One event featured at Multicultural Day was a late night presentation titled “Women of Haiti.”
Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on the The Office, spoke at the Performing Arts Center about his multiple visits to Haiti. He assists young girls by travelling to Haiti to be a community acting teacher.
Student Voice reporter Andrew Nino caught Wilson after his presentation and asked him and his wife Holiday a few questions.
Student Voice – When you got off the plane and got to the Haitian community center, what was the first thing that went through your mind?
Rainn Wilson – I was just astonished that people could live in these conditions. I walked into a tent camp with 50,000 people. Living in muddy tents, packed together with pigs and chicken everywhere. Feces and garbage everywhere and I had just never seen human beings living like this before, I never knew that humans could live like that.
SV – How did you feel going back the second and third time?
Wilson -I think things are getting better, people always ask “Well are things getting better now? Are they getting better?” and it’s like certain things are getting better, rubble is getting removed. There are more health care facilities set up now than there ever have been in Haiti’s history. And yet, it’s staggering how little has been done. You know? How little construction, how many people two years after the earthquake are still living in tent camps. So it’s both things, there’s positives and negatives.
SV – How far back do you think the earthquake set back progress in Haiti?
Wilson – In a lot of ways it’s set us back tremendously. Roads and infrastructure which were already hurting before, and in a lot of ways it’s helped motivate people to change and really try and fix up Haiti. There’s a general attitude of like just trying to make Haiti a better place and not accepting the way that it is. There’s a lot more NGO’s, non-government organizations coming in and trying to fix things up and empower Haitians, and just make Haiti a better place.
SV – Your wife said that she loves Haitian art, what’s your opinion on it?
Wilson – Yeah, we always buy art. We found a great folk artist, what was his name?
Holiday Wilson – Jon-Robert?
Wilson – Jean Robert. J-O-N dash Robert. Jon Robert, and he makes fine art objects out of just stuff, out of pieces of garbage, and he makes these sculptures and they’re beautiful. We buy everything from twenty-dollar street art, to thousand dollar paintings.
SV – On an unrelated note, you have over 2,900,000 Twitter followers, how does having almost 3 million people following you affect what you say, knowing how much you can affect such a large group of people?
Wilson – It’s kind of an awesome responsibility, it’s kind of scary but I mostly just tell weird thoughts and fart jokes and whatever pops into my head. So I don’t really pay much attention to that, otherwise I’d just be too intimidated. I state my opinion, and I piss off a lot of people, and have a good time.
