"It's okay to cry."

We spent today in two children's homes that are right next to each other. One of them is run by a Pastor Leslie and World Wide Village has been providing that children's home with Feed My Starving Children food for awhile. We arrived mid-morning and immediately all of us had bumps on our legs that looked an awful lot like little kids. It is market day in town, so many of the vendors had fresh fruit and veggies as we drove past, not to mention the thousands of other goods that were being peddled. Someone commented that it looked like an entirely different street; that is very true. I only recognized it as the same street when we went over the bridge that crosses a river with trash piles all over the place. Anyways, as soon as we got inside the gate and outside of the tap-tap, the kids were all over us. They recognize white people as being persons who usually bring things to them, and besides—we were new adults to play with and who might just pick them up. Ali had three kids on her, I was carrying one and another was latched around my waist. These kids did the same thing as the kids up in Cazale—once they were picked up, it was a trick trying to set them back down.

It is a school day and Pastor Leslie brings in neighborhood children for lesson time. The kids wear different colored shirts for a quick glance of where they belong—blue for the neighborhood kids and green for the children's home kids. There are approximately 70 kids at the children's home, and thanks to the Feed My Starving Children food, they look pretty good compared to many other kids seen throughout the country (particularly than those seen in Cazale yesterday). These kids are the lucky ones. They receive schooling, food three times a day, have clothes to wear, and have grownups who care about them. By our standards they still have significant needs to fill, but at least many of the basics are covered, even if they are not covered to our American ideal standards.

Some of the children in the children's home are true orphans, but many have family somewhere in Haiti. Many parents send them to the children's home so they may have a better life than they have at home—at least here they have food.

After arriving, we passed out coloring pages, blank pages, crayons, and puzzles. The kids immediately set to their tasks, coloring with an ernesty that would make any kindergarten teacher proud. I sat at the end of a bench with some children and had to rescue a puzzle from a baby who just wanted to teethe on the pieces. The baby sat in my lap, several young children crowded around me, and we just goofed off for a little bit. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again—kids are kids everywhere. They loved my camera, and loved to have their picture taken and seeing themselves immediately afterwards when the camera was flipped around. I kept ahold of the strap but would let the kids take pictures. They got a kick out of posing and then laughing at each other. Quite frankly, those kids took better pictures of each other than they would allow me to take!

After awhile it was meal time for the neighborhood kids before they left for the day. They lined up to take turns at washing their hands, found their places, sang grace, ate their meal, sang a thank you song to the Lord, and then went about their business. The kids are designated to various groups and there is a leader for each group. While it appeared that all kids helped out with chores, the group leaders helped set the plates and wipe down the tables. Official decision of the day: the most beautiful sound in the world is seventy spoons clanking against plates as seventy children eat a meal they would not have if it were not for the children's home where they live.

During this entire time, there were two children who had attached themselves to my side (if I knew their stories a little better and could have adopted them, I would have!) and would not leave. They directed me all over the compound, and it was with great reluctance that they left when it was their turn to eat. I have some video of the kids singing and eating, but probably won’t be able to post them until arriving back in the States.

The kids are fascinated by white people (one little girl kept pinching the inside of my elbow just to watch my skin change colors—hers doesn’t do that when she is pinched), and we were told they do not make it out of the compound very often. They sleep in big tents along with fifteen to twenty other kids—they don’t seem to mind. After all, many of them either don’t know any different or they know far worse conditions. One very sweet little boy obviously has some pretty severe developmental delays, and while he received no special treatment and was largely ignored by many of the other children, I could not help but acknowledge that he is better off at the children's home than anywhere else. Special facilities and aid for persons with psychological disabilities are nonexistent in Haiti, especially considering this is a country where many fully functioning individuals are struggling to survive.

Part of World Wide Village’s mission in the country is to do what we can to help stem the spread of the cholera epidemic. A major factor in stemming this tide is proper education about hygiene and good hand-washing techniques. Before we left, all of the kids gathered together and we taught them a song about handwashing while two of the kids from our group demonstrated how to properly wash hands.

