The Day of our Departure

Last Monday morning, we woke up bright and early, not only sad about leaving Bayonnais, but also excited about heading home. None of us had a clue about how to keep those two longings in balance. The days had passed quickly, but not so fast that we didn't fall in love with the place, the people, and one another as teammates. 

Outside the guesthouse, cocks crowed. Dogs barked. Garbage burned. Children donned their colorful uniforms and waited outside the school gate until it was time for classes to begin. Inside the guesthouse, we packed what was left of our wardrobes, stripped our beds, and made piles of sheets, towels, and the articles of clothing we were leaving behind. I tried to imagine who would wear my clothes, who would sleep in those beds on future visits, and how much of an impact our presence there had made. All I could do, all I did do, was bless the piles, bless the mattress, and bless God for giving me the opportunity to be there.

After walking around the village one last time, we returned to the compound to await the arrival of our transportation to the airport, this big blue bus, entitled, "Living Water."

We hugged the guesthouse staff, bid farewell to our new friends, boarded the bus, prayed, and begin the winding trek down the mountain, along the coast, and through the bustling townships between Bayonnais and Port-au-Prince.

The Monday market in town bustled with business, selling recently killed chickens, freshly baked bread, and moonshine.

We crossed a river or two, plunged innocent bystanders and pedestrians into clouds of thick dust, and bruised our kidneys on the bumpy bus ride. The highlight of the ride for me was passing a bus that was heading up the mountain; that bus was filled with OFCB teachers heading to school. As the two buses passed one another, moving rather slowly so as to avoid forcing each other off the narrow road, I spotted the Spanish teacher I had spent all of Friday afternoon shadowing. He saw me too, and we waved to one another. I said the same prayer for him, for the rest of the teachers, and for the entire school that I had prayed so frequently on Saturday morning: Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name. I suspect that I will be repeating that prayer as often as I remember OFCB and its work.

Once we passed through three security checks in the airport (why on earth would we need to take off our shoes and belts and run our bags through the scanning machines THREE times in the same building? One of the team members refused to go to the women's room until she was assured that she wouldn't have to go thru another checkpoint.) we settled in for beer, soda, french fries, and plaintain chips while we waited to board our flight. Guess who was the only person at the table to order Pepsi? 

We were reminded of how protected we had been on our journey when the people at the table next to us reported that they had been robbed by armed bandits and were forced to cut their trip short. 

Passport? Check.  Boarding passes? Check. Journal? Check. Carry on bags nearby? Check.

All ten members of our team and Pastor Eddie, present and accounted for? Check. 

Heart broken, tears shed, and mind wondering what "my students" were doing at that moment? Check.

As we rolled onto the runway and turned for home,
as the day of our departure became the moment of our departure,
I leaned back against the headrest, closed my eyes, and prepared for take-off.

What I did not yet know was where my tenderized heart would land,
what I would do with all I had seen, heard, learned, and experienced,
and how on earth I would ever recover.
In truth, I hope I never do.

Thanks be to God.

Sunday Sermons

For as long as I can remember, Sunday has been my favorite day of the week. I remember being in Sunday School at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, wishing that church could meet five days per week and school only two. And anybody who knows me knows that I am a serious geek. I loved going to school, but I loved being at church even more. For the most part, I still do.

What I have come to realize later in life is that what I love about Sunday, other than singing the ancient hymns of the church, is the presence of the people of the congregation. I make no judgment about anybody's motives for attending church, at least not in this forum, but rather, I express my gratitude for all the stories, the secrets, the yearnings, the hopes, the dreams, the prayers, and even for the less stellar motives that draw so many people together on Sunday mornings for worship, for teaching, and for shared community time.

