Week Three

…………………………..........................……………………………………………………

“For I know well the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

..........................………………………………………………………………………………………………

Highlights:
• Mail!
• The sink isn’t dripping anymore!
• Visiting the Missionaries of Charity
• I was able to wash a neglected child from the neighborhood.
• The Haitian staff loves music and dancing! We’ve had many impromptu dance/guitar and drum nights.
• Doing projects with the maintenance staff
• I’m getting used to sweating all of the time.
• I started reading “The Devil Wears Prada.” It’s a welcomed break from the seriousness of our job here.
• Even though I’m always doing projects and don’t get much down time, every once in a while you get a project (like washing the girl from the neighborhood) that breaks up a long day and reminds you that there’s joy and hope in this country.

Low points:
• Getting hold of paint and bleach is still hard even though they are necessary. We’ve been given painting jobs that we can’t finish because nobody will go buy paint, and we can’t leave the school to go buy it ourselves.
• It was disheartening to see the staff slack off when Mr. Moynihan left for a week.
• Walking through Zone 7 with Christina, I got to see some of the injustice and corruption of the country. It’s very depressing.
• We weren’t able to feed the neighborhood kids the second time we tried.
• People from the neighborhood still wanted to take things for themselves from Christina’s free “yardsale” even though they wouldn’t let their kids come in to eat the lunch leftovers.

........................................................................................................................................................................

Wow, what a week it’s been! Mr. Moynihan, THPs president went back to the States last weekend, so Monday marked our first work day experiencing Haiti without him to light a fire under the staff. There had been issues with professors asking for unfair pay and insulting the working staff, so it was “suggested” that they resign. A number of the Haitian staff are also either resigning or being asked to leave for some reason or other. We’re not on the “need to know” end of the issue, so I can’t comment to much except to say that tensions have been high and getting some supplies such as bleach to purify our cleaning water and food for meals has been difficult.

Tuesday, half of the volunteers, including me were able to go to the Missionaries of Charity’s hospital/orphanage. The experience deserves more than a paragraph reflection, so I will expand later. Wednesday was a long day. The other half of the volunteers visited the Missionaries of Charity, and we had a debriefing meeting with very deep insights since two of our volunteers have a medical history. Wednesday I also had a wonderful experience with Christina and a few neighborhood children. Corey is in charge of community outreach and started a project using lunch leftovers to feed some of the neighborhood children. While coming in from the work day, I saw Christina feeding the children and joined them. Seeing the children interact with Christina showed me how much joy the children had just because they were given a good meal at a table in a shady part of the school. There was one little girl who came in dirty with scabs on her neck, arms, and head just because her family wasn’t bathing her. I went with Christina to her house as she asked what the issue was, then we brought the child back, and I was able to give her a bath. The little girl loved having the water poured on her and smiled all throughout her shower.

Thursday, feeding the children was a disaster. A few boys in the neighborhood began arguing with Christina, saying that it was disrespectful to give the children food that we didn’t want. I got the feeling that there was more to the issue than just a feeling of injustice on the boys’ parts. Thursday was also the day that we were going to run Christina’s “yard sale” where people from the neighborhood could come in to pick out five items (clothes, plates, shoes…) for themselves and their families. While arguing with the boys, she made the point that everything from the yard sale was leftover things that people didn’t want. The boys didn’t know how to respond since they wanted the items for themselves, but they had just said in essence that it wasn’t right to give the children leftovers. Overall, it’s been an eye opening experience seeing all of the injustice that goes on between classes, genders, and ages.

Earlier, Mr. Moynihan had told us that Haiti can drive some people crazy. There is so much that goes on that just doesn’t make sense. Since we know better, we automatically ask “why?” There really is no answer that makes sense. Why don’t the men want their children to eat? You told me to paint the classroom, but why didn’t you buy paint? Why does it take a week to fix a leaking sink? Why do you stress out about how many jobs there are to do, why do you sit around playing cards during the work hour? It doesn’t make sense, and this week, the volunteers were starting to go crazy with the “whys.”

By Thursday, I was so completely fed up with Haiti. The feeling of being stuck here began to set in. Then, Samantha reminded us of the rest of what Mr. Moynihan said: Haiti is a country that is so corrupt that it will drive you crazy. You have to consciously maintain your sanity and focus on the joyful moments that you experience. I know that I sound melodramatic. I thought Patrick was overstating how frustrating Haiti can be, but it is true—the chaos and mistrust in Haiti can drive you crazy. I’ve always taken the order that we have in the States for granted. But equally as true is the fact that you have to focus on the joy that you experience.

As a group, the volunteers each talked about a joy filled moment from the week. People shared silly moments with the staff, moments from the Missionaries of charity, or “ah-ha!” moments while planning lessons. Accentuating the positives really helped eliminate the negatives. Joys in Haiti are so much more intense than others I’ve experienced. Feeding starving children, washing neglected children, comforting crying babies, watching a smile crawl across a shy orphan’s face—life becomes a mission. The injustice might drive you crazy, but the sweet moments are so incredibly delicious that “a future full of hope” is no secret. The most depressing situations have the most room for hope. This week I learned that joy and hope are beautiful gifts as well as decisions.

