Angry: Life's Not Fair

You get angry here.

Angry at the injustice. Angry at the absurdity. Angry at the sheer preventability of the tragedy.

Today a child was left at school. Just before 3:00 we took him home with us, as we are wont to do with the odd left-behind student.

Phone calls went unanswered. The student remained. For three and a half hours.

No one had come looking for him. No one had tried to get word to us. No one, it sounded, had considered the emotional trauma this six-year old would experience being three-hours abandoned.

Beverly granted the parents grace. Tomorrow they should pay 25 Haitian dollars, or 100 gourdes, approximately 80 cents on the U.S. dollar, or else their son cannot attend school. By the 30-minute tardy rate, they ought to pay 50 dollars; by rights they should be on a strike list so if they are tardy again their son loses his place at school. There is always another child to fill a vacancy.

By rights their son ought to make them set around for him for three hours, uncertain of his return time.

Rights are unfulfilled. Justice is unserved. Life’s not fair. We knew that already. I remember hearing those words at a very young age. Probably I’d complained that Mom’s rules were unfair as her instruction disagreed with my own wants, and she replied with the harsh truth: Life’s not fair. It never has been and it never will be.

But for some, life seems more unfair here. Life seems intolerably unfair. Life is outright impossible.

You get angry here. Angry when you see kids desperate for food. Wandering, scavenging, asking strangers for handouts.

As we walked down the road homeward a few weekends ago, a young boy kept stride. He was skinny, tall and wide-eyed and serious.

“Bonswa,” he said, “Good afternoon.”

We returned his greeting.

“Where are you going?” he asked.
“We’re going home.”

“Where do you live?”

“We live here,” we said, gesturing down the street to our gate.

“Can I come home with you?” he asked, fixing those wide eyes on us.

We laughed to prevent our hearts from cracking. “No,” I said. “It’s our home, not yours.”

He asked for gum. We had none. Then he asked for a lollipop. We had none. Then he asked for money.

“Why do you want money?” we asked in return.

“I want to buy food,” he said, nodding towards the end of the road, to the Beach restaurant-bar. He was heading that way in hopes of getting food.

That’s when we told him about where we lived, asked if he knew who lived in that big house by the ocean, if he knew of Madame Rose. He didn’t. So we got permission and invited him inside, brought him back to the kitchen. Beverly went inside and dished him out a large portion of rice and beans and sauce.

He was invited to come back every Sunday afternoon to eat.

Later we found out he lives in another neighborhood. He’d just been wandering, scavenging.

The next week we were befriended by some other bold young boys at our quiet place. We were seated on the ledge over the ocean, soaking in sunshine and wind, when two boys accosted us, clambering up the wall in a very monkey-like fashion. They asked for money, for food, then begun asking for everything they could see: our sandals, our watches, Beverly’s wedding ring, my phone. We said no to all these entreaties, and rather than becoming angry, they took it in good humor. Soon we were on comfortable terms, laughing, singing, playing, and steadily joined by more boys from the beach.

Before departure there were seven boys on the ledge with us, teaching us how to make a flattened bottle cap spin on a string, practicing English phrases, and singing “Deep and Wide” in Creole (Fon e Laj.)

We prayed together in a tight circle.

As three of them walked us out, Beverly offered a drink from her water bottle. The boy carrying it, lanky and long-haired, perhaps twelve years old, who’d greeted us earlier with “Hey, you, you, you!”, refused to drink. Only after pressing him did he gulp down some water, passing the bottle to his two younger companions. Flipping the pages of my Bible he saw a few gourdes left there, and alerted me before closing it back up.

His original companion was a delightful nine year old with a round head crowned with blotches of head fungus and a smile illuminated by dimples. He couldn’t remember my name, and shook his snapping fingers in frustration as he tried, putting back his head and squinting. When we repeated his name he became embarrassed—sure these blans couldn’t care enough to recall his name.

To these three Beverly gave some gourdes she’d tucked away, and we parted ways outside the gate of the Weslyan compound, our quiet place, Beverly and I headed homeward as the sun set, and these boys, one of them a petite seven-year old without shoes, headed off in the other direction.

“Cheche pou nou. Look for us,” I told them, squeezing their hands in farewell.

We wondered how long our friend had been plagued by that head fungus, when we might see them again to give him some medicine, and how many people would share in those few gourdes.

They’d crowded in for photos earlier, competing to hold our hands and set on our laps. They’d asked for nothing after the initial demands. They’d laughed and chatted and come close for cuddles.

“They’re still unsullied by the world,” I said as we walked home beneath a salmon, gold and mauve sky.

“In a few years,” Beverly responded, “they’re going to have the choice to follow Jesus, or not.”

We both sighed.

