"In the window of a crisis we can build a better frame" - Carrie Newcomer

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Dust of Port-au-Prince


On our third full day in Haiti, as we were driving through Port-au-Prince an Pétionville, we, again, passed by the tent cities where thousands of displaced Haitians still live. We, again, passed by the piles of rubble and dust that still dot the city, and the blank spots where the rubble has actually been cleared away. We, again, passed by the big pancaked concrete buildings. We, again, passed by the tiny cinder-block shacks, half-destroyed, but patched up, as best they could be, by scraps of blue tarp.

One structure in particular caught my eye. It had once been a large building, though, after the earthquake, only the front piece of it was still standing. Most of the rest of it was a large pile of jagged concrete that had yet to be cleared away. In the front, parallel to the road, part of a single wall was left standing. There was also a piece of the old second story, which now served as the roof of the new structure. Whoever lived there had found a long piece of blue tarp (I assumed it had been part of one of the tents that had been distributed by an aid organization) and had hung it from the overhanging slab of concrete to create another wall for the new “house.”

A small square of concrete floor extended past the end of the long, tunnel-like house. I couldn’t tell whether the section of concrete outside the half-tent, half-house had originally been part of the house’s interior floor or its front porch, but, either way, it was its front porch now, and the Haitian man who lived there was standing on this tiny porch with a broom and sweeping it, kicking up tiny puffs of dust as he went. And, while he swept away the bits of dust from the tiny porch of his makeshift home, the giant mound of rubble and dust and sharp slices of concrete twice as tall as he was loomed behind him.

When you’re in Port-au-Prince, it seems like a dusty city. Partly this is because of the poor conditions of the roads: In many places, the roads are gravel, so everywhere you drive you kick up a cloud of dust. But the city’s dustiness is also a result of the destruction that still lies about the city, fourteen months after the January 12 earthquake. The earthquake turned 250,000 homes into dust in a single instant, and each time a gust of wind blows, it sweeps a little of that dust up into the atmosphere.

I inadvertently brought a little bit of this dust back with me when we came back from Haiti. It was on my shoes: They’d turned almost white with dust by the time we’d left. But the dust on my shoes didn’t last long. As I was walking around downtown Boston in the snow last Monday, the dust slowly washed away and my shoes resumed their normal color.

While we were in Haiti, however, it was hard not to notice all the dust circulating in the air, especially since the day we arrived was just five days after Ash Wednesday, and its reminder that everything we claim to own and even our own selves will one day break back down into dust. I know most Haitians are Catholic, and I assume that most of them had celebrated Ash Wednesday in much the same way we had. But it occurred to me that in Haiti, Ash Wednesday and perhaps the entire season of Lent are obsolete. In a country where fifty-six percent of the population live on less than a dollar a day, and an additional twenty percent live on between one and two dollars a day, there’s no reason to fast because all of life is a fast.

While we were visiting the Saint Joseph’s Home for Boys, we looked out over the home’s reconstruction efforts, and on the other side, we saw a building of two or three stories that had had collapsed and was still lying there in a heap. Our guide from the Home for Boys pointed at it and said, “We still believe there are two bodies underneath that rubble.”

Saint Benedict told his followers that, if they wanted to be holy, they should “keep death daily before their eyes.” In Haiti, where you wake up each morning and look out your window and the first thing you see is your neighbor’s grave, this doesn’t take any special spiritual effort.

The problems facing our Haitian brothers and sisters are unimaginably big. Not only must they clear away what remains of the rubble and the dust and rebuild, but they must also confront the problems that predate the January 12 earthquake: Extreme poverty, a decimated environment, and a political system that’s known barely any stability during Haiti’s two-hundred year history. Everywhere we went, we saw Haitians trying to fix these problems, but like the man sweeping his porch with the mountain of concrete in the background, their efforts seemed tiny in comparison with the work to be done. Yet the Haitian people are hope-filled and they continue to keep at the work laid before them.

