Psychosocial Experience

For one week I knew how it might feel to be an immigrant. Before I went to Haiti, I had never left the country and had only flown once before. I was at the complete mercy of my trip leaders, neither of whom I knew. I know a little bit of French but no Creole. From the time I exited the airport, I was bombarded with cultural differences. No matter what our situation was back home, everyone in the group was on equal footing. We had no idea where we were going or how we were going to get there. None of us had ever been to Haiti before. We stayed at a compound that housed a trade school. We were the only white people there and sometimes it felt like we were on display. The school started before we normally woke up so it wasn't uncommon to wake up and see  people staring in the windows at us. We got pointed at, laughed at and definitely made fun of. The difference was these people didn't know any better. Most of the people we met had never seen white people before. They were amazed by the fact that we had sunburns and would poke our skin and watch it turn pale and then red over and over again. We chose to go to Haiti and had prepared ourselves for the differences. We knew that in one week we would be leaving and going back to the United States where we would always have hot water and electricity, we could eat whenever we wanted and there was air conditioning. Immigrants don't have this option.

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I'm not sure how his status as a child of immigrants has affected Mouhamadou. He told me they speak English at home and he seems very bright. Last week he didn't have any homework so again we just drew and talked. He has has a brother. He said he was 20 but put all ten fingers up as he said it. He is still pretty shy and I have to ask very direct questions to get answers from him. I don't know when his parents came to the United States or what the situation is but from my interactions with Mouhamadou I would say they have assimilated fairly well. His favorite TV show is Monday Night Raw, that is a very American thing to watch. Another thing I think is interesting is that it airs on USA a cable network. This and the fact that he always has nice clothes on makes me think his family may not face some of the economic issues that a lot of immigrant families face. He has grown up in the United States and doesn't know any other lifestyle. While he is still affected by racism and prejudice he didn't have to go through the process of coming to a new country and has grown up learning English.