When we entered "the house of the Lord" in Bayonnais last Sunday, I was happier to be in that sanctuary than I'd been in such a place in a very long time. I had seen their homes. I had watched their children walk around the village in ripped and dirty clothes. I had seen their bare feet and dusty faces for the three previous days. At 9:15 am in that bright space, there was no dirt, wrinkles, or torn clothing. Spirits were high. Songs rang out loud. And ribbons, ruffles, and shiny shoes abounded.

I was offered the opportunity to extend a few words of gratitude to the congregation on behalf of our team. I was honored to do so and grateful that God kept me from breaking down and turning into a puddle of tears and babble in front of the gathered crowd.

The High and Most Reverend Wes Barry spoke rather eloquently on the story of Jesus healing the paralytic beside the pool of Bethsaida. He challenged us to take up our own mats, our fears, anxieties, and doubts and go forth from that place rejoicing at all that God has done for us, among us, through us, and in us.

An hour or so later, he was outside the guesthouse laughing raucously about a French song he was glad he hadn't sung from the pulpit, blowing bubbles and playing with Play Doh with children, all the while cradling a recently captured scorpion in his waterbottle. Now that's a pastor I can relate to.

A few away from the steps in the photo above, Liz gave her sneakers to a very grateful young man who had led the mountain climbing expedition that day before... the same expedition that I bowed out of. Apparently this young man made the hike in rather flimsy flip flops. Notice the gathering of children watching the hand-off of the shoes. Notice the numbers of bare feet in the photo. I left my sneakers, my flip flops, and more than half of my wardrobe in Bayonnais. I hope someone is getting good use out of it. Truly, it was the least I could do. Thank you, Liz, for setting the example last Sunday afternoon. 

These two little boys came dangerously close to being kidnapped and brought back to Charlotte. Every time the boy on the right heard one of us call his name, Caliboos (I'm sure I've spelled it atrociously), he would smile so brightly and thoroughly that it looked like his entire body was involved in the joy-letting.

The young woman in the orange tee shirt, Evoline, 

was one of our interpreters and guides during our visit in Bayonnais. 

On Sunday afternoon, she led the team on a walk to her home. She introduced us to her family members, showed us their fields, their access to the river, and demonstrated the joy of grinding corn.

I use the word "joy" intentionally here - she smiled the entire time, invited us to try, and then as she sorted out the smallest bits through her basket, she laughingly shared the discarded bits with her dog.

Following our visit to Evoline's house, we went to the medical clinic in town. There is much work to be done to complete the construction of the clinic, but there is much for which to give thanks in that it has come this far.

On our way to the clinic tour, we came upon a happy, talented, and very naked little boy. 

He was a master tire roller - notice the wheel and stick.

Perhaps in repayment for Reverend Barry's fine morning sermon, the underdressed young chap endeavored to teach the Sir Barry how to roll a wheel.

Wes tried unsuccessfully to keep the wheel upright, and then in humility, returned the wheel and stick to their owner, and we all watched in awe as the little fella ran down the patio of the clinic, up the rocky path, and through the canal running alongside the road. He literally rolled the wheel through the running water. Now that is a boy with some serious talent.

On our last walk through the countryside, we were both led and accompanied by the children. This is the loving, patient smile of the little girl who withdrew to the back of the group and walked with me, making sure I didn't slip, slide, or fall into or over the canal. How sweet is her smile? How bright are her eyes?

Are words even necessary here?

Most of the best Sunday sermons are the wordless ones - the ones spoken by the clouds, the trees, the branches laid across babbling brooks, the floating of bubbles, the malleability of Play Doh, the intricacy of a scorpion's many frightening stinging parts, the crunching of the corn grinder, and the naked, the poor, the patient, and the silently ever-present little ones who are always crossing our paths.

