Language Learning

   I spent the first twenty-five years of my life taking for granted the ability to just chat with the people around me. It was not as though my introverted self walked around striking up conversations with strangers, but I could have. If I wanted to. In this new life of mine almost every conversation is a mental effort. Day in and day out I wrestle to understand what’s being said around me, confused over meaning, sentence structure, pronunciation. On Friday I tried to ask one of the girls who lives here if her sore throat had improved. What I actually said, while stroking my neck, was “is your cup better?” Thankfully her father understood the context clues and answered my actual question (after a few surprised looks).

  I have learned a lot since January, but I think the thing about living in another country, another culture is that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Does that make sense? Before I came down here I thought I knew in the abstract how important language learning would be. I saw it as one of my first tasks, after all how can I love well people I cannot talk to? Now that I am here, the need to talk, to communicate, is both tangible and acute.

   The people I live with are so wonderful to me as I learn. Their grace as I string together grammatically incorrect sentences, their kindness as they parse what I am trying to say and their patience as they repeat vocabulary words to me (again) are precious. There is something beautiful about the kingdom of God and learning to love your neighbor in all of this, but it can be hard for me to see it when I just want to know how far away the market we are walking to is.

  Rationally, I know it is ridiculous to be expecting myself to speak Kreyol like a native when I have only been here since January. I keep reminding myself of that fact, but there are SO many things I just want to be able to ask people. I want to talk to the women in the neighborhoods we visit about their children, their daily schedules, what they think about life and health. I want to ask kids how school was, what their day was like, what songs and foods they like or do not like. I am learning to string some of those sentences together, but I am impatient, dreaming of the day the words flow off of my tongue intelligibly.

   Will you join me in praying for grace in language learning? That I would work hard, while giving myself grace, and for grace for those are wrestling to understand me as well. Thanks friends.

Pictures from Wancheez

 
  This afternoon I went to one of my favorite neighborhoods and actually remembered to use my camera instead of just lugging it around everywhere.A girl from the neighborhood we were in took most of these pictures. I was not expecting great results, since the kids were running around all over the place, but I was really pleased with how most of them came out. I was excited about that, plus the fact that I figured out how to share pictures in this space, (for a technology-challenged girl like me, it’s a big deal) so I decided to post some of my favorites from the day.

Disclaimer: I am pretty certain I have not spelled any of these names correctly. I am working off of what I heard phonetically, and still getting the hang of spelling in this new language. Sorry!

The little girl in the middle, and the little one on the right are twins. Valencia and Evancia. We had two sets of twins on the beach with us today. 

Betsaida! Looking so happy and healthy! It was actually her older sister who took these pictures.

Betsaida's other sister, Jusnyka. Love her pose!

It was a pretty great afternoon. 

Wancheez, our photographer. (Actually, I took this pic.)

   Will you join me in praying for these precious kids? They matter. They matter to me, but more importantly they are so precious in the sight of my God. Will you join me in praying that they come to know how beloved they are to him, and that their lives would reflect that knowledge? Thank friends!

Tarantulas!

 Apparently these can be found in the area behind our house.

It's probably better I didn't know that before I moved here.

First day back

    I returned to Haiti Monday after being gone just over three weeks. I am so very happy to be back. I wrestle with how to accurately describe life here in a way that is not disrespectful to those who live it. I can be tempted for the sake of the story, and for drama to focus on the most dramatic suffering or poverty. That part of the story can have the greatest emotional impact, and I believe it is important to share the difficult parts of how these people live. At the same time, it can be easy for those of us who are used to North American standards of living to be so overwhelmed by the harshness and otherness (if that’s a word?) of life here that that is all we see, missing the other parts of the story. Does that make sense?

   Okay, all of that being said, I want to tell you a little bit about Nan Banan, the neighborhood we visited yesterday afternoon. The area was new to me, although I had met some of the kids at our house before.   The road we take to get to the neighborhood fills with trash when it rains. Not just a few pieces here or there, but trash piles up and down the road. The public health nurse in me cringes to see it. Moreover, the people of the neighborhood were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy last fall. Their neighborhood was flooded and people lost homes and belongings. They are still recovering.

   Now comes the fun part. Kids were lining up to greet us even before we parked the car. When we got out we were welcomed with kisses, hugs and exuberance. It was so lovely to be back, surrounded by precious babies, sweating, laughing and wrestling to understand what’s going on around me. I know enough to Creole to make a few jokes with the kids now. Ed brought a recorder and interviewed a few people for his radio program last night. The kids sang a song and shared their names. A couple of adults talked about how the listen to the radio program. I made faces with the kids, we laughed. It was such a precious first visit back, a reminder of why I love it here.

    Will you join with me in thanking God for a smooth return back to Haiti, and in praying for the people of this neighborhood? Pray for them as they rebuild homes and lives after the hurricane, for hope in the midst of their struggles. Thanks friends!

When treating chronic diseases is complicated

                Last Friday we visited the kids who hold church in the pick-up truck and then went to see one of our friends who we had been told was not well. When we got to her house, Se Odette told me she was having a headache and left-sided chest pain radiating down her left arm.  As we talked to her more I learned that she had a stroke at some point in the past and had lost most of the use of her left side. Through therapy and perseverance she is walking and moving again, but she always has pain in her left arm. I went ahead and checked her blood pressure and it was well over 200. We talked with her about whether she had ever been told she had high blood pressure before (yes), and if she had been prescribed medication (again, yes). However she had stopped taking her meds a few months ago because she could not afford them. We got her prescriptions refilled and got them to her to start taking them again.

