Author: darthjedi

Into the belly of the whale….

So I went much further into the interior of Port-Au-Prince today – with a guy I met this morning named Enock.  He was a very nice guy; he spoke Creole, and French and a little bit of English.  It’s surprising how much language that you have studied comes to you in a situation like that.  We were able to communicate quite well… only once did I need help from Alix (our hotel manager who found Enock for me) – when I needed to find out how long until Enock got back.  It actually wasn’t as scary as I imagined, I ended up driving with my windows down, mixing with the people – sometimes even talking with them at stops (mostly to say “No I don’t want to buy <whatever they were selling>”.  There are people standing on the streets selling everything in Haiti – even Air.  We had to stop to have a guy start up an old rickety generator to pump air into the tires of the car I was riding in.

He was supposed to wait for me at the Embassy, but he received a call and had to leave – at least he got me a note telling me that.  When he came back though, he seemed very anxious, and his car was stuttering and it appeared to be out of gas.  I asked him, “Ou bwenzen Gaz?”, and he (knowing that i could speak more French than Creole) rattled off a few paragraphs in French – I didn’t understand him, so I just said a quick prayer – a warrior prayer.  I made it back ok.

The trip into Port-Au-Prince was heart-wrenching… so many times I almost lost it.  These people are so beautiful, not only in physical appearance, but in their spirits.  The air is so thick with poisons, burning plastic, rubber, most cars pouring out black smoke, it makes your lungs burn and ache, you feel like you are suffocating, not only under the heat itself, but under the weight of the noxious fumes.  You try to breath light, which only makes your oxygen starved body cry out for more and make you breath all the harder.  My lungs are in pain… how can these people live like this?

Everywhere there were school children, going to school, uniformed, playing, laughing, while all around them were hungry bellies, and putridity.  Trash heaps piled everywhere, people emptying what looked like slop water out into the streets.  All around were colorful signs painted on the walls, painted on billboards, i don’t think i ever saw a single bare wall, the murals were amazing; and yet, what kind of hope is there for these people? 

A life expectancy of 50; breathing in constant poisons, scrapping to feed families on a little less than a dollar a day.  I couldn’t imagine eating the food being sold and prepared in the market places.  I saw people filling old gas cans and bleach bottles with water – I wonder if they would drink it… something makes me think so.

The buildings were unbelievable, as you drove down the road, you could look over the ‘cliff’ of the road, and see two-three stories of buildings that went down into the ground and two or three stories that went up into the air… knowing that when storms come in Haiti there is massive flooding, it’s no wonder so many people die, in a town with millions of people, many living below grade…

I ache to save my children from their future here in Haiti…  I ache to help those left behind in anyway I can… I also had to spend a small fortune to get into the embassy ($60 US dollars for a 3 mile drive) – and I have to go back tomorrow… so I’m paying about $10 US a mile….  I didn’t have all the paperwork I needed…  into the belly of the whale again tomorrow, but Junior and Chris are going with me this time…

The trip to the beach was just as scary… sometimes reaching 70 miles per hour in a 14 seat van that had 28 people in it, no buckles, roads that were for the most part dilapidated and falling apart (although there was ALOT of rebuilding since the last time we were here from the hurricane the previous year).  Sometimes there were pits and ravines on either side, the roads crumbling into them, and we would swerve around going 60 mph.  Quite a few times we went head on to an oncoming car, at 60-70 mph, and the driver would swerve just at the last second.  Haitians are AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING drivers… American would likely die quickly on the roads over here… I SWEAR we grazed so many pedestrians, and they didn’t even blink…

Imagine, driving through your town at 70 MPH while 2-3 year old children play in and on the street, and they just blink and eye and slide out of the way of the vehicles that do not even attempt to slow down.

