Thoughts on re-entry from Carla, and pictures from Kevin
Day Nine- Carla and Kevin are home.
Contradictions are even worse when we get home.
Kevin and I have returned from our travels. We stayed one day beyond the rest of the
group- in case anyone had trouble getting out of the airport. As it turns out, the airport in Port au
Prince has become surprisingly efficient (for Port au Prince) and the
departures went smoothly.
Immigration and
Customs in Miami were far worse! After
two hours, three passport inspections and three security lines, we RAN to our
connecting flight, backpacks bouncing. We arrived breathless, sweaty and just
in time to get on board. To top it off, the
big man in the seat next to me on the flight intruded into my space, snoring
loudly, and passing gas! I kid you
not-it was one bad flight!
We left Haiti and are back in the comfort of the first
world, with its first world comforts.
First world problems seem so pointless. A hot shower felt better than
ever this morning. In Haiti today, young
girls are walking miles to get water. I
bought tomatoes and fresh Romaine today from amidst an abundance of fresh
vegetables in the produce section. The Haitian
peasants’ tomato fields are dead of drought.
My cats are soft and well-fed, purring to have me home. The ribs are showing on the cats creeping
into the dining hall at La Kay. Extreme
contradictions. I let go of
contradictions and enjoy my shower, my tomatoes, and my cats. Re-entry is a
challenge.
Yesterday, still in my program-leader hat, I sent an email
to our group about the challenge of re-entry. This is a continual process of
integrating all the contradictions. We need
to be patient with ourselves, not to wallow in guilt. We need to continue to
enjoy our lives, and yet to live with a new awareness. Our experience in Haiti shatters our racial
and cultural assumptions, the divisions we saw in the world. We establish connection -we cross a boundary. Beyond the contradictions and the boundaries
we humans have created is a universal human experience and human connection. I believe this. I continue to struggle with the
contradictions, and to seek integration. This is why I return. I am so grateful to share the experience, and
the struggles, with others.
Laura speaking: I believe all of the Haiti Travelers (aside from Carla, Kevin, and Rob), are home now. Carla and Kevin should be home this evening. Rob will be staying at MPP for an additional two weeks. Today has been a challenge for me, as I begin this complicated process of re-entry. There is plenty to be written about on this process alone, for sure.
Thoughts from Liz, right before we began our long journey home yesterday morning:
Morning of our eighth and last day in Haiti. We head to the airport in Port au Prince after breakfast.
I had intended to post on this blog each day. This my first post.
Writer's block is a condition I have rarely experienced. Brilliant, pulsating, sunny Haiti was not the place where I would ever have expected it to show up as present. Yet there it was for the past seven days. I am grateful that Laura's posts have spoken so strongly and clearly and beautifully for me.
A simply glorious week here in this Caribbean country with all of its bounty and scarcity, beauty and pain, courage and fear.
Six week old Emanuel has been in the forefront of my mind and deep in my heart ever since I had the blessing of holding him in my arms two days ago. I can still feel the warmth of his little body and see his beautiful, brown face. His spirit will accompany me back home, I know, as will the spirit, love, and courage of so many I have come to know here.
The dedication and tenacity of the workers in Papaye's AG-ECO program and their fierce determination to develop nutritional crops in the face of drought and paucity of equipment inspires beyond words. The bright smiles of greeting on the faces of Haitians of all ages as we see each other in the streets brimming with poverty cause me to ask myself whether I ever dare to complain again.
The plan for Father Richard and me to get together at the hospital in Port au Prince today will not come to fruition because he will be working to retrieve a boy in very perilous health from an off shore island and treat him in whatever way possible to help save his precious life. Father Richard wrote in a message to me yesterday that we now need Zach's prayers for this boy. As I write these words I am back in Zach's room in the last weeks of his earthly life when Father Richard visited and prayed with Him, his parents and sister, and several other family members including me. Now here Zach is, showing up in Haiti.
I am crying today. I can't let these tears start or they may
never stop. Still, I cry. I am here to support others, to be the calm
reassuring presence, the program leader. Still, I cry. Perhaps I could model that it is ok to cry?
Sitting in the shade beside my husband and listening to one
man's story of loss, the tears began to swell. Another tragic story of struggle
and loss, a broken water system and hard work that bears no fruit.
Water is life.
In this case, tomatoes are the fruit that that the work doesn't
bear. Dry tilled fields lay sprinkled
with seeds, ready for greens and ripening reds. No water will come to these
fields, even so close to a lake. This
ideal location for growing has gone dry as the pump that brings water through
pipes from the lake to these fields has broken. No amount of hard work and even
the dollars the peasants scrounged together to hire a technician could fix
it. The plows that tilled this soil, the
men who walked behind them, the cows who pulled them, that seeds that lay in
the brown soil are equally powerless to help these fields now. There is no water.
Water is life.
The gray-haired man cracks a smiles as he tells us of the
day he carried 14 jugs and 10 bottles of water from lake to field. That desperate day when he still dreamed of
saving his fields. The next day he went
to plant beans but couldn't bend over.
