Day 7: Post from Carla

Carla's thoughts on day 7:

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

The Haiti Travelers