By Lily Zerihun
One of the most rewarding aspects of my summer has been the opportunity to slow down from the constant bustle of college life, and to simply listen. I’ve stopped to hear the mesmerizing break of turquoise-blue Caribbean waves, and the sweet lullabies weaved in every unfamiliar birdsong, the thud of mangoes hitting earthy black soil, and the rustle of towering palm trees bowing to a starry Haitian night sky.
Most of all, I listen to stories. I hear stories that make me cry. Stories that make me laugh until my sides hurt. They come from fathers and teachers. From Vodou priests and radio hosts. From development teams and mission groups. Every day of work brings a new opportunity to catch glimpses into intricate lives of humans from very different walks of life.
Stories wield an immense power. They have the ability to inform and misinform, to provide voice and strip agency. The stories that I’ve heard in Haiti provide testimonies of resilience, and preserve memories of struggle and strength. Stories remember what was, and bring hope of what will be.
Stories teach me to appreciate the gift of presence, and show me what it means to “be with” others.
Samuel Wells, a former dean of the Duke Chapel, eloquently describes this concept of presence in Living Without Enemies. “Being with people means experiencing in your own life something of what it is to be disempowered and oppressed. It means setting aside plans and strategies for change and simply feeling with the person’s situation…. It dispels an easy view of poverty as romantic and of disadvantaged people as simple.”
“Being with” implies that Global Health teams should be living as equals within communities. It means eliminating ethnocentrisms and savior-complexes, and to learn from real-life people before attempting to give. It means leaving the confines of a barbed-wire guesthouse to really learn what it’s like to live in Haiti. It means seeing and smelling and tasting and hearing all of what the culture has to offer.
“Being with” means embracing ourselves as members of a community. By listening, I can make efforts to humbly and mindfully understand Haitian ways of living and thinking, before prescribing to my own research agendas. Sometimes there’s nothing I can provide more than a listening ear as I strain to follow along with my new Creole language skills.
I’m learning to eliminate the word “them” from my vocabulary in favor of language that implies solidarity. After all, we’re not completely different. We laugh. We love. We hope. We grieve. We question. And through the intersection of my own story with that of the Haitians I meet, the gift of presence can allow me to celebrate these similarities and differences in solidarity and strength. In 2 short weeks, my time in Haiti will come to a bittersweet end. So I’ll relish the moments of stillness, and this fleeting gift of insurmountable presence.