The pain in his back was the pain of the futility of this, he laughed at
himself for being a silly old man. Even
the three young men, all the tattered, sad-eyed women, and thin but charming
children cannot carry enough buckets to water these fields.
Water is life.
"We are hungry," he says. He is done with his
story. We thank him ,"mesi anpil."
We climb into our air-conditioned vans, wave out the windows, drink from our
water bottles in hot, thirsty gulps. We laugh and talk and leave them
behind. Mostly.
Water is life.
How many water bottles would it take to save these
tomatoes? How many tears would it take
to water these fields? How many months can these people survive before the rain
comes?
I can't stand to listen to another story; another failed
well, failed fishpond, community in conflict, child who will never go to
school. Across every field is another
heart-breaking problem that has no end. there is always more hard work and misery, more
hope fading silently into hopelessness.
I cannot bear another tale of a broken dream. I do not want to see more
imaginary tomatoes and dreamed of beans.
I want to go
home. I need to go home! I want to stay
and to help. I need to stay and to help.
How could I ever help? I know no
raindances, and I don't fix broken pumps.
Water is life.
When I get home I'll turn the tap to wash my hands, my
dishes, my teeth. I will flush a toilet and take a hot shower. I may complain
of another grey rainy day. I take water completely for granted. As I do light bulbs, air-conditioning, tomatoes in the
supermarket, and cans of black beans. We are hungry, says this man; no water,
no crop, no money from the market, no food.
Water is cool, refreshing, beautiful. Water, we are privileged to forget, is
essential. Water is the Source of All Being.
I can only cry for these people- for all the people of
Haiti- for all the hungry people at home- for all of us. I can only cry.
Water is Life.
The bottom of the waterfall we visited
From the top of the waterfall
Our fearless leaders! Juliette, Carla, Robert, and Mayheeda
There is music in the
distance as I sit on the Big Thoughts front porch tonight. In the van today, Carla wondered whether it
might be more aptly named the Big Hearts front porch...and I think I agree with
her. When we have our evening reflection
circles here on the porch, the love and hope and compassion in this circle is
astounding. I have to imagine that the
energy of our collective Big Hearts is rippling out to the rest of MPP, to
Haiti, and to the world.
The Big Heart front porch
Photo credit: Kevin
I held a 6-week-old
beautiful baby today named Emmanuel -- "a gift from God," his mother
said. As the Sweet Honey in the Rock
song goes:
For each child that's born,
a morning star rises and sings
to the universe who we are.
Like all babies,
Emmanuel holds immense promise. Like all
mothers, Emmanuel's mother was so proud to share her son with the world. She
came and handed him to us -- the white strangers -- as comfortably as though we
were his aunts and uncles. Like all
babies, Emmanuel smelled sweet, and his tiny body snuggled against mine as his
eyes closed.
We are our grandmother's prayers
we are our grandfather's dreamings
we are the breath of our ancestors
we are the spirit of God.
After Liz held young
Emmanuel, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "what wouldn't
you give to see that he grows up healthy and safe?" I could only nod. Yes.
We are mothers of courage
fathers of time,
daughters of dust
sons of great visions,
we are sisters of mercy
brothers of love
lovers of life and the builders of nations.
Like all babies,
Emmanuel knows nothing of the world he has been born into. He cries the same universal cries of hunger
and discomfort, and makes the same baby coos and noises that all babies make. He is loved, and tended to, and cared for by
his mother to the best of her ability.
He is known to be a gift from God, and one only need look into his eyes
to know this to be truth. At 6 weeks
old, Emmanuel's world is still coming into focus. What will he come to know as his vision
clears?
We are seekers of truth
and keepers of faith
makers of peace
and the wisdom of ages.
And Emmanuel is also
the youngest of 6 children in a Haitian family who survived the earthquake and
is starting over. If his family stays at
MPP, he will grow up in a house with 4 walls and a roof - and this is a
blessing. He may or may not have enough
food. He may or may not have clean
drinking water. He may or may not get an
education, and if he does, he may or may not go past the third grade. He does not currently have electricity in his
home or in his village. His family does
not currently have enough food. His
family does not currently have clean drinking water. By luck of the draw, Emmanuel was born here,
to Haitian peasants, 5 years after the earthquake. By that same stroke of luck, he was born to one
of the 500 applicants who managed to get a place in one of the MPP
villages. This is -- I believe -- a
blessing.
We are our grandmother's prayers
and we are our grandfather's dreamings
we are the breath of our ancestors
we are the spirit of God.
The school today was
full of beautiful children. In the
afternoons, we drive by children in uniforms walking home along the
pothole-ridden, unpaved, rut-filled roads.
I watched the clouds of dust from the passing cars and motorcycles
engulf them. I watched big brothers -
who couldn't have been more than 9 - walking with their arms around their
younger sisters. Who knows how long and
far they walk? I've seen children managing
donkeys and bulls with more gumption than I would have. I've seen them playing with metal hoops and
sticks: a universal toy. I've seen them
carrying jugs of dirty water in their hands and on their heads, bathing naked
in the river, tending to a fire, and playing soccer.
