"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.

Lap-Tap

If anyone knows a good way to set down a starving child who just wants hugs, let me know. Like the earlier post says, we went into the mountain village of Cazale today. A bunch of us rode in a tap-tap that belongs to Peter, though it was not nearly as crowded as many that you see going about Port au Prince all the time. Definitely more than one more person would have fit (hint hint...you should come down here!). Patrick is an amazing driver--I certainly could not have gotten the tap-tap up the side of that mountain! When it rained awhile back, they (Randy, Pat, and Peter) very nearly did not make it all the way up because dusty mountain roads and rain do not get along well--kind of gets slicker than a greased pig. Randy said they do not send teams up there when it has been raining for that very reason. Pat noted the possibility existed that we would have to get out of the tap-tap if it started having difficulty. Well, that didn't happen and approximately an hour and a half and lots of dust and bumps later (Charis and I both clocked our heads on rails in the roof and got good brain dusters), we arrived at the Real Hope for Haiti rescue center. Lori and Letia--the people who run the center--are both American women who might as well be Haitian--they have lived here for a number of years, have Haitian husbands and children, and have a heart here. Anyways, Lori gave us a tour of the place and talked about many things:

· The cracks in the walls of the clinic are from the earthquake and have not been totally plastered over yet—the structure itself is safe and sound.

· An organization that provides water systems to rural communities donated a large water purification system to the clinic, and it can produce 10,000 gallons of purified water per day (while a blessing to the clinic, it is massive and non-portable).

· People line up to get into the clinic and then they wait in an area where people talk about the Gospel with them while they wait. Sometimes people will sleep outside the gate so they do not lose their place in line.

· They have seen 160,000+ unique individuals—people come for miles around to visit this clinic as the people who run it are becoming more and more trusted in the community.

· The number of people in the clinic fluctuates on a daily basis and with local crises, just like clinics in the U.S., but here they fluctuate with differing numbers of cholera and malnutrition patients. STD and prenatal care are also in high demand. Lori would like to train Haitian women as midwives and send them into some of these remote villages, but the logistics on that are just not quite working.

· They see people who have cholera, malaria, malnutrition, tetanus, dehydration, colds, flus, broken bones (one woman who came in had a metal and plastic contraption sticking out of her arm that was holding broken bones stable so they could heal), etc.

We walked all over the clinic and looked at basically everything. There is a women’s health room where they have private discussions with women regarding sexual and reproductive issues. They have a pharmacy area and receive about 60% of their medications from a group of Mennonites in the States. This is in addition to a massive water treatment system, exam rooms, recovery areas, etc. As we were walking around, a group of Haitian men were applying spackling to a wall. We saw a little girl who has cholera, another little girl who is “simply” malnourished, and another young girl whose entire body is wrapped in bandages because her clothes caught fire while she was trying to light an oil lamp--thirty to forty percent of her body is covered in third degree burns.

After visiting the rescue center, the team split up and went different places. Ben and Candice were called over to do medical work with people in the cholera house that was just up the hill. Ali and I sat with the children for just a little while longer—they were awfully hard to leave (described in a minute). Mariley, Corben, Carter, Charis, and Sharon worked on putting together hygiene packets to hand out to people (a key to preventing the spread of cholera is proper hygiene practices—even if it is just washing hands). Then Ali, Dessy, Cindy, and I went into the back pharmacy area with Pat and Sharon, who were packaging pills. Dessy and I put together packets of chlorine (so concentrated that it was granulated) in varying weights depending on what the packets were designated for decontaminating (varying chlorine concentrations are used for various things—you would not drink water treated with a chlorine solution that is strong enough to decontaminate the medical equipment). I was working with a bucket that was basically slop because it had gotten wet via a crack in the bottom of the bucket—it wasn’t supposed to get wet. Chlorine is chlorine though, so it will still work. Dessy and I probably had the cleanest hands of the place given that we were working directly with the chlorine! J My poor paws were feeling a little raw after while from handling the raw chlorine, but I can’t complain—every patient there is suffering from much, much worse.

The rescue center is a place where people bring children who are malnourished, ill, or simply not wanted (a young girl was simply left at the gate recently, and this was not the first time this has happened). Medika Mamba (Haitian for “medical peanut butter”) is a highly fortified peanut butter substance that was formulated by a group here in the States. The peanuts are grown in Haiti, thereby supporting local farmers. The peanuts are ground up and mixed with vitamins and other physical fortifications and then fed to the children. The kids love it and it is extremely good for them (win win all around). Children have literally been brought back from the brink of death with this mamba.

