Adventure Story- Haiti
In 2009 my family took a vacation to a beautiful resort in Haiti Just 6 months later the country was destroyed by one of the most powerful earthquakes.
I was only 11 at the time, so my main focus was on the pool and what activities the resort was offering each day, but spending a week in Haiti would make me appreciate all I have in life. Due to the fact that visiting a foreign country has the potential to be dangerous, we stayed in the resort for majority of the week. However, we ventured from the resort one of the days to visit a market where the Haitian locals were selling handmade goods.
It was evident that these locals were very poor. This made them very assertive when tourists walked in looking to spend money. I remember my little sister was looking to get a straw doll for a souvenir and she had many people come up to her putting their work in her face to get her to buy from them.
At the time this was a scary experience to have so many people so aggressively in our face. Looking back on it now, it was sad how desperate these people were for money and how little they had. We drove through the town in a shaky van and saw so many houses and buildings falling apart. I was astonished to see how destroyed this city looked. Little did I know, how demolished it would be just six month later.
On January 12th 2010, just 6 months after my family vacation, an earthquake hit Haiti with a magnitude of 7.0. There were 230,000 people killed and 300,000 injured. After hearing about this disaster, I thought about what buildings I’ve visited were left standing, if the people I met were alive, and just what was left from what I saw as a beautiful tropical vacation.
After this trip, I viewed Haiti as a beautiful, tropical island, and based off of the hotel we stayed in and how young I was, I thought it was a richer country. After seeing the different side of the country outside of the hotel and pictures from after the earthquake, I was astonished to see a different side of Haiti.
This trip taught me to see things beyond what it right in front of me. If we hadn’t left the hotel I would’ve assumed Haiti was a luxury island, but after I understood what poor and desperate really looked like. It now now 9 years since the earthquake and the country is still rebuilding.
Since this experience, when my family and I visit countries that are not wealthy, we make sure to leave the resort and do some kind of community service for at least a day. While we love staying in a resort and having a luxury vacation, giving back for just part of our trip is much more rewarded.
