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Exchanging Nightmares for Dreams of Hope for Haiti
By Erline Vendredi, Pétion-Ville , Haïti
Where I come from, hope is the only thing that keeps young people alive. I grew up in Haiti where I saw wonderful things happen. I also saw things that I want to forget.
"The students who demonstrated for change didn’t focus on what there were going to do after Aristide left. They should have learned from Haiti’s history and remembered that a country doesn’t change when a leader is expelled. They should have learned that fighting for the poor and protesting with the elite will never change the abuse of human rights in Haiti. And it hasn’t. " -Erline Vendredi
My country is notorious for its political turmoil and rampant poverty. It's no wonder that no one ever asks what it's like growing up in Haiti. Instability and economic crises continually turn things upside down. While my opinion may not represent every Haitian's I do know that many young people feel the same as I do.
We are frustrated and fed up with everything. We are frustrated because no one besides our parents cares about us. We are fed up because some old dudes who have already lived their lives are playing with ours. While we all know that the people in power will be gone one day, they will leave their mess behind. This scares us because no one has shown us how to take care of our people.
We have no role model leaders to look up to. The real ones died more than 100 years ago. The situation in Haiti is tenuous at best. But no matter what, someone will have to take the lead - the question is, who?
Young people are afraid to get involved in politics. We are disgusted by it and by our politicians. Some university students tried to become political activists, driven by their passions to create change. But in 2004, after the departure of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, things went really wrong. Schools closed and people stayed off the streets. It was scary.
The students who demonstrated for change didn't focus on what there were going to do after Aristide left. They should have learned from Haiti's history and remembered that a country doesn't change when a leader is expelled. They should have learned that fighting for the poor and protesting with the elite will never change the abuse of human rights in Haiti. And it hasn't.
When Aristide left the country it was kind of like the last straw. My friends and I concluded that our life would always be a failure. We knew that we could never succeed without an education. Not being able to go to school for a while took away our hopes. Our future seemed to be sinking slowly right before our eyes and we felt there wasn't anything we could do.
I gave up on the dreams I had made since my childhood. I wanted to become either an interpreter or a successful business woman. But in 2004 I chalked this up to pure fantasy.
I became more pessimistic about the future. After all, how could I achieve when families all around me were starving because there was nothing to buy and they had no money? My own mother had to walk for more than two hours to go to work because there was no transportation. Haiti was under an embargo and the local gas station could not get gas from international suppliers. We tried to forgive our leaders - hoping that they were acting on our behalf - but they never stopped exploiting us.
Hope for the future was gone - but I did not stop dreaming. Every night when I went to bed, I would imagine amazing things that would happen in my life. In the world of my dreams there were no more internal conflicts, our parents were no longer abused by sweatshop owners and young people could go to school and achieve their dreams.
I know that many people would not understand how I could dream of such things and when they found me lost in my thoughts, dreaming about the impossible, I would tell them that I was just thinking about life. It was a way to separate myself from the atrocities of living another day - a reality that was inescapable.
But my dreams somehow came true. I got a scholarship to study at an international high school and obtained a diploma from the International Baccalaureate. I am now in college, preparing a major in economics and hopefully will achieve another one in Linguistics. I still cannot believe that I graduated from high school and am now getting a higher education.
Sister Genevieve once said in one of my classes that if young people "don't hope they cope". I would add that if you can't hope, then dream. People might call you crazy but sometimes your imagination can set you free.
Many people from third world countries get shoved into a box that's labeled "People Don't Change." And many people believe the Haitian government is cursed and whoever leads the country will become a weird monster - that he or she will be corrupted and become a dictator. People have felt this way for years. But I believe that there are some vicious cycles that can be broken.
The last time I talked to my mother, I asked her about things back home. She said, "it is just discouragement." I know that our torments in life will not end soon but this does not stop us from thinking about a better future.
My friend, Junette is a freshman at Luther College in the US. She wants to return to Haiti to work after she completes her studies. Many people probably think that she is mad because they consider Haiti a lost cause. But this young girl strongly believes that she can help her people achieve something positive.
2008 might not be the year that positive change occurs but we can never keep our heads down. If it seems unreal to hope for a better future, we must try and live our goals in our dreams and remember that the sky will be brighter one day.
