I know they’re invincible. I know that there is nothing under the sun which can defeat them, which can persecute them to the point of hopelessness, strike them down so they do not rise, fall upon them so they do not dust themselves off and start again. In my own few years I have witnessed their response to Hurricanes George and Matthew, the flooding and destruction; the world (in)famous 2010 earthquake and subsequent cholera epidemic; cycles of presidents, coups, and protests that blockaded the nation, choked the air with the black smoke of burning tires, and filled the streets with rubble and bloody bodies.
I have been to the local hospitals
where the shelves are bare and the lights flicker, where what care the doctors
might have mustered has sweated out with their hopes and ideals, drowned by the
dreary reality of constant helplessness and inability to grant relief with no
supplies and no funding. I have demanded immediate treatment for a needy
student, gone door to door to the adjoining green and white pharmacies for prescriptions
the patient could never afford. I have been impressed and depressed at the
methods of medicine which do without electricity and steady supply of one-time
use gloves and syringes.
I have wept with gratitude standing
under the cold flow of the shower, remembering the labors of our friends and
students pumping water at their local cistern or toting buckets from the
reservoir. In that same reservoir women scrub clothes, pigs wade, men wash
their motorcycles, and children bathe. I have grimaced walking the unpaved
streets after a rain, dodging the gray flow of sewage water clotted with trash,
and have watched safe and dry from the car’s interior as pedestrians and
moto-drivers navigate the rising flood of that same gray, trashy water during
the driving rain.
I have rubbed cream on white spots
of fungus on so many heads, on circles of ringworm, on burns and bites and
oozing wounds. I have given soap and washcloths and helped scrub faces and
hands that had no chance to learn or do at home. I have held children with
fevers, stomach ills, headaches, broken bones, all better off there at school
where there was someone to watch them, medicine to give, water to drink, and
the possibility of a doctor’s care. The office where we were meant to have
administrative discussions, grade papers, plan lessons, or meet with parents,
was almost always also a nurse’s office hosting at least one sick child. It was
here they were introduced to Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, thermometers, and
acetaminophen and ibuprofen.
I have spread peanut butter on
hundreds and hundreds of crackers to give as a meager morning meal—something to
tide the children over until their proper midday meal of rice and beans (every
day the same fare). Many mornings children joined me in the kitchen, eating
extra crackers before class to ease their hunger pains. But the crowd of
children became so large we had to stop this practice and simply ready the
plates as fast as we could so they might eat.
Most days the rice pots were
scraped clean as students wolfed down their first heaping helpings and raced
back for seconds. I made the phrases “I’m hungry” and “I want a cracker” part
of our English lessons. Although these children will probably always live in poverty,
unable to fulfill their wants or even basic needs, we persist in teaching them
assertion. They will become their own advocates.
They learn to ask for water, for
medicine, and for hugs. The last is a breakthrough I’ll never forget.
Although our supplies of rice and
beans and crackers and peanut butter are limited, although medicine and
ointments can always cure the ills, we can always supply hugs. And there is
never a shortage of requests. As children learn the power of hugs, the warmth,
the refuge, the nourishment that could overcome hunger pangs and swellings and
sores, we push them to hug their parents and guardians. And we tell those
parents and guardians to hug their children. The awkward unfamiliarity of so
many of those hugs breaks my heart. For far too many, our orders of “Hug your
son!” or “Hug your mama!” instigate the first time, or the first time in a very
long time, that parents and children had embraced. That they had touched with
gentleness and affection rather than punishment and anger.
The staff reminds one another to
hug the children as much as possible, knowing that our arms might well be the
only welcome they ever know. The short hours at school are to treasure the
children: to listen to them, be silly with them, hold them, and, of course, to teach
them academics, health, and God’s Word. The children come to know best words we
repeat every day: “I love you. Jesus loves you more!”
Although my working title at the
Peacemaker School of Petit Goave, formerly called Christian Academy, was “English
teacher,” my mission is always to love the children. There were days I missed teaching
due to preparing peanut butter crackers, administering first aid, counseling,
or taking someone to the hospital—doing what was needed at the moment. Each of
these missed lessons was a loss, time I mourned because classes were a joy. But
I could never regret choosing one form of love and aid over another. And these
choices, to stay and help run Preschool while their teacher was ill, to extend
sixth grade class so we could finish the poetry books, to coach a small group
of students for a Bible skit; these choices were just constant confirmation
that I could not help everyone, could not fix everything, but could only do my
small part, one piece at a time, one day at a time, one person at a time.