Haitian children are as
children are everywhere -- and this work that is being done -- all of this --
is for them. The work being done now
will not benefit this generation of Haitians.
Everything that is being done is to create a better life, a better
country, a better world for the children.
The families in the villages are pioneers setting out in a land plagued
by drought, and a harshness I could never understand. They are living in a land where only 2% of
its forests remain, and so they plant trees.
They learn sustainable farming methods.
They begin again, if only because they have to. Perhaps that's why there is hope here: where there
are children, there is hope.
We are mothers of courage
fathers of time
we are daughters of dust
and sons of great vision...
There was a mother with
her older, perhaps teenage, daughter at the village, too. Her mother had a far-away look in her eyes
that I am coming to see in so many Haitians.
Her daughter held her hand as they walked, and leaned against her
bashfully, as though they may be pulled apart forever if contact were to be
lost.
There was another mother
with two children -- perhaps 2 and 4 years old -- who appeared quite ill. The two-year-old, who wore only an Elmo shirt,
tugged on his mother and whined, attempting to get her to look at him. She sat with her head in her hands, unmoving.
...we are sisters of mercy
brothers of love
we're lovers of life and the builders of nations
we're seekers of truth and keepers of faith
makers of peace and the wisdom of ages.
At the school today,
the director said, "if you know doctors who can come and treat the
children's physical and emotional health, tell them to come." Tonight, I asked Chavanne what is being done
to address the children's mental health.
"We are concerned with the mental health of all people in the
villages," he told me. "The
children and the adults." Although
there was support immediately following the earthquake, and people were trained
in trauma and stress reduction techniques, there is no ongoing support.
We are our grandmother's prayers
and we are our grandfather's dreamings
we are the breath of our ancestors
we are the spirit of God.
Rob and baby Emmanuel
I do not know the life
Emmanuel will have, but I know he is the hope for the future. The light shines bright in his eyes that are
just beginning to see the world. Like
mothers everywhere, his mother loves him with all her heart. Her life is dedicated to the betterment of
the world for his future. Like mothers
everywhere, he brings her hope. Like
children everywhere, Emmanuel sleeps in the security and comfort of her arms,
unaware of the world he has been born into.
She breathes in his sweetness and blesses his head with kisses. He is innocence, and love, and hope embodied.
He is her gift from God.
Thoughts from Rachel on visiting the school this morning.
We visited the school today. I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I loved seeing the children. I loved giving them new school supplies. I loved taking their pictures. But on the other hand, I think maybe we shouldn't have gone. We were there for our own benefit, mostly. How did it benefit them to have a bunch of strange white people interrupt their class to stare at them and take pictures of them? They are only in school 5 hours a day for 3 years. That was valuable time that we took away from them. I have these thoughts because I have been there, as a former preschool teacher. I did like that we tried to minimize our disruption by only going into one class each, staying for a short time, and giving the supplies to the director instead of directly to the children. But the phrase "well-meaning white people" is still in my head from the other night. This is my point of view.
Photo credit goes to Kevin:
School time!
Visiting the MPP goat farm, and speaking with their veterinarian
Meeting the residents of Village 5
The residents of Village 6
Meeting with Chavanne, the director and founder of MPP
Today, I discovered a dozen new ways my heart can break.
As a psychologist, I have met with children whose histories
leave my heart heavy. I have heard
stories and seen faces full of traumas that are named and unnamed. I have learned how to hold those stories, and
the pain and the hurt, to the best of my ability. I have met with families for whom trauma
seems to run through their veins - generations of abuse, pain, and neglect
leave them such that I can feel the weight of their stories before the stories
are told.
But in Haiti, trauma is in the air they breathe. There is environmental trauma, and the
collective psychological scars of an entire country of people. How is it that one country can bear so much? This trauma lives in its founding,
in every generation of its history, and is also ongoing and acute. One cannot be in Haiti and not sense the
weight of the trauma as it sinks into your pores. One cannot be in Haiti and not feel the
trauma as you inhale the dusty air. It
touches the very core of you. There is
no way it cannot. It sinks in, and it
breaks your heart.
I'm struggling again this evening with finding the
words. I can only say that I feel a
sense of hopelessness, and powerlessness, and feeling as though the pain and
need is so immense that no amount of anything will help heal it. The trauma is in the water. Even if complete peace were to arrive
tomorrow, it will take generations to unlearn the ways of being they have
developed by necessity.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the
work we are doing, or with MPP, or with the vision of MPP for the
peasants. MPP is an incredible organization.
UUSC is also an incredible
organization, and I had a moment today when talking with the peasants at
Village 1 when I was so proud to be Unitarian Universalist. I believe everyone involved in this
organization and its support is doing absolutely the very best they can do, and
there is nothing more that can be asked or expected. I simultaneously believe that this is not
enough, that it cannot be enough, and that even - perhaps - there is not an
"enough." In the face of this
much suffering, there is never an "enough."