Pastor Leslie had told us about an children's home just down the road where the pastor, other adults, and kids there have nothing. We went to that children's home, and this is where my heart was cracked in two. Upon driving into the courtyard, we were surrounded by walls that had crumbled in last year’s earthquake. At least twenty kids crowded around the back of the tap-tap before we got out and were pushing and shoving for a look at these pale strangers. I was almost knocked over by the kids as they grabbed onto me when I stepped out of the vehicle. They didn’t mean any harm and were not trying to knock me over, that just happens sometimes when so many little bodies press against a person at once. Anyhow, when I looked up, the walls surrounding part of the courtyard shocked me. There is no more than two square feet anywhere that doesn't have a crack from the earthquake. Piles of rubble litter the courtyard, twisted rebar juts out of the walls at unnatural angles, the intact-ish overhanging on a porch stuck onto the aforementioned structure is being held up with cement pillars that are trying to crumple. Shortly after the quake, the Haitian government inspected every house in the area and wrote a series of codes on each building in one of three colors: red, yellow, and green. Green means the building is just fine for human habitation and use. Yellow means the building is unstable but workable. Red means the building is completely unusable. There was a big long series of code on the side of a structure at the far end of the courtyard--code prominently sprayed in bright red paint. By all rights, there should be no human being setting foot in that structure until it is torn down and rebuilt. Yet this is assuming insurance as we know it exists in Haiti. Earthquake insurance does not exist in this country. The Pastor was telling us that he owned the land (at least an acre). On one end there had been a church (now a pile of twisted rubble) and on the other end the aforementioned structure was standing. After the earthquake, the church was no more, the other structure was severely damaged, and the pastor had lost his wife. “Some days, it is the children who give me strength” he said. One who did have a lot suddenly had nothing.

The pastor, whose name I cannot remember, showed us around the land devoted to his kids. There is an open courtyard for playing, a room where cooking is done on an open charcoal fire (the smoke from this is extremely unhealthy. and it goes right into where the children sleep), several rooms for sleeping, and a row of classrooms that are separated out by grade. The children are lacking enough clothing and proper latrine facilities, but none of them had the little starvation pouches or were scary holocaust skinny—it is obvious that this pastor devotes what little resources he has to feeding these kids. Indeed, he told us at one point that he tries to make sure the children have at least one full meal per day—some days they have more, but times are hard. The children's home received its first donation three weeks ago, and while we were there, people from that organization pulled up. Apparently, they are coming in to build bunk beds for the children.

We had not warned this pastor that we were coming, so our appearance was a complete and total surprise to him, though a welcome blessing. We came bearing prayers, toys for children who had none and a little food for kids who have little food. One of the boys stood up and told his story about how he came to live in the children's home. Now, keep in mind that this boy was probably in his early to mid teens. He was walking along the street one day when a bunch of older boys grabbed him, shoved a high-powered gun in his hands, and told him to go shoot anyone who was white and/or UN officers. When he refused and ran away, he tried to hide in a local motel, but the motel owner hit him with a stick and knocked him down. He was then shot. Obviously he lived, but I saw an old man looking out of that young boy’s eyes. NO ONE, particularly not a child, should have to live through this kind of trauma. NO ONE should subject a child to this kind of trauma.

I mentioned that along with the toys, we also gave out a little food. Though the pastor works with what he has, he does not have much. The kids were fighting over the boxes of raisins and cracker snacks that we had. For every one item of food that we had, four hands were stretched out for it. One little boy kept asking for some for the younger child standing in front of him, but I could tell that he would just snarf it down himself. Food has never disappeared faster. Just like the kids at the first children's home who did not leave a scrap of food left after their meal, these kids made food disappear as though they would never seen an edible scrap again. For them, however, this is a very real possibility. When we piled back into the tap-tap when it was time to go, one team member was sitting next to me and handing crackers one by one to children who were shoving their hands through spaces between the slats in the tap-tap. I have never seen anyone so desperate for a cracker before! These kids were the epitome of hungry, despite that they do not look like they are completely starving. They shoved their hands out and were hollering for food and kept insisting that we had more even when they were shown the empty bag. My dad warned me that this sight would break me, and he was right.

