Safe in God's Will

There is no safe place.

Many would say Haiti is one of the least safe places in the world.

There are myriad risks here, from traffic to unclean water to manifestations: protests when citizens create roadblocks and throw rocks, to be discouraged by police forces with tear gas and rifles.

One Tuesday last month the National Road in front of our school hosted such a manifestation.

By noon students were leaving in droves, anxious parents and caregivers leading their charges away to avoid the risks of rocks and gas.

Ti Goave has been troubled by riots like this in the past month. Students from the lycee, the public high school, are protesting for the lack of teachers. The teachers are striking for they have not been paid for a questionably long time. Town’s folk demand electricity after a week of no power. Thus far the manifestations have not succeeded in reopening the lycee or paying salaries, but they have disrupted school for everyone, and turn on some switches.

On this particular Tuesday our second-grade class went down to Recreation as scheduled at 11:30, but was called into the kitchen after just ten minutes so students could eat something before departure. (Usually they are dismissed at 2:00.) Once in the kitchen excitement matured into minor frenzy which would increase to chaos with the afternoon.

In the five minutes preceding, I had been attempting to direct exercise when we were interrupted by our sixteen year old custodian Jonas.

 “We have gas there! Get away from the windows!”

He swung his arm toward the far wall where rows of open-window blocks let in feeble light and air. On that side of the school building there is nothing but an empty lot riddled with banana trees and various stubby growth. The street is perhaps a couple hundred feet away, for the Recreation room, kitchen, office, and bathrooms are set at the back of the building, after all of the classrooms.

I looked out the windows and neither saw nor smelled any foreboding vapors, and shook my head.

“Thank you, for inciting a panic,” I said to myself, and called the students to order, arranging them on the other side of the room and continuing to lead exercises. Our security guard and substitute Recreation teacher Michelet had disappeared to the almost immediately after our entry, so I had stepped in.

“Make two lines,” I said, spacing out students so they could move without hitting one another. We were just getting into twists to practice counting by three, when the group began to flow away from me, pushing each other out of the doorway.

“Go to eat!” someone said, I think it was Madame Rose, sticking her head round the door.

I sighed but followed the surge and called again for order.

There was an attempt to storm the kitchen and be served, but I called for return to the hallway to wash hands. We always wash our hands before we eat.

A passable line was formed and the class began to wash, but those waiting kept turning to look down the hall and out the front doors. This caused backups as the line wouldn’t move forward.

“Turn around, be calm,” I kept repeating. (I would speak less and less Creole as the afternoon progressed.)

The words were not as important as the tone of voice, as the hands that turned around writhing bodies and directed them forward, one by one, to wash their hands and enter the kitchen as usual. “Let’s keep routine,” I told myself, paying little attention to what kerfuffle was occurring at the end of the hallway.

With some compliance the children washed their hands, filed into the kitchen, received their food, and then marched up the stairs.

In the classroom everyone ate at their place, most wearing their backpacks, knowing they might be called to go at any moment. I knew that, too, but didn’t acknowledge it.

“Don’t eat too fast,” I said from my station at the front. “Pa mange two rapide. Mange normal.”

As students finished I collected their plates at the front. Then we gathered our bags and headed downstairs, the children combining in Madame Patricia’s five-year old classroom.

The low point of the day was when I was left in charge of thirty-odd children crammed into the office.

I had been surveying Madame Samanne’s classroom, wishing to engage the wild and leaderless students but not knowing how to go about it. So I continued to stand, half inside the classroom and half out, watching the hallway.

Suddenly there were several loud pops, and staff began to sprint down the hall. Madame Samanne lunged inside, Madame Valerie bolted from the doorway she’d been guarding, Madame Rose and Jonas burst inside from their outside post. There were cries of “Gas! Gas!”

A flood commenced from classrooms and courtyard to office.

I recognized that I was still standing, that no noxious fumes had knocked me over or assaulted my eyes. There were no masked police or sign-carrying protesters surging through the doors from the street.

Thus I left my own post and began my almost leisurely way down the hall after the crowd. The teachers had shunted students into the office, deeming it the most secure place in the school, although even there the windows are open blocks that permit constant outdoor air and sunshine to enter. If there were truly gas spoiling the area, the office would be as hazardous as any other room. There was no safe place.

As I walked, I pulled up the collar of my teacher’s polo to cover my nose.

“Cover your mouth, cover your nose,” I began to repeat, approaching the office. “Kouvri bouch, kouvri nè.”