The residents in Village 1 are all people who lost
everything in the earthquake 5 years ago.
They were living in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, and fled to
Papaye when the earthquake hit. They are
adjusting to a life they had never known, and perhaps never even imagined for
themselves. They are living in the
aftermath of a trauma in which they lost everything, and they are starting
over.
I don't know how one starts again after that. I don't know how one begins anew in a country
where trauma seems to come as predictably as waves crashing on the shore. I don't know how you have the courage to
begin, and begin, and begin again.
And yet, I am also witnessing the beginnings. In all beginnings, there is loss, and pain,
and dreams, and hope. There is anger,
frustration, resentment, and also courage, and bravery, and an ever-present
belief that things will get
better. In order to begin again, you
must have an inkling of that belief.
Otherwise, no one would be able to begin again. I don't know where that hope is, or where it
comes from, only that it must be there.
I feel it, too. I don't know how
or why, but it is here.
I am thinking about healing and where it comes from. I'm wondering whether it's possible. I'm feeling powerless in the role I can have
in this. We all know the story of the
boy throwing the starfish into the sea: there were too many to throw them all
in, but he knew it mattered to the ones he threw. In some ways, it feels that this country is
covered in starfish and, while I'd love to throw a few into the sea as I pass
by, the sea is nowhere to be found.
There is nowhere to throw them, and no water to bring them life: my job
is to witness. To write, perhaps. To tell the stories.
I'm thinking of a poem titled "A Fixer" by
Anonymous.
A fixer has the
illusion of being casual.
A server knows he/she
is being used in the service of something greater,
essentially unknown.
We fix something
specific.
We serve always the
something:
wholeness and the
mystery of life.
Fixing and helping are
the work of the ego..
Serving is the work of
the soul.
When you help, you see
life as weak.
When you fix, you see
life as broken.
When you serve, you
see life as whole.
Fixing and helping may
cure.
Service heals.
When I help, I feel
satisfaction.
When I serve, I feel
gratitude.
Fixing is a form of
judgment.
Serving is a form of
connection.
Perhaps this is my answer.
Perhaps this is where the healing starts: in connection. Perhaps it starts with witnessing, with
hearing, with seeing. Perhaps it
travels, then, from wire to wire, across the connections of space and time,
from my eye to my typing fingers. From
the screen to your heart. From your
heart to your hands.
"Serving is a
form of connection."
With my feet connected to the floor of the Big Thoughts
porch, sitting on the contradictions living inside the Haitian soil, I open my
heart in connection to the people of this country - and also to you, in the
hopes that you will feel moved to do the same.
In this way, may we connect, and serve, and create the ripples of an
ocean into which we may toss the starfish, giving hope and life.
To open the lock on my door I need to turn the key to the
right-toward the frame - in the opposite direction I want the bolt to move.
The circle of men, the burros, and motorbikes to the side,
the children wandering in and out, the cries of the cocks fighting.
Walking home from church, white shirt, white dresses, dust
from the road as cars and bikes pass by.
Walking because there is no other option. All wear shoes.
In Haiti 4 days and I have yet to see an obese person.
Savory greens for breakfast and PB&J on white bread for
the evening meal.
Pictures from day 5, courtesy of Kevin and Rob:
Inside the cathedral in Hinche
Panoramic view from the top of the cathedral in Hinche
Chopping banana trees with a machete for the compost
Discussing the challenges and successes of Village 1
Laura's thoughts on day 4. Photo credits go to Kevin, Rob, and Gwyn.
It's so impossible to put this experience into words.
As a writer, this drives me crazy. At home, finding the right word to fit into a
poem can keep me up until 2AM, so having this experience -- and being so
utterly unable to find how to say it -- this could make my mind go in circles
for a year.
It's amazing to me that there is something about being here
that feels right. There is an ease of being that is
difficult to describe as it occurs in a place in which life is so very
hard. Perhaps it is the way everything
moves so very slowly without all of our machines and instant ways of
being. The art of conversation, and
singing, and ritual, and physical labor, and sharing meals feels so very basic,
and necessary, and natural -- even as we routinely fall out of those
experiences in our daily lives. And yet
here we are, in Haiti, a group of friends and used-to-be strangers gathered
together for such a short time, and yet truly together in a way that together does not usually feel. Here, there is work, and sun, and
conversation that is simple, but profound, and beautiful all at once. How is it that this feels right and natural,
even as it is all so new and foreign?
I'm going to start to call the front porch of MPP the Big
Thoughts porch. I don't know if it is
the people, or the air, or the mountains that surround us, but I've found I can
hardly help but think Big Thoughts as I sit here listening to the cricket
punctuated silence. The Big Thoughts I
am thinking tonight involve the way we enter and are received into others'
spaces. As a foreigner, a guest, and a
minority in this country, I am acutely aware of the ways in which I do not
belong. The accommodations and gracious
hosting being offered us. The stares and
fascination from the children we pass.