Friday was a great day. We started getting the hang of managing the 50 or so teenagers who come in to work, Creol class became “Creol sports”—a Creol immersion while playing sports, mail came in and went out (thanks for the letters! I love them!) the fixed sink was fixed for the second time (and it stopped leaking! No more early morning lakes in the common room!) Kety, one of the maintenance staff that I work with, stayed two hours after he was off to put up the last of the shelves in the living/dining room (it reminded me of doing projects with my dad—especially the sink , ) halfway through dinner, Mr. Moynihan strolled in, and after dinner he met with the volunteers at his house to discuss any left over frustrations or concerns from the past week. Oh! It was great—not only did we get everything aired out, but Christina also broke out the soda, cookies, and Robbie cut up a coconut! I never thought I would miss cookies so much! They were heavenly!

Overall, the week was a good one, full of tough realizations of injustice, and intense moments of joy.

Missionaries of Charity
The Missionaries of Charity are the Catholic order of nuns that was founded by Mother Teresa. Their mission is to help the poorest of the poor, love everybody one at a time, and treat each person like the embodiment of Christ on earth. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the volunteers split up into two groups and visited the Missionary’s hospital and orphanage in Port au Prince. Tuesday’s group was Meg, Sam, Jon, Stacey, Timmy, Michaela, and me. Wednesday’s group was Elissa, Betsey, Mary, Corey, and Peter. We left LCS around 8:30 and got back around noon. When we got back, even though we had a full day left, we didn’t get much done because the experience was so emotionally draining. I didn’t even realize how much the experience affected me until I realized that it was dinner time, and I had spent five hours straight journaling about the day. I’m sorry that this is a long blog, but I’m going to try to pick out and share with you the coherent thoughts from my journal:

Today, we went to the Missionaries of Charity to work with the orphans. Only Timmy, Stacey, and Michaela had been before, so most of us didn’t know what to expect or what we would be doing. We started in a room with crying infants. The room was full of cribs, probably about 24 babies in a room. There were three rooms with infants and one room of older children. Our job was just to pick up a baby and hold them. Most of the babies just wanted to be held and stopped crying as soon as you picked them up. One little boy was wailing so I picked him up. He immediately stopped crying, but I had to put him back down to change his diaper. As soon as I pulled him away, he began wailing again until I changed him and held him again. I held him and walked around, using my free hand to try to comfort other crying babies in their cribs.

One baby was completely emaciated and was just lying there staring ahead. Her legs were so thin that her thighs were wrinkly and her fingers were the size of the small part of a pen cap. I realized that while the room was full of people, nobody was singing, humming, playing with the children, or even smiling. None of the babies seemed to be getting stimulation. I made a point to smile and coo to the tiny emaciated girl in the crib. I wanted to see if she would respond to me, so I put her fingers around my index finger. Most babies would hold on, but she didn’t seem to know or be able to grasp my finger. I took her hand and started stretching each of her fingers out, rubbing each one in turn. I wanted to show her what she could do with her hands. I stayed with her for about ten minutes, just playing with her fingers. Then I took the little boy I was holding outside for fresh air.

When I came back, the little girl was lying in her crib, watching her finger tips as she intently played with them in the same way that I had been. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. This child was bone thin and broke my heart; she seemed so smart. Since she responded to well to being touched, I gently reached in to rub her legs and arms. She had been so intensely concentrating on her fingers that my touch startled her, but she relaxed and kept playing with her fingers. The baby that I was holding seemed healthy—he was fairly filled out, one of the chubbiest babies in the room. In my mind, I told myself that the hospital had been so good for him that he had recovered from the same malnutrition that the little girl had. Therefore, maybe the little girl had hope for health. I have no idea whether or not the little boy had come in because he was malnourished or if the hospital had restored him to health, but I needed to believe that the little girl could one day be healthy.

Stacey told us that the room we were in was for the critical children, and that the tiny girl was probably new. She did, after all have hope. If nothing else, her situation had recently been dramatically improved. I hoped that she might progress to be able to sit up or even get more meat on her, but I also realized that she might die first. I immediately wanted to hold her.
Realizing how upset the boy was going to be when I had to put him down, I sat down with him to try to slowly separate with him. Even if I just pulled him off my chest, He would start crying. He needed to be close, to be laying his head on my chest, but why? Why was human contact so important to him? He was too young to have a reason. He just needed contact. I thought about the first night after we bought our dog. She was a puppy and Mom told us to wrap a clock with a dish towel and put it in her bed because the ticking would remind Schatzy of her mother’s heartbeat. Maybe that was it. Maybe he just needed to hear or feel a heartbeat. I tried to distract him with singing, clapping, and rubbing his hands, but he just wanted to cuddle, so I let him. I tried to show him as much love as I could, rubbing his head, ears, arms, legs, and back. I hummed and bounced, walked him around, and made sure to always keep him close to me.
Knowing that I would have to separate from him, I brought him back to his crib, and tried to simply comfort him by putting my hand on his stomach. He would have none of it. I stood him up, happy to see he could support himself, and hugged him while he was standing in his crib. At first, he would cry until I tucked his arms under mine and hold them tight to my sides, but after a while, he was okay being a little more separate. His head was off my chest and one hand was at his side. Another volunteer from our group came up, so I let them hold him.