People, I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. Here are little children that God loves desperately and they are on the brink of starvation. Many of them lost relatives in the earthquake. All of them are hungry. I think of all the times a Compassion International or Save the Children commercial has been on and shown faces of starving children from all over the world—there are some affluent people who honestly do not care. Every individual who thinks they are hard off but have three full meals a day (or at least access to such) and transportation that works and clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink should come to Haiti for a week. You can look at all the pictures in the world, watch every documentary ever made, but you do not truly “get it” until you have seen it first-hand. I desperately wanted to run back to the guesthouse and gather up every item of food within sight and bring it back to these kids, but that would not solve the problem. That children's home needs sustainable help, something that will last through years—not a one-time solution that will fill their tummies for just one night.

I had been on the verge of tears almost all day, but was trying not to cry in front of the children. Despite the difficulty they face, they have the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. Despite their hunger and pain at recently lost relatives and lack of privacy and clean conditions, those children have a joy in their faces that is hard to miss—a realistic joy, they make do with what they have and hold no delusions of “maybe I’ll win the lottery” or “oh it will all be better tomorrow”. From what I could tell, they take each day at a time and consider it a blessing. The boy who was shot that I mentioned earlier? He said life at the children's home was hard, but he could be living in much worse conditions and thanked God for where he is currently living. My heart shattered at the thought that there are countries out there where children face those worse conditions every day. So what are we doing about it? The kids did not need to see someone bawling at their condition, they needed someone to look at it realistically and figure out what to do. Yes, tears show compassion, but they need to indicate action as well. It is just so easy to be so completely overwhelmed at the vastness of the need that exists. It is important to keep in mind that you are not an individual attempting to tackle the world’s problems—God calls many people because this is a task that will only be accomplished with many hand.

In the car on the way back to the guesthouse, I was trying to listen to what was going on but could only think about those kids and their faces. If only you could have seen the happiness that something as simple as basic toys brought to them!! Pat looked at me and said “it’s okay to cry” and I lost it. These kids need caring individuals to help them, and I was and am devastated for them. It is also devastating to think that kids in similar situations can be found in the US!! For the biggest superpower in the world, the US isn’t even developed to the point where every child is guaranteed a warm bed and full meals every day. AAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! There is a reason God says to care for the widows and the orphans. They need care. We need to acknowledge that we are one tragedy away from being in similar situations. We need to truly be God’s hands and feet in this world.

Hebrews 13:3, James 1:27

AMONG THE THINGS I SAW TODAY:

· Children’s beds made from a piece of plywood balanced on top of stacks of bricks pulled out of rubble piles.

· Kids with hunger pouring off of them.

· A man carrying a chicken while riding a moto.

· A bazaar called “Victory of God Bazaar”

· A little Haitian boy wearing a “This is why I’m Canadian” shirt (they can’t read the English words).

· Haitian children in the children's home who have all the same problems with each other as American kids: two young girls who didn’t like each other and kept pinching each other, pushing and shoving, yelling at each other, etc

· Children running around naked simply because they have no clothes (thank God they live in a warm place).

· Two monstrous holes dug behind the second children's home that a company dug intending to install septic systems—it is VITAL that promises be followed up on. Right now those holes are just plunked in the ground and nothing is happening with them other than they are operating as trash pits and hazards that little children could fall into and get mortally injured.

· Pigs digging around in the same trash pile where humans were also digging.

· The biggest genuine smiles in the world.

And we're off!

