Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - Day 5

I awoke to the sound of hymns rising from the street -- it could have been a gathering for a death or birth but due to the cheerful nature of the hymns I assume that it was in celebration of a birth. Soon after I heard the 5am bell for the boy's morning prayer. The boys gather every morning at 5 for a 10 minute morning prayer to pray together before school. It was in Kreyol but I could join in the Lord's Prayer and they sang "In the Garden" for us in english.

After breakfast, the group was divided into three with part going to Mother Theresa's baby hosptial, part going to Mother Theresa's home for the dying, and the other going to the Brothers of Charity clinic. I went to the home for the dying. I was intimidated at first. We were there to give massages to the dying and I had never considered myself a touchy feely person, I am often grossed out by medical things, and the level of modesty in Haiti is not the same as in America. I was out of my element. However as I offered massages, I kept thinking of the woman washing Jesus' feet and Michael's reminder that morning to bee Jesus to another person. There was a room full of women with TB and another wid AIDS. I then found a small group of girls in the hallway. The nuns were Spanish and Indian with impecible English. The first girl I held in my arms and painted her nails and played a game with her. The nuns explained that she had been brought in deathly ill with her older sister a couple of weeks before. They had typhoid and menigitis. This girl pulled through but her sister did not. The nun explained that despite having a family she was so distraught that she told the nuns she wanted to die when her sister died. The nun asked me to put vitamin a & d on the limbs of another small child who body had been ravaged by malnutrition. She cried because her legs were so raw from skin peeling. They were waiting for the results of her TB test and she had worms. I rubbed her back and sang to her trying to comfort her. The nuns explained to me that her parents come to see her everyday but are too poor to feed her. The huns said that when she was healed they would give her faimly food for a year but often people would not take their medicine and sold the food on the street. The nuns explained that children were not normally at the hospice home but it was because they had come out of the attached clinic so sick they needed somewhere to stay. I also met Noel was was 100 -- she is the oldest person I've ever met. Her body was ravaged by scabies. Many were scared to touch her but I used gloves and relized that the chance contracting the disease was small and it was treatable in the US. I thought of the lepers from the Bible and how horrible it must be not to be touched. This was the hardest, most emotionally draining day yet.

After this we went to the Caribbean market, which is like a large supermarket. The well off shop here -- it has the same things as an American supermarket. It was mostly filled with foreigners. I never saw another place like while I was in Haiti.

When we got back to St. Joseph's we painted the floor with our prayer partners while listening to American hip-hop. I painted alone as my prayer partner was at school. It was so much fun to paint the floors of the new art center they are building for the community next to St. Joseph's. Amazing artwork is created here -- see the work of one of the guys in the community. Check out my painting above, Scott's awesome soccer painting, and Fieyole's sun.

That evening we heard the story of Leon and Jackie Dorleans whose schools we had visited the previous day. Leon was US educated and wanted to start a Bible college in Hait. He was asked to be the pastor at Cite Soleil, the poorest slum in Haiti and began this work. Leon offered a school to train church leaders and it was at this school that he met his wife Jackie when she was offered a scholarship from a Bible school professor who was impressed by her. They were married and she told Leon that she wanted her contribution to ministry to be schools. So they started schools at Blanchard and Cite Soleil. They now have medical clinics and churches there as well. There are over 1,000 who attend church at Blanchard and Cite Soleil. There were over 347 at the service we attended at Blanchard. They have also started a very popular vocation school at Blanchard. They have several successful graduates from the schools including a girl from the poorest slum who is in her 5th year of medical school and top of her class. The schools are currently through the 6th grade but they hope to start a high school by 2010. The school's greatest need is sponsorship of students who could not afford to go to school otherwise. Education is not a given in Haiti. It costs $300 a year to educated a student -- uniform, materials, and a hot meal (most other schools do not provide this).

After Jackie and Leon's story we took Communion and for the first time I felt the emotional weight of my trip. I was seeing poverty in a way that I had never seen it before. To me the thought of wanting to die seems ludicrious and yet I met a 4-year-old that had already been so wrecked and ravaged by life that she wanted to die. How often do I pray "thank you God for my life" and yet that was the exact prayer that Gary, the assitant director for Wings of Hope prayed that night during our prayer time. It is a very real prayer in Haiti. How do I live in the space of returning to the privledged life that I live knowing that this kind of poverty exists in the world? Knowing as well that my words can never express to you the depth of my experience. This is about giving voice to Haiti.