000 people perishing in less than 30 seconds on Jan 10, 2010. I refuse to pawn such a monstrosity off to a higher power. If you wish to do that, well, this is your right to do so. Myself however, no way. I will not hear such things as "these people had it coming" or "this is what you get, when you turn your back on God". These types of comments regarding death in humanity. These comments have no place on this earth. These people in Haiti. They were living their lives that warm January morning. They will tell you stories of the quake. How they were eating in the market with there families. Jumping rope in there cousins backyard. Playing soccer in there front yard. Just living as normal humans try to live each day. When all of the sudden they are forced to witness and experience death on the grandest scale. Death to there friends and death to there families. All in the amount of time it takes some one to complain about having to sit at a red light too long. These people had to fight through this horrific event in nature. Only to have people on the outside try to put a label as to why this has happened to them.

The quake happened and it will happen again. Some where else, to another people group. It will, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What we can do is this. Change our minds and our hearts. We could try and find reasons for chaos, or we could fight the chaos with understanding. Let me tell you, I don't understand much of anything in this life. I have little answers for anyone. I'm not a special child and I'm frequently disappointed in myself and the path I've chosen to take. I do however have some new goals. Dreams if you will. I haven't shared much with anyone in a long time in the way of blogging. I decided to go away for awhile. In more ways than one. I'm finding it hard to come back now and project on to a screen what I'm feeling inside. Especially when it comes to my thoughts on Haiti. I'd rather no one even listen to another word I say. Mainly because I've been a fool the majority of my life. Here I am again on this rambling page. Trying to convey new hopes and dreams while still failing to do so in a respectable manner. What I've got left is this.

Haiti changed me. How does it not. Of course it did you might say. What you can't hear me say is this. I have been given a chance to go to Haiti for the rest of my life. Either I take that chance and do some thing special with it. Or I take what I've learned from those people and those faces, and I run far away. At this point I will choose to remember the names and faces that won't seem to leave my mind. I will do my best to make sure they aren't forgotten or left to a label. I won't do this by myself, it'll be with you all. Because why do it alone. Not with all of you right here with me, feeling just the same about this life. Not many things in this life make sense. Not to you, not to me. Haiti makes sense though. Going back there until my hair is gone, well, that just makes sense. That doesn't make me special or courageous, in fact it doesn't mean shit in reguards to my personality or heart. It just means I'm a human who is trying to love another human. Why Love?. Well, Why not?. If you need to search for meaning in this life, just look at your fellow humans around you. Look into those same eyes, the ones you share. Then tell me there isn't meaning. Those kids we saw, those kids we got to know, those kids we tried to help, those kids we fell in love with. They are capable of shaking up your life. They will change your life. Not in the destruction around them will they change you, but in the love they bring you. If there is anything that I do know, it is that. So we go back and we go back, and others will wonder why and we, we, we will go back.