Reflections In the Tension of Two Realities

It's 8:30 in the evening, and it is still about 80 degrees out. My ceiling fan is on and the windows, as always, are opened. It's hard to believe that at the same time many people back in the States are huddled under blankets or sitting beside heaters as snow blows around outside.

But it's not only climate that separates these two realities. It's political structures, economic struggles, infrastructures, and a history of prosperity or poverty. While I'm in the States, showering in hot, drinkable water, I often think of the Haitians bathing at the public fountains or privately in their homes using a gallon jug of cold, untreated water. Or when I hop in the car and head down the highway to the grocery store, I think of the unpaved rocky paths in parts of Port Au Prince, packed with cars creeping up the road within inches of each other.

How is it that the realities of a five dollar a day cup of coffee and a nine dollar a day pay check can exist simultaneously? How can I walk down a trash covered ally past beggars and barefooted kids in tattered t-shirts one day and the very next day climb into a $30,000 dollar car and speed past multi-million dollar shopping centers or church campuses where any given person can be wearing an outfit easily worth over 100 dollars?

And yet I do. One day I am here in Haiti, handing out a bag of rice or an extra pair of shoes, and the next day I drop 60 bucks at Wal-Mart and tell the cashier no, I don't want to donate my change to the children's hospital. What do I do with that?

On other days I decide not to give the man in the 4-sizes-too-big corduroys money for medicine for fear I'm enabling an unhealthy dependency and instead send my money to an American church trusting they'll choose to use it better than I will.

One day I feel like the richest woman in town because I live with electricity, a refrigerator, and a flushable toilet, and the next day I’m laughing with my friends about being poor because I’ve never owned a car and can’t afford good health care. I don’t know how to respond to this reality or interact with these realities.

Obviously I can’t only care about the poor when I’m living among the poor and then deny their need with a simple perspective shift that places me in the position of poverty rather than power. But how can I maintain a sense of responsibility for the well being of my brothers and sisters who have been oppressed and in need since before my birth, while I have been born into an abundance that was established and bestowed upon me based on nothing other than my birth into privilege?

Almost a Year Later

In front of the Bicentennial Monument January 2011.

Last week I traveled to down town Port Au Prince for the first time since the earthquake. Even though I have been here since the quake, I had not yet had an opportunity to travel down by the palace or through some of the most heavily damaged areas.

So, almost a year after the earthquake changed our lives, I saw the damaged palace for the first time. By now the dust has settled, and the chaos that filled that square last year has settled along with it. The palace is surrounded by a chain link fence and cars are parked in what used to be the beautifully kept green lawn.

Across the street, where a larg park used to be, tents and makeshift homes hide the space and the sidewalk. In another direction, more tents, tarps, and tin homes crowd around the statue of Henri Christophe on his horse. Where students once lounged in the lawn to study, mothers wash clothes in metal basins and children wait in line for water provided my NGOs.

Photo of Bicentennial Monument yard before the Quake. This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Port-au-Prince

The beauty of that well kept place is gone, the need of the people pressed right up against the walls of the fragile government structures.

But what bothered me most wasn't just the raw reality of need, but the permanance of it. Almost a year later, people seem to be settling in to their new homes. Porta potties have been brought in to line the edges of the cities and water stations have sprung up amidst the tents.

A boy in the doorway of one of the tent sat polishing his shoes as we drove by. Meanwhile I listened to one of the missionaries tell me about reports of an increase in rape in the tent cities and answer back the news I had heard about AIDS being on the rise in these settlements, too.