Madame Patricia saw me from her stance in the doorway. Her troubled face smoothed a bit at this practical action. She began to repeat my direction, pulling up her own collar.

The word spread inside and soon all the teachers were instructing the mingled students to cover their faces, tugging orange tee shirts from waistbands and lifting them up over noses and mouths.

Our office is perhaps 8 by 12 feet, comfortable enough for the bookshelves, cabinetry, desk and benches, and various boxes and articles, along with a few staff and odd students. It was not designed as a shelter for 30 persons.

And there we were.

The teachers at first huddled near the door, which remained open, continuing to usher in the odd student, Samanne and Valerie herding the three-year olds into the adjoining bathroom.

The students were mixed, ages four to seven crowded together on benches, the desk chair, standing or leaning on the walls. Only half of them had their backpacks.

The three-year olds were then sitting on the edge of the tiled shower stall, or jumping around on the tiled floor, as vivacious or silent as they always were.

After a few minutes, teachers began trickling away. We’d been united in our flight from potential harm, but as the time passed without those noxious fumes, the teachers became bold enough to leave. All of them have families. All our teachers save Valerie have children of their own. And most take moto taxis home. I understood their desire to leave—the advisability of their leaving.

That didn’t leave me happy about their departure.

For there I stood, the sole adult in a room packed with young children, some of them only three years old, attending for sounds of sirens, horns, gas canisters popping, or Michelet calling someone’s name to signal a guardian’s arrival.

As the minutes passed the noise inside increased. Most children were talking, chatting, laughing, pushing, whining, searching for amusement in that stuffy room.

I called for silence. It was predictably ineffectual.

I picked up the Bible, what I’d done earlier in Madame Patricia’s classroom where second grade mingled with her kindergarten class. I’d commenced the story of Noah, projecting my already tired voice to stumble through the Creole as I half-regarded the book and half-regarded the students.

In the classroom the story had been mostly well-received, and the noise level and frenzied frolicking had decreased.

There, in the office, my attempt at entertainment was unsuccessful. I thought of The Book Thief, and wished I could comfort a roomful by the sound of my voice telling a tale.

The three-year olds kept jumping. Kids kept pushing and talking and elbowing one another.

After perhaps 15 minutes, a first grader spoke up.

“M’ap chante, Madame Rachelle,” she whispered to my ear. “I’m going to sing.”

“Ok, go ahead,” I nodded, putting the Bible back down on the desk.

I had refrained from singing earlier because I’d guessed the noise level in response would be even higher than before, as children who love to sing and dance would commence singing at the top of their lungs. Or shouting the lyrics.

The first grader began to sing one of the most popular songs at school: He’s got the whole world in his hands. Il tient le monde entier dans ses mains.

Her voice was immediately joined by several others, and a rousing chorus began. We pounded through one verse before word came in that the greatest risk had passed and we ought to relocate across the hall in the Recreation room to give the kids some more space.

Thirty minutes later we’d be back in the office, although this time only myself and a handful of students remained. All other students had been collected by guardians who took firm hold of the children’s hands and rapidly retreated back through the gate.

There had been another call of close proximity gas, and the air was indeed a bit foul. My eyes were pricking, so I lowered sunglasses onto my face and pulled up the little ones’ tee shirts to mask their mouths and noses again.

Outside the office windows is a beaten path alley where there are perpetually parked and broken cars rusting in the sun. Sometimes it seems a mechanic is there, and there’s light foot traffic, but the route is small and unimportant. Crowds and gas had no place down that way.

I looked around the small office space, noting the heavy iron doors that could slam into the concrete walls and lock us in here or the bathroom. In the U.S. that bathroom would probably be the allotted lockdown space, or the tornado shelter: the most enclosed space in the building where we could hunker down and bar the door. But even there the open window blocks break up the thick wall and ventilated between the bathroom’s interior and the hallway. There is no safe place.

That Tuesday school day finally finished as the last child was collected and we drove home, weary with tension and dust. The car we use is a new model, barely two years old with smooth gears, electric tinted windows and locking doors. Inside we are sealed from dust, scents, and exposure. It’s almost a safe place.

But car accidents are fast. Motos zip up and down the streets on whichever side they please. Pedestrians, dogs and goats crisscross the way. Potholes and speed bumps disrupt the pavement and huge loaded trucks and speeding Papadap vans roar along National Road on their way to Port au Prince. Venders’ stalls stretch from the road side. Driving involves intense concentration: one palm ready on the horn, eyes darting from side mirror to rearview to far side and back again, squinting through the sun and swerving around whatever dog, goat, van, wheelbarrow or trash pile is blocking the road.

