What Haiti Taught Me

“If anyone is in need of a Thanksgiving dinner, our house is open!” my professor for Sustainable Development in Haiti Gordon Geballe announces as we begin to shuffle out of the classroom at the end of our last class before break. Hearty “have a good break” wishes are exchanged. There would only be two more class meetings of this seminar, and everyone was a little sad to the semester coming to a close.

Sustainable Development in Haiti is a freshman seminar that I took last semester that looks at development in Haiti from an interdisciplinary framework, exploring the issues from perspectives ranging from history and economics to health and the environment. Coincidentally, or perhaps not at all, I stumbled upon the course description for this seminar even before I considered applying to Yale, and wrote about how excited I am that I could take this class here. Now here I am, taking this incredible class with 14 others, learning so much and having such interesting discussions.

As you may be able to tell from the name, freshman seminar are offered to only freshman, and they offer the small class the opportunity to get to know each other and the professor really well. The topics range from exploring possibility of extraterrestrial life to a study on oil and empires. In fact, one of my friends is even taking an art of the printed word seminar where they get to work in the printing press in the basement of Jonathan Edwards College.

I may be biased, but I’d say that my seminar was one of the best! It was more than just learning from readings and discussions. We read Farewell, Fred Voodoo by Amy Wilentz to get a better understanding of the different dynamics of interactions between the outsiders and the people of Haiti. What was really neat was that Amy Wilentz was named a Poynter Fellow, and she was able to visit our class and be our guest, which gave us an opportunity to ask her a ton of questions. We talked to a Haitian doctor who is a member of the diaspora and a Yale student who worked to conduct field research in Haiti in previous summers.

In addition, I had met Alejandro Pacheco, a Yale World Fellow, at an event and learned that he worked for the UN Development Programme in Haiti. We shared with each other our views on post-earthquake aid and development efforts. After bringing this exchange up in class, I was given encouragement to bring Alejandro to one of our classes, which came to fruition.

The course has given me more than just a deep understanding on the complexities of development work and Haiti itself. It has challenged me to rethink how I view international organizations like the UN, NGOs, and development as a field of interest. It has reshaped how I evaluate my opinions as well. Nothing else has driven me to investigate questions that piqued my curiosity as much as this seminar.