Jediah Logiodice's Blog – Page 25 – You too now begin to be a magician

Whoever said love doesn’t cost anything….

Nope, this really isn’t a philosophical post – it’s just a straight out humanistic discussion on the literal costs of love.

A friend of mine wrote to me the other day saying “I wish I could afford to adopt” – and I was thinking, what a SAD reflection on the realities of life.

I’m about to write a 7,000$ check today for adoption costs (1300 of that is just to get some documents translated). We’ve spent almost double that already out of pocket already, now that we have depleted all of our savings that we set aside for the adoption we’re now having to take loans out to pay for the adoption costs…

Children around the world, starving, dying, sleeping on dirt floors, eating mud, no mother, no father, suffering from treatable and curable diseases, and the literal costs associated with adopting and bringing them into your family, to care for them, love them and give them a hope for a better life is $15,000-$30,000 dollars (that’s a low estimate).

But we keep reminding ourselves, as a parent you will pay anything for the health and safety of your children, and the health and safety of our Haitian children cannot be given a price, it’s priceless… so while frustrating, and a bit scary to be creating all these loans that will take a long time to pay back, we’ll continue to spend whatever we need to spend to bring our children home, and give all of our children the very best.

Little girls can be so cute…

On my way into the office this morning, my daughter Bella insisted on opening the door for me; I love you so much, comes her reply as I walk down the stairs and she shuts the door, and then further away I could hear her holler at the top of her lungs “I’ll miss you in minutes”…

Where did she come up with that? How cute!!

Oh Captain, My Captain

On a couple of our plane trips down and back from Haiti the captain’s let Donovan sit in the cockpit and play with the flight controls… I’m like “Don’t touch anything” and they’re like “Everything is turned off, he is fine, take the stick”… One of the times, the captain is like, “Look, the plane can talk to me”, and he ran a pre-flight certification diagnostic, and the plane came back and said something like “Error, not all systems are certified for flight” and the captain said “Uh, oh, that’s not good”. I assume they had it fixed, there were no flight tragedies that day.

Speaking of flight tragedy, I am getting slightly better on a Plane, although I still sit there and imagine what it’s going to be like to die in a plane crash – I can’t help it. And somehow, both trips we have taken have been surrounded by tragedies.

The last time we went there was the NJ crash that killed everyone on board, this time, a couple days after we got back there was the Air France tragedy that killed everyone on board.

Just as I was starting to get used to the idea of flying, I’m reminded how unsafe it really is… and the worst part, due to the fickle nature of politics and governmental paperwork, I am probably going to have to fly back down to Haiti later this year to submit my I 600 in person. =\

Heart problems & resolutions.. why I love going to Haiti

This past week we were blessed and reminded of the scarcity and sanctity of life.

As I previously mentioned our daughter was diagnosed with a Heart arrhythmia, but they had no idea how severe or mild it was. But knowing how worried we were Chris & Junior did an amazing job squeezing us into the Cardiologist before we flew out on Monday morning (despite the torrential downpours and the 2-3 feet of rivers blasting through the streets).

So, I can tell you that doctors in Haiti work much differently than in the U.S. The doctors there keep open hours, even with 3 million some odd people – you don’t make an appointment, you just show up.

We showed up, and waited about 5 minutes, the doctors brought us in, got a little bit of the background story, talked to Christella in French (I didn’t know she knew French too) – and then placed her up on the table.

He at first said “Oh, yes, I can hear it, it’s very distinguished”, then as tears welled up in my eyes he stated “There is nothing congenital, she has a slight murmur probably do to her severe malnutrition or anemia”. He video taped it, wrote a report and handed it to us all in 20 minutes, costing $75 U.S. The tears of joy that even now fall thinking how blessed we and she are that there was nothing seriously wrong.

And that very weekend, at home, my father had a stroke, which we didn’t find out until we returned home. He seems to be doing ok, a lot of weakness, some confusion, but otherwise, nothing to serious (we think). They’ve done MRIs, brain scans, chest xRays, echo Cardiograms, taking hours at a time, and days to get in, costing thousands and thousands of dollars… but we really haven’t heard the results of everything yet.

Apart from the reflection of the differences in the medicine (even though it is scarce) in Haiti, with the U.S. – it all just reminds me of how little holds us within the embrace of life from the clutches of death.

One thing that I LOVE about going to Haiti is through the vast array of business, the University, Leadership development, house chores, work; it really forces you to come back and realize that as short as life really is on this earth, everything should funnel to a point. Everything I do, everything, should be to support and love and care for mankind rising up to an ultimate love and responsibility to my family, and all I do for my family should be to God’s glory.

If at any time, I find that the all the support mechanisms I have for that triad (People, Family, God) are getting in the way, I need to step back and take a breather. In the end, it doesn’t matter how smart I become, how many degrees I have, how much money I can make, or how much respect in my field I can earn: People: that is where the true investment is.

Senyè a bay! Senyè a pran! Lwanj pou Senyè a!

Maine – the way life should(nt) be…

So we drove into Portland last night, from Miami, and Haiti the day before (around 95 degrees and 90% humidity). We were in shorts and t-Shirts, and we jumped out of the car to get a bite to eat.

