Background behind why I went to Haiti in 2022
Below is a snapshot of Instagram direct messages between myself and Nicole Moss of Ipswich, MA from back in November 2022. I was then messaging with Ms. Moss via an Instagram account belonging to her non-profit organization, called "Always Haiti." Ms. Moss is the President and Founder of "Always Haiti," and her IG account uses the handle "light_of_haiti."
Significantly, only a couple months previous to these Instagram messages with Ms. Moss, I attended a fundraiser event for this "Always Haiti" non-profit that was organized by her. The fundraiser was held as a private event at the True North Brewery, a micro-brewery and event hall, in Ipswich, MA in September 2022. I was invited to this event by a mutual friend of Ms. Moss and myself, a man named Chase Hambley, who was then living in Gloucester, MA and originally from Rowley, MA, a town right next to Ipswich where Ms. Moss herself is originally from.
When I attended this event, it turned out to be a pretty small affair at this micro-brewery on the North Shore of Massachusetts. It was attended by about 15-20 people and lasted a couple hours into the evening. Other than Ms. Moss, Mr. Hambley and a couple other mutual friends, I did not know anyone else at this event personally. However, I do believe the rest of the attendees must have been personal friends of Ms. Moss, or of her other friends present.
According to Ms. Moss, this fundraiser was intended to raise money to benefit a school for children in Haiti run by her "Always Haiti" non-profit, called the "Enstitisyon Limye nan Caracal," or “Light Institution (School) of Caracol.” When operational, this school was located in Caracol, a small community of about six thousand people located on the north coast of Haiti.
The event itself consisted mainly of Ms. Moss and a friend of hers MC'ing a charity bingo game, while the other attendees, including myself, sat at tables in the micro-brewery's function room, playing bingo and listening to Ms. Moss and her friend run the Bingo game. Asides from the bingo game, Ms. Moss also talked intermittently about the history of her school in Caracol, Haiti. While talking, Ms. Moss also had a running slide-show presentation of photos taken of children at her "Light Institution" school in Haiti, that were prominently displayed on the back wall of the function room via projector, as we sat and played bingo.
Towards the end of the evening, I distinctly remember that Ms. Moss brought up an interesting fact about her school to the group. As Nicole herself said, her school in Caracol, Haiti is located very close to what is believed to be the historical location of Christopher Columbus’s very first fort and settlement in the “New World,” called “La Navidad.” Columbus’s Spanish conquistadors built this fort in 1492, when their trio of ships first landed on the shores of what is now modern-day Haiti. “La Navidad” in Spanish means “the nativity” i.e. “Christmas.”
After bringing up how her school in Haiti apparently had a kind of bizarre association with Christmas, due to this nearby “La Navidad” fort, I also distinctly remember that Ms. Moss then stated that “Christmas” was also the inspiration behind her naming her non-profit “Always Haiti.” Again, according to Ms. Moss, the inspiration for her school’s name came from her memories of traveling in Haiti. Ms. Moss said that during her travels in Haiti, she always remembered seeing buildings and walls prominently displaying Christmas-related imagery painted on them (Christmas trees, Santa Claus and the like), even at times of the year other than Christmas. This was due to Haitians painting this imagery around Christmas time as part of the festivities, and then, at least in some cases, these Christmas-related paintings did not always get scrubbed off after the holidays! According to Ms. Moss, seeing this Christmas imagery in Haiti throughout the year, gave her the inspiration to think, “Its always Christmas in Haiti!” This amusing thought of it “always” being Christmas in Haiti, apparently gave Ms. Moss the inspiration to name her non-profit “Always Haiti.” (Bit of a convoluted explanation, I know, but still interesting).
Basically, that pretty much describes this event hosted by Ms. Moss. Significantly though, after the event concluded and people were milling about outside the True North brewery, I talked briefly with Ms. Moss. During our brief conversation, Ms. Moss raised the possibility with me that, if I wanted to, I could potentially travel to Haiti myself to find out more about her non-profit’s school in Caracol. At the time I made no commitments to Ms. Moss about going to Haiti, but I do remember telling her it was something I was possibly interested in doing, and left it at that.