The very patient answering of questions and explanations. I am aware of what an honor it is to be
received as a guest here: to be offered so much by these people is a gift I can
never hope to return.
I have struggled -- as many others have voiced as well --
with feeling useful as we assist with physical labor tasks. Even if I have the strength to assist with
digging holes through the clay and rock-filled soil (and, I'll admit, my
strength on this task with the heavy tools lasts a very short while before
needing a break), it takes me easily 4 times as long (and probably longer) than
the MPP worker allowing us to assist him.
The amount of work that goes into survival, and the additional effort
and dedication that is put into education, sustainability, and forward thinking
as they attempt to nourish and tend to the environment and thereby their
country is astounding. Have I mentioned
that this organization and its vision is astounding?
The only thing I can think to do to even begin to return
this gift is to share it with you -- our friends and families in the good ol'
USA. I feel this intensity growing
inside me that I need to share and explain with others regarding the
complexities of this country. I want
people to understand the ways we help and the ways we hurt Haiti and its
people. I want you to see and feel the
struggle and vitality and hope and sorrow of the peasants. It is in the air and the soil here -- each of
those things are alive in this country in a way that feels nearly
tangible. I want you to also have the
gift of this peace, and this pain, and the beauty and complexity. I want you to have it because you need
it. Because they need it. Because our world needs it. It is the only way I see forward. The only way I see us moving towards
compassion.
Please don't hear me saying that I want to rub the poverty
and pain in everyone's faces. I don't
want to bombard and berate you with statistics and terrible stories. It's not that those things aren't true --
because they are. They are real, and
here, and present in every breath the Haitian peasants breathe. It is, quite simply, the reality.
What I want you to know, instead, is the complexity. I want you to have the privilege of knowing
the challenge, pain, and hope and devotion I am seeing -- because it is all real. It is all present in a way that is too big
for my heart to hold. The only way I can
see to change the world is to witness this complexity and to sit in the
discomfort.
I am thinking about a podcast I listened to recently from
Krista Tippet's "On Being," in which she interviewed Parker Palmer
and Courtney Martin. They were talking
about "rebellion," and Tippet quotes Martin's book as saying,
"our charge is not to save the world after all, it is to live in it,
flawed and fierce, loving and humble." Perhaps that is it -- perhaps that
is what I am trying to say. Perhaps this
is the way that we learn to be with this experience and its complexity and how
we learn to be global and compassionate citizens in our world: we learn to hold
our world, ourselves, and one another in flawed ferocity and loving
humility.
I'll close this evening's post with a quote and several
pictures from today. The quote I also
first heard in Tippet's interview with Palmer and Martin. It is by Victoria Safford who, upon further
research, is a Unitarian minister. (I love
when things are interconnected in this way!)
Hope
"Our mission is
to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope - not the prudent gates of Optimism,
which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry
hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the
cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "everything is gonna be all
right." But a different, sometimes
lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and
its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from
which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the
place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see."
May it be so.
(Some of these posts are from a few days ago, but have just been sent to me now)
At the market alongside the road on our trip from Port-au-Prince to MPP
The "Partners in Health" hospital founded by Paul Farmer and discussed in Mountains Beyond Mountains, also seen on the ride from Port-au-Prince to MPP
A panoramic view of the countryside on our walk to the tree farm where we assisted with preparing bags of dirt and compost for trees to be given to the peasants
At the tire garden. It was harder to dig those holes than it may look!
All of us! We sure look happy for people waiting to scoop goat poop, don't we?
The happy goat poop scoopers, scooping goat manure into holes for soursop trees to be planted
It's 8:30pm here in Haiti, and I am sitting on the front
porch with the other night-owls. It's
quiet, aside for the crickets, some laughing and very distant music, and an
occasional dog walking by or barking/fighting in the distance. A man is walking somewhere nearby and singing
in Creole. I was greeted by a small
lizard scurrying across the wall in the bathroom this morning -- cute little
green guy who wasn't at all scary, once I pulled my vision together enough to
assess exactly what was running across the wall at breakneck speed.
We had the opportunity today to learn more about MPP and the
fantastic work they do with and for the Haitian peasants. We saw everything from tire gardens, to
irrigation systems, to a composting toilet, and even the MPP radio station
connecting the peasants and giving them a voice in the Central Plateau. Then, we assisted with assembling/fixing a
tire garden by moving some dirt filled tires, deconstructing the wooden
structures, and preparing materials for the assembly of the new frame for the
tires. I know I felt less than helpful
in what I was able to do to actually assist - and this is where my true
amazement comes in. In all the
innovative, resourceful, and incredible things MPP is doing, the resources and
tools they have are so very limited. For
example, the saw we had was not only incredibly dull, but the blade kept
falling out of it and had to be repeatedly reattached. And yet, the work got done. There is so much physical labor that must go
into everything, and it is all on such a different time-table than what I am
used to in our society of power tools and i-everythings.
