" I don't have enough money"

The little island off the coast of the Caribbean known as Haiti, is easily a place where foreigners would call this “The land of purgatory.” An experience that I had the opportunity to embark on at a time when it was considered “safe” to travel there.

To my knowledge, Haiti has never been a safe place as we were escorted back and forth by Haitian locals with machine guns before dawn settled in. This was back in 2015 so, I am sharing with you how I remember it.

How I remember it is a place where the innocence of all species was stripped from them without even knowing it. Our system likes to call this “culture.” For me, culture isn't as unsettling of a word to describe the sights my eyes beheld. No living thing should have to live in a “culture” on any planet where newborns are scraped out of the rubble and brought into rehabilitation centers which we visited. Children who were lifeless, connected to wires and feeding tubes had a 5% chance of survival when they were brought in, but the beauty of each story is truly immaculate as so many of these same children grew up to have happy endings and families of their own. Remember, this was almost 10 years ago. Social media has granted me the privilege to reconnect with some of these orphans who were just children or teens at the time and follow them on Instagram watching their lives flourish from afar. That is one of the greatest fruits that came out of my experience in 2015.

So, what is the difference between Haiti then, and Haiti now? Well for starters, just entering the country at any point today even for journalism reasons could be a suicidal experiment.

The country is being overridden by mass gangs and political outrage. Innocent blood is shed for the sake of having a voice. The people have had enough. There's no limit to how far an unhinged mind can descend. The tyranny led to the burning of any place people could run to for safety such as hospitals and police stations, locking down the airport after the release of over 4000 inmates.

The picture you see above is the beating heart of Haiti, the innocent. The pulse that keeps it alive, or what's left of it. Smiles I captured along the way on my journey there. Some of the most grateful people I had the pleasure of meeting were the people of Haiti. In my time there, I had the pleasure of assisting medically and teaching a class of about 40 children, some with zero education only going up to third grade. The absence of God, or any knowledge thereof was non-existent. A memory which struck the title for this article, was when I asked an elderly woman if she would like to know who Jesus was and she so kindly replied through our translator who was a young teen boy,

“I don't have enough money”

She thought Jesus was an object that cost her something. My only response to her with a frog in my throat and goose-pimples rising on my skin was "Lucky for you, it is free"

The young boy then interceded, informing me that most of their people do not know of any God and turn to the dark forces of vodou sacrificing their soul just to provide immediate answers and that praying to a God in the sky does not.

This made sense to me, as the God of the Bible is a God that grows faith through patience and long-suffering, but promises peace in the midst of hardships.

My eyes were opened to the desperate plea of not just the urgency in needing food, water and shelter, but the urgency of hope.