Back in the States, there is much thinking to be done about how we contribute to those problems and our obligations to build with the Haitian people. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Port-au-Prince is less than two hours from Miami by plane, the rubble and the dust can seem like they exist in an entirely different world. It doesn’t take long for the dust of Haiti to wash off in the Boston snow. May those of us who have just returned from this journey be a little bit of Haiti’s dust for you, and for everyone else we meet—dust that clings to your shoes and doesn’t wash off so easily.

- JRM

Sunday, March 20, 2011

We are safe and sound in NYC after an amazing week in Haiti. More reflections and pix to come...

Friday, March 18, 2011

Ruptured World

We've been experiencing the most consistent "issues" with internet access in the past 15 hours or so. Messages pop up regarding "suspected satellite link outages" and we power down, or try rebooting again and again. That means we have more time to let the thoughts and images simmer...

Thursday was a day on the move again: St Joseph's Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince and Wings of Hope in Fermathe. Visiting St Joseph's was particularly poignant as it is the site of Ben Larson's death. Ben was a Lutheran seminarian working with the fledgling Lutheran Church in Haiti when the earthquake struck. His wife and cousin share remembrances of their last day with Ben in this Minnesota Public Radio story. While there, we saw the amazing work of rebuilding that has gone on -- and heard both stories of personal experience of being in the quake and the hope that stirs through the work and mission of St Joseph's Family.

That story was deepened, then, when
in Fermathe we met a young man who told us his story of being orphaned and, after some months on the street, being brought into St Joseph's Home for Boys where he was given things he'd never had: hugs, food, a mattress... I deeply regret that I did not record his conversation with us. It was deeply moving. Particularly so when he shared that his response to the disabled children at Wings of Hope is born of his own experience of being loved and having had his worth recognized and celebrated.

While at Wings of Hope, we learned that the organization receives no support from the Haitian government and that, because many Haitians believe that evil spirits are the cause of or are present in the disabled, people do not want to have them around at all. Some children have been brought to the gates of a local mission and abandoned; one was found on the streets by an American family; one was discovered in a trash can. Despite minimalist conditions, there was a spirit of care among those working with the children and the echo, for me, of the director's words about his own experience of being valued and loved. When invited to feed the children plates of rice & beans with dried fish, we were given opportunity to engage.

Cavernous was the distance between our university-world and this one where moans sound much the same whether en Kreyol or in English. The little guy I spent time with is named Sam. We managed to have some good communications in laughs and smiles while he ate and then drank some Tampico.

After time with the children, we went back to the Baptist Haiti Mission where we enjoyed some baked goods and did a little shopping with local craft vendors. Next, we traced our journey back down the mountain and up another - back to our "home" in Mariaman with Merline and John Engle. Over food and drink we delighted to share stories, hearing from our group member Rachel about her day spent with John and the Architecture for Humanity who are working together to design a new Haiti Partners Children's Academy. Today, most of the group is hiking there to see the beautiful land and learn about the project. This afternoon we will be together again with the children from the Haiti Partners choir - learning and teaching side-by-side, an exchange of song and laughter, hope and presence. A fantastic way to end our last full day in Haiti!

As the group was leaving for their hike this morning, news of Aristide's return was corroborated by a binocular-aided sighting of his plane at the airport below. We don't know what it means, but steady prayers rise that it not interfere with the presidential election on Sunday. To say the least, more rides on this election than any of us really can comprehend... God, have mercy.

Finally, I will share this amazing ending to Serene Jones's book, Trauma + Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. Oh, how richly resonant are her words in these days:

At the edge of every thought, there resides the promise of both ever-deepening loss and insistently imposed newness. Mourning and wonder. There, at the edge of every eyeblink, every muscle bend, and every lip-formed moment of speech--there is a space that both carries traumatic loss and yet remains open and new. Poised here, we always wait to be dragged from despair into light. The cross trains us in these dispositions of body and imagination. It narrates for us, again and again, two paradoxical stories about who we are: God's inevitably broken children, and God's constantly renewed beloved; these two stories run down parallel tracks of flesh and soul. They are not, however, driven toward evolving resolution. We are not becoming better or worse: we just are these two things, in the juxtaposed tension of our everyday life.