And yet -- because Haiti seems to be this land of
contradictions -- we went to MPP headquarters office and were so graciously and
warmly introduced to everyone. To name a
few, we heard about how they make solar panels, met their accountant, and learned
about the MPP credit union. If you were
to take a snapshot of the people at their desks, you might see an accountant
using Excel and Quickbooks, or any other person in an office with a laptop or
desktop computer...and yet it is also, still, worlds apart.
I am so amazed by this organization, its mission, and its
people. The dedication to its mission,
and to this beautiful country is incredibly inspiring.
A few pictures today! Photo credit goes to Kevin and Rob:
· A boy playing with a soccer ball in the midst of
rubble
·Clean clothes drying on bushes and cacti
·Styrofoam litter
·More rivers, lakes (reservoirs?) and green than
I imagined
·Bibles being carried, families dressed for
church
·Bathing and clothes washing in the river
·Huge loads being carried on heads
From Kevin:
· Sights and smells brought me back 30+ years to
my time in Liberia.
·So much to see and take in - colors, people in
their Sunday finest, markets everywhere, vitality, beauty next to ugliness...
·Meeting so many folks from Haiti and other parts
of the U.S.
·Anticipating the next adventure
From Laura:
There just aren't even really words to describe what this
day has been. I don't think I can, really. It's not very often that you can feel
yourself changing in real-time, and changing in a way that encompasses all of
you - your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self.
Haiti is so full of contradictions. It is simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful
and hopeful, and also heartbreaking in its poverty and devastation. Even as I sit here this Sunday evening and
have spent the day witnessing all of these things, I am also recognizing that I
don't fully know how I am witnessing and holding those contradictions. And that, perhaps, is the struggle, isn't
it? Is that the thing that is
overwhelming? The way that I am trying
to reconcile those polar opposites, or perhaps the way I am trying to make them
fit into my worldview - which before yesterday was only big enough to imagine these things, and has now,
today, been given the privilege of witnessing them.
I am sitting on the front porch at MPP with Carla, Rob, and
Kevin, and it is just an absolutely gorgeous night. I hear crickets, and dogs howling, and
roosters crowing (yep, at night). A
little while ago, we heard singing and drumming for a bit. Earlier today
on a walk, a man and a woman drove by on a motorcycle with big drums on the
back. I think we all wanted to join
them.
It's not nearly as buggy as I thought it would be - likely
because of how dry it is and has been.
It is quite dusty and dry...but I won't complain about the lack of
mosquitos...and also won't skimp on the mosquito netting or bug spray. It's delightfully cool with a wonderful
breeze. This moment is so incredibly
peaceful.
My favorite moment of the day: Michelle, Alice, Rachel and I
went for a walk off of MPP grounds. We
very quickly ran into a group of children carrying water in dirty plastic,
leaking containers. Two of the children
were riding a donkey, also carrying water, which was leaking as they made their
way down the dusty road. The children
were quite intrigued by us and began following and posing as we took pictures
of the countryside and animals. As they
slowly got up the courage (and perhaps we did, too), they began gesticulating
and talking rapidly in Creole. After
much back and forth and utter lack of communication, we realized they were
asking us if we had a ball, and they wanted us to play soccer with them.
"Blan!
Blan!" they called us to get our attention, wanting to see our
cameras, and Michelle's hat, and Alice's hand sanitizer hanging off her
backpack. Michelle, Alice, and Rachel
were able to come up with an impressive amount of French to help us
through. I, helpfully, remembered more
Spanish than I have recalled since college and tried those words with a little
ASL thrown in for good measure...all of which helped me with absolutely
nothing. Turns out Spanish and Haitian
Creole are not at all similar. Shocking,
right?
They asked us for money -- "one dollar?" One particularly savvy little guy
communicated very effectively for a picture with Michelle...and then told her to give him $1.00 for the picture. When we
were finally moving away, they called after us, "Blan! Blan!," trying so hard to
communicate. Michelle, miraculously,
managed to understand that they wanted
us to meet them at 3PM tomorrow, somewhere around the bend in the road ahead of
us, for a soccer match.
I'm struck again with this sense of contradiction -- it is
both beautiful and complicated to see how incredibly beautiful the people and
the children are. Driving up to MPP
today, we passed town after town of people walking to and from church in their
Sunday best. The girls and women were in
beautiful bright, white dresses and the men and boys in pressed shirts and
pants looking so very handsome as they carried their Bibles and walked along
the rubble and trash on the side of the road.
The contrast of the crisp white dresses surrounded by the dust and
rubble and trash is startling - and yet the simple beauty of it made me smile.
The ride to Hinche was incredible. I was in the back of a van...facing
sideways...for three hours...with 8 people (plus the driver and the translator
in front = 10)...over roads in various versions of paved. The switchbacks going over the mountain made
some folks feel a little ill, even in spite of the Dramamine we all took before
we left. The main rule of the road seems
to be "honk, then go for it." However,
the view was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, but beautiful in a complicated way --
beautiful in that you are high up, looking out at mountains and villages, and
more mountains. Someone in the van
described it as being a "moonscape" -- the deforestation and
devastation is overwhelming and so apparent. I'm having a hard time finding words to
describe this.
