Recounting Charlotte

                Last week was a whirlwind of meetings and family time and all kinds of grace.  I flew to Florida a week ago Saturday and to Charlotte last Monday. While in Charlotte, I met with Lex and Renee and various people from Bless Back International to discuss clinic matters, or as as I like to call it, the state of the union. 

                The meetings in Charlotte mostly involved discussing next steps for the MOHI clinic. It was a time for spinning dreams and what-ifs and what-nexts, for weighing opportunities and finding ways to improve and expand clinic services. More on those things as they develop. Usually when I am with the people from Bless Back, it is in Haiti and we are running full speed ahead in the clinic, so the chance to enjoy one another as people was welcome.

                The second major blessing of last week was seeing the Edmes. Well, most of the Edmes. They have been State-side since the beginning of August, making this the longest stretch apart since I came back in January. One of the more bittersweet aspects of them being gone has been how much I have missed spending time with them. We work well together as a group, but in a tremendous grace for a group who spends as much time together as we do, we also enjoy one another's company. I mean, I am assuming they enjoy mine. I certainly enjoy theirs. Last week we moved the party to Charlotte and laughed over every ridiculous thing we could think of.

               Speaking of laughter, I sandwiched the Charlotte trip with weekends at home with my family and best friend. When we are together, I laugh until a cry, until my sides ache and I cannot breathe. The grace of being surrounded by people who know some of the deepest, rawest parts of me and love me anyway is almost more than I can take in. When I am home with them, I am absolutely saturated with love.
               

                

Charlotte

       I head to the States tomorrow for a quick trip to Charlotte by way of South Florida. I will be meeting with the Edmes, and people from Bless Back International, MOHI's main medical partner. I checked the weather for Charlotte, and apparently it's supposed to be in the 50s at night. So I will most likely freeze death in the next week. Assuming that doesn't happen, I am beyond excited for a couple of days with family, friends and hot showers. My internet connection took the week off without my approval. Now that it is fixed, I am madly scrambling to get things caught up to fly out tomorrow, so I will leave you with this picture of one of our preschoolers today.

Learning to live here

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

Aboriginal Activists group, Queensland, 1972

 

            I stumbled on this quote on a global health forum this week and it resonated deeply within me. I (naturally) spend a lot of time thinking about cross-cultural interactions and what it looks like to live well in a culture I was not born into. When I look at Haiti, I see a lot of damage done by well-meaning foreigners. We look at this country and decide it is broken, and since our way of living in our country works for us, we decide that this country needs to live like us. Consciously or subconsciously we assume that our way is the only right way to live. We miss (or misunderstand) the complex and wildly different history of this country, and more importantly we don’t see the beauty in how this culture functions. We don’t speak the language, or we don’t speak it well. We misinterpret interactions and we don’t listen or learn much. Instead, we impose.

                        I think there are two main ways of interacting with a foreign culture. One is the way mentioned above, bringing in the things that work in our culture and assuming if those things were just done here, this culture would be “fixed.” Few of us would phrase it so baldly, but our actions betray our underlying assumptions. This is the way of belittling our brothers and sisters in words and in actions, in snide jokes and muttered asides. We see the material comfort of our country and assume that our way is the only way. We see different as wrong, and in our attitudes and words belittle differences in others’ ways of doing things. This does so much damage to both sides. So much damage. It harms the people we are supposed to be working with, telling them in so many words, that they are less, and it harms us as pride and superiority, attitudes completely contrary to the Gospel, root themselves even more deeply in our lives.

            There is a second way. This way involves humility and listening and learning to see the value in the way another culture operates. One of the things I love about working with MOHI is talking to Renee. Renee has an incredible capacity to see the richness in Haitian culture.She sees beauty and strength rather than only weakness, and she celebrates what she sees. Moreover, she celebrates with me as I learn to see these things too. So many times I have come into her office to talk about something I witnessed, trying to process my thoughts. Over and over she has helped me see how the people of Haiti bring something unique and valuable and necessary to the kingdom of God. I believe that this is the way of peacemaking, the way that brings the healing that all of us, American and Haitian desperately need.

            Writing this post has been a bit of a “get the plank out of your own eye first” experience for me. I am leagues from getting this right. I spent the last week beyond frustrated with the way some systems work in this country, and to my shame mouthed off to my Haitian friends about it more than once. By the grace of God, I am learning to see. Grace opens my eyes to my complicity in the brokenness around me, and grace opens my eyes to the kingdom of God- a bigger, richer, more beautiful thing than I could have imagined on my own.

Babies

      If you know me, you know I love kids, especially babies, especially toddlers. I love talking to kids, I love holding other people's babies, I love watching them play and learn to walk and be fascinated by the world around them. Unfortunately,  babies and toddlers in the MOHI clinic do not always feel the same way about me.
      Sometimes, like this morning, things don't go so well. Someone tries to bite me for taking his temperature. Someone else pees on the floor. A third child screams so loud throughout their consultation that I can't hear anything their caregiver tells me. Or some combination of the above. Days like those endear my adult patients to me.
      One other days, things go beautifully. There was a twenty pound eight month old who grinned toothlessly at me through her entire visit last week, giggling sporadically when I listened to her lungs and tummy. The little one pictured below did not cry once during her visit, and showed weight and development gains since her last visit.

    Those are my favorite clinic days.

Back to School

It was a busy first week back for the students and teachers at our Thozin campus!

Happenings

Some tidbits from the last few days:

• I had a couple American women over for coffee on Saturday. In an effort to be more Haitian in my approach to hospitality, I baked. (Note: I hate baking.) This happened:  

        Martha Stewart, I am not.

• It was annual conference time for our sister church in the mountains, so I got to experience church in St. Etienne for the first time in a year. I do like it up there.
• Today was the first day back to school for our students. In a remarkable event for Haiti, and a testament to the hard work of our school staff, we actually started the school year on time. 
• Thanks to the above mentioned note, there was a troop of sweet and smiling faces greeting me this morning when I arrived to start clinic. I missed those babies over the summer.
• Our patient with the chronic leg ulcers was two weeks healed and counting. I was all set to add that to the list of rejoicings in this post when he walked in the clinic with one of his leg wounds reopening. Although this is the expected course of the disease, it's still a disappointment. Feel free to keep us in your prayers.
• We had a 13 pound three month old in clinic today. He had a double chin and rolls on his thighs. That was a good way to make Monday morning a little more welcome.