A tale of two diaries: one I wasn't meant to read, and one I was meant to write

I am a city boy, through and through. In some parts of Haiti, people are awakened by crowing roosters, but in the particular neighborhood where I grew up, the opposite is true. It's the roosters that are awakened by the obnoxious honking of frustrated taxi drivers caught in traffic at six in the morning.

If you think Bay Area traffic is bad, imagine being trapped on 101 at rush hour — except instead of a highway, you're on a narrow single-lane road riddled with potholes, sharing the space with cars, pedestrians, and the occasional herd of cows. In Haiti, traffic signs aren't legally binding commands but suggestions. Instead of an inflexible request to STOP! ​​— they read more like: “Would you please consider slowing down, if you're not in too much of a rush, of course?”

To give us a break from the chaos of city life in Port-au-Prince, my parents would send my brother and me to spend a few weeks every summer just outside the capital, in a town called Fonds-Parisien. Located near the border with the Dominican Republic, Fonds-Parisien is where most of my mother's family lives and where many of my fondest childhood memories first took root.

That's where I learned how to skin a ripe mango using nothing but my hands and teeth, and where I learned how to spot which of those sweet-looking delicacies were just begging to be picked. The most important thing I learned during those summers, however, was the value of keeping a diary.

Whenever we visited my Aunt Emma, ​​she let my brother and me sleep in my cousin Alex's room, while Alex stayed with her. One morning, in the summer of 2010, I woke up unusually early and decided to explore the room. That's when I saw it — an elegant notebook sitting beneath the TV. Its appearance piqued my curiosity, so I slid it off the shelf. On the cover, printed in big capital letters in English, were the words: PRIVATE PROPERTY! DO NOT READ.

So I opened it, eager to discover what was written on its pages.

I didn't speak English then, so I couldn't actually read the entries — and more to the point, I couldn't have understood the warning telling me not to. A few minutes into my attempt to decipher its contents, I realized I didn't understand a single sentence.

When the sun rose, I brought the notebook to Alex. "Hey Alex, what is this notebook for? I tried my very best but I couldn't understand anything. It seems like it's in English."

Alex rushed over and snatched the notebook from my hands. "C'est mon journal intime, Gil," she said. "Gil, this is my diary." Alex explained what a diary was — a place to keep track of what happened throughout my days and express how I felt about it. "You should try keeping one," she suggested.

That same day, Alex handed me a fancy notebook and an even fancier pen, and I began my journaling journey. I wrote an entry every single day that summer while we were at my aunt's house. I filled the pages with my thoughts and feelings. Most entries were descriptive, but sometimes they turned inward, quietly introspective.

I wrote every day until the last day of our trip, when my dad came to drive my brother and me back to the city. After that, keeping a journal became harder, partly because I lived in constant fear that my brother, with whom I shared a bed, would read it. Or that my parents, with whom we shared a room, would discover it. And it didn't help that I couldn’t write in English (my entries were in French, plain as day for anyone to read). 

So on our first night back in the city, I wrote the final entry of that very first diary:

Dear Diary,

Today, Daddy came to pick up Orlson and me from Aunt Emma's house. What an amazing few weeks we had! I really love hanging out with Alex.

But I was also starting to miss my parents, so I guess I'm feeling bittersweet about our departure. I missed the neighborhood too — or what's left of it.

On the way back, we drove through downtown. It was dusty. I saw the schools, hospital buildings, churches, lottery houses, and private residences — all collapsed to the ground. I can't believe the earthquake was already six months ago! I can't believe 200,000 people died. The rubble is still there, like an open wound. Sometimes I wonder if there are still people underneath. I think there are. The flies hovering over the rubble seem to think so too. I think the people have just stopped screaming for help.

I didn't know it at the time, but journaling saved me. It helped me process the confusion and the immense grief I was feeling. It gave me a place to hold emotions too big for an eight-year-old. It helped me make sense of what it meant to witness death and experience loss at a time when I still couldn't quite spell the word "grief" (deuil).

Writing down my thoughts and feelings helped me find space to hope, to love, and to dream. It still does today.

Gil Joseph (2025 cohort) is pursuing a master’s degree in international policy at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. He aspires to work at the intersection of policy research and legal advocacy to advance equitable global migration governance and is particularly interested in designing policies that ensure safe and dignified mobility for migrants while balancing economic priorities and national sovereignty.

Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.