Haitian Recollections and Haitian Returns

Haitian Recollections and Haitian Returns is my gift to the Haitian people. The gift comes in two parts. The recollections part, is my sharing with the Haitians a piece of their history; which is relatively unknown to most people alive, today. It describes in words from my personal experience in Haiti as a boy in the early 1940s, coupled with many photos from my mother’s album how things were at that time. It was a very unique period, characterized by positive collaboration between Haiti and the United States—then it came to a tragic end! The details about this have never been clearly told nor seen before.

The returns part of the book is about my going back to Haiti to teach the children reforestation—and return to where I lived 65 years ago. It is about what I have learned, saw and did that the reader should think about when hearing news of Haiti.
This book reflects how Haiti and its people have returned so much to me over my entire lifetime. A specific program is presented for approaching the solution to Haiti’s reforestation challenges. It directly involves all the children in Haiti, can start now and can be sustained indefinitely. My own collection of recent pictures are used in this part to show how some things change in Haiti, but also, how many things take a very, very long time. Hope is there for Haiti and we all can assist them if we help them do what they wish and need. However, the Haitians must be actively engaged in anything others do, in order to take their country back from a devastating 500 year-long attack on their natural environment. We and they need to persist, but also, tenancy is required over a long period of time—200 to 300 years. By doing this, Haiti “returns” to all of us in immeasurable ways.