Day Three - The Day I Bow Out of the Race

In the past, I have been accused of being perceptive, of being a good listener, and even of being wise. I put all of those skills to use on the day we hiked up Nicholas. I listened to both Pressley and Amilor ask me, several times each, with looks of grave concern on their faces, if I was planning to hike up to the fort on Saturday. I listened carefully when they both described the difficulty of the climb, especially when Amilor was asked to compare the hike to Nicholas to the hike to the fort; his answer was, "There is no comparison." And as he said those words, he was looking at me, at least that's how I felt. At that moment, both perception and wisdom kicked in, and I decided that I would bow out of the race up the mountain to the fort and would instead hold down the fort at the guesthouse.

Apparently, the team left somewhere around 6 am last Saturday morning. Apparently, they took water, snacks, and flashlights with them. Apparently, I was asleep when all that happened. Apparently, no one gets up early on Saturday mornings in Bayonnais, because these photos capture the view from the door of the guesthouse when I stepped outside.

These photos capture the view inside the guesthouse on Saturday morning. It's a good thing that I love solitude. Although I didn't eat breakfast alone, but spent the better part of an hour listening to an expository, multi-dimensional explanation of the whole Bible, beginning with the first two chapters of Genesis and ending with that last two verses of Revelation, I spent most of Saturday morning blissfully alone, reading, journaling, napping, and praying for the safety of the climbers.

The second half of John 17:11 became my morning mantra. In the middle of his prayer on behalf of his disciples, Jesus pleaded: "Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name." I repeated that simple prayer dozens of times. When the team reappeared in the courtyard just before noon, I jumped up and ran to greet them as though they were my own prodigal children who had returned from a sweaty, dusty adventure in the mountains of Haiti...

When one of the team members told me that there were moments on the hike when she thought, "I hate Gail right now because I know she's back there in bed," I knew I had made the right decision. Sometimes the best thing to do is raise the white flag of surrender and simply bow out of the race.

***************

After lunch, showers, and a brief time of rest, the team gathered in the main room of the guesthouse to meet and greet some of the children who are being sponsored by members of First Presbyterian Church. Slowly, shyly, they paraded into the guesthouse, with bows in their hair, lumps in their throats, and terror in their eyes. Even the teenagers seemed reluctant to speak at first.

We cried silent tears as the children, through interpreters, told about their families, their battles with hunger, single parent family life, and their hopes for the future. The girl in the brown shirt above is one of six or seven siblings being raised by a single father. The girl in the blue dress, although she looks cute and sweet in her dress, suffers from frequent sicknesses and is in rather frail health.

The photo above is of Rose, that precious little blue-clad princess, meeting her sponsor, my roommate, Melissa. Rose is in kindergarten and her sister, not seen in the photo, is in 3rd grade. Melissa used to be a kindergarten teacher and her son is in 3rd grade. One boy, whose sponsor was with us on the trip, told about his love for music and hopes for being in the music industry someday. His sponsor sings in the choir at First Pres and takes care of pipe organs for a living. One girl spoke of being an only child (which is exceedingly rare in that village) and living with her single mother. Her sponsor is a single woman in Charlotte who lives with her widowed mother.

It would be easy to write off those "coincidences" as obvious pairings made by the sponsoring organization between children and prospective sponsors, but there was no formal matching procedure. The sponsors simply gave their money and the organizers "randomly" chose the children. Some might call that "luck;" we cried, shook our heads, and marveled at what God had done.

Members of our team with sponsored children and their family members.

Don't let the smiles fool you; our hearts were cracked wide open.

I suspect - and I hope - that they always will be.

This young man's story broke my heart in a deeper way than any other. He is 15 years old (the same age as my own son), one of several siblings, and a proud student at OFCB. What moved me first to tears and then to action was his matter-of-fact description of the pervasiveness of hunger in his life - how he and his friends wander around the village looking for food, how he often goes to bed hungry, and how he sometimes ties a rope around his stomach when he cannot sleep due to hunger pains. None of us could fathom a reason why or how tying a rope around his midsection would ease the hunger pains, but it's what he does. As soon as the gathering ended, three of us sprang from our chairs, ran to our bedrooms, and gathered up crackers, peanut butter, granola bars, and whatever else we could spare and gave it all to this young man. His gratitude was evident, as was our sense of powerlessness as we realized that our meager provisions would last only for a day or two... and then what would happen to this delightful young man? What would happen to his siblings, to his friends, to all people everywhere, including right here in Charlotte who go to bed hungry every night?


