The Baptist Mission

One afternoon while I was in Haiti, we went up to the Baptist Mission. I went with Charity, and another friend who is in Haiti with MINUSTAH.

The mission is all the way up a mountain, hence the beautiful views (there are pictures in the previous post). It's also nice because they have a restaurant and bakery with amazing food. It's also just peaceful there, a welcome repreive from Port-au-Prince.

I had been to the mission before when I lived in Haiti. In fact, there was a teacher at Quisqueya who married a man that works at the mission. but until this trip I did not know about some of the, um, eccentricities of the mission.

For one, they have a "zoo." I put it in quotes because it's, well, a very sad zoo. Charity pointed out though that it's probably the only zoo some Haitians will see. We saw this monkey, who looked like he's had much trash thrown at him. Either that or he's been binging on candy lately.

There was also an alligator (with a little boy poking him with a stick), peacocks, and a whole slew of rabbits. No wonder, since they had more than one in a cage. Sadly the American Raccoon had died, but they still had a couple of snakes.

Somehow even stranger than the zoo was the mission museum. I'm not sure what qualifies as a museum, but if a few animals qualify as a zoo, I guess this qualifies as a museum.

Some background first--missionaries are weird. Granted, this is my humble opinion. But, in my experience, missionaries are strange, and have to be to do what they do. So the missionaries who started the mission had some crazy ideas. And, they have a whole wall of the museum devoted to their family and their photos. A friend told me that the Haitians actually call the mission "Kay Wallace," which means the house of the Wallace's, the people who started it.

So keeping in mind that missionairies are somewhat eccentric and bizarre people, here's
some of what was in the museum. Notice the fossilized dinosaur manure, and the Indian pottery--the sign is my favorite. And, possibly the most hilarious part to me is the, well, let's call it "slant" on most of the sign.

Like this sign to the left. It says "They ate all of Haiti's monkeys, but still liked to picture their faces!" Weird!

The blue wall below is a group of pictures of different groups of people around the world. So the museum had some Haitian history stuff--Duvalier, money from of old, some old armaments, etc. It also had the customary missionary versus voodoo display, and then it got weird.

There were some posters of old cars, then a few walls displaying clothing and customs of people around the world, and the whole wall about the people who started the mission.

I mean no disrespect to missionaries, but in my personal experience, this museum exemplifies what missionaries can be like. Self-absorbed, judgemental, and not always very accurate about things like fact and truth.

Like I said, not all missionaries, but many.

If you don't believe me, read The Poisonwood Bible.

One thing I learned though living in Haiti is that you just have to LAUGH out loud at stuff like this--it's funny!

Haiti is messed up. Laugh when you can.