"I hurt myself to see if I still feel" (Johnny Cash)

As the airplane banked into Miami, I started to experience something I had never experienced before on a return trip to Haiti – a strong and deep feeling of NOT wanting to go.

We’ve traveled back and forth to Haiti often enough over the past four years and have done lots of traveling besides that. Every other time I felt a sense of excitement to get back there – the sights, sounds, smells, work, friends – our life. This time feels different. On a rational level, I try to explain it away because of the six weeks I spent “alone” (can one ever be alone in Haiti?) in Haiti while Esther and Gabriela were in Canada, and leaving them back in Canada for the next two months. I had a great time with them – Gabriela was so much fun, and it was really good to re-connect with Esther for these two weeks. E and I talked a lot about the “what next” questions: how long do we want to stay in Haiti? Where do we want to go next? Should we try living in Canada for a while? Or do we even want to do that? All of our thoughts and feelings seem to point to not staying in Haiti for a whole lot longer – though don’t ask me to define “a whole lot longer.” These questions and doubts are certainly part of what I am feeling.

There is something deeper going on as well. I’ve been reading a book called “The Hot Zone” about a journalist (Kevin Sites) who is hired by Yahoo!News to travel to and report from 20 active wars/conflicts around the world in one year. It’s a riveting, but terribly sad tale that includes a short report from Haiti. This type of poverty pornography confuses me. It’s exciting to live in a place with such drama surrounding it – to witness first hand the ups and downs of the struggle for something better, and to be part of it if only in a tiny, tiny way. It’s fun to stand around a bonfire in rural Ontario (as I did on this past vacation) being asked about living in Haiti and trying to share and explain something beyond the CNN version of Haiti that most people see. But at the same time, something in me yearns for something different than all that drama. I can easily see myself slipping back into a “normal” life back in Canada. Or maybe somewhere different not so absurdly complicated as Haiti.

So, to drown these feelings of confusion I clicked to Linkin Park on my iPod and cranked it much too loud. The loudness helped. Then, as I strolled through the airport terminal in Miami waiting for my flight to Port au Prince, I put on something a little more chill - I was listening to Johnny Cash, until I got to “Hurt.” The first line is: “I hurt myself to see if I still feel, to focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.” I wonder if that’s why there is still a draw to Haiti somewhere inside me, or to this kind of life and work in general. Seeing the hurt and pain helps to “keep it real” as the young kids are wont to say these days. Seems so trite, but life in Canada seems so sterile for me right now.

So as I set to board the plan for Haiti, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Confused probably sums it up. We have invested a lot of ourselves in Haiti and our story, now with Gabriela at the centre, is inextricably linked to “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.” So thinking about not wanting to be there seems like a form of running away – all while my planes, trains and automobiles are bringing me there.