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Hope for Haiti
Copyright © 2003 by Jeff Bjorck. All rights
reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
I recently traveled to Haiti as part of a delegation from Lifewater International, a Christian faith-based organization that empowers, equips, and trains local villagers to drill and maintain their own wells for safe, clean, drinkable water. I serve as a member of Lifewater's Board, and I was privileged to make the trip with three men central to this ministry: Bill Ashe, founder and emeritus director; Dan Stevens, current executive director; and Les Babcock, veteran Lifewater volunteer and principle contributor to its efforts in Haiti. Lifewater has projects in 53 countries on five continents, but Haiti is one of the poorest. On the bright side, Lifewater has been working in Haiti for almost 20 years, and the impact of fresh water was a wonderful thing to see. Still, the plight of the people there is fresh in my mind as I sit in the comfort of my heated office with electric lights that do not routinely lose power several times a day. What follows are some of my reflections from this trip. Much of what is written was done while I was still in Haiti. In many ways, I am still there.
Contents (Click on any link below.)
I. Port au Prince
The Vocational School
II. La Gonave
The Mountain Village
The Seaside Well
III. Cape Haitian
Time Travel
Hope and Fear
Tomb of the Unknown Haitian
IV. Home
The air is thick with charcoal smoke and sweat, odors overwhelmed only by the stench of filth and sewage that rises up from every gutter. These aromas mingle with the smell of burning tires, torched in the streets by political demonstrators protesting life in the western world's poorest country. Each protest leaves behind wounds that bleed melted asphalt and render awful roads even worse. We drive past several such wounds on our way to the mission guest house where we will spend our first two nights in Haiti. Along the way, we pass several cars with missing windows, presumably smashed out by protestors who are tired of living in squalor near the palace of a billionaire president. I check my door locks and pray.
The city streets are choked with garbage and lined with faces that stare through the heat and steam. The younger faces are sometimes wide-eyed, but the eyes close to half-mast in even the older children. Young women and elderly people sit in the shade of building overhangs, where they appear to have sat for years. Some attempt to sell wares such as produce, clothing, or crafts, but the heat and steam seem to squelch any enthusiasm, and the vendors merely sit and wait.
When there is no overhang, umbrellas and hats must suffice for shade.
These people know waiting but they do not know time, which successfully remains hidden from them in the camouflage of standing still in the heat. There is no need for time when the only thing hurrying does is bring one closer to another day of heat and steam and hopelessness. In the midst of this, the bright eyes and smiles of small children stand out as stark contradictions, pointing to the harsh reality that hopelessness is learned over time. Sadly, even the young learn this quite early.
In the midst of this collage of steam and stench and smoke and refuse, women and an occasional man glide effortlessly on foot through the streets with huge burdens on their heads. Some carry produce to sell; others carry laundry fresh from one of the rivers, where the water rinses more dirt into the clothes. Even so, the colors are bright in the Caribbean sun, and many people are clean and scrubbed. In particular many children are neatly dressed as they walk to and from school in brightly colored shirts and dark pants or skirts, uniforms clearly washed with regularity.
Our driver stops at the top of a deeply rutted dirt road outside a compound with an iron door and high cement walls topped with broken glass, not unlike a prison. The green and brown shards are not intended to keep prisoners in, however, but to keep trespassers out. I wonder why we have stopped and am surprised to learn that this compound is the mission guest facility. Once inside, I am impressed by the peaceful grounds, the modest but clean rooms, and the delicious food. Sadly, however, I also quickly come to value the walls and glass when occasional gun shots pierce the night. Extreme chronic poverty and the resulting anger make a volatile combination.
Driving in Port au Prince is an adventure. As we crawl and lurch through the streets crammed with cars, the driver continually weaves through the people and cars and people and people and cars and bikes and people. There are people standing everywhere and people walking everywhere. The taxis are old pick-up trucks and school busses, wildly painted with bright colors and names like "Merci Jesus" and "Celine Dion." These are the "tap-taps," which represent an amalgamation of people and machine. They lurch through the streets with back bumpers scraping the ground and 40 pairs of arms and legs sticking out in all directions like a large four-wheeled sea anemone. A tap-tap without 15 passengers clinging to its roof is less than half full. On a smaller scale, there are bicycles full of people. One bike can travel down the rutted road with one man, two children, and a baby on the handlebars. Gravity and mortality are continually defied.
This tap-tap is only half-full, with room for 20 more on top.
Defiance has its cost, especially on the "highways" between towns, which are littered with metal carcasses of those who lost at games of chicken played at lethal speeds. Others flip to their permanent resting places after hitting huge holes that swallow up these narrow two-lane roads. Still other vehicles strike unpainted speed bumps, seen too late by drivers who become airborne