On the Outside

by Cara Kennedy

Shortly after moving to Haiti, I incorporated the term andeyò into my description of the rural area where I was living. To me, the word simply meant “in the countryside.” I’d heard andeyò used countless times to refer to this area outside the town of Jacmel, as well as to the people who live in it (moun andeyò). But it wasn’t long before one of my colleagues informed me gently that the term andeyò can be stigmatizing, even degrading.

I was perplexed. I was living in a beautiful, peaceful place, with some of the kindest people I’d ever met.  What was degrading about country life? But there was something to unpack in this word, andeyò—as there is in so many Haitian Creole expressions. 

The literal translation of the Creole word andeyò is “on the outside.”  People from rural areas—and most of Haiti’s population is rural—describe themselves as living “on the outside.”  But, outside what? Outside the city, that’s true, but there seemed to be much more to this expression. Over time, I began to understand the complexity and the “outsidedness” of life for people in Haiti’s countryside. 

		The author picks black beans with her neighbors in Dal, the rural community that hosted her for her yearlong apprenticeship. Dr. Kennedy now works with the Beyond Borders office in Washington, DC, and returns to Haiti frequently.

Of course, it is not just the people in Haiti’s rural areas who are outside the world of privilege that so many of us enjoy in the United States.  Those in Haiti’s larger cities live amid some of the most difficult conditions one can imagine, with very limited access to education and other resources.  In fact, Haiti itself has been excluded from our global family in so many ways. But my experience in the countryside gave me opportunity to observe some additional ways the moun andeyò are “on the outside.” 

The father of the family hosting me labors alone in his fields. His two young-adult sons refuse to work the land with him, because they want to leave rural life at all costs (“at all costs” meaning without other options, totally unsure how they will make their own way, and mostly unable to make their own way). The youth here walk two hours each way to attend school, leaving them little time and energy for study or leisure. The young women living in this community don’t even use its name when talking about where they live, but refer to themselves as residents of a place closer to the city.  I think they believe this makes them more city-like. They hunger for electricity, refrigeration, television—none of which they have “on the outside.” Yet they take pride in being closer to the city than the mountain-dwellers just up the hill. A clearly defined hierarchy exists, and there are layers of andeyò, degrees of exclusion.

Observing these dynamics, I began to wonder more and more why it is this way. Why is rural life so devalued and degraded? What has led my host family and their neighbors to idealize something else? 

It is a tragedy that the once-lush land that should be able to produce enough for people to live and eat well is now deforested, eroded, and so vulnerable to weather. Because most people here can no longer depend on the fruits of this beleaguered land to sustain them, they don’t take pride in themselves as farmers, as keepers of the land, either.

The majority of Beyond Borders’ work takes place in these very areas, in partnership with these “outsiders” who devote their time, ideas, and resources to creating real change in their communities. We choose to support these efforts because we want to help rural communities grow stronger, so people can educate, feed, and protect their children, and stem the flow of children into servitude.  We do this by supporting local organizations that promote education for adults and children, by training teachers in more than 200 schools, and through an ambitious effort to bring an end to child servitude in Haiti. 

We also know that in choosing these communities, we are following Jesus’ example, seeking to live and work among those most andeyò, those most excluded and marginalized.  We’re striving to expand the boundaries of who is considered inside—so that more and more people have access to education, the awareness to protect their children, and the tools and skills to improve the land’s potential for harvest. 

And in the places we work, these "outsiders" are our teachers, with wisdom and experience that shape everything we do. Through our relationships with these moun andeyò, we are called to examine our own hearts and find ways to break down the barriers that marginalize and exclude.