Remembering Haiti

Every day, I think of the people we met in Haiti. I think of the rain and the misery that follows. I think of the mosquitoes and the thousands who don’t have DEET. I think of Markenley Edouard and wonder if he’s safe and fed and dry and loved. I think of Mirdrede and her new baby and the challenges they’ll face. I think of the women and children and disabled and elderly who are vulnerable to sexual violence when they go to the latrines or are eyed by evil. I think of the government that can’t win for losing and has learned to prosper only through its capacity for corruption. I think of the little girl at Notre Dame Orphanage in Carrefour who is listless and wasted away with malaria and whose life will likely end without clear meaning. I think about the members of our team, who went from being strangers to family in a week, and wonder how they’re faring now that they’re back in what we once thought was the “real” world. I think about God and His love for each of us and wonder why so much was given to me and how I can best honor Him with that ridiculous abundance.

I watched “We Are The World” for the first time last week and cried all the way through it. I felt frantic to pack my bags and return to a place that is unsafe, especially for women, to sleep on the ground and wear the same clothes three days in a row and eat little more than protein bars in the blazing heat. I want to be among them. I want them to see us among them, to know that God has sent us, and that they are far from alone. I want to teach them something productive that will save their children’s lives and spirits.

I’m not going back to Haiti right away, because of the rise in sexual violence and kidnappings, and that reality that I’ll be aching from afar just about reduces me to depression. I want to be in that truck, racing along that pot-holed road, heading to Ms Evelyn and her kids, so that I can help them smile and function and then, as soon as I can convince someone to accompany me, I want to go outside her compound and find Markenley and his family. I need to see whether he’s in a tent or a tarp and whether his mother and sister are healthy and if they have protection from predators. He haunts my dreams and I want him to know there is a lady in America who cannot and will not forget him, even though that seems more than a bit crazy. He is 10 and needs to know that, in an impossibly expansive world of millions, he is the one I think of when my eyes open each morning.

Jim and I are throwing ourselves into Portlight Strategies’ initiative to convert former shipping containers into housing in Haiti (http://portlight.org/). The specifics are taking shape and soon funds will be raised and a prototype built. I hope that, when the first step is taken by a formerly homeless Haitian into their new, secure home, I can be there to capture the laughter.

I wonder if I’ll be able to hear theirs above my own.