I volunteered to take on the task of moving a small, block-making machine from Florida to Les Cayes, Haiti, in the summer of 2013. The machine, purchased by Good Shepherd Community Church for post-earthquake reconstruction, had been sitting in the manufacturer’s warehouse for almost two years. For reasons I don’t remember, the people originally given the job of transport were not able to get it done. The motto of the DC-9 squadron I was attached to in the US Navy was Can Do, so I approached the endeavor unhampered by experience, and at the same time, bolstered by naïveté.
I called a trucking company and a Florida-based shipping company and made the arrangements to have the machine hauled and then transported by ship to St. Marc, Haiti. Once the block machine was loaded onto a truck and delivered to the shipping company, I was told that it would be two weeks until it would be unloaded at the port in St. Marc. “Piece of cake,” I thought. “What’s been the problem?” So I made travel arrangements accordingly.
Then reality set in—mechanical problems with the ship, then a tropical storm—delay after delay. All problems related were conveniently explained with the adage, This is Haiti. What I had expected to take two weeks turned into five weeks. For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven (Eccl. 3:1). After four weeks in Haiti, I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve been here for more than a month, and I’m not going crazy.” Also during that delay, I met a student who was attending the American University of the Caribbean. He and an engineer working with buildOn, who also taught at AUC, took me to lunch at a restaurant at Gelée Beach west of Les Cayes. While we ate grilled fish, they urged me to consider teaching at AUC. That was an entirely new thought to me. I vividly remember walking the short distance to the shore, looking up and down the beach, hearing the surf, feeling and smelling the salty breeze, seeing the cerulean blue of the Caribbean Ocean and thinking, I could live here.
After I got back to the US, I sent my resume to the academic office of AUC, Les Cayes, Haiti. I had taught English in China the summer of 1990; I had a master’s degree in linguistics, ESL track, but nearly all of my work experience was as a bricklayer. I was accepted anyway and started teaching English Composition at the American University of the Caribbean January, 2014. I’m still there, still teaching; I love what I do, and I live in Haiti. Bondye Bon!