Eyes on Me

When I started this blog, I had no idea what my focus would be. Of course art and hair would be a prominent topic, however I have yet to incorporate the current issues that my culture faces. In order to make a change, you must start within yourself and realize what you are and not doing. So lately I've been thinking profoundly about my purpose which is correlated to my identity, and what I wish to accomplish during my existence on Earth... and can up with nothing concrete. I have so many ideas brewing in my mind of ways to save humanity; however, I still can't figure out how to share my vision with others. My utmost passion is of course art but what exactly can I do with my talent? Recently, I was reading someone's blog and was fascinated of how passionate she was about human rights and actually started an organization for youth. I'm also big on human rights but I never do anything about it, I only talk about it; but talk is cheap. So then I started thinking about who are silenced the most and came up with children. Then I thought well how can you save children who are abused and voiceless. Once again I came up with nothing.

But then it hit me today, what about Haiti? I wasn't born there, but Haitian blood still runs in my vein and I'm entwined with the culture and spirits. I'm always proud to say I'm Haitian and despite the fact that I feel like I'm checking out early when I eat the food, I still love it, and love the music, dance, art, our sarcastic yet beautiful language, and our sense of humor. I've been there many times and lived there for 4 years and feel like it's my true home. Yet I'm still ignorant about the political, economical, and social downfall of Haiti. I know I shouldn't be incriminating myself like that, but it's the truth. Why is it that I don't know as much as I should about Haiti and why aren't I doing anything to help fix Haiti? Why is it that my generation, with all the knowledge we've obtained in top notch Universities, aren't participating in social change addressing the fact that Haiti is crumbling. Why are we letting Haiti fall apart right before our eyes? Even though we don't live there, we're still affected by what is going on. For instance, if one day the American government decides that all the immigrants and their children should return to their home, would you be able to handle what is going on in Haiti. Even though it's unlikely that would ever happen, but let it marinate a bit.

Everybody is running away from the problem and is scared shitless to even visit Haiti right now. We have the power, voice, resources, and revolutionary attitude, yet my generation, my Haitian generation isn't doing much about current issues in Haiti.

I'm not doing much about it...

Only a few people are speaking, singing, drawing, visiting, and writing stuff about Haiti and the more I think about my purpose and identity, I think about the restavek (children slaves) I met in Haiti and how underdeveloped Haiti remains. And what's funny is that whenever I talk about this issue to my mom, aunts or other older folks, they don't see anything wrong with having restaveks in their country. In fact my own mother would gloat about how she grew up so wealthy that all of her siblings had a personal slave picking up and wiping down all their shit. It hurt to see how powerless and voiceless these children are. As cliche as this sounds, children are the future, yet if they're being dehumanized and desensitized, what are we left with?