This is the kind of thinking we
must maintain to work in the third world. Lose sight of the small things, of
the individual soul, and we will be overcome with despair at the chasm of need,
the hopelessness of such suffering.
They have not lost hope. Even now,
when so many of us missionaries and aid workers have fled, when fuel and food
supplies are blocked, when schools are attacked and hospitals are burned, the resilient
Haitian people have not given up. They have seen disaster, they have lived
hardship, and they only ever had little to lose. Now, when circumstances are worse
than ever, when gangs indiscriminately kidnap, assault, torment, and murder, the
Haitian people persist. Our Ti Goave children persist.
I don’t know why it should still
surprise me. As aforementioned, I’ve witnessed some of Haiti’s greatest disasters
and the people’s dogged response to keep living; I’ve visited their homes and
seen how they survive on the sparsest provisions. It should be no surprise to
see the children smiling. To see their brilliance shining through all the evil in
the background.
Yet, once again, the pictures of
them, clustered on the plain wooden benches in the campus courtyard, hugging
bundles of food stuffs in their skinny arms, I am taken aback at their joy. I
feel at once humbled and astounded and impressed and dumbfounded and ashamed
and thankful and proud. My heart bursts with love all over again, new and
shining with hope. Hope that has been dwindling, crushed beneath the load of
bad news and horrible reports, mountains beyond mountains of obstacles which
have deprived these children of education, safety, food, water, health care,
their very innocence.
They never lost hope. And they
smile still. Those smiles can almost make you forget the bad news, the very
real and present dangers of marauding gangsters and invisible diseases; those
smiles bring beauty to even the most emaciated faces, sunken eyes and wasted
cheeks, arms and legs that appear far too frail to carry those treasured bags
of rice and hike the hills home. Of course, the dangers are still there and
Haiti is still in crisis, veritably anarchy without government leadership or humanitarian
resources.
But God is still there, too. While
most of us who can, both foreign and Haitian, have left and now watch anxiously
from exile, God stayed. He has not and will not ever abandon His children. Even
if we doubt, flounder in bewilderment as to why God has left Haiti to the
wicked, these children still believe. Our faithful Christian brothers and
sisters in Haiti still believe—they have known far longer and better than we
privileged foreigners that God is their only hope.
When the cistern is dry, the pot is
empty, and the charcoal runs out; when the rent is due on the over-crowded house
with the leaky roof, when illness strikes, when thieves break in and steal and rats
and damp destroys; when there are no emergency services, no social workers, no
health insurance, no food pantries, scholarships or relief packages; when there
is no evacuation helicopter, no way out and no way ahead, there is only One
Hope. It is not the Great White Hope. We are not the Great White Hope. None of
us are, no matter how hard we work, how much money we raise, how many barrels
or pallets of supplies we send, how many houses we build, how many students we
teach or children we sponsor. We may help to spread hope, but we are not the
Source.
God is the Only Hope. God alone can
stand against any gangster and any weapon, remains unaffected by any disease or
malady, never weakens from hunger, thirst, or overwork. He never sleeps and He
never loses sight of a single wandering child, desperate mother, or humiliated
father. And although He may not grant a life of ease and comfort, may not smite
down all the corrupt officials and gun-toting gangsters as we might wish, God
will come through.
Somehow God has always come through
for these children. He has put them in school when their families could not pay
school fees. He has delivered the MannaPack rice for the children’s meals through
blockades and fuel shortages. He has paid the school staff and building rent. He
has sent doctors, dentists, and specialists at just the right times. He sent a
team to paint all the walls white and fill the school with light. He sent
carpenters and electricians to build benches, bookcases, stools, and handrails,
and to wire the building for lights and fans. He has arranged relationships
with bankers, pharmacists, police officers, customs officials, booksellers,
pilots, and barrel-shippers to fill needs. He provided a motorcycle to
transport daily food and water. He has saved students and staff from vehicular
accidents and hypertension. He arranged a beautiful graduation during COVID
lockdown. He provided a new campus and residence and secondary school. He has safely
transported staff and supplies to and from the capital warzone, again and
again. Somehow God has always come through. Even in tragedy He has brought
good.
When we reflect, we cannot deny God’s
goodness. He has provided and protected His ministry innumerable times. While
watching Haiti from afar, still waiting for news of improvement, we can remember
all these ways God has proved Himself over and over. Even as our hearts ache at
the increased suffering of the Haitian people, even as we long to be there with
our loved ones, we remember that God is there, bringing Hope in the darkness. And
we can rejoice with every smiling face of another child who has not forgotten
from whence comes real Hope.