For a short while on the ride in, I was moved almost to the
point of tears as I was overcome with a sense of my privilege - and guilt.
How is it that I have lived on this planet for 29 years and never
had the experience of seeing, feeling, being in the way that so many people in
our world live their entire lives? In
this moment now, I feel so incredibly privileged and amazed to be here. Perhaps, the people who do not have the
privilege of having our eyes opened, our visions of the world shattered, and
the opportunity to build it anew...perhaps it is those people who experience a
true emotional and spiritual poverty. I
cannot name what I am seeing here, but this culture and these people have an
abundance of emotional resilience and spiritual wealth, for sure. The world as I am seeing it feels more
accurate, and painful, and beautiful than I ever could have imagined. There is a quote by Mary Oliver that comes to
mind: "This is the world. I am not in it. It is beautiful."
I wrote last night that I was working out what my intention
is in being here -- and it is so clear to me now. I am here to be present, and to witness the
joy and the suffering, the hope and the transformation, the resilience and the
pain. In the van today, I felt that I
could not open my eyes wide enough to soak it all in. By the time we arrived, I had reached a point
of saturation such that I could not absorb any more. My senses feel physically full, if there is
such a thing. And what a blessing that
is.
More thoughts on Day 2 to (hopefully!) come tomorrow from Kevin, Gwynn, and Laura!
Even the longest
journey begins with just one step.
Lao Tzu
Today, after a long and twisted trip through the mountains,
we've arrived at our destination. We are just outside of the town of Hinche (
ench) in the mid-plateau region. For the rest of this week, we will be staying
here at Lakay, the training center for our partner organization, MPP ( Papaye
Peasent Movement). (I'm sure you'll be
hearing much more about MPP. I think
I'll urge my very knowledgeable co-leader, Robert Ehler, to write a piece about
MPP's organization and the visionary work they do here. That is not my topic
tonight. )
Tonight I am typing while out on the porch of the house at
La Kay in the peaceful soft 70 degree air, listening to the crickets. I am sitting just outside the front door of
the house. And I am thinking about thresholds.
We, as a group, crossed a threshold today-we left the city
of Port au Prince and drove to the countryside. We've literally crossed the
threshold into the lovely, though simple, and certainly rustic, house where we
are now staying. The same house in which
I've stayed twice before. We are also crossing a threshold into new perspectives
on the world.
We opened the door to this experience when we made the
decision to participate on this trip. It
requires a conscious choice to open a door to change in our lives. Poised at the threshold, we needed to set
other things aside, to let go. We needed
to put down the cell phone to hold the doorhandle. We put aside work and walked out our office
doors and closed them behind. We put
down some of our ways of thinking, judging, categorizing, to open our minds to
new perspectives. Only by letting go can we enter into the new with a full
awareness.
There is a satisfaction for me stepping into this place
again. I've had happy and meaningful experiences here in the past. This feels a little like visiting a favorite family
cabin in the woods again after two years.
The house at LaKay, feels comfortably familiar now. Three years ago, when
I first came as a participant on a UUCSJ Haiti Journey, this building seemed strange,
oddly bare and a little uncomfortable. I
am aware that it may feel strange for some of our group, though their first
response has been surprisingly positive. Perhaps my tales of tarantulas and cold trickles
for showers scared them enough that the reality looked pretty good by contrast
to their imaginings!
There are surprises whenever one steps over a threshold. And although this place has become more familiar
to me now, there are still surprises.
Passing through Hinche, I was surprised, and delighted, to see how
lively the streets of town were today. Never having visited Hinche on a weekend day,
I had not experienced the market so alive with crowds, the music playing and the
motorcycles sailing recklessly down crowded streets. ( Did you know that four
people fit on a motorcycle?) The people congregating to talk and laugh were
dressed in Sunday's best- the little girls in their flouncy white or pink
dresses, ribbons in their hair, all look as if they are celebrating their First
Communion! This town's dusty, ramshackle
streets were depressing and troubling to me the first time I visited three
years ago. On today's drive through it
felt festive, vibrant and alive.
I'm also surprised by how at ease and happy I am to be with people
I remember from previous trips, like Mayheeda and Juliet, our translators; and
Mocsin, one of the MPP members who has welcomed us here. And some improvements have been made to the
house- including closets in the rooms and a railing on the stairs. Each a pleasant surprise.
Stepping into a new place always leads to change- intended
and also unpredictable changes. Coming to this place in the past has opened my
heart once again and changed my vision of the world. Through my experiences of
Haiti I feel as if I am forming a new version of myself, a person who sees the
world in a larger perspective. I hope that I am growing a self who is more
aware, and more able to make connections with people whose lives are so different
from my own, and yet not so different at all.
We've stepped through the door now into our new- temporary-
home. This step will change our
surroundings, and change us in ways we can't yet know. I wonder what this
journey will be for the others in our group, for whom it is their first? I wonder what this third trip here will be
for me? What will be most beautiful,
most challenging, most moving on this trip?
