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)
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| At the market alongside the road on our trip from Port-au-Prince to MPP |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| At the tire garden. It was harder to dig those holes than it may look! |
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| All of us! We sure look happy for people waiting to scoop goat poop, don't we? |
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| The happy goat poop scoopers, scooping goat manure into holes for soursop trees to be planted |
<3
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