Having seen all that I saw, having heard all that I heard, having lived out that eye-opening, heart-breaking experience last weekend, the question I am asking myself over and over is this - What will I do now?

Thold told me about a Haitian proverb that says something like: "God gave us everything we need to survive on this planet, but he left it up to us to share." Indeed. 

Day Two - On a Deeper Adventure

A week ago this morning, our team set out with three Haitian guides on a long hike up the mountain from Bayonnais to Nicholas to visit the OFCB satellite school. We left the guesthouse at 6:15 am and arrived around 7:45 am. 

The landscape quickly changed from deep greens to dry browns. Drought sucks. So does hunger.

At one point, one of the members of our team asked one of the guides the name of a certain flowering plant we saw. The guide's response was sobering: "I don't know what that is called. We don't eat it." In other words, they aren't interested in daffodils or roses or tulips or crepe myrtles. If it cannot be eaten, it is not important to them.

A short while later, we passed a family of pigs rooting through the underbrush, digging out their breakfast. We stopped and took dozens of pictures, oohing and aahing over how cute the baby pigs were. The same guide asked us if we have pigs in the United States. It was challenging for Genny, one of our team members, to explain the concept of "factory farming."

Throughout the entire walk, as we passed small fields of peppers, peanuts, banana trees, and the like, as we watched the people bent over at the waist, tending, pulling, pruning, and lovingly caring for their plots of land and their small herds of animals, I was reminded of how far removed most of us are from the production of the food we eat. And I was also challenged to comprehend the fact that the fields and animals we saw would not be enough to feed the people for very long. I spent much of the day praying for rain.

At the top of one of the mountains, at the end of the trail, stood the school at Nicholas. Nearly 200 students are enrolled there. While we struggled, stumbled, slipped, and slid up and down the hills approaching the school (to be fair to my rather agile teammates, I should change the subject of that phrase to "I"), several students ran past us on the trail, easily leaping, lunging, and skipping along in order to arrive ahead of us. Once again, we were welcomed with song - "Lord, I lift Your Name on High" in Creole. Do I even need to say that I started to cry? That I wanted to hug every single one of them?

Above - one of the school's two classrooms, an open-air affair. What do they do when it rains???

Below - the other classroom. The two photos below are taken from the same spot in the doorway. That's a whole lot of kids in one small space. In the second photo, the little boy with the red and blue striped shirt is sitting in "the back row" of the section of the room that caters to the younger students. Notice the the children on the far side of him are facing away from me. And, yes, there are many students who are standing. 

The woman in the green dress is a teacher's assistant in the larger classroom. The woman in the middle is one of the cooks for the school. The woman in the hat needs a better fashion sense. The small building behind us is the kitchen.

Making our way back down to Bayonnais, some of the landscapes were truly breathtaking. I apologize to all the folks who were walking behind me for the dozens of times that I stopped to take pictures. In four days in Haiti, I took over 800 photos.

I owe Pressley, our lead guide, the man in the photo above, a public thank you for allowing me to hold onto his backpack whenever I felt unsure of my footing - which amounted to approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes of our 3 hour hike. I probably should have tipped him with more than a fistful of Orange Mint Lifesavers. But he certainly enjoyed the candy. Interestingly enough, Pressley and I spoke to each other only in Spanish.

Pastor Amilor, the one with the velvety voice, served as ferry and tugboat when we crossed this rather shallow river. He took each one of us by hand and walked us across the rocks, soaking his jeans and shoes over and over. How he and Pressley made that hike in jeans baffled me - it was soooooooo hot!

The two photos here are of the left and right halves of the same classroom
at the main OFCB school in Bayonnais. 

