During the month of June I traveled to Borgne for the fourth time as an anthropology student and a volunteer of H.O.P.E. Over the past four years I have worked to establish a personal relationship with Borgne in order to learn about how different kinds of people approach the day-to-day conditions of life and situate their actions within the broader social context of the community. As a volunteer of H.O.P.E., I have been active in the economic development and social justice initiatives designed to bring about positive changes at the grassroots level. I feel that my work as a student-researcher has helped to contribute a sense of direction to my goals as an advocate for change in Borgne. The bulk of my research consists of talking with different kinds of people and participating in a broad range of activities that they feel are important to their lives.

I arrived in Borgne interested in working with H.O.P.E.’s most recent development initiatives with local peasant organizations. I was curious about how these organizations were structured and the kinds of roles they played in the lives of their members. I felt that this kind of information could be useful to H.O.P.E. in understanding how to best work with these organizations towards mutual interests in development. The most exciting aspect of this research was the process of understanding the cultural, social and political histories of these groups and how each group had uniquely contributed to constructing a vision of development and democracy.

This May, I joined Rose-Marie and a small group of people in Borgne for two weeks. Rose-Marie invited me because of my interest in anthropology. I went, hoping to understand a little more about what anthropology meant to her. The trip was especially interesting to me because of the group of people we traveled with. I’ve also been interested in anatomy and physiology, and I ended up learning more than I had anticipated from Kathy (a nurse-midwife) and Leo ( a med student). In terms of anthropology, I saw a couple of angles. Both Rosemarie and John were continuing their projects in the community – meeting often with groups and visiting people in their homes. Because I had no project of my own, I spent most of my time following people in our group in their work . In some ways, those two weeks were hard. Every day I thought about coming home. Part of that feeling I know came from not having a set purpose or goal. It made me unsure of what my responsibility was in relation to the people I was traveling with and the people we spoke with while we were there. I was the only person in our group who did not speak Creole or French and so I had to rely on translation which was isolating and difficult. It was a huge relief when we met the Cuban doctors who were working in Borgne. All of a sudden I could speak someone’s language!

My arrival in Haiti followed a tumultuous series of changes in my life. Three days prior to leaving, I took the final exams for my first year of medical school. Two days before, I packed all of my belongings, moved out of my apartment, and drove 350 miles home to New York City; and one day prior, I landed in Miami. Here I would meet Rosemarie, Kathy, John, and Dorothy. Together we would land the next day in Cap Haitian. This would be my first trip outside of the US and Europe in 15 years. At the time my mental state was one of acute fatigue in addition to drainage from a year of school, but overlying and permeating my thoughts was a strange excitement at approaching an unknown world -- an radically different perspective, one which could lead me to a new kind of understanding. I would learn more clearly how people function, as well as how I might function in a radically different environment.

When I arrived my first sense was one of overwhelming stimulation, of a reality visually and qualitatively distinct from what I had lived in at the hospital for the past year. The enveloping heat, the overflowing tropical vegetation, the concentration of people, the intense activity and movement, all contrasted with what I was used to. The stimuli melded into a fluidly evolving reality that resembled a developing piece of music, in which different elements built upon each other, played off of each other, intersected with each other, in ways that affected the way everything else played out.

At points where peoples’ testimony intersected, a framework emerged that defines Haitian culture on a more general level. In looking at where testimonials diverged, I started to see how particular circumstances modify peoples’ perceptions. By finding where I could draw parallels between what people were telling me and my personal experience, I could start to see what kinds of thoughts and explanatory frameworks might be independent of environmental factors, and more fundamental to human beings as a whole.

Apart from interviewing people about these questions, I worked in the clinic in Borgne four mornings a week, and with John and Sarah participated in a French-English-Creole radio program every night. John and I also taught a bit of computer, and Sarah and I started teaching an English class just before I returned to the US. Every once in awhile we would explore neighboring towns or Cap Haitian, and we also visited the Citadel. I remember many incredible journeys by foot through tropical forest, crossing rivers, with sweeping landscapes of the mountains falling into the ocean or steeping into a valley.