What I'm doing in Haiti

This April, I finished my first year of living in Haiti. During that time, I was able to teach 2 English classes to adult professionals. I was also able to introduce my highest level students to research writing, which was really fun. Classes, however, along with everything else were interrupted by the earthquake on January 12th. After that point, I temporarily shifted my focus from teaching English to working with other missionaries to coordinate relief and host short-term teams.

Though this shift was necessary, it was difficult. And becuase of this break, my students andI are anxiously awaiting English classes which will resume in September. This year, I hope to find a new curriculum, raise the standards of the program, and start taking steps to prepare students for the TOEFL tests.

In the long-term, we would love to see our English students go on to become translators, to take Master's courses online, or to pursue degrees at the university we hope to start on La Gonave. Though I am not sure if I will be in Haiti to see the university become a reality, all the other missionaries working in education and I are committed to teaching our students with the university goal in mind.

Through English classes, computer courses, and the use of the WISH library (which is currently under construction), we are equiping our students to pursue further education in Haiti or around the world.

Big Bags

On April 6th, 2010, I flew back into the United States. Inside my suitcase, I carried a couple of full journals, some faded skirts, and Haitian coffee, a load much lighter than the one I'd carried in 11 months before.

As always, I was happy when the luggage guys took my bag from me and tossed it into a pile. It was nice knowing I wouldn't have to think of it again until we reached Ft. Lauderdale. It and all my stuff would ride safely along until I got to the next airport, where I would again let the airport attendants stow it away.

I guess I just take it for granted that all my stuff will be safe, never even glancing inside my bag until I reach my final destination. It's easier that way because then when I get to it, I'm so excited about seeing my family that I don't care that there are coffee grounds in my tennis shoes or that the lotion broke open on my new skirt. And besides that there's no baggage tosser around for me to scold unnecissarily.

But this particular time, my luggage didn't make it through. After waiting for 45 minutes or so, we finally filed a report with the airline asking them to ship the luggage to my sister's house in the next day or so. Now call me sick, but something in me was strangley satisfied to walk out of the airport with only a backpack.

Maybe I get a strange pleasure out of simplicity, or maybe it's because I had packed a change of clothes in my carry-on and knew we could pick up toothbrushes at Walgreens...either way, I wasn't worried. And I had no problem letting my luggage be someone else's concern. I hate carrying big suitcases and all that stuff anyway. If I let my inner simpleton win out over the worrier, I think travel everywhere with just a back pack or with no luggage at all.

It's possible that I'm just a little crazy and hate carrying luggage. But is it also possible that this reflects some spiritual truth?

Becoming a socially awkward American

This evening I was talking with a pastor when I noticed a mosquito on his face. I immediately reached up and gave his face a small smack to ward off the malaria-carrying insect, to which he quickly responded, "Merci."

Earlier this week, I broke the same American social norm when I stuck my finger out to wipe flour off the face of one of our cooks. Thinking about this tonight, I wondered if after spending time in Haiti, I'm becoming a socially awkward American.

Here are some things that are now normal to me:
1) touching someone's face (see above examples)
2) carrying everything in a bag when I go out (a pair of shoes, a can of soup, anything)
3) close-talking
4) asking "how is your family" every time I talk to someone
5) touching while talking (generally putting an arm around the other person's back)
6) shaking hands at the end of every conversation
7) paying by handing crumpled up money to someone else with a closed fist
8) close-sitting
9) talking loudly to others across the room
10)arriving fifteen minutes "late" to everything
11)close-standing and generally just being too close

So if ever I reach up and hit a mosquito off or your face or insist on shaking your hand every time I leave your living room, please forgive me. I am now a socially awkward American.

God Can Do Everything

They were both squatting down on the cement slab, large metal wash basins at their knews, as they scrubbed clothes and towels and asked me their usual twenty questions of the day. "Ki le ou prale peyi ou?" (when will you go to your country?), Mme. Ovner asked in a sing songy tone.


When they heard my answer "Avril," both the wash ladies gasped a surprised, high pitched oh. We've had this conversation at least five times, and the response is always the same. How long will you stay there, will you come back, when will you come back, nap priye (we're praying).

This morning, however, it went a little different. When they asked if I'd come back, I decided to explain my financial situation and how I can't come back without the help of the churches. I then asked them to pray God helps me come back. Maybe I did this to try to break the stereotype here that all Americans have unlimitted resources. Maybe I was just worrying about fundraising again. Or maybe it was a little bit of both.

Either way, their response blessed me. They both emphatically committed to praying for God to help me. Then they said to me, God can do everything. Mme. Ovner even started singing, "Bondye ka fe tout bagay, tout bagay, tout bagay." (God can do everything, everything everything.)

And as she did, I looked down at her. This stick-thin mother of three, who was wearing the same faded orange t-shirt and navy blue skirt I saw her wearing yesterday outside her two-room house in the poorest part of town, was looking up at me with a reassuring smile. I watched her hands scrubbing back and forth over the clothes, knowing how much her forearms must ache when she finishes work each day, and wishing I had her faith.

Images of Destruction

Yesterday I made my third failed attempt to get to the epicenter in Port Au Prince. By failed, I mean my insistent requests for transportation to the center of town were denied in favor of more important things, like medical shipments and airport runs. Though I had traveled over 3 hours to get to Port Au Prince for this very purpose, I again had to accept that it just couldn't happen. I couldn't see the heart of the damage.

