Haitian Hospitality

Haitian Hospitality

In many cultures, hospitality is highly valued and respected. This was definitely the case this weekend when Nesly Gustave invited me and my Haitian driver, Midi Osner to stay at their house for two nights while we visited the 16 Ambassadors teams in the Gonaives area.

You may remember that in 2008 and again in 2009, Gonaives was flooded and mud filled many houses up to 6 feet. This was the case with Nesly’s house, where you can still see the marks on the wall where the water rose. The water flooded so fast that they could not escape their house and were forced to sleep on the roof under driving rain for two days. The following day all they had to pay ten times the normal price for some crackers and water because the flood had carried away everything in the town.

Their house did stand in the flood, but it took them over 2 months to clean out all the mud and muck and let it dry out. Today the house has 2 small bedrooms, and a small living room which doubles as a bedroom. This is where my friend and I slept. It also has a storage room which serves as part of the kitchen, since most of the cooking is done outside. One nice new addition to the house since I last visited was a new cement-floored outhouse which doubles as place to take bucket-showers. It was clean and had a good ventilation system. The other wonderful thing was they had a new outdoor pump that provided good water for bathing. It was fun for me to learn how to pump water by hand while the children laughed, but I’m sure it gets old pumping water after a while!

All this supports a family of 10 children, with 4 still living at home. The rest are married and out of the house, and one lives in the US with his wife and child. Nesly’s mother told me she had 12 children, but her last one died as a baby, and another died around the time he was learning to walk. She proudly told me that all of them had attended school, but Nesly had gone the farthest and is studying to be a lawyer.

She told me that she came from a family of 12 children also, but now only five are still living, which makes sense since the life expectancy in Haiti is still under 50. She and her husband have been married for 24 years, and seem to have raised children who get along well together as adults and love each other. These are blessings that money cannot buy!

She was an excellent cook as well, and I can honestly say that I lacked nothing while there: food, drink, water, shelter and a clean bed with a mosquito net! The Bible tells us we should be content with these basics. It wasn’t the Hilton, but as Proverbs 17:1 says, “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife.”

On Sunday morning Nesly’s Mom took her granddaughter to church hopefully introducing another generation to Christ and setting the foundation for another loving Haitian Christian home.