The relief workers who were released earlier this week came home to a hero’s welcome. And while it was nice to see family reunification and first words (and, as one relief worker put it: “a shower!”), the media seriously missed an opportunity to discuss the true reason of their imprisonment in Haiti.
We are familiar with the charges: Americans deemed kidnappers of children whose impoverished parents wanted a better life for their young ones. Parents sign papers, no legal system is involved, and then workers are stopped crossing the border into the Dominican Republic (for a second time)–and subsequently jailed for nearly three weeks on charges of kidnapping.
But that’s not why the American relief workers were imprisoned.
The American volunteers were put in jail because of their overarching sense of superiority; Haitian courts wanted to remind the American volunteer workers that they did not have the right to do as they pleased because they came to help, and that help and hurt are balanced on a fine line in a crisis of such magnitude.
Christian relief workers were given the ok from God to do their work; and that ok created shudders on reality, namely the reality of due process. It takes time to remove a child from a home for good or bad reasons. The judicial system–and yes, other countries have them–must make sure that what happens is in the child’s best interest. And let us not forget that there are those who would use such a crisis as an opportunity to plunder Haiti, to rob them of their most precious gifts: their children.
For the most part, I believe the workers who took the children did so with sincere thoughts and a sincere heart; they weren’t going to sell the children on the black market. They wanted to be responsible for helping lives succeed in a time of tragedy–and they wanted to meet God’s mandate of converting them to Christ.
The volunteers went into Haiti with the idea that no matter what they did, they were right and good, because they were American–and, of course, because “they had God on their side.” One relief worker proudly proclaimed that ” God was a mighty God!” No doubt this mindset also gives way to the idea that one’s actions, if in the name of God, are completely justified.
This was not their fault.
Americans are bred to be self-centered, arrogant, and willfully-stubborn. For example, I remember clearly when the towers fell on 9/11. I also remember my blind arrogance. “This is America. They can’t do that to us!” I screamed at the television. I went on for days contemplating how anyone could dare attack our country; no body messes with America.
It was then that I began to really analyze my country: both it’s inner workings and it’s relationship to the world. Many Americans did. From that was born a new mantra, one that focused on building bridges with the world instead of sitting on Mount Olympus giving orders.
When you think about it, It’s not surprising that 10 American relief workers, on a mission from God, would find it necessary to ’save’ Haitian children by bringing them to America (Via an orphanage in The Dominican Republic. I have no doubt that some of those kids would have ended up here). In America, they will surely have a better life, right?
Let us not consider that we are uprooting children–however young–from a culture and a society that has been home; we also shouldn’t consider the implications of trying to live in America with a foreign accent thanks to the hypersensitivity of the ‘war on terror’; and why consider that the customs, the food, the very aura of life in Haiti would matter to so small a child?
The Haitian courts were right to stop the American relief workers in their tracks; they were right to force them to consider that America isn’t ‘the best place in the world’ anymore. Yes, I love my country, and I think it’s one of the best places that I could have been born. But that doesn’t mean that every child will have a fighting chance here.
Children should not be uprooted–by volunteers, aid workers–or God for that matter– with the thought that tossing them into the home of a white family is going to make their life better.
Building up Haiti, creating strong infrastructure, strong homes,schools and agriculture keeps the family unit intact. It prevents decent people (like the Haitian volunteers) from being accused of crimes, and it prevents religion from being forced on defenseless minds.
