I’ve been looking up information on Haiti. What I find is of two varieties. There is the information I find that makes me wonder, “How did I not know that?” and there is the information I find where I say to myself, “How could I have forgotten that?” The latter is information, often historical or geographic, that I can’t believe I didn’t come across in school somewhere along the way. If I did, and I’m sure I must have, then why would I have forgotten it?
The answer to the last is question is, I think, because when I was “learning” what I was learning had no meaning for me. I would have been very young and if I studied it the purpose for me would have been to pass a test.
For example, Wikipedia says of Haiti, “It was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion.”
That seems very significant, meaningful, to me now. But when I first came across it — maybe I was 8? 14? I don’t know — Haiti was a place in the blue part of the map of North and Central America, somewhere near the bottom part.
Then there is that first question I asked: How did I not know that? Here, I’m referring to the impoverished state of Haiti’s population, it’s history of repeating disasters, its health issues (like AIDS), the deforested landscape and so on. And how could that be so? It’s smack dab in the middle of the Caribbean — white sand beaches, blue seas, sultry breezes, right? How could a Haiti be there?
And that Haiti we are hearing described in the news now … That can’t be Haiti. Haiti is music and food and colour and warm, laughing people. I know because I’ve seen it in movies. There’s even voodoo stuff that makes it even more exotic. I think I saw that in a James Bond movie.
Put another, the mainstream images and stereotypes many of us grow up with don’t sync well with reality.
I have no brilliant summation here. There’s no grand conclusion. I do, however, wonder how much of our ignorance is by design (our own) and how much of our forgetfulness is, along similar lines, due to a self-centric way of seeing the world.
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