We are off this morning to the mountain town of Cazale to spend time at the Real Hope for Haiti clinic where the Medika Mamba substance is administered to starving children. Medika Mamba, or "peanut butter medicine" when translated into English, is an extremely fortified peanut butter substance used to treat malnourished children. Peanuts that are grown in Haiti are ground, combined with vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, and then fed to starving kids. The kids love the stuff (it kind of tastes like the inside of a Reese's piece). $100 is all that is needed to provide enough Medika Mamba to bring one child back to health.

I am not certain what all we will be doing while there, but Pat and Randy promise that it will be a life-changing day. This morning dozing Americans were awakened by the smell of a wonderful breakfast being cooked downstairs (nothing like French toast to start a day) and it was bustlier in the guesthouse than it has been--five extra people will do that. : )

Well, time to go!

Kids, Port au Prince, and an unfortunate goat

I am officially in love with Haitian food…well, that which I’ve eaten so far. Surret is an amazing cook, but from what I hear she cooks much like my mother does—a pinch of this and a dash of that, pinches and dashes only measurable with lots of experience. An amazing cooking style but one hard to teach. J For dinner last night there was beet salad (which, and this will surprise some, I actually really liked—traditionally I hate, no—abhor, beets), fried chicken, fried goat meat, fried plaintains, fried okra dough stuff (can’t remember what it was called), rice and beans, and picallys (a spicy cabbage dish). I tried and loved everything but the chicken—I have chicken all of the time in the States and wanted to eat anything but that which I have all the time. Goat is awesome—I loved it! Surret then gave us a banana bread/cake that she had made—also very delicious. Group discussion followed, then Bible study and sleep. I was asleep pretty quickly. Lack of sleep from the night before and the comforting sound of the generator knocked me out (I grew up with a generator running, so I like that sound). The dog that sounded like it kept getting stuck in a trap near the house, however, was not as comforting—apparently it barks by yelping. Oh well.

I know many people in MN who would be surprised at how much animals are a part of the daily life of Haitians. It isn’t like our tendency to have a few pets and hide them in our abodes, being shocked at seeing a deer in town. In Haiti there are goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, and cows running all over the place--every single one of which has an owner. Goats return to their homes at night, and there are quite severe penalties for goat/cattle theft. There appears to be one kind of dog, a general mutt that runs around all over Port au Prince. Oh, and the pigeons and MN state bird—the mosquito. I hate mosquitoes. Oh, and bugs that look like leafs--those are pretty nifty -->

After breakfast, most of the vision team currently in Haiti went to the clinic where they were working yesterday. Fleura, the woman mentioned yesterday, was seen by the doctors—she appears to have made a miraculous recovery. Suspicion exists that her ailments are caused by dehydration. Next time you are a little thirsty, think about the Haitian people whose only water option is potentially filled with cholera bacteria. The choice is don’t drink and therefore die, or drink and risk getting an illness that may kill you anyways. What hard decisions have you made today?

A team of builders from “Engineers Without Borders”, a group from the University of Minnesota made up of civil engineers, arrived early this morning to build a bio-digester. From what I understand, they are going to spend the next week constructing a “concrete stomach” that human waste will go into (they are also constructing an outhouse) for the initial stages of decomposition. The waste, or "effluent" will then be moved into a cooker that will heat the material enough to make it release naturally occurring methane gas, gas which can then be harnessed to power the cookstoves in the Luly school. This is certainly a much better option for cooking food over charcoal. Don't get me wrong, charcoal cooks well, but the smoke from charcoal fires does horrendous things to peoples' lungs, and the coal is made from cut-down trees. Cutting down trees least to looser soil integrity, a definite problem in this country. Looser soil leads to aggravated soil erosion, less land that is available for farmers, and more devastating damage when those darned hurricanes and/or monsoon rains sweep through the area. But I digress....Once the methane from the effluent has been harnessed, the remaining material will be spread out of the cooker onto a concrete platform where it can dry. At that point, it is sterile due to having been heated, and can be used as fertilizer in a community garden. This is a sustainable project that has a very promising future!

