Cherline and Fredline

     Our summer short term teams have started. We have back to back groups here into July. With the teams here, we are busier than normal, visiting two or more places a day, and inviting extra kids to our house. So far, it is a happy chaos.

    Yesterday was Mother’s Day here in Haiti, and to celebrate I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a mama  in the neighborhood we visited this afternoon. (As always, I apologize, as you can be pretty sure my spelling of the names is totally off.) I met her daughter, Fredline, first when she came up to meet me. I found out later that Fredline is only three, so her coming up to me was significant. Most kids her age here are scared of white people. Fredline and I had a lovely time playing with her packet of crackers and sharing a coconut.

   Later, at the house we visited, I met Fredline’s mama. When Cherline came back for her daughter, we chatted a little about her life. Fredline is Cherline’s only child. She had two others, but they have died. Fredline’s father is alive, although I do not know that he is in the picture. We talked about whether I have children or a boyfriend yet, and about how old I am.

  These may sound like small things to have discussed, and on the surface maybe they are. I was partially excited that I was even able to have a conversation with Cherline in Kreyol, and she understood me without a translator. My prayer is that these kids of conversations are the beginning of forming relationships. I hope that as I learn to ask questions about their lives, people will see that I care, that I want to listen and that we can begin to be friends. Will you join me in continuing to pray for true relationships with the people I meet here, that we would learn to listen and hear one another and that God would be glorified in that? Thank you.

Cooking

   One of the things I have been doing is helping with the cooking at our house. Well, I hope I have been helping. I have definitely been learning. I thrive on quality time with people, which is hard when I can hardly talk to them. Cooking with the girls who live here has become an opportunity to be with these girls, to learn from them and to laugh with them.

   The longer I am here, the more dear these girls become to me. I have specific prayers and hopes for both of them. Spending time with them in the kitchen grants me the opportunity to begin seeing them individually. It acquaints me with their tastes and preferences. I learn who prefers plantains to rice, who prefers fried chicken, who likes Bob Marley, and what the Haitian president sounded like when he was a music star. It also gives me the chance to learn and practice my Kreyol with those whose ears are full of grace and patience.

    It probably will not surprise you all to hear that I have been reading and praying about intercultural relationships, especially between people with very different levels of material wealth and power. All relationships take time, grace, forgiveness, laughter. These kinds of relationships seem to need them more than others. When I cook with these girls, I hope and pray that this is what is happening. I hope that as we spend time together, as we laugh, and especially as they teach me, we can edge towards some of the healing that this country needs, that perhaps my poverty and theirs can decrease.

    Friends, will you join me in praying for the girls here, for their individual needs and struggles and for them to grow in love for the Lord. Will you also join me in praying for my relationships with them, that grace, humor and forgiveness would be the foundations of these relationships, that I would listen to them and that through us God would be glorified. Thank you.

  

   

Deciphering Missions

I stumbled across this post last week from one of my favorite bloggers, and loved it so much. I would highly recommend it as to anyone who supports missionaries. Ask questions, ask me these questions. They matter.

The view from our house

This was the view from our house last night, yet more evidence my life is filled with grace.

I would apologize for the power lines running through every pic, but they are a grace too, since they mean I have a working fan (almost) every night.

See the ocean? This Florida girl loves living by the water!

Do no harm

    The Hippocratic Oath has doctors promising to first do no harm. Those words have been one of my heart’s cries since I decided to move here. I heard and hear story after story, statistic upon statistic detailing the ways well-meaning missionaries and aid and development organizations and other countries’ policies have contributed to the mess Haiti is in today. While I am so far from qualified to comment on most of those issues, I believe the complaints and concerns are valid. It is one of my biggest fears that I will only contribute to the problem. Occasionally I wonder how I could not, since it can look like almost every attempt to help ends up harming this people and this country.

     Thanks to my general love of learning (read: nerdiness) I have been reading books and articles and websites on poverty relief and development and missions done well. The experts talk about not giving things out for free when it’s not an emergency situation, how that’s a way of reinforcing dependency and taking opportunities from the community to support their own. I believe they are correct. They know a lot more about these things than I do, but here’s the thing. None of them are medical. When they run the risk of communities and neighbors not stepping up the consequences do not feel as dire.  