I went directly to the tiny little girl, changed her diaper, and picked her up, a little afraid that she could be too frail. She reacted well, holding her head up and looking around. She was very curious. I walked her around looking for stimulation. We found a few toys, but she didn’t know what to do with them. If you stretched out her arm to show her that she could reach for the toy, she would just hold her arm out straight. She didn’t seem to understand that she could control and move her body in order to experience the world. Eventually, I found a bear that she would watch as I brushed it over her fingers. I took this as a sign that she liked it. For about half an hour, I walked her around, talking and humming to her. At first I felt a little self-conscious because everybody else was just holding the children, staring at the walls. Some of the Haitians just had the babies draped over their lap. I soon realized that I didn’t care if the other people thought I was odd.

After I put her back into her crib, I went back to the older kids and played with them. The kids loved being tickled and getting attention. One little girl, Jillian said in Creol, “I’m not fun to play with,” but I replied, “Mwen remen jwe avek Jillian”—I love to play with Jillian. She was adorably shy. There was another little girl playing a chase game with me, so I would intermittently go to chase after her. Since all of the children wanted attention, the chase game evolved into me walking after her with one child holding onto my front, one hanging off my back, and one in each hand chasing after her. I was their jungle gym, and I loved it. For lunch, the kids each got a hard boiled egg. Some shared with the kids who ate quickly and wanted more. Nobody grabbed. They all asked and shared well. After lunch, one little girl who hadn’t talked much said, “Ou pa ale”—Don’t go. I didn’t want to, but Meg found me and told me that she didn’t know where everybody was.

All of the Haitian people and our group had gone. After we looked around, we decided to just go back until people found us. The nuns and nurses were feeding the infants. We didn’t want to be in the way or break any rules, so we just comforted the crying babies in their cribs without holding them. One little girl would not stop crying and squirming in her crib. Her body was so hot, so I picked her up and blew on her to try to cool her off, and she quieted down some.
Michaela found us and brought us to the upstairs orphanage where our group was, but they were eating lunch, and we felt in the way so Meg and I went back downstairs. We asked to help feed the babies, and were given plates of liquefied beans or rice and beans to feed the babies. Some of the kids were feeding themselves, but others needed help. The children were the size of infants, but each had a bracelet on their ankle with their name and age. Most were about two years old.

I don’t think we were supposed to stay after all of the Haitian people left (we found out later that they were mostly family of the babies.) It was obvious that we were there to help; we were the only young white people there. I didn’t want to be in the way, but the nuns didn’t ask us to leave. They would even smile at us, so I took it to mean that we were welcome. Even when we were only comforting the children, the nuns let us stay. After all, who knows what those babies needed the most? If we were asked to leave, the babies would still be attention starved. There were too many babies for just the nuns and nurses to coo over. Maybe some of the babies wouldn’t make it through the night, but at least they had been fed and loved on. What else could we do?

Getting back to the school was odd. It was hot and the volunteers were in shock. Eating lunch was hard; it just felt wrong or out of place. We realized that at the hospital, you were completely outside of yourself. It was too dire of a situation to be fully conscious of the babies’ situations. Just like your eyes blur out what you see peripherally, our minds blurred out the peripheral awfulness of the babies’ situations. At the mission, you filled whatever need had to be filled. At the school, eating didn’t feel like a need. In the end, it is hard to say what we did that morning. As U.S. Americans, we wanted to be able to describe what we did. The question being passed around was, “what did we accomplish?” The babies still cried when we put them down. Some will die. We really didn’t do anything. Nothing changed because we were there. A few of the volunteers decided that this point made it too hard to go back again. How can you just fill peoples’ needs without trying to be proactive? How come nothing is being done to prevent this?
I think we focus too much on accomplishments sometimes. It wasn’t our job to accomplish anything or really even do anything. We just held babies and for a few minutes, they didn’t cry; they may even have felt loved. Who knows? Who cares?

Last year, I started reading a book of Mother Teresa’s writings, but stopped because they all seemed to be about the same thing—love. To me it was cliché. Love—in the States, it seems so corrupted to me. From the Flavor of Love to free love, it’s overdone and twisted like violent video games. After the Missionary, I realized that I’m cynical about love. “Love, love me do. You know I love you. So please love me too”—sure, but what do you want in return? It’s all about give and take, but in the hospital, there was real love, the love that Mother Teresa wrote about—love without any accomplishment.

Loving, letting a crying baby nestle up to you, seemed true. Why did they need to be touched? The love came regardless of the “whys,” but they made it all the more poignant. It reminded me of what people say about prayer, that one of the hardest things to do while you pray is to acknowledge the distractions, but to let them slip away. At the Mission, the questions were the distractions. In the moment, to experience the moment, I let them slip away.

So, here I am, writing for hours because for some reason I can’t stop. I need to communicate what I realized today—something that can’t be put into words.