Playing the Game
story and photos by Tyler Hull
I was in the back of a truck bouncing through Port-Au-Prince with six strangers. We sat in complete silence as we drove past groups of children, their pleas for money blending into a steady drone of unintelligible noise as we passed. The only thing separating me from the Haiti I had heard so much about was a thin metal grate. Barely enough to keep the children from climbing in when we stopped, it only mildly interfered with my view of the city.
I expected to feel bad. I knew Haiti was the poorest country in the western hemisphere. I knew they had severe problems with deforestation and clean water. I thought when I arrived I would empathize or feel sad for them. Instead, I watched silently as we made our way through the streets, feeling only wonderment.
Little did I know that in a few days I would have the most shameful experience of my life.
Haiti is a place of opposites. The next day our guide even told us it’s “A place where the impossible is possible, and the possible is impossible”. Spending the day visiting churches and schools where our trip leaders had built community wells, I began to understand what he meant. We saw children playing and laughing. Whole communities rising up around a center of freshwater, education, and religion. We saw mansions and expensive cars on stunning countryside. We also saw rivers of trash and sewage, shanty towns, crushing poverty, and barren landscapes.
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