    So, once again, I sit in my questions. There is a little boy who is two or three or four years old depending on who you ask, whose mama has died and who appears to be pretty malnourished. Do I get involved? There are no malnutrition centers nearby that I know of and I have not been trained in proper malnutrition treatment, nor do I have any relationship in place with his family. Do I just leave it then, and hope he does not come down with an infection? Or do I take responsibility for intervening and the many unforeseeable consequences? Then there is the boy with asthma who talks to me about his asthmatic episodes and missing school because of them. His family appears better off than many others in the neighborhood and they know he is sick but have not to my knowledge taken him to the doctor. So, do I step in? If I do, what am I communicating about their parenting and decision-making? If I do not step in, how do I look him in the eye when he talks about his experiences? Compounding all of this is my overwhelming awareness of how much I do not know about these families and this culture and loving well within it.

   So, I pray that God’s kingdom would come and His will be done on earth as in heaven. And I pray for mercy and grace, so much grace. I ache for the brokenness in this place and in my own heart. I ache for the ways I contribute to their poverty and my own and I pray some more. Friends, will you join me in these prayers for wisdom and discernment, for little boys with empty bellies and broken lungs and for God’s kingdom come? 

More Pics from Wancheez

    So, I am trying to take more pictures of life down here. Letting you all see the kids and things I care about would go a long way towards sharing the stories that are so important to me. We were back in Ofisye this afternoon and the kids asked for pictures. I took some, but I let Wancheez get the majority since it seemed to work last time. Here is a sample of what we got.

Tracie

Moseline is not lacking in personality.

Marie Junie

Shaggy, with Ismail in the background

Rachelle was not in a good mood this afternoon.

This is when I gave Wancheez the camera.

We like posing. Also, Betsaida that so many of you have prayed for is the one giving the thumbs up.

Twins! Valencia (on the right) and Evancia. 

Wancheez and I.

The view from the beach. Seriously.

Grace for today

    I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but for the last few weeks I have been the only American in our house. Ed has been in the States and I have been managing more on my own than I have before. This has been one of those things that I  think I will look back on as having been a wise decision, but in the moment it is hard. I have never lived in a situation where there is no one to talk to, because I can’t talk to them, or where I am in any way responsible for teenagers. Both of those things are a large part of my life right now.  

     I am also right in the middle of what I what I am thinking of as the calm before the storm. Starting the end of this month we will have back to back teams for something like six weeks straight. Maybe longer. I have lost track at this point. Things will be busy and crazy and hot, so I am taking the time to enjoy this period where things are just hot.

    There are so many moments to savor in this new life I have been given. Learning to cook Haitian food and laughing with the girls who live here over how I get food on my clothes. Every. Single. Time.  Or how I am too short to see what’s cooking on the stove without a stool. The little tiny girl who is not afraid to climb up in my arms and the mama who loves her.   My favorite cherries, a gift from that same mama.  Bandaging wounds while five kids look over my shoulder and hang on my arm. Having simple conversations in Kreyol and following them (I think). The boy who comes to our house almost every day and the kindness with which he treats his little sister. Sitting on the floor of the girls’ room talking about what we are going to wear tomorrow. I wouldn't trade these moments for anything. They fill my heart.

    I look forward to when Ed gets back and I am no longer the only American here, to easily understood conversations and not being in charge of teenagers in any significant, but in my anticipation for that time I pray I don’t miss the grace that is in front of me.

Ofisye

      Yesterday we went to one of my very favorite places, a neighborhood I have visited off and on since my first trip to Haiti almost twelve years ago. This is the neighborhood I always hoped we would go to when visiting Haiti on college spring breaks and it is one of two places that began to solidify for me the hope of one day making a life in this country, meeting healthcare needs.

   Visiting in Ofisye is so many things. It is the familiar heartache of learning about another mama-less little girl. It is mango-sticky fingers slipped in mine and “Blan!” shouted down the beach. It is pebbles in my shoes as I jump streams, stubbornly insisting I can do it. It is blood pressure checks on dear older adults and desperate prayers for wisdom when those numbers read too high. It is ibuprofen when a tooth really needs to be pulled. It is pulling sticks out of feet, for once grateful for tough skin, while hoping infection does not set in. It is gifts of mangoes and hands running through my hair. It is words and questions repeated because I don’t understand the first time. It is laughter all around when I sing children’s songs. It is falling on my butt because we thought it would be a good idea to let one of the girls carry me piggyback down the path. It is tiny twins jumping around, laughing one minute and angrily throwing sand at each other the next. It is little ones in my lap, held tight, with prayers whispered over them.  It is the tension between wanting to health care needs met and being terrified of reinforcing dependency. It is beautiful and precious and hard.

    Friends, will you join with me in prayers for Ofisye. Pray for Wancheez who got the stick in her foot yesterday, and that she heals without infection setting in. Pray for justice for these people, that physical and spiritual needs would be answered in ways that do not steal their dignity. Pray for me as I learn to navigate these relationships. Thank you.