As we were sitting in the restaurant Donovan said to me: “Papa, when we came back to Maine, there was a sign that said ‘Maine, the way life should be’; but let me tell you, Life shouldn’t be like this, unless you live in Antarctica!”.

Amanda and I couldn’t stop laughing….!

Anyone for a plate of Fish Haiti style…

This is the actual dish that I was served at Wahoo Bay in Haiti. And yes, those are razor sharp teeth the fish have…

It was scary – but I didn’t die after eating it – so it must have been safe to eat! 😉

We rode a tap-tap today… and here are more pictures…

We went to church today – and it was so amazing to be praising the God on the other side of the world with the Haitian people.

Bondye se Bon!

The other side of the story…

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with Mary, Ralph’s mother. She said that this year was the first year that Ralph was in the compassion program, and his older brother has never been in the compassion program, that their need is very recent.

Mary’s husband has the skills of a mechanic and a mason, but there is no work in Haiti. He was working in the Bahamas as an illegal so he could send money back to them so they could live. They caught him and sent him back to Haiti. She works sometimes as a cook, but it doesn’t bring in very much money at all, and her husband cannot find any work now.

I asked why they didn’t apply for a Visa; she said that it used to be that Visa’s were much easier to come by, if you had money – around 1,000$ US (which is a years worth of rent) – but now, you can’t even get them that way anymore. They give out so few Visa’s that it’s near impossible to get them, and there is probably no possibility of ever getting a visa after being caught illegally in another country.

Apparently the economics of Visa’s goes something like this: very few Visa’s are given to people wanting to go to countries that are economically better than their own country – they are afraid the people will skip town and not come back. Additionally, for every one migrant worker there is a worker that is displaced, replaced from that country.

And yet, these migrant workers will do the jobs that a lot of people don’t want to do in the country they are going to – mostly because they are hard, tireless and difficult, and sometimes even dangerous. Most of the time these migrant workers work VERY hard, because they are supporting so many people that they can’t afford to be displaced, and the very little they get paid is like a fortune in the country they come from.

Towards the end of the day Mary described her situation and told me that their greatest need right now is financial; they pay about $80 US a month for their rent… I found out that the average Haitian income sometimes ranges a little higher than I previously thought – between $30-80 a month, but with a rent of $80 a month, that doesn’t leave anything for food.

Now that I’ve seen the impacts first hand from the immigrant workers perspective, with my own eyes, I may very well be in the process of changing my views… Odd how experiences can do that to you….

A couple more pictures

First time for many things…

Today we started out with a standard typical Friday in Haiti – we were not going anywhere, we were just sitting around the Hotel, we swam a little, ate a little, etc.

Then this afternoon, we all decided to take a crazy trip. I took my family out the guarded gate (big shot guns standing by the gates), down the street, around the main road, and way up the hill to a ‘fast-food’ restaurant. Apart from the smells of sweat and rotten trash, and the murky water flowing by on the streets, and the crazy cars that would speed by and honk their horns to let you know that if you get hit, it’s your fault for not paying attention (that’s the way it works in Haiti, as long as a driver honks, it’s the pedestrians fault for getting hit), apart from all that, we made it safe out and back an hour or so later.

We had a lot of stares, ALOT of stares, some smiles, and a few requests for ‘dollar’. One lady it was very hard to say no too; she was very, very skinny and was carrying a baby, on the way up, she said she was hungry, “Mwen grangou, Mwen dwè fè manje, Mwen grangou”, but we knew there was no way that we could hand her money; if we pulled out money and handed it to her, we ran the big risk of being overwhelmed with people, perhaps creating a pretty scary incident; and I had my wife and three little children to watch out for on the way there (on the way back, we had about 10 women, twice as many children, and one other guy besides myself).

On the way back out; she was still there, and she pulled out medical papers showing what looked to be a prescription and asking for money; I have no idea if the prescription was real, but I’m sure she could have used some money for her and her baby, but there was just no way I could risk handing her some.

We also got to spend some time with Ralph, one of the little boys we sponsor through Compassion. He came with his mother and two compassion representatives. He was so excited to meet us; and he had a blast playing fotbôul with Donovan and loved playing in the pool, although I asked him “Ralph, Ou nage byen?”, Ralph reponn, “Wi, mwen nage byen” he then proceeded to slip and fall into the pool and go under, we had to scramble to get him, he was down there for a good 15-20 seconds. That’s the third child that has fallen into the pool so far this week, my daughter was the first… funny though, these children clear out their nostrils and climb right back in… they’re not scared at all.

Speaking of which, it’s also funny how the Haitian children are cold in 90 degree weather when they go swimming, they actually shiver… Christella has been warming up to me over the last two days, today she wanted me to hold her, she wanted me to cuddle her, she wanted me to play with her, she talked with me a little too. I’m so happy. I miss my children at home, but I also have a growing sadness welling up as I look to our trip home next week, once again leaving my beautiful children behind for who knows how long.

Anyway, we took so many pictures and printed out a whole bunch for Ralph and his mother. I’ve decided to post some pictures tonight.