In the short time St. Andrew's Episcopal School student trips are in Kap Son, Civol, we look for ways to reach across the boundaries of language and connect personally with people there.   Art is a great vehicle for this, and over the years we’ve done murals together, made jewelry, done pop up design challenges.  Many of us use photography not only to capture impressions to share with everyone back home, but as a vehicle of interaction with the students at the Christ Roi school.  The lighthearted posing and playful pleas to be the center of attention for a moment, our students bending down and sharing the images they create on their cameras, all make for wonderful exchanges.  

 In February of 2018, I again chaperoned St. Andrew's students to Haiti.   I, too, used my camera to record and connect, but something different happened on this trip.  Something made me slow down.  I stopped reacting in the moment to the collective joy and swirl of activity around me.  Instead, I turned to a teenage girl who had been sticking close to me, Luneda, and asked if I could take a formal portrait of her rather than her go-to pop teenage “fashion model pose”.  She was hesitant at first, self-conscious at how serious this seemed.  I got her seated in a chair, waited for her to relax, shared my test shots for lighting and background.  Many friends gathered to add advice, most notably the adult women, who typically hang back during our visits.  I gently adjusted her seating, the angle of her head.  When she saw I wasn’t walking away for the next snapshot, she got involved, shifted her posture and expression, and revealed to me just how she really wanted to be seen. What I sensed, what came through to me in our exchange was simple and powerful: it was her own certitude of her potential as a human.  Her portrait, those of others who live and work and learn in Kap Son are presented here. 

This interaction underscored for me our responsibility to try to comprehend, as much as one can under these circumstances, not only something of the collective strengths and challenges of our sister community, but also of the individuals there, their unique attributes, and to honor their particular story, as they wish it to be portrayed.   

Seasoned photojournalists know this well.  Yet western media has been accused of co-opting the real story of Haiti through its unrelenting and at times sensationalized depictions of natural disasters and human mismanagement.  But because we have built the relationship we have over the last ten years, we have the opportunity and an obligation to see through and past these persistent generalizations, and into the individuals we know and love there.  

 As the experiences brought back by our visiting St. Andrew's students testify upon each return, this “seeing” and “knowing” doesn’t just happen for us in Haiti through the lenses of our cameras, or our brief visits.  It happens because we are committed to each other, person-to-person.  It happens when people take the time to reach out to one another, at whatever distance, in whatever way we can, to authentically care and authentically share who we are, and who we can be, with one another.