Keplet Harrigan still laughs, 30 years later, when he remembers his first day of college in the U.S. as an international student from Haiti. Like a scene from a movie, he recalls that he and several others watched an American student eat an entire pizza and drink a liter of Coke while waiting in a dormitory lobby.
“He did not offer even a single piece to anybody; he just ate it all,” Harrigan says with a laugh. “That’s my first interaction. I thought, ‘Are Americans really that selfish?'”
He realized, with time, that was not true, but for a then-19-year-old who was raised among Haitian culture, adjusting to life in the United States was not always smooth sailing.
Harrigan grew up in a small village in northwestern Haiti called Jean-Rabel, and while he’s lost some memories to time, he remembers how they used to play soccer until late in the night, barefoot. He shared a two-bedroom house with five brothers, with the bedrooms divided by a veil. The family kitchen was outside. His dad, a farmer who raised goats and pigs, passed away when Harrigan was 8 or 9, so he doesn’t have many memories of him.