                Yesterday we were back in her neighborhood. I rechecked her blood pressure, hoping for better results. Her diastolic (bottom) number was in the 120s. Her systolic (top) number was well into the 230s. No one was happy about it. She had been taking her meds as prescribed but they were clearly not working. As in Abjirs’ case, we were in the neighborhood after working hours, so there were no medical options until this morning. We gave her money, and I wrote down the numbers I got when I checked her blood pressures and told her go back to the doctor today. Join me in praying for wisdom and compassion and medicines that work for her?

                I want to tell you a little but more about Se Odette’s story and the challenges she has faced in complying with her treatment regimen. After her stroke Se Odette sold everything she had to pay her bills for treatment and medicines.  She sold her house to pay her bills. The man who bought the house (just the house, not the land the house is on) has allowed her to remain in it a little while because of her health problems. She had not refilled her prescriptions for two months because she did not have the money. What’s more, the man who bought her house is asking her to vacate it so he can tear it down and using the materials to build his own house elsewhere.

                There’s so much in this story that tears at the heart, so much unfairness. My mind balks when I try to wrap my head around it. Will you join me in praying for Se Odette, for the immediate concerns of her blood pressure and suffering, the intermediate concerns for her housing and the long term concerns for her as she manages not only extreme hypertension, but also diabetes? Chronic diseases pose so many unique challenges that I am only beginning to figure out how to approach them. I need grace. She needs grace. Join with me in petitioning our great God? 

How a man's feet made my day

     About a month ago a man named Vadu came to our house, seeking help for a foot problem he had been suffering from for three years. His feet were fissured, sore and peeling and whatever it was had begun to spread to his hands. Before coming to us his friends told him he had been cursed and he sought treatment from a witch doctor. I thought the problem was fungal and we referred him to a clinic for medication. In a move that I am coming to see as significant, he went to the clinic and followed the instructions given to him for treatment. Now his feet are completely healed. You cannot even see where there was a problem. I wish I could explain how significant the change in his feet is in just a few weeks.  Healing that I expected  to take weeks or months happened in just a couple of weeks and it is as though he was never sick.

  Vadu came by our house yesterday to thank us and talk to us again and tell us more about that the last few years have been like for him. He said he spent the equivalent of a couple hundred American dollars (a tremendous sum here) seeking help from a witch doctor but he only got worse. His kids were sent home from school since he could not pay their school fees because he had spent all of his money on the witch doctor and his remedies. Even the people in his church had encouraged him to spend more money on cures from the witch doctor that did not work. He suffered for three years and no one recommended he seek conventional medical care. Today, he is healed and praising the Lord.

 On a medical level this man’s story thrilled me because he was suffering, there was a simple fix and now he is not suffering. I am learning that people in Haiti often see a division between sicknesses doctors can cure (physical in origin) and sicknesses doctors cannot cure (spiritual in origin). Vadu’s friends told him his sickness was spiritual in origin and thus could not be cured be conventional medicine. I love that he got a concrete and surprisingly quick lesson in how much medicine can help.

  On another level, I see the Lord moving in this Vadu’s life to free him from another type of suffering. Vadu is apparently part of a church that mixes a variety of beliefs (voodoo, Catholic, Christian, other) together into one big pot. By his own account people in his church contributed to his suffering for years by encouraging him to continue to seek the witch doctor’s treatments. Now, he is considering finding another church as he believes his prayers were answered elsewhere.

  Will you join me in prayer for Vadu? Pray that his feet will stay healed and that our gracious Lord would continue to make Himself known in Vadu’s life, that this would not be the emotional change of a happy moment, but the beginning of a true and richer relationship with his Creator.

What are we even doing down here?

     People ask me what exactly we do here in Haiti day to day, and I hem and haw and say something about community health and something about building relationships and generally am unsure how to answer. The truth is I don’t really know how to explain what we do, except to say our focus really is on building relationships, loving kids and helping the people we come to know meet their daily needs.

     We have a couple of short term teams here this week. This afternoon we were visiting a neighborhoods and something beautiful happened that I think might be a way to illustrate we do. Most of the short termers have been to Haiti before, so they know some of the kids and families we work with. Some of us traveled to the neighborhood in the back of a pick-up, so we were out in the open. When we got to the neighborhood and almost even before the truck stopped a girl came running to greet one of the short termers. He hopped over the side of the truck and the minute he touched the ground the little girl jumped up in his arms, flinging her arms around her neck. Our short termer knew this girl from previous visits and she knew him. They were meeting as friends. I could not tell you who was more excited to see whom. I can tell you my eyes were not dry.

   Friends, this is the only way I know to describe what we do. It sounds cheesy and cliché but we do what we can to love the people around us. We hold kids and we become friends with them and with their families. And we do what we can to love them like Jesus loves them and to communicate how much they matter. When short termers come back, they see kids they remember and the kids see that they are not forgotten when these people leave the country. I really believe this is a part of what it means to believe in the communion of saints, to be a part of the Body of Christ, and I really, really love being a part of it. Join me in prayers of thanks and recognition of the goodness of God in all of this? Thanks friends!