No, the car is not a safe place. Beverly and I prefer walking when we can rather than deal with the swerving, honking, avoiding, dust-rousing and street parking that driving entails. On our own two feet there are narrow paths to walk, sunshine and trees to enjoy, and community members to greet. We choose the pace and worry only for ourselves, not an expensive machin or another’s livelihood—or life.

No one would say that the roads are safe.

Petit Goave is a safe town. It’s well maintained and quite impressively clean. There are the blessed drainage ditches that aided so much during the hurricane. There are waste baskets posted on some corners and certain fields unofficially designated as dump zones. Lush green and brilliant flowers border and adorn us here.

Many people in the community know us, from church, school, or frequent sightings. We walk paths, sidewalks, and main roads. We buy local and always greet with a smile. To many we are no longer an anomaly but an amusing pair of friendly local faces.

Most times we are quite comfortable in our excursions, our purposeful forays to our ocean-side retreat, the copy shop, or home from school.

While Beverly was gone, at home with her ailing husband from mid December until early February, I walked little. Most of my housemates don’t care much for walking, and it’s inadvisable for me to go alone. In our pair there is security; on my own there is invitation.

So two afternoons in a row I asked Jonas to accompany me on the walk to the copy shop. This little back-alley shop is directly across from our church, perhaps a half-mile from the house, easily accessible by main roads.

“You want to go this way? You want to see house Ann?” Jonas asked as we turned up the perpendicular street that should lead us straight to the copy-shop street. It is paved and interrupted on both sides by little stalls, driveways, and unexplained holes.

He gestured to a narrow beaten path veering down from the road on the right side, traversing through a bank of trash and winding out of sight among the trees.

I’d seen people using it but never thought to take that route.

“Yes, okay, but I don’t know the way,” I said.

So I tailed after Jonas down this footpath, stepping over the litter of bottles, cans, water saches and wires. We twisted down to walk beneath sunbeams and tree-limbs, the path widening, passing half-finished walls and many contented pigs. Then the path forked, the right side diverging to a cluster of houses and possibly abandoned structures. On the left it hugged a wall, turning a corner out of sight. But in the open space I could see a distant high wall and the mountainous horizon. As we turned that corner the view opened and it was lovely: sunlight and shade and green foliage.

I liked taking this new way with Jonas, merging from footpath to dirt road, passing beneath tree limbs, immersed in the thick of local terrain.

Jonas showed me his school and introduced me to the director seated at the office door. I shook my head at the expected cries of “Blan! Blan!” from children. At the end of the road we emerged onto the copy-shop street, stepping back onto cobbles, and went about our business.

The next day we walked that way again, but diverged to stop at Ann’s house.

At a corner before the house a cluster of young boys lounged, and were particular amused to spot a blan. Jonas summoned me inside the house after him as their calls continued.

I was glad to duck through the hanging clothes, pass the ladies and children sitting there, and turn out of sight in the next room where Jonas met Ann’s tailor husband.

But as I stood there, shadowed, one of the young ones approached the house and tried to enter.

The ladies shooed him off. I wondered whether his manman had ever taught him manners. I wondered if he had a manman.

When we emerged from the house the clump called louder and louder.

In response, Jonas swung his legs in his usual swagger and cranked up the volume on the speaker he was carrying. The degrading voices were drowned under Alicia Keys passionate “This Girl is on Fire.”

Jonas and I laughed and continued, the prickling discomfort in my palms and heart lessening every step we took away from that corner. I thanked God for Jonas, thanked Jonas for being security for me, and wondered if I’d ever be able to go out on my own. Just when it seems the community is acceptant and affable—there’s another someone, usually group of someones, who crush the budding sense of comfort.

The streets are not safe.

So we are usually grateful to get off the streets, returning to Pastor’s house, our house. This large concrete house firmly enclosed by high wall topped with wire, gated, and patrolled by dogs. Inside the windows are barred and screened and lights brighten the darkness.

The house has always felt a safe place.

But even here, even from my favorite rooftop post, threats are possible.

I first had this inkling during the hurricane, when Matthew knocked on every door and window, huffed and puffed in rage when we wouldn’t admit him. The bars on the windows prevented broken branches entering, and the lack of glass sheltered us from broken glass. However leaves and water blew through those screened and barred windows. In my bedroom the bed sets between two windows, and usually I fight to feel the entering breeze. While Matthew blew outside, I wrapped myself in two sheets topped with a towel and curled my feet away from trespassing rain.