“We can only pray that they’ll do the right thing.”

You get angry here. Angry when children suffer from maladies all but eradicated in the First World through vaccinations and basic hygiene. Angry when babies are unsupervised. Angry when tears are condemned and trauma is ignored.

A few weeks ago one of our five year old students came into school with his Maman. He was smiling shyly, hiding his face in her skirt as they entered the office. Maman explained Richard was sick. He lifted his shirt and we saw an angry series of bumps curling around from above his bellybutton to his back. Madame Rose looked at it and deemed it zona.

I Googled “Zona Haiti” and was rewarded with a gruesome series of photos and a keyword: Shingles.

Our visiting Pharmacist agreed with the prognosis and we discussed steps. We never stopped shaking our heads that a kindergarten student was struck with an immensely painful ailment that rarely attacks these days—and is confined to adults.

Richard never stopped smiling his bashful smile although he confessed to pain and burning.

It’s been two weeks and he’s not returned to school. The shingles must still be inflamed.

That same week a three year old came to the office every morning for burn cream. The inside of his calf was open and raw, burned from the motorcycle taxi he took every day to and from school. (Moto taxi is the most common mode of transportation in Petit Goave. These calf-burns are a common resulting problem.)

 When it was my turn to dab cream on the oozing flesh, I flinched, watching Anderson’s little face for cringing and screaming. Instead, he sat expressionless as I covered the burn and then deemed him finished. He toddled off to class.

I took off the glove I’d used to administer the cream and turned to Madame Rose.

“Li pa’t kriye. Li pa’t fe anyen.” I shook my head. “He didn’t cry. He didn’t do anything. Usually kids will scream when they have pain. He has pain! Li gen doule anpil!”

Madame Rose nodded, her eyebrows raised. She shrugged. “Yeah! I don’t know.”

Later I’d reflect on this with another American.

“Probably he thought someone would scold him if he cried,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. He’s been told so many times to be quiet, he just thinks now, ‘What’s the point?’”

You get angry. Angry that a three year old has already been scolded for crying so often that when severely burned he sits in silence rather than shed tears for his pain.

You get angry when you talk to the young adults. The ones with a trauma record longer than your resume of part-time jobs. The ones who’ve been burned, beaten, lost, abandoned, ignored, starved and humiliated so often they don’t remember what it is to cry. Their feelings have never been recognized. Their turmoil never discussed. So now they carry everything inside, until the moments when something bursts.

You get angry when you discover how deep this pain runs. You get angry with every new bit of the story. Every tidbit of abuse, neglect, and needless suffering.

You get angry often here.

Angry at the ignorance. At the lack. At the rudeness.

You get so angry you can’t see the joy anymore. Sometimes. So angry you think there’s no point in trying any longer. So angry you think you’d better leave before you collapse under the anger, before you lose your mind to the frustration, when you can’t accept the injustice. The unfairness of life. The head fungus marring the head of a boy with brilliant dimples. The shingles advancing around the torso of a five year old hiding his face in Maman’s skirt. The stoic wide eyes of a severely burned three year old. The shaking shoulders of an eighteen year old who’s about to be left behind again.

That’s when God comes in.

That’s when it’s time to step back. To retreat. To seek sanctuary in a quiet place.

That’s when you cry. Shed all the tears that those children don’t. That those young adults can’t remember how to release. That those parents scold.

You cry and you rage. Sometimes you beat your fists on the mattress.

After a while you start praying, asking God why.

After a while you open the Bible and start flipping pages, telling God He’s got to speak to you.

After a while you actually start listening.

You hear that God is angry, too. You hear that God weeps for His children. You hear that God hates the poverty. Hates the suffering. Hates the ignorance. Hates the disparity. Hates that in a world He created beautiful and diverse and flawless, in a world rich with resources, many of His most beloved Creation go hungry, sleep under tarps, squat in ditches, scratch mosquito bites with dirty fingernails and birth infantigo.

You hear that God has already won the war and one day He will return. One day He will wipe away all the tears, shed and unshed, and welcome His faithful into a place without tears, without hunger, without pain or sadness or suffering. Without fear. Without anger.

To this hope we cling, through all the anger.

And we don’t have to accept those injustices. We don’t have to like the words “Life’s not fair.”

We do have to keep going. We do have to seek the Joy amidst the pain, focus upon the dimples, the smiles, the laughter, the hugs, the games and the jokes. We treasure the moments of sweetness and innocence yet unsullied by this broken world.

In this broken and unjust world we will always be angry. God will always be angry, too, and will always weep at the brokenness.

But He will always remind us of hope, and always give us grace to endure. He will fight for us. He has won the war, and while we wait for His return, He expects us to shake out the anger and do the work set before us. 

Revelation 21:4

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."