Apart from the noxious and poisonous fumes, I saw dead donkeys and dead cows along the road… 

The ocean, however, was beautiful.  Mountains in the panoply surrounding the ocean, mist, bright blue ocean, sandy beach, wildlife everywhere… but it took us 2 hours to get out far enough that the OCEAN was safe enough to play in…

On another note, we found out that our daughter has a heart arrhythmia,  please pray for her that it is not very dangerous – she is going to go for tests in a couple weeks, and then will go for a second opinion in a few weeks after that.  We also found out that our beautiful baby boy not only had malaria, but his GI infection was causing him to have bloody stools and he had dropped so dangerously low in weight, that they had to give him a feeding tube… after a second round of antibiotics he finally seems to be getting better…  Chris and Hal and the HIS Home staff, are amazing people!  Chris was so worried about our son that she used skin contact therapy to keep him with us… 

It makes me weep; I want them to come home with us … I want them safe…  Please pray for our children, please pray for this country, please stand up and do what you can to help.  I don’t care how these people look on the outside, and how well they seem to be taking their “lot in life” – these people HAVE to be hurting on the inside; they HAVE to know that this isn’t how life is supposed to be.  Why should they have to wait to die to taste the riches of life that God has given?  Why?  My 16$ pizza would feed a family of 6 for half of a month…  God, send your warriors!

And please, while you’re at it, heal my lungs, because I feel pain at each breath, and I can’t get the smell of poisons out of my nostrils.

Signing off in Haiti on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009.

Tomorrow is going to be an adventure… (to say the least) – Psa 37:3

So, I’m driving into the city of Port-Au-Prince tomorrow, by myself, with a fella by the name of Enoch that I’ve never met yet, and he doesn’t speak any English…  This is definitely a first for me, and I’m feeling a bit nervous (ok, quite a bit), for more than a few reasons which I will blog about tomorrow night (hopefully).

Alix, the really great manager of the Hotel we’re staying at says Enoch is one of the only guys that he trusts… hopefully that means I’ll be safe…  In a foreign city, by myself and can barely speak any understandable Creole…  … … …

(Psa 37:3)  Trust in the LORD and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

(Psa 37:3)  Mete konfyans ou nan Seyè a, fè sa ki byen! Pran peyi a fè kay ou, viv ak kè poze!

On another note, it was sobering tonight to realize that the price we pay for one dominos pizza (16 US) is a little more than half a months pay for the majority of people in Haiti – boy do we take a lot for granted!

And on that same note, I MISS my refrigerator with the built in ice and water.  It’s been in the 90’s with 90% humidity and each bottle of water costs us 1.50$  and we’ve been drinking a very large amount each day (between the 5 of us).

 

Here are a few pictures…

 

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We arrived!

I smell like dirty feet wrapped in a bacon sandwich, and it is unbelievably hot and muggy – but we arrived and were SO happy to see the children.  Our little boy is quite the riot – he reminds me of Braeden, he is very spoiled… he HAS to be held and get attention or he cries, but he smiles, and laughs big HUGE smiles.  Christella is as quiet as ever – however, this time we have a young gal named Vivian who is also here, she is Haitian, and she has helped us communicate with Christella, which has been a blessing!

The trip over was rather uneventful, except for all the problems with luggage, that normally occur… Donovan got to meet one of our captains, and he got to sit in the cockpit and try out some of the flight equipment too – that was amazing for all of us!

 

Pictures will be coming very soon – but it’s time to go spend some time with the children… I’m already sad that we have to leave… 🙁

 

By the way; for everyone in Maine that is experiencing frost tonight – nah nah…  😉

Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe!

A very interesting Haitian proverb; most literally, this means: “God knows to give, but He not know to distribute”.  In other words, God gives humans everything they need to survive, but it’s the responsibility of the people to share and divide the bounty amongst themselves.

In other words:  Those who have should give to those who have not; that is the way God intended it to be.

From what I have read about Haiti, this is lived more than just spoken.  While many families go days without food, when they do get food they share every little bit they have with each other; despite the fact that the little they do get isn’t enough for one, let alone to be shared.