It is very important to point out here that in February of 2021, a year previous to me attending Ms. Moss’s fundraiser in Ipswich, I published for the first time on the Internet my comprehensive three-part investigation into the death of human trafficking researcher Monica Petersen in Haiti, titled “Monica Petersen, Haiti and the Octopus of the Deep State.” Point being here, at the time I attended this fundraiser for Ms. Moss’s school in Haiti, Haiti was already very much on my mind. I had already been intensely researching human trafficking crimes allegedly occurring in Haiti, as part of my own investigative journalism.
Whether through coincidence (or possibly not), when I attended Ms. Moss’s event, it really did end up being the proverbial “spark” that drove me to do what I had already been considering doing anyways: go to Haiti personally to try to further my investigative journalism there. Just a couple months later, in December 2022, that is exactly what I did. I spent the last 10 days of 2022 staying in Cap-Haitien, the major city in northern Haiti. Cap-Haitien is less than an hour’s drive from the small community of Caracol in Haiti.
In the Instagram communication partly shown here, again from November 2022, I told Ms. Moss that I planned to travel to Cap-Haitien, Haiti that December, and that I wanted to help out her school if possible. Ms. Moss was enthusiastic in her response, basically saying that was great news and that there was a lot of tax-related work I could help her out with for her “Always Haiti” non-profit. Nicole’s response to me via Instagram here appeared normal enough, apart from a bizarre reference (by her) to “… the seeingeyeeyeeyeeye…” followed by a bunch of “blowing kisses” emojis. If you can make sense of this particular part of Nicole’s communications to me, congratulations, you are a far better journalist than me, lol!
Aside from this still-unexplained “weirdness” from Ms. Moss in her response to my decision to travel to Haiti, the point here is that I made the commitment to Nicole that I would actually go to Haiti, which is indeed exactly what I then did. When I went to Haiti, I had two major goals I wanted to accomplish while I was there, or at least that is how I conceived of my motivations when I first got to Haiti. My first major goal was to try to help out this “Enstitisyon Limye” school run by Ms. Moss, through my own financial contributions and possibly by contributing some accounting services to the school free of charge. (I work as an accountant here in the States.)
My second major goal was to push forward with my own investigative journalism by investigating claims of human trafficking in Haiti while I was there. In particular, I really hoped to find any evidence to support the claim made by Monica Petersen herself, that human trafficking was occurring at the Caracol Industrial Park, a very large textile factory located right next to the small community of Caracol, the same exact community that Ms. Moss’s school was located in. This is the community that I myself visited during my trip to Haiti, on December 26th and 28th of 2022. Monica Petersen died in Haiti in November 2016, less than a year after she made this very specific claim of human trafficking happening at this textile factory complex in Caracol, Haiti. It is now confirmed in the mainstream press that Petersen was in fact “murdered by traffickers” in Haiti.
I know people are going to want to know if I accomplished these two goals. Long story short, during the course of my time in Haiti and after, I have met both significant failures and some limited success in terms of accomplishing these goals I originally set out for myself. What prevents me from going into further detail here, is honestly the extreme volatility and danger of the current situation in Haiti. Of course I want to shine light on the truth through my own investigative journalism. However, I cannot let my pursuit for the truth unfairly endanger people in Haiti who honestly are already in a dangerous enough situation as it is. Again, this is what is preventing me from saying more here, at least for now.
However, what I can say is that this story is not over, not by a long shot! I plan to reveal a lot more in the future, about my own investigative journalism, my journey to Haiti in 2022, and the situations and people that led me there in the first place.
I pray that the children I saw at Ms. Moss’ school in Haiti are safe, and are well-cared for, as of the present.
I pray that the community of Caracol, Haiti remains safe and free from the heavily-armed gangs that have overrun so much of Haiti now.
Stay safe everyone, stay tuned… #JusticeforHaiti #EndHumanTrafficking