The purpose of the cross-cultural sail was, as Joaquin Mendez of the Cross Cultural Center of Santo Domingo explained, to facilitate the equivalent of the early student exchanges between Israeli and Palestinian students. Because of the strained relations between the two nations of Hispaniola, Mendez worked with the six Haitian and two Dominican students just prior to the sail to explore the notion of “minority” (a concept foreign to what has been, for so long, a divided island), and he charged each student with care for the other and respect for their cultural differences. But this type of exchange was not limited to Dominicans and Haitians. Furling sails out on the bowsprit together were also crew members from ten of the United States, from Belize, and from Sierra Leone. Through the long, cold months in Norfolk, and again during the weeks of gale- and hurricane-force winds in Bermuda, the crew heard much about the Amistad mission, about the goals of the organization, about the positive and emotional impact we could have on the lives of those we would encounter. We took inspiration from this potential, we held on to it as we would the uppermost shrouds in a rolling sea, but as we’d spent so much time focusing on operational details and had yet to see the fruits of the bigger picture, we were truly acting on faith. For many of us, I think, that faith was rewarded here in the Dominican Republic when we set sail last Friday night and through the exchanges we’ve had with our new friends from both Haiti and the DR.

Just as we had our own struggles in getting Amistad to the Caribbean, bringing the students together was a challenge for organizers on this end as well. Kirsys Yohanna Feliz and Carolin Arias agreed to represent the Dominican Republic and already live here in Santo Domingo. Three of the Haitian students, Gacques Gosue, Sandra Logiste, and Christelle Saint-Natus, are Haitians who are also studying in the city; the other three, Melissa Jean Francois, Garry Pyram, and Etienne Jean Chavenet, were living in Haiti when the earthquake struck in January and will return to Haiti this week. Christelle and her mother, Michaelle Saint-Natus, who lives in Port-au-Prince, were charged with finding those Haitians who were not only in need but who also had passports and were able to travel. Garry works at the sugar cane museum operated by Saint-Natus, and Sandra was responsible for connecting with Melissa. Christelle flew home to Haiti last week, and she and her mother traveled to the rural villages in the mountains in an attempt to fill the last open bunk but were unable to locate anyone with a passport. Finally, just a few days before Amistad was to sail with the students out of Santo Domingo, Michaelle met with Chavenet, who’d lost his passport in the earthquake but still had some of the necessary papers. The Director of Archives for Haiti heard about Chavenet’s plight and agreed to search the state files to locate the necessary documents for Chavenet to travel. With much luck and much help from high-level Haitian officials, Chavenet secured his passport and a visa at 2 pm on Thursday, December 4, flew immediately to Santo Domingo, and came straight from the airport to the dock, arriving just ten minutes late for the Amistad welcoming celebration.

Once ship, crew, and students were all in place, the crew faced the challenge of communicating complicated sail-handling procedures with the assistance of only one person able to translate English to French. And although there are several Spanish speakers among the crew, sail terminology is in itself another vocabulary. After a confused and rushed departure (owing to logistical concerns with port authorities), three of the students became seasick and several others were nauseous and tired. By the time we dropped anchor at sunset on the first night, I for one questioned how much good we could do in 48 hours under such conditions. The nature of shipboard life, however, mandates that a crew come together to overcome our differences and to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and despite the cultural and language barriers between us, the determination of the students to overcome these barriers, and indeed to care for one another, became readily apparent.

Within the first hour, Gacques Gosue jumped into the fray, pulling on lines and helping to secure the gangway tower on deck. And although she wasn’t feeling well, Christelle, our trilingual translator, asked multiple questions and tried to pass along as much information as possible to the other students. By the following morning, the seasickness had passed, and by lunch, Haitians, Dominicans, and the crew were working side by side to tack the ship as we took her up and down the coast. By the time we dropped anchor that afternoon, even those who could not swim donned life jackets and trusted their lives to the rest of us. That night, Rueben, one of our deckhands, celebrated his birthday, and the students and crew sang together in Creole, Spanish, French, and English. On Sunday, the students returned to the ship for a ceremony with visitors from the American Embassy, and Christelle has stopped by to volunteer and to chat with crew members each day since.

Many times I’ve heard the word “hopeless” in conjunction with Haiti. It has no infrastructure, no stable government, no organization, its forests were razed long ago, HIV/AIDS plagues the population in epic proportion, there are few jobs, little opportunity, and great poverty for approximately 90% of the population. It is easy, I think, to become overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problems. But just as we emphasize the humanity of the heroes of the Amistad story by reciting their names and remembering their faces, here too I believe it’s important to focus on these students as individuals. Each of them has a story, and each of them has committed, in his or her way, to bridging the divide between nations. It is impossible, in fact, to look Gacques or Christelle or Sandra or Chavenet or Garry or Melissa in the eye and say the word “hopeless.” If they and Kirsys and Carolin are at all representative of the youth of their nations, then I have little doubt that not only will there be healing in Hispaniola but that there is, even now, great hope for Haiti.