This is a direct expository for the biblical verse:

John 3:

11 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

11 "If you have two coats, give one away," he said. "Do the same with your food."

11 Li reponn yo: Sa ki gen de rad, se pou yo bay sak pa genyen an yonn. Sa ki gen manje pou manje, se pou l’ separe l’ bay yon lòt.

Does this sound familiar to a Mainer?

A man walked into City Hall carrying his cat.
Man:   “Hi.  I would like a dog license for my pet.”
Clerk:   “That’s a cat.  I can’t give you a dog license for your cat.  I can give you a cat license.  That will give her all the same privileges as a dog.”
Man:   “She already has a cat license.  That’s not good enough.  People think of her as just a cat.  Dogs are thought of more highly.  Man’s best friend, you know.  I want to get her a dog license and call her a dog.  Then people will think of her as a dog.”
Clerk:   “I don’t think so.  Anyway, I cannot give you a dog license for your cat.”
Man:   “Look, it’s not fair that only dogs can get dog licenses.  Let’s just call everything with fur and four legs a dog.  Now give me a dog license.”
Clerk:   “That’s a novel idea.  I imagine that would include bears and mice too.  Anyway, I still cannot give you a dog license for your cat.  The law won’t let me.”
Man:   “All right.  I’ll go to the Legislature and get them to change the law to call everything with fur and four legs a dog.  Then I can get a dog license for my cat, and people will start thinking of her as a dog.  I’ll tell the legislators that it’s a civil rights issue.  Then they’ll give me whatever I want.”
Clerk:   “You are probably right.  But she still looks like a cat to me.”

 

(The Record, Maine Family Policy Council)

The thing that is scary…

Today we called Chris to ask her a few questions about things we can bring to help the Orphanage with, and she informed us that our son has been very sick – has been for almost a month and has lost a lot of weight – but they didn’t tell us… 

I suppose they didn’t tell us because there was nothing we could do but worry (except perhaps they forgot about prayer and intercession?), and we would have not only been worried sick, but perhaps we would have also been calling quite frequently to check on him.  Perhaps they were worried about his ability to make it through – so they spared us the agony of worry and concern for something that was out of our hands and half way across the world… 

I am not angry at all with their decision to not tell us, a little scared, and a lot sad though.  It brings a level of concern that we could be thinking that everything is all right, then get a shocking call without any warning or time to prepare… babies are so fragile… this was one of my biggest concerns about having another baby, the constant worries around health and safety of a child that is so tiny and so fragile…

I guess this is the risk that every parent takes… but we didn’t even know he was sick, how heart breaking is it to think of ourselves as his parent and not even able to have a close enough relationship with him to know that he is sick… sad… 🙁

I’m my own grandpa!

We were discussing in my discrete math how you can represent genealogical information by trees; but I had to point out that as trees can’t be cyclical, and genealogies can be – that technically we can’t use trees to represent genealogies.  For example, what if you were your own grandpa – that would create a cycle and would break the whole tree thing…  What?  You say it’s not possible to be your own grandfather… surely it is.. just look…

 

 

Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father’s wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow’s grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.

Father’s wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter’s son.
My wife is now my mother’s mother, and it makes me blue,
Because, although she is my wife, she’s my grandmother, too.

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I’m her grandchild,
And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

I’m my own grandpa.
I’m my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so,
Oh, I’m my own grandpa.

Talking to our children today…

Once again, we are very grateful to H.I.S. Home for giving us the opportunity to spend a few minutes on the phone with our children a couple times a month. 

This week Christella seemed to be a little more responsive to us, she shook her head a few times; she showed us the “I love You” hand sign, and even blew us a kiss!  Amanda also saw that she had put her dress on backwards today – so CUTE!  When Braeden dressed himself for church today, he put both his shirt and his pants on backwards!  I guess it’s the ‘in’ thing for the 5 year olds right now!  😉

We are so excited to go and spend some time with them in a couple weeks…

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