There was no total refuge from wind, water, or darkness inside the house.

Last week I sat on the roof with three visitors and Madame Beverly just before dusk. The family was all at Tuesday night church service, leaving us five at the house. The gate was closed save for a few inches where it was sticking: we had given up trying to seal it and just shrugged for the best.

A knock came at the gate. Beverly and I called out.

“Bonswa—ki es? Who’s there?”

Beverly heard an answering male name and thought he was delivering bread. She set off to collect the bread while the rest of us remained on the roof.

I perched on my usual concrete slab and waited for her to appear in the courtyard below. In the crack of the gate I could see a figure.

Beverly began crossing the cement yard when suddenly Blackie, the long-legged dog named for his color came bounding out and cut off her step.

“Oh, Blackie!” she called. “Wait! There’s a dog out—chyen!”

The figure hastily backed out through the gate, echoing her warning of chyen dog.

I watched from above as Beverly turned her step, calling after Blackie to get back.

A few minutes later she returned to the roof, shaking her head.

“I don’t know who that is,” she said, looking down at the almost-shut gate. “I didn’t like that he started to let himself in.”

Down in the courtyard, now dusky and rife with shadows, Blackie was trotting about and sniffing contentedly.

“That man, he started to come in before I got to the gate. And then Blackie came out right in front of me!”

We all stopped to listen to the man on the other side of the gate. There was an exchange. He entreated entry to leave something for Pastor. We told him he had to wait, that Pastor was coming.

He offered to leave the something with us and be on his way. I stood up to go down to collect it. Beverly said no.

“I don’t know who he is. I don’t let people in that I don’t know.”

I called down again to this figure at the gate, who was now afraid to enter and face a possibly hostile dog.

“Ou bezwen tale pou Paste! You have to wait for Pastor ! »

He was not pleased but Beverly stood her ground.

“I bolted all the doors downstairs,” she said. “He’s not getting in.” After a few minutes the figure turned away and walked up the street with what sounded to be words of discontent.

By then the courtyard was all but black, and the roof deeply shadowed.

“I believe God brought out Blackie at just the right time,” Beverly said from her seat on the concrete.

Blackie had been tied up behind the house with the other two dogs. They are only released at night when the house is shut up or when everyone is gone. That night he slipped out of his collar and loped happily free. His loping cut off Beverly’s stride to the gate, the uncloseable gate through which a stranger was entering.

We continued talking on the roof of other things, watching stars appear in their twinkling glory. But from my regular perch I continued to survey the gate and courtyard below, and noted the sinister obscurity of the night shadows in which I normally reveled. The soft, restful darkness could be hiding anyone.

We took comfort in our high walls topped with wire. In our watchdog-patrolled courtyard. In our barred iron doors. In our placement on the top of the house. In our position of respect in the community.

Mostly we took comfort from Jesus. From the All Mighty. From His angels who we knew stood on those razor wired walls. Who patrolled the courtyard and the street and the skies. Who crossed swords over doorways and sat beside us under the stars.

When the family came back from church we told them about the gate not closing and our mysterious visitor. We shared his name, and Pastor appeared to recognize it. He considered it possible such a person, an acquaintance from the mountain, did indeed come looking for him. He also understood Beverly’s decision to refuse entry to a stranger.

With their arrival the gate was closed firmly, with guidance on how it could be fitted (stubbornly) in place and padlocked; the generator was cranked and lights blazed forth from the windows. The house was full of voices, laughter, and light once again.

I went to bed without fear of the shadows.

Today there were manifestations again. Beverly marks this as her first manifestation experience at school. It was certainly up close and personal: directly in front of our building there were roadblocks, rocks and angry protestors.

There was police retaliation. There were gas and firearms.

Parents began to arrive with the restless crowds around 11:30 and pulled students hurriedly through the gate.

Like the last time, I was not afraid. I was frustrated this was happening again, but more determined than ever to not let this time be wasted. With Beverly there, surveying and organizing, responding as a long-time emergency-trained United States teacher would, with reason and calm and clear directions, the entire school was less frenzied.

(And perhaps the experience of having been through all this before…)

After Recreation ended for our class at noon, students lined up to wash hands, collected their food, and returned to class. I entered the room to quiet eating, everyone seated in place, some already wearing their backpacks for the inevitable dismissal.

But I didn’t accept the wide-eyed fear on some faces.

I set down my own plate of food and addressed those nineteen second graders, and my co-teacher.