Yup, that's over 50 students in one Spanish class. 

The high school Spanish teacher and I traveled from one classroom to another all Friday afternoon and I had a fabulous, fantastic, fun, wonderful, and wildly enjoyable time conjugating verbs, telling them about my family, asking them questions about their lives, and inviting them to the board to correct my "mistakes" in verb conjugation. They laughed at my teaching antics and silly anecdotes.

They asked me the same questions in every class: what is your name? how many siblings do you have? how many children do you have? what are your parents' names? what is your job? how old are you? In every class and in every one-on-one conversation I had with young people around the school grounds, they asked the same questions. One of my teammates told me that in one of the English classes, she flipped through a student's notebook and those were the questions that were listed in order on one page. They had learned their lessons well.

I showed them photos of my family - and they were struck by the fact that, not only am I an American and not a Haitian, (many students said things like, "But you look like me." And "where were you born? Where were your parents born?" They simply do not have much exposure to Americans who are also brown skinned.) but also that my husband is white. The boys couldn't believe that Kristiana doesn't have a boyfriend. After staring at her photos for a few seconds, one boy raised his hand and said, in English, "I love her."

This young man asked to have his picture taken with me. How could I resist? 

My only concern was that all 50 of the students would ask. No one else did. 

When he put his arm around my shoulder a wave of low pitched "oohs" rolled across the classroom. For all of their frenetic movement, hand-grasping, and requests for photos, the children of Bayonnais are not very physically affectionate. Unlike the children we met in Nicaragua, they did not ask to be picked up or carried, and other than one or two of the smallest children, they did not try to sit in our laps. They shook our hands rather politely when they introduced themselves to us, but otherwise they didn't touch us. Both children and adults alike flinched slightly when I put my arm around them to have photos taken. I was surprised by that and a little bit sad, especially because I wanted to grab up a few of the little ones and bring them home to Charlotte! 

A front view of the two-story school building.

Intramural soccer is the highlight of each school day. The competition is between the students of various grade levels and the teachers. Last Friday, the game was between the 7th grade boys and the teachers. The student team won 1-0. And it was not because the teachers "let" them win. It was a hard-fought game, with students and teachers alike being pushed, shoved, and chased up and down that rocky battlefield. The crowd roared at every shot on goal. What energy! And what a rowdy celebration when the game ended.

Nothing clever to report here - isn't he adorable?

My two friends, Stenson and Phito, sought me out on Friday after school was done to say good-bye before they went home for the weekend. I saw Phito, the boy on the right, at church on Sunday morning. He introduced me to his father and said, "See? He's short like me."

Knowing that I would not understand or remember their names easily, I asked the children to write their names in the back of my journal so I could try to sound them out. They LOVED that idea. In the photo above, the girl in the lavender and white shirt in the back row oversaw the proceedings, making sure that everyone wrote only on the back pages, that they wrote neatly, and that no one - except her, of course - wrote their name more than once. In the foreground, the children are carrying out their usual antics whenever they saw someone pull out a camera. They sing, clap, jump, pose, bug out their eyes, and then they ask to see the photo. What the what?

Then I remembered: I'm the adult here. Several times in a row, I pointed at the ground and demanded, rather loudly, "Sit down." Isn't that stereotypically American? If someone doesn't understand you, repeat yourself slowly and loudly. Well, by golly, it worked. 

There were a few panicked seconds when I looked up and saw the children flipping through my journal. I wondered, "Will they think I'm too emotional, too detailed, too religious in how I write?" Almost immediately, I laughed as I reminded myself: "They can't read English, Gail. And even if they can, they probably won't be able to decipher your terrible handwriting."

Soon after taking this final photograph, I collected my pens, my journal, and what was left of my energy, dragged myself inside, and fell fast asleep. Those kids wore me out!

It was another fabulous day in Haiti. And the fun was only beginning.