There are very few places that illicit as many negative images in people’s minds as that of the country I was born in, Haiti. I love where I was born and I love the fact I left and become an American citizen, but I have to admit, there are very mixed messages about these two countries being sent to one another.

In Haiti, like everywhere else in the world, we got a lot of American entertainment. We also saw a lot of American news and while I bet less than 1-in-50 American students could name the leader of Haiti, probably 49-out-of-50 can tell you the night of the presidential election who is running the United States. When I left Haiti and moved in with my uncle in Florida, I would see depictions of Haiti on television, usually connected to the massive earthquake that happened there. I believe these pictures have left an imprint for a generation of Americans of what Haiti actually offers.

Of course, there are poor section of Haiti, a lot of them. There are also some of the most beautiful homes you’ll find anywhere. Yes, there is inner-city blight and places you would never want to be after dark. But there are also pristine fields and beaches that look like they belong on a postcard. In other words, it’s a lot like every place else in the world. If I held up a carefully selected group of five photos, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were looking at Haiti or the United States or Japan or Brazil.

Writing the Script Meets the Wall

I think that some of my deep love for America comes from the images that I saw when I was a child. I built a script in my head about what it would be like if I came to the United States. I had friends who did the same things with other countries. One of my best friends thought Germany was the greatest country in the world while another wanted nothing out of life but to live in France. They left around the same time that I did and they both still live in Germany and France, respectively.

Based upon how we were raised, we wrote scripts for ourselves of where to live a better life. Unfortunately, you needed to have certain connections for higher education and high-quality job opportunities and neither I, nor my friends, had that. We needed to leave. That was the first part of our script after school was over.

There have been some bumps in my script as there are bumps in all our scripts, but there are times when we run head-first into something that isn’t a bump. It isn’t a hurdle. It’s a wall. It’s the wall that tells you your script is faulty. That has also happened to me. It was when I recognize that my career in health care as an officer in the Navy was not my final destiny and would not be my legacy. After recognizing that, it just got worse, and I’ll get more into that in future articles.

I stood there looking at that wall. I could stick to the script. Stay on my side of the wall and live out my years with a nice paycheck, then pension. Have a good home, put my boys through college and slide into old age a tenured Officer. The thought made me not want to get out of bed. I had to find out what was on the other side of the wall. 

And like magic, when I ripped up that imaginary script, I discovered a ladder. I climbed it, and you’ll never believe what I found on the other side….