“Class, don’t be afraid. We don’t have to be afraid. God is with us. He is for us.”

I picked up one of our new Bibles, a Creole New Testament that each child will be responsible for and practice reading.  I turned to Matthew 6:25 and started reading, stumbling over the first few verses.

“Look at the birds of the air; gade zwazo k’ap vole nan syel la they do no sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Eske nou pa vo pi plis pase zwazo yo?”

My co-teacher, Madame Alice, sat on the back desk and clucked along with the reading. At verse 34 I closed the Bible.

“Do not worry about tomorrow, pa chaje tèt nou pou denmen…”

“Class, God does not want us to be afraid. Satan wants us to be afraid. He wants us to be discouraged, to stop learning. Do we want to make Satan happy? Nou vle bay Satan plezi?”

“No,” everyone agreed.

“Okay, so we will not be scared. We will continue. We will keep learning.”

There were then a few loud pops from outside. I recognized the sound of gas being thrown—again.

Beverly called up and then appeared in the doorway.

“Get your stuff and go downstairs. And pray,” she said in the perfect Director voice: authoritative and rational.

Students gathered their bags and plates and filed down the stairs to the Recreation room. Madame Alice and I took a few extra minutes to gather up our own things and the materials intended for the afternoon lesson.

When I arrived down in the Recreation room students were milling. Some were sitting, some standing, some wandering slowly, some kneeling. I was giving directions to sit down in silence when one told me, “Shh. We’re praying.”

Beverly had gone from class to class instructing teachers and students to pray. Everyone had heeded, and in that open space with balls piled in a corner, our seven-year old students were talking to God on their knees, asking safety for our school.

Every morning we pray protection for our school, for the building and all the members. We pray for blessing on the food preparation and consumption, for clean water, for guard against malady and contagion, for encouragement and overflowing love and joy.

Every evening in family service we pray protection for the house, for the courtyard and all the members. We pray for angels on the walls, peaceful rest, and God’s guidance. We pray safe travels on these unsafe roads. We pray encouragement for easily overwhelming circumstances.

And everywhere we go we know we face uncertainty. We know there is no assurance of preservation. There is no safe place. Nowhere the evil or harm of the world cannot touch us.

But we know with all certainty, with all assurance, with all faith, that we are preserved in God’s love.

Last week we were blessed to attend seminars featuring American guests: three godly men who work to provide Christian literature to Haitian people in their native language.

One of the speakers, gifted with great wisdom, knowledge of history and tradition and clearly explained theology, shared this thought.

“I believe the only safe place to be in the world is in the middle of God’s will.”

There is no safe place in this world. From the quiet tree-lined streets of small-town New Hampshire where we don’t lock our doors, to Daejeon, Korea, where at any time of day or night I walked alone without fear, to Ti Goave, Haiti, where we are continuously more respected in the small community—in all of these places there are risks. There are reckless drivers, foul minds, freak accidents, and illnesses.

There is no safe place.

But we have this blessed assurance that Jesus is ours, that God goes before us and sets His angels around us, from the time we rise in the morning to the time we lay down our heads at night. He watches out for us and has a Master Plan.

We are safe in God’s will, knowing that while we are doing His work He will preserve us, on unpredictable streets and through all rock-throwing manifestations.

Maybe there is no safe place. But we need not fear. Nou pa bezwen pè. Nou p’ap janm bezwen pè. He is with us.

Psaume 23 : Cantique de David.

L’Eternel est mon berger: je ne manquerai de rien.
² Il me fait reposer dans de verts pâturages,
Il me dirige près des eaux paisibles.
³ Il restaure mon âme,
Il me conduit dans les sentiers de la justice,
A cause de son nom.
⁴ Quand je marche dans la vallée de l’ombre de la mort,
Je ne crains aucun mal, car tu es avec moi:
Ta houlette et ton bâton me rassurent.
⁵ Tu dresses devant moi une table,
En face de mes adversaires;
Tu oins d’huile ma tête,
Et ma coupe déborde.
⁶ Oui, le bonheur et la grâce m’accompagneront
Tous les jours de ma vie,
Et j’habiterai dans la maison de l’Eternel
Jusqu’à la fin de mes jours.

~La Bible : Nouvelle Edition de Genève

Psalm 23: A Psalm of David.

23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.

³     He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
    for his name's sake.

⁴ Even though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death,
    I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

⁵ You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

~The Bible: English Standard Version

"Whom Shall I Fear?" Chris Tomlin, Burning Lights, 2013.