We spent the majority of our time in Yvon working on a large church at the bottom of a hill. It was a beautiful work of cement art, big enough for over 200 people.
The other time was spent exploring the beautiful hills surrounding the village and spending time with the kids in the area. If children can afford to go to the school in the village, they learn French, English, Creole, and Spanish. We were better able to communicate with many of the children than the adults who had been out of school for many years. I spoke the tiny bit of French I know, but immediately had better success with English. The little girls giggled and asked shyly to take the coloring books while the young men asked how to translate things into English. “How do you say…?” became a favorite phrase between us and the children.
Every night we slowly made our way back up the mountain, exhausted from the sunshine and work. We ate all of our meals in the old church that overlooks a huge beautiful lake. We mostly had rice and beans with fried plantains and chicken. After dinner we pulled out boxes of dominos and turned on the generator, which powered the lights on the porch, in the kitchen, and one bulb in the church. About thirty people from all over the village came to play cards and dominos or laugh and sing church songs with us.
Some days we walked down to the well to help people pump water into five gallon bottles or buckets so they could take it home or bathe in the shadows of the palm trees. It was difficult work. The long metal pole to pump the water took almost all of my body weight before a tiny bit of water squirted out. The well was where everyone gathered at least four times a day. Even the smallest children pulled and poked their donkeys to the well to gather water for their families.
We talked a lot about the earthquake within our group but we were too afraid to ask too much from the people in the community. We weren’t sure if they or their families were directly affected by it or how they would react to our questions. We finally found enough courage to ask one of our translators Napoleon and were struck by his story.
He was in the university at the time, studying to be a translator as it is one of the few semi-guaranteed jobs in the country due to the mission trips that have been more and more frequent in the past five years. Napoleon was running late the morning of the earthquake. He said he was walking to the university when he felt the ground move beneath him and the walls around him start to crumble. He laid flat on the ground and thought to himself, “this is the end, I will die here.” As the quakes and the aftershock stopped, he continued his walk to the university. What he saw was complete devastation. The entire four story building collapsed, killing over 200 students and more than a dozen professors.
Napoleon said that it was much worse for people who were in school or had jobs - they were the ones inside the buildings when they collapsed that day. He hesitantly told us about his cousins who worked on the first floor of a hotel. The entire building fell upon them.
On the last day of our trip we drove over five hours to one of the memorials, honoring the lives of thousands of people who died in the earthquake. The memorial was at the sight of a mass grave where bodies were piled into a hole by a dumpster after the quake.
It was eerie and devastating. There was a deafening silence - anyone who may have lived near the area has long since left due to superstition and respect. Over the walls we could see the city of Soleil (the poorest city in Haiti) with clouds of ash coming from the communes where they burned piles of trash. We sat at the memorial for several minutes, each of us praying or meditating, remembering in our own ways.
We flew home the next day after spending a long time in the Haitian airport. I haven’t been able to write much about Haiti since that day until I sat down to write this. For a long time I have prayed a devastating prayer: “Lord, break my heart for the things that break your heart. Ruin me for the ordinary and for the easy.” God has answered my prayers in this trip.
I want to learn to live in a way that empowers others instead of treading on them. I want to learn to enable them and help them identify their gifts and calling in this world. I wish to be a leader who is able to follow, one who leads with gentleness and kindness as well as justice. I wish to seek the assets of communities and peoples instead of first noticing the weaknesses. I hope to find redemption and grace in all situations and experiences. I hope that God will continue to ruin me for the cultural norms and the things that society thinks are natural. I hope to follow Christ in all my actions and do God’s will - especially when it leads me to new places and makes me feel uncomfortable.
So, you might be asking (as I am), what is next? What can we do for a country that takes our aid and sells it for profit? What can we do for a country that continues to take handouts because they are readily available and jobs are not.
One thing we are able to do right away is change our thought process. We must think in terms of what we can do with Haiti instead of for Haiti. We must partner with the government and aid organizations that are already in Haiti and accountable. We must look for the strengths within Haiti and throughout the Haitian people instead of focusing on their weaknesses.
We can also work with churches within Haiti who are accountable to help put money into the Haitian economy. Although there is a lot of literature about how harmful short term missions are for countries, when done correctly they pour thousands of dollars into the country’s economy and encourage people to care about foreign countries. Our mission trip gave over $3,200 for the new church and to pay the workers and translators that stayed with us that week. That money will not go to corrupt government officials or unaccountable aid organizations. It will go directly back into the Haitian economy.
We can also pray. Although it sounds benign considering the pain and heartbreak in Haiti, we know that God is able to do incredible things. We have no knowledge of what God might do through pray and what God has already done through the churches in Haiti.
