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The immediacy has died down

February 22, 2010 — 5:40 pm

The immediacy has died down. The fervent fever pitch has subsided. The situation in Haiti isn’t any less severe; it’s just that daily responsibilities crowded their way back into our lives. I had to return to work. The kids needed to finish homework, go to guitar lessons and pack lunches for school.

Then the snowstorm hit. Our neighborhood banded together. We dug out cars, and dropped in chairs. School was cancelled. The kids dug tunnels and we went sledding at the local hill, piling six kids on a single truck inner tube. Inside the house, it was hot chocolate, Wii, coloring, Uno and Sorry.

But the misery in Haiti never leaves my mind. It’s like a sensitive tooth. I try to eat ice cream without it touching that back molar, but I can’t. I cannot ignore the suffering of so many in Haiti – where life was so hard even before the quake.

The novelty of the snow has worn off, the kids have to return to school, the stuff I put on hold is piling up. But all I want to do is turn everything else off and just read about Haiti. Not the articles circulating about how to rebuild or who is to blame. Not scrolling updates or intermittent tweets on my iPhone. But a book that gives me depth, real stories about Haiti. Stories that will remind me of my own experiences there.

I miss Haitian food, pica lese, the spicy shredded cabbage and carrots you pile onto fried plantains. I want to hear again the drip of rain on corrugated tin, feel the absolute fatigue of trying to hold up my end of a conversation in creole. And yet, deep down, I know that I will always be an outsider. And there is more than skin color and language that separate me from the Haitians I know.

I’ve been frustrated by the impossibility of contacting our Haitian friends, by not knowing how well they’re coping with this crisis. News trickles in like water dripping from the icicles growing from the box gutters of our Pittsburgh home. So we have few answers for friends and supporters here who want to know what’s happening.

I’m frustrated with not being there. Like so many other who’ve been touched by events unfolding on the TV, I want to do something. I know at this point I can gather resources to bring with our summer teams, spread the word for the need to be involved long term, and build up a community here to help the Haitians we know.

What an irony it is, our disgust at the city’s lack of a response to the snow, to the need for clear roads. There is no 911 in Haiti – or even a 311 line, like here Pittsburgh. And those mounds of concrete and rubble will not melt in a month.

Here, snowbound, we stay inside and sip hot chocolate. Haitians are sleeping outside, under sheets tied to trees. We’ve run to the store to buy milk and bread. I read of doctors who, lacking anesthesia, ran out to a hardware store and bought saws for amputations.

Sometimes the context of our lives overlaps with the lives of others, and this is where we make contact. When you know your neighbor, you want to help. A friend once told me “when it gets personal, it gets compassionate.”

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Jeffvander

‘An open heart is always an open door’

February 11, 2010 — 10:25 am

In 1997, Sarah and I led our first team to Haiti. We were going to build a school in the remote community of Baissin Caimman. There was no electricity, no running water; in fact, there was barely a two-track road cut through the brush to get there. We worked hard that week – mixing cement by hand and stacking cement blocks, and cutting rebar with a hacksaw. I practiced my Creole as I gathered rocks for the school foundation with the children. Onelle, a 9-year-old boy with a brilliant white smile and very soft demeanor, became my teacher.

I would ask him in Creole, “Kisa sa ye,” which means, “What is this?”

“Gwo rouche,” he would respond: “big rock.” And then ask “An anglais?”

“Big rock.”

I learned the name for everything I could point at. It was this week that I also started learning Haitian proverbs — the oral wisdom that has been passed down since the days of slavery.

“Mes anpil, shy pa lou.”

“Many hands make the work light”

I thought we had a very successful week. We put up 1,000 cement blocks for the first three-room school building in that community. We Americans like to do things, and we were certainly doing things. Pearl Jam captures this spirit of doing in their latest song, “The Fixer”:

When something’s dark, let me shed a little light on it

When something’s cold, let me put a little fire on it

If something’s old, I wanna put a bit of shine on it

When something’s gone, I wanna fight to get it back again

Later in the week, we met the widow who lived right across from the new school building. Through our interpreters, she told us how she and a few other people had met for years each Sunday under the shade of the tree where we all were sitting. These older members of the community were too worn from a life of hard work and heat to walk the five miles to a neighboring church. So they met together, sang and prayed that some day there would be a church right here in this community.

I can remember my ego deflating, in that instant, like the soccer ball we’d kicked into a thorn bush earlier that day. I thought I’d organized the group and initiated this new project for these people in this poor and forgotten country. But as we sat there listening to the history of this area, I thought, “I am just a tool.”

God was already present in Baissin Caimman. I was just one of the many many people – one of the many tools in this grand project – able to join in the work of establishing a church, a school and a clean water source. But this was also liberating. All my naïve notions of fixing this poor country were aligned with what was already happening.

I know that it is the same God who is working in our lives and the lives of the Haitians. He is the God who has been working to redeem his people. Being orientated with that truth has helped my perspective and built a foundation for us to come along side and work together with the people in that community.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)

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Haiti
Amy

Trying to reach Haiti

— 10:15 am
Haiti H2O has been planning on going in to Haiti to visit our partners as soon as it was appropriate. Since we are not doctors or trained rescue workers, we realize that our task is not to do search and recovery work in Port au Prince, but rather to continue to work with people in specific communities as they respond to the disaster that has affected the whole country. Our long-term partnership enables us to work directly with people as they provide relief to those who have been cast out of their homes and to rebuild together for years to come.
We had purchased flights from Air France for February 16, but we were just alerted that those flights have been cancelled. We recognize that resources are critical, so we are looking for other flights, but there is no guarantee that those flights won’t be rescheduled as well. It seems that “the only constant is change,” and we will have to be flexible and patient.
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Amy
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