This is a profoundly presentist vision of life, landing us hard in the here and now: to be saved is not to be taken elsewhere. It is to be awakened--to mourn and to wonder. And to stand courageously on the promise that grace is sturdy enough to hold it all--you, and me, and every broken, trauma-ridden soul that wanders through our history. To us all, love comes.

May it indeed be so -- that love comes, to us all. Surely here in this little corner of a ruptured world, we are witnessing how that can make all the difference.

- JEE



Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Thank you...

You get the overview of the day from reading Joanne's post below, so I will just add one or two specific details.

When we met with the choir children this afternoon, we had the opportunity to share the pictures and letters that some of our UniLu (University Lutheran) children sent along with us. I asked the children here if they had any message they'd like us to bring to the children back home and one boy said, "Thank you for writing to us, and for thinking of us, and we hope that maybe we will be able to meet you someday." I pray that we will all, always, keep thinking of the children in Haiti, and of their families and friends. I pray that we might allow such thoughts to continually work in our minds and hearts, and shape right relationships of all kinds in our world, with the help of God the Holy Spirit.

Today we also broke from our Lenten fast and sang the 'A' (or actually 'Ha') word. In the music exchange with the choir children, we could think of no better song for playful mixing than 'Ha-la-la-la'. Indeed, many broad smiles (and handshakes, high fives, fist bumps, etc.) were shared between and among us! It was a most holy, human way to participate in the first week of Lent; to draw nearer to our neighbors, and hence to the life God intends for us.

I am so grateful for the hospitality we enjoy here, for the support and prayers of those at home, and for the privilege of bearing your greetings and mindfulness for the people here.

-Kari

Haiti - day three

Another astonishing day in Haiti. We trekked up a steep hill (with more than a few stops by me to catch my breath!) to reach the Lalo community school. We were able to go into the very small school and see all the children in their individual tiny classrooms. Then, they came out and sang for us. We had a chance to sing for them (and learn en Kreyol) "I've got peace like a river." We got some amazing photographs in the course of the day and look forward to sharing more - with stories - when internet access (and energies) are a bit more robust.

The afternoon was spent getting to know 40 children in the Haiti Partners choir. We had time to talk with them before they sang for us. Among the many pieces, they agreed to teach us two of the songs. And we did our best to learn from Alex a beautiful song written by him and Merline Engel about the earthquake. Then in our singing for them, we taught several songs. What fun to dance and sing with the children this day! Even better: at the end of the day one of the children said he hoped very much that he would get to sing with us again before we returned to the States. We hope to do that on Friday.

We have no idea just how things will unfold if Aristide does, indeed, show up tomorrow. But we hope for the best. The plan is to go into the city to visit Wings of Hope (of St Joseph's family) and the Lutheran Church in Haiti. If things are calm enough, we also will have some time to do a little "shopping" (crafts and some candy for the choir children)...

Brief though this is, I just want to say that hope for Haiti grows deep within us as we get to know the children (and teachers and administrators) in the Haiti Partners schools. We are so grateful to be here learning. Thanks for all the loving, prayerful support.

- JEE

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Scope

Driving through Port-au-Prince, I think of the tornado that hit St. Peter MN in March of 1998. Then I multiply by about a million. There is something familiar to me about rubble and devastation wrought by natural disaster -- my eyes have seen it up close and personal before. But the scope of the devastation here is indescribable. Pictures cannot capture it, nor words describe it. And that's familiar too: indescribable times a million.

There are cities of tents within the city, but what is more striking to me are the tarps that are pitched singly or in small clusters against the tall stone walls on each side of the road, or against the half-walls that still stand crookedly in the piles of rubble and dust. Life on the edge to be sure. Trucks, tap-taps, cars and motorbikes cruise by within inches. We cruise by within inches.

-Kari