Living Outside of the Gate

It's easy, in Terrier Rouge, to become jaded by life inside the gate.  Inside, we have running water (sometimes) , we have clean bottled water and fresh fruit at every meal.  We have beds and sheets, pillows and toothpaste, lights and fans and even an occasional cold Coca Cola.  It's easy to get comfortable and know that you have a soft bed and flushing toilet to return to after walking through the dusty streets of north east Haiti.  

But make no mistake, that's not how the Haitians live.  They walk a mile or so to a well that holds all sorts of mysteries from cholera to typhoid, and they carry the water home in 5 gallon buckets balanced tenuously on their head. They have beans and rice at every meal that is accented by whatever meat might be available - goat, dog, chicken, seafood or even the large white worms we dug up in the garden. When food is scarce, a mud cake, shaped to the size of a small patty can trick a young child's body into thinking it's full.  If they are lucky, the have a mattress between them and the dirt floor of their mud packed homes, a twin sized mattress for four or five people in the dank and dreary home with windows covered with the Americans leftover sheets, if there are windows at all. No lights hang from their tin or thatched roofs.  They relieve themselves on the side of the road or in the makeshift lean-to with a hole  in the ground.  Their kitchens consist of tall sticks leaning together and roughly covered with a sheet of discarded metal, a pit of charcoal and one pan in which to cook.  

But some things are no different here than they are at my seemingly enormous home in Warrenton.  As the sun comes up, Luna's family falls out of their mud  packed house and scurries around to get ready for the day.  The children are fussed at as their school uniforms are dirty or they can't find their one pair of shoes.  Breakfast consists of gathering the eggs and quickly eating them before rushing off to school.  The children push and shove as to who gets the bathroom first and Luna yells again to "stop fighting and get ready" all in a universal language mothers understand- regardless of the words that are said. 

Parents gather around the school gate spit shine their children's shoes, some stripping their children naked to put their uniforms on right there in order to keep it clean on the long trek to school.  And in the children run, into this life that is so different inside the gate .  

My first trip to Haiti, in 2008, I had no clue what to expect.  I saw adorable pictures of children in clean uniforms with red bows in their hair and red lacy socks on their feet.  They looked beautiful and healthy and just like any other child you might find anywhere around the world. The world of l'ecole St. Barthelemy is one all the parents of northeast Haiti wish for their children. It is the best of the best. Outside the gate the world is a different place.

Ever since that first trip I struggle with what God is calling me to be.  I thought that in two weeks I would find that answer.

Two  weeks and now I'm headed home. 

Two evenings spent packing food in a silence that hung heavily in the air.  At times no one spoke because no words could convey our solidarity. We passed fish and oil between the team and the Haitians, each caught in our own thoughts and prayers. We each prayed in our own way. Bethann hummed a gently tune.  Mike counted each bag and prayed it would be enough.  As the rice slid through my fingers, I thought of Jesus on the lakeside as he multiplied the loaves and fishes and prayed He could do that once more.

Two food distributions, each wrenching my heart from my body and forcing me to look into eyes deeper than the deepest sea. 

Two visits to an orphanage of beautiful children that clung to my arms and hung from my back.  Children without a mom or a dad but thanks to the Harveys they have hope and life and love.  

Two trips to Cap Haitien, where you can literally smell the suffering and the mass of humanity that fights for a piece of fresh air to breathe or water to quench an everlasting thirst.  A place where there is nowhere to clean the smell of charcoal from your nostrils or the grit from your teeth.

Two long bumpy trips to Minniere, where cholera took 7-8 souls a week for months on end  less than a year ago. Where now, thanks to my fellow Rotarians, two wells serve 4000 of our brothers and sisters with fresh clean water.

Five bowls of pumpkin soup.

And not one bean.

One huge spider, a June bug in my hair at 2AM, chiggers, mosquitoes, lizards and of course the roaches.

One case of jungle rot, cured and cleaned.

One Dr. Pepper. 

350 dresses and shorts. 350 happy children and mommas with clothes that aren't hand me downs or American leftovers, but brand spanking new.

Hundreds of pairs of underwear and medicines, flip flops and candies.

Four small medicinal gardens.

One starfish found and tossed back into the sea

Two chlorine pumps installed

Twenty four lap top computers, delivered, installed and ready to roll.

Three floors of freshly painted walls.

Nine of Warrenton's finest Rotarians, businessmen and college students.

Ten Presbyterians.

And me.

I've found over these few years that my calling isn't so much to heal the sick or teach a new trade, it isn't so much to paint a wall or plant a garden as it is to find those people that can.  Once they are found, it's quite simple, as Pere Bruno says ... "Come and See." So that's what I will do, until the last person tells me "No" , I'll keep searching and I'll keep going back, again and again and again.

Growing up my favorite poet was Emily Dickinson and my favorite poem was this:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain.

If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain.
If I can help one aching bird,
Unto his nest again...

I shall not live in vain.

  It's time for me to go home. Time for me to cry into Isabelle's thick brown hair and exchange eye rolls with Jacob behind Paul's back.  Time to sit again at my desk and find words to tell the Story. Time to train for a race and chill with my girlfriends.  I only pray that once inside my own gate that I don't forget what's on the other side.  

May it be so for you and for you and for you....

Thanks for reading, but thanks most of all for praying.

Love more
Give more
Serve more

carrie