Shortly after the engineers arrived, it was off to downtown Port au Prince to the World Wide Village warehouse. There was not enough room inside the cab of the pickup to hold all six of us (Peter, Pat, Ali, Dan, Bob, Nate, and I), so Dan, Bob, and I opted to ride in the bed of the pickup. Always one up for adventure, I loved the ride—though people were nervous the way I was bouncing around taking pictures. Yesterday I was really shy about taking pictures and was convinced the people would be offended by my action and it was culturally looked down upon…and I didn’t want to look like another dumb tourist. Pat assured me that if the people objected to their pictures being taken, they would indicate such and it is perfectly fine to take pictures of anything. Well, today I took over 250. J

It is a totally different experience riding in the back of a truck as opposed to being in the cab. The sounds of the city can really reach you. I mentioned this yesterday but will mention it again—traffic here is crazy! People walk across the street so close to cars you wouldn’t even have to reach out to shake hands. Cars are continually cutting people off. Traffic lights, what few exist, are a suggestion. Tap-taps, very brightly colored vehicles that serve as one form of public transportation, are everywhere. People are constantly shouting, and honking at other drivers (though I have been told that honking in Haiti has developed into a kind of language, where so many taps mean something, while a different number of taps means something else, while a blaring, obnoxious horn may mean the same thing as it means in the US). If a car breaks down in the middle of the road, people start working on it right then and there. We saw more than a few cars having their engines tweaked in the middle of the commotion or just plain being shoved out of the way. When stopped in traffic, it is common for street kids to come up, clean the car, and expect monetary compensation. Two such street kids came up and were wiping off our pickup—one team member handed them some granola bars.

Anyways, we made it to the warehouse, where Pat skillfully installed a phone and the engineers examined some kind of wall making materials that are being stored in the warehouse. Apparently it is just what they need in the size they need it, so that is good. They just need to get some tools from someone here they know and will be good to go! In fact, I can hear them discussing the plan of action with Randy right now. Then it was off to “the Haitian version of Home Depot”, which we were unable to see because it was closed. We picked up a rental car, kept an eye on one of our guests as he drove it (record: Bob drove a car through downtown Port au Prince on his first day here!) through the gnarled mess of traffic, and got back to our abode.

After we got back to the guesthouse, we had enough time to refill on water, go buy bread from the breadshop that is across from the Livesay’s house, and pack back into a car to head to Luly. Along the way Randy told us statistics. There were very few displaced Haitians before the earthquake—now 15% of the nation’s population is displaced and living in tent cities. We drove by hills where no tent city existed at this time last year—now the hillsides are peppered with thousands of tents. Wires are strung between tents and hold up very clean laundry (I am very impressed at how clean most of the clothing is here compared to how dusty and dirty everything seems to be).

Something like 300,000 people are living in thousands of tent cities scattered across the country side but mostly located around PaP. Slash and burn agriculture is still practiced (note: this does NOT help contain the soil erosion problem) and we saw several fields burning. Fire makes me nervous…especially when it causes a plume of smoke that goes across the road and is so thick that we cannot see through it to the other side. Haitians do not mind their side of the road at all times, so it was a little nerve wracking going through that plume, but Randy knows what he is doing and all was well.

Luly is a small mountain village on the edge of the ocean. Approximately 3,000 people live there, many of them young children. We parked the car and walked up to the school where Pastor Lyons officiates. Ali and I were very popular amongst the children and spent time with them while the engineers went with Randy to examine the land where the bio digester will go (don’t worry—they were only a few hundred yards away from us). Ali had some hair clips and other d0o-dads for the kids. One little boy broke my heart—he just seemed so sad. While the rest of the kids were energetic and excited, he was just standing there looking up at me with sad little eyes that would make a hardened criminal’s heart break. Of course I don’t speak Creole (though Peter was happy with the progress on a phrase I have made), and could not ask what was wrong. More frustrating for me, however, was that I could not even offer words of encouragement in his own language. AARGH!!

