Once Upon a Christmas in Haiti...

- Abraham Lincoln -

So, Christmas is near... You're busy shopping... shopping for bargains... gifts... trying to load those boxes under the christmas tree...

I hope you bought me a gift...

After all the wonderful :) articles I brought you all year, I think I derserve a present... HEE! HEE!

Today I bring you a little christmas story from my childhood in Haiti.

As a matter of fact it was my last christmas in Haiti, I just turned fourteen (14).

The world may call Haiti the poorest country in the western hemisphere but it's a place I call "HOME".

I really enjoyed christmas in Haiti, not because there were a lot of gifts, not at all.

It was something else...

• It was the season where I felt truly free to do whatever I wanted.
• It was the season where I could wonder around and my parents didn't care.
• It was the season when I got to spend as much time with my friends as I wanted.
• It was the season where all the kids in the neighborhood were running around at one O'Clock in the morning without being afraid... Why be afraid when all the grown ups are up and all the doors are open

I remember Christmas 1987, in Cite Militaire, Ruelle Guichard. Me and a group of friends came up with an amazing idea.

It was a game that we invented...

The beauty of living in a country like Haiti is that when you are a kid and you don't have a lot of toys to play with, you learn to improvise.

You will come up with games that cost nothing but the fun you get out of it is priceless.

We were all tired of going around the neighborhood... after all we just circled around and came back.

So...

We decided to circle around one more time except this time, there was something different about it.

One of us was blindfolded...

We would walk the blindfolded person for about 10 minutes, sometimes we made him/her cross the same street corner five times, going up and down sidewalks, trying to fool them into thinking that they were traveling a great distance.

After about ten minutes, we removed the blindfold and that person was supposed to bring us back home the same way we came

I'll tell you, we had so much fun; we couldn't stop laughing.

Everyone thought it was a silly game. The rich kids thought we were just being stupid.

You know something? That's all I remember about Christmas 1987, and I missed it every year until I grew up.

Every christmas reminds me of the fun I had with Harry, Ti Claude, Kaliko, Claudia, Fedner, and all the other kids in Cite Militaire, Ruelle Guichard.

I wonder if they remember it like I do!...

Nowadays some of us are grown and we're the ones going crazy buying the gifts.

Don't ever forget...

IT'S YOUR CHRISTMAS TOO!
BUY YOURSELF A PRESENT

Merry Christmas!

Woodring Saint Preux

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