We can't possibly predict all that will happen when we cross a
threshold. The excitement of this
threshold crossing is in the not-knowing.
Thanks to Rob for the map, and to Kevin for the photo
We made it! After
waking VERY early this morning, driving to church, driving to the airport,
flying to Miami, hanging out in the Miami airport for a bit, and then flying to
Haiti...we really did make it. I have to
say that, as long as the trip was, it was also surprisingly painless and full
of good conversation and company. The
people on this trip are just incredibly fantastic. What an amazing group of thoughtful,
experienced, knowledgeable and compassionate people.
I am realizing as I am starting to write this and talking to
Michelle - my roommate for this evening -- that it is going to be both very
challenging and very wonderful to attempt to blog about this experience. This experience is so very "big"
and almost overwhelming (for me), it's hard to put words to the thoughts and
feelings that arise. This is not at ALL
negative, but as a thoughtful, contemplative person who likes to take her time
in thinking, discussing, and processing, it's a lot to put together all at
once. I apologize, then, if this seems
disjointed - know that it is only because I can't find a way (yet) to put it
all together into a coherent picture.
I knew before I left that I had no framework for beginning
to imagine what I would be experiencing -- and that is exactly the
challenge. It feels a bit like taking
the 1,000 piece puzzle of the world you have pieced together through 29 years
of experience, and mixing it all up only to realize that an entirely different
picture will emerge when you put it together again.
I had an amazing moment on the plane from Miami to
Port-au-Prince. I had been listening to
my music shuffled on my phone -- a wide selection of everything from Turkish
hip-hop, to Pink, to the Indigo Girls. I spent most of the plane ride reading (Mountains
Beyond Mountains is HIGHLY recommended -- Rae, Liz and I are all reading it
currently and are so inspired!), but as we were just beginning to be able to
see land and come down from the clouds, I looked out the window at this
incredible view just as "Blue Boat Home" by Peter Mayer began to
play. In that moment, I was struck by how incredibly small
I am, in spite of how Very Important it all feels in the day-to-day. I was also struck simultaneously in an
overwhelming way with how vast, beautiful, hopeful - and also devastating,
and devastated -- our world can be.
"The wide universe is the ocean I travel/And the Earth
is my blue boat home."
******
Arriving in Haiti, we waited for quite a long time to get
through customs. As opposed to the
orderly lines and rules of the Washington, DC and Miami, we were herded into
some semblance of a....well a herd. A
nice little clump, that then bottle-necked into a tiny little
hallway-type-thing where the Passport Stamping Man, who was Very Serious about
his passport stamping and piece-of-paper-giving stamped the passport and sent
us on to the next line. It was
interesting to talk to other people arriving in Haiti -- lots of church groups
coming to build churches. I'm still
trying to work out how I feel about this.
In talking with Liz, I said that I question what their intention is in
coming -- although I acknowledge and completely own that this may sound judgmental.
Liz, in her wisdom, said, "I'm still trying to work out exactly
what my intention is." And I think that's right, too. For me, right now, it's more of a feeling than an actual thing I can put words to, but I hope to come to an answer.
The really excellent part of the long customs line was that
it enabled the group from First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (FUCB) to catch
up with us Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia (UUCC) folks, so we
were all able to navigate the remainder of the airport together.
And what a challenge that was. I'm still not entirely sure what happened - I
just know that I was very grateful for Carla, and for Kevin, and for the fact
that all of us -- and miraculously all of our luggage -- ended up in a van
(with the luggage balanced precariously on top).
The drive to our hotel is difficult for me to find words to
describe -- we are driving out of Port-au-Prince tomorrow and to Hinche, and
I'm hoping I find some clarification, or at least some words, then. Things I saw:
A chicken.
Lots of walls, in various states of construction and
disarray, partitioning off little squares of land. Some of these little squares consisted only
of rubble. Some had children playing
soccer. Some had a make-shift tent
constructed. Many we couldn't see
inside. The tops of some of the walls
were covered in spirals of barbed wire.
We passed a school, with Mickey Mouse painted on the wall
outside. Mickey is an eternal and
universal favorite, no?
A beautifully dressed family, with a young woman walking
across the rubble in the road in white heels.
A small boy playing with a group of children, wearing only a
t-shirt and blue underwear.
People selling onions.
Really unclear rules of the road, and a car that was either really close to us, or we were really close to it.
The hotel, though, is really quite gorgeous. I would have had no idea we were turning into
such a beautiful place from the road. After
some time to settle into our rooms, Michelle and I had a long conversation on
the porch (with a chatty kitty who joined us!) about everything from learning
to trust your intuition, to ecofeminism to psychologies of liberation...and
then joined the group for a delicious dinner and wonderful conversation.
Now, I have just learned the intense concentration it takes
when brushing your teeth to NOT reach for the tap, and instead to use your
bottled water to rinse your toothbrush and your mouth (it's harder than you
think!). It's 9:21 in Port-au-Prince,
and this traveler is ready for sleep.
I find myself returning to the words from "Blue Boat Home:"
