More than a half-year after an earthquake of devastating proportions rocked Haiti, Port-au-Prince is a city with a landscape defined largely by tents, tarps and widespread homelessness.
The subsequent international relief effort included donated money, items and scores of volunteers who traveled to Haiti over the summer, some of whom call the U. Nebraska-Lincoln home.
“This isn’t just another nation across the ocean,” said Meghan Vilter, a sophomore secondary education English major. “These are real people with real needs.”
Vilter spent time teaching and playing with children at the Son of God orphanage, as well as distributing shoes and medical essentials to those in need, over the course of her eight-day trip. She traveled as part of a mission trip group, known as AIM, helping in the most humanistic sense, but also cultivating an environment of hope and spirituality.
“The Haitians were a very persevering people,” Vilter said. “Being with them and going through their losses, it opened my eyes. Instead of despairing, they are now persevering through God’s strength.”
This widened perception was brought on by the high level at which the Haitians find comfort in what they have.
“We brought an extra tarp to one of our translators, and he was just so excited and grateful,” Vilter said. “I was just kind of put to shame by these people who have nothing. I live in America with a roof over my head and complain if it’s too cold inside. We get too tied up over the worst things in life.”
Other UNL volunteers shared similar assessments of the Haitian people and their mindset.
“The people are just phenomenal – very resilient,” said Anna Buettow, a junior economics and accounting major, who traveled to Haiti this past summer as part of a group from the UNL Lutheran Center. “You can’t know how people living like that everyday feel until you meet them and talk to them.”
Buettow’s crew volunteered at the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince, worked with the mentally and physically handicapped and dug out a foundation for the home-rebuilding process. Despite the full week’s worth of work that Buettow’s group and so many others like it took part in, the experience was quite indicative of the jobs that are yet to be done.
“I met a group of people and talked to them for a while,” Buettow said. “They said we were the first aid group that had come to see them since the earthquake. Of all the groups to come down in the last six months, it was kind of shocking there were some people that hadn’t received any help whatsoever.”
The enormous need combined with the scarcity of help adds a degree of cynicism for many volunteers.
“I was skeptical hearing through the news and media about all the money being sent and all the great plans for the relief effort,” Buettow said. “While I was there I didn’t see that much at all. I think it’s just inhumane to live like that. We have a responsibility to get the 1.5 million people in tent cities into real houses.”
Yet, as the struggle for restoration continues, the individuals most in need of an optimistic frame of mind possess it to a great extent.
“A lot of the Haitian people would be talking to us about the earthquake, and a lot of them viewed it as a chance to rebuild better than before,” Buettow said. “It was such a motivating experience for me.”