The kids got a huge kick out of seeing their pictures. I’m borrowing a camera from my friend Paula, and was taking pictures of the kids. They definitely understood what I was trying to do, and would cluster together, pulling each other in closer so that all of them might be photographed. After each photo was taken, I would lower the camera and put it in review mode so the kids could see themselves. They laughed with hilarity that displayed the hope in their eyes and the overwhelming strength of the Haitian people, and would poke each other and point when they saw their friend in a picture.

One little girl in a pink dress came over and leaned on my shoulder, eventually making her way to sitting in my lap. An adult who I think is one of the teachers at Luly school set another child right next to me, who also sat down in my lap. Kids are kids everywhere—they all like positive attention from an adult and the kids settled right in as if they had been sitting there their entire lives. When Randy came over and said it was time to go, I hesitated. These kids were adorable and seemed to be having a grand laugh at the American who was horribly mispronouncing their names. We had only been there for what seemed like just a few minutes…not nearly long enough.

I was, however, horrified by the signs of malnutrition evident all over some of these kids. Not only were all of them thin, some of them were frighteningly thin and had the little pouched bellies that indicate lack of proper nutrition. I just wanted to plant a garden right there, train the people in the neighborhood how to tend it, and watch these kids’ muscles fill in. Good news: there are plans to use the material produced from the biodigester as fertilizer for a community garden.

There was a starving man sitting on the side of the road today. I’ve only ever seen people that thin in pictures of Holocaust victims and anorexia patients—this man just simply did not have enough to eat and it was not by his choice. Talk about feeling guilty about every cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. Yet guilt is not the answer here. Action is, but action that empowers the Haitian people to work for themselves. I’ve heard of the “gimme gimme gimme” mentality that is so prevalent in this country—largely resulting from the huge amount of foreign aid that has flooded the country, money that was just doled out in a way that did little more than to foster an overwhelming sense of dependency. Everywhere you hear "dollar, dollar". Yesterday, several boys were hollering at us "hey you, give me my money." They were only kids and thought they were being absolutely hilarious, but it really showed how dependent many people are on aid, and how entitled they feel to that aid. Good intentions and aid must be handled carefully in order to not worsen the problem. The people must be taught how to fish, so that they might fish for themselves and see the worth in their own work and brains.

My prayer for this trip is that every foreigner in Haiti right now, especially those here to “help”, have eyes that see as God sees, ears that hear as God hears, and hearts that love as God loves. The Haitian people have a rough life, there is no getting around this fact. Yet it is just as much of a fact that the Haitian people are the strongest people I have ever met—constitutionally and physically. I have been examining the faces of people we pass by and only one or two have seemed completely hopeless. Keeping in mind the trauma the country has experienced in the past year and the many people we have seen, this is a miracle. Difficulty exists, but so does hope. Devastation exists (there are still piles of rubble everywhere), but the people have not allowed that to cease their lives or their hope for the future. Can we as Americans truthfully say we are that resilient? I think not.

Among the things I saw today:

--culverts full of water with children bathing in them

--a tap-tap so full of people and things balanced on top of it that I was worried it might just tip over

--puppies

--men and women carrying HUGE loads of stuff on their heads (I’ve seen two women so far carrying full five-gallon buckets of water balanced on their noggins)

--police driving by with automatic weapons sticking out of their cars and gate guards with rifles

--a live goat hanging upside down by its feet from the back of a truck; after all, there is no point in buying a dead animal in Haiti, the more alive it is upon purchase the more fresh it is upon consumption

--people not blinking twice when the power goes out…it goes out all of the time

--people sitting in their living spaces on the side of a river that floods during rainy season

--one of the fields where mass graves for earthquake victims are located (just like the site at Wounded Knee, that area is painful to be near)

--chickens with their brood of chicks (DON’T LAUGH, I’ve never seen a mother chicken with her chicks before—it is always momma hen in one place and baby chicks/eggs in another)

--children in Luly wearing the dresses that Carol Harwood and her ladies sewed for them

--HOPE EVERYWHERE