Upon entering the rescue center, immediately to the left you can see a long table with lots of little kid chairs in it—this is where they seat kids during meal time. We had not even made it all of the way into the rescue center before we were mobbed by lots of little children who wanted to be picked up. They love being held! Cindy had one little boy who would not let go of her legs--I picked him up as she was already holding another child. Turns out he is five years old and just started walking recently. On those scrawny little legs he has, I’m surprised he was walking at all. People, you do not understand hunger until you have seen these children. Ten-year-olds who look like they are three simply because they have not had enough food to eat during their short lives. A six-year-old who I thought was only two for the same reason. They are so unbelievably little for their age! We walked into the area where the children were and were immediately completely overwhelmed with little ones looking for some attention. I think lifted arms must be the universal “pick me up” sign. I already had one little boy in my arms, but wanted to be right with the kids and so I sat down on the floor. Within a few minutes, there were four children in my lap and one behind me playing peek-a-boo behind my shoulders. I kind of felt like a lap tap-tap—how many kids could fit in my lap? One more.

I just sat with the kids for awhile. Anyone who knows me at all knows that kids and their welfare are my heart and the call on my life. To protect my heart, I didn’t even go into the back room with other people where the sickest of the sickest children were. Maybe that made me a bit of a coward, but my heart would not have survived…not just yet. And besides, the kids in the room where I was needed love too. At one point the staff had the children singing in Creole and I recognized the song. “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. I only recognized one word, “blanc” or “white”. To hear these children, to whom life has dealt an unbelievably unfair hand, singing about the love of Jesus Christ—then and there they officially stole my heart away. I may go back to the United States to live out my life, but a piece of my heart will always remain with those singing children.

One of the children sitting in my lap just looked sad and would start crying instantly if something did not go his way. Another was all smiles and giggled a lot. Another just stared at me. Eventually it dawned that he was not staring at me, he was staring at my glasses—he kept trying to take them off. I guess that makes sense, the only other person I saw wearing glasses was another American. Several kids came up behind me and kept playing with my hair, which I had left down. Little fingers rearranged the tiny clips holding my top pony in place, and at one point I was using my hair as a shield to play peek-a-boo with one of the kiddos (okay, so super long hair has its advantages).

It was obvious that some of these kids were just not feeling well. Rather than being smiley, trundly little kids, they just laid where they were and stared around with sad little faces. They have seen too much, been through too much for how young they are. I saw several old little people, if that makes sense. At the same time, however, these kids are the future of Haiti. Though they have seen a lot, you can just tell in several of them that they are going to grab life by the tail and make it work. “Degaje” – “make it work”.

When it came time for me to go into the backroom and help out, I had to wiggle my way out of this pile of kids. They did not want to let me go, they did not want to let any of us go—when we tried to set a child down, we were met with resistance in the form of an arched back that would not let you set them down without fear of breaking their neck or arms, hands, and legs clinging to our clothing. All they want and need for now is love and food. Thank the Lord that they receive both in that place.

Someone just asked me, as I sit typing this post in the guesthouse back in Port au Prince, if I was okay because apparently I seem “off”. The kids hurt. Seeing legs barely bigger around than my thumb hurt. Seeing utter despair in the eyes of several children too young to remember these years hurt. At the same time, I saw hope in their eyes and in the eyes of those caring for the children. I saw a strength that many woosified Americans can only dream of. There may be hunger, but there is also a future for this great nation. As long as the people are empowered to do for themselves, there is a bright future ahead of this people.

Side note before I forget: Lori also showed us a birthing kit they put together for women to take home with them. In the States, we picture this grand elaborate thing that would fill a backpack at least. In Haiti, this birthing kit fills a sandwich bag and contains string to tie off the umbilical cord, a clean razor to cut the cord (many women and babies were contracting and dying of tetanus from using dirty can lids and shards of glass to cut their umbilical cords), some gauze, cotton balls, and some antiseptic. We were also told that Haitian women are not told to go to the hospital--many births are perfectly safe happening at home, so long as the women do not try to yank the placenta out of themselves before they birth it naturally...that causes life endangering hemorraging.

AMONG THE THINGS I SAW TODAY:

· School children walking home in their uniforms.

· Four people riding a moto.

· A woman walking with a full-sized cooler balanced on her head.

· A young boy who was flying a kite made of a plastic bags and some sticks.

· A boy named Denny who has a condition where his head is huge, but he does not let that prevent him from being a little boy.

· Trash fires on the side of the road.

· People living in garbage piles alongside a river, picking through the trash to find something, anything, that they might be able to sell on the street.

· Kids laughing with hands interlocked as they walked back home.