And it made me cry. Not because I didn't get my way, but because something inside me needs to see the crumpled palace, impassable roads, and piles of rocks where buildings once were. Something in me needs to see these images of destruction.
I'm not sure why. I've been seeing images of destruction ever since the quake. But the images I'm seeing are not the same as those that filled the screens of televisions in homes across the world.

No what I'm seeing are the blank faces--eyes on the floor, lips straight--of friends who talk again about the family they've lost: hurt. I'm seeing the little dance our laundry lady does when she asks me if I felt the latest tremor, and she alternates stomping her feet and shaking her fists back and forth: fear. And I'm seeing it in the wet cheeks and trembling chins of the men who pass in front of the church on Sundays: brokeness.

Though there aren't fallen buildings and tarp cities on La Gonave, these other images of the earthquake are forever etched in my mind. I will never forget walking into Merline's house and seeing her whole family lying on blankets under a tarp, hardly talking. And I'll always remember the faces of my English students as our room started to shake and they scurried under tables, one of them on his knees hugging a door frame.

But still something inside me is begging for more proof. Did this disaster really happen? Is it as bad as they say it is? In spite of all I know and have seen, part of my heart still will not accept it. I want to deny what I know is a reality, which may be why I'm longing to see such overt images of destruction.

Nomads, a Frenchman, and Earthquake Relief

This afternoon, I found myself sitting across the table from a French man and listening as he told stories of a tiny village in Niger where he helped finance a tree planting project. He talked about the school children who each cared for their assigned tree and explained a demi lunair water irrigation system.

As we talked we ate Haitian food with a Canadian pastor, I thought back to scenes from the movie Second Hand Lions. A couple of crazy seeming old men sit on their front porch, guns in hand, and tell stories about their adventures in remote places. Then I looked back at the Frenchman. He's tall with gray hair and a carefully groomed mustache. He was wearing a yellowish brown button up and speaking accented English, and talking to us about Africa.

This man, a nurse, had shown up on the mission station unnannounced. Somewhere between his adventures in Africa and his time with his wife he had managed to make friends with a Haitian and arrange a 3 week trip to Haiti to work at the hospital.

People like this really exist? This is real? There are really French men who know and work with desert nomads in Africa. Nomads who paint their faces, dance, and build irrigation systems. I had to laugh a little bit as I answered my own rhetorical question.

This is my life. It is real. I really did wake up this morning and watch part of an 80,000lb. food shipment move into our guesthouse and I did hear that our 3000lb shipment of hospital supplies was delayed in England because of a bomb threat. And I did share lunch with a Frenchman telling stories about nomads in Africa.

Complexities of Cross-Cultural Giving

At around 8:00 this morning I walked out of my front door expecting to hear the normal morning bustle of wheel barrows, laundry buckets, and young men with machetes talking as they start work. Instead what I heard was an indistinguishable rumble of several voices, a choir of requests occasionally reaching a crescendo when one voice rose above the others. I looked for the voices, expecting to hear news of some recent event in the street. What I saw instead was a crowd of 40 to 50 people, hands stretched out over our compound’s small metal gate. Also lining the gate were 8 to 10 of our workers, walking back and forth, talking to the crowd, and making waving motions.

“Sak te rive (what happened)?” I finally asked, a little nervousness showing in my voice.

Quickly and casually my friend replied, “Yo vle kek ti radio (They want radios).”

This is not good, this is not good, was all I could say in response.

The people had come because they had heard that people from the compound had been given little radios. These radios, which came with a crank flashlight, were given to us yesterday by a team. We had given them out to our workers and the hospital workers, then sent some of the workers home with boxes to discretely share with their friends. But somewhere our plan had gone awry, and word had gotten that there were radios at the Wesleyan compound. Hence the mini mob.

Fast forward two hours. I was at the airstrip in town, which is really a large, clear dust path usually covered in goats. Three North Americans had just arrived with plans to respond to a distress call they’d heard in the States, and we had gone out to give them a ride. They loaded their bags into the bed of the truck while a crowd of 15 or 20 kids mostly under 25 stood nearby watching in the shade of a tiny block building. Once all the stuff was loaded, a single box of water bottles, left intentionally, sat on the ground in front of the group.

There was a moment of stillness.

Then before I knew what happened, pieces of cardboard had been flung in every direction and the crowd of kids were now entangled. Pushing, pulling, and wrestling, they grappled for the bottles. When all the bottles had been snatched up, the group separated, leaving behind 4 flat chunks of what had been a box.

In the midst of it, I had backed uncomfortably into the truck and pulled the door shut behind me. As we pulled away from the airport I shivered. This is not the Haiti I know, but this is the second time I’ve seen this new face in one day. I’m not telling you this so you’ll fear for our safety or be afraid to give. If anything these stories reinforce the fact that people here are in need.

Giving in a desperate place, however, is more complex that I ever realized. It takes networking and discretion, wisdom and shrewdness, which we hope will characterize our daily distribution efforts. We get it right much of the time. But sometimes, on an atypical day like today, we’re reminded again of the weight we carry by having resources in this culture.