Survival

There are many days in Haiti that all I can see is dirt and filth.

I look around and wonder how it is that people can thrive when your hands are always calloused and worn and your feet are barefoot and never clean. There just never seems to be a place to wipe off the dust of the day.

 Even in the rivers that flow through the edge of town there are animal remains and disease infested waters. And that seems to be where everyone gathers. They gather at the bank of the river to scrub their clothes and bathe their children. There on the roots of trees, the children lather up as mom scrubs away the bugs and week long grime of a life lived in Haiti. It is there at the watering hole, that the motorcycles are cleaned from the diesel and smoke of Cap Haitien, it is there that the women gossip and where the men relax. And yet, when I peer over the concrete bridges I wonder again if this is as good as it gets.

 At first glance, you can't see the beauty of Haiti. You see the struggle of barefoot men dragging hundreds of pounds of rusted and long broken auto parts on a simple handcart of wood and long worn tires. Women walking with stacks of American hand me down clothes piled on their heads in the hopes of a sale. There are children balancing forty pound buckets of water on their tiny little heads while carrying two more in each hand. A hundred and twenty pounds of water carried by a child weighing no more than ninety pounds sopping wet.

One can actually feel the oppression and sense of hopelessness in the air and all at once you realize the truth - they don't just live day to day, hand to mouth but they are on the very edge of survival. Homes on top of homes, filth upon filth, poverty of the like we in our American two story wall to wall carpet homes can never imagine. Yes, there are many days that all I can see in Haiti is the unending pain of a nation long on its knees. And in many of their eyes, surrounded by wrinkles and wisdom and life, you can read stories beyond stories of abandonment, loss and even resignation.

 But there is beauty. There is a strength that you and I can not comprehend. It is a strength that goes beyond muscles and endurance...it is basic human will to survive. You see it as they pile 30 kids in the back of an old pick up truck to drive them to school. Or pack 5 children on a motorcycle with a driver mashed in-between. All of this to make sure their children have something more than all of this...So they will know that there is something better.... that there is something else beyond all of this. That there is more to life than survival.

That's the hardest part really. Finding the beauty in the midst of the grime, but it's there. You look to see mountains beyond mountains and you look into the sky to see stars unobstructed by lights and planes and cell towers, just God given sky. And the people. Oh the people, strong and silent, lost and found all at once. They wait for a better day to come, and it will. I don't know when or how or what exactly will change but I choose to believe that what we do down here is part of that greater plan.

Feed the hungry.

 Clothing the naked.

Healing the sick.

 Loving the lost and giving the rest to God.

If I have learned anything over the past 6 years, it is this... It isn't up to me, all I can do is my best and that I'll give with joy. Beyond that it is all God. With all my heart I believe that. I know that. And I see that as more and more hearts are open to the beauty of this place. As our circle of those willing to serve grows ever wider and wider. As Presbyterians, Rotarians and Warrentonians of all sorts step off a small little plane into a small little world ready to make small little changes that will last, all because in everything we give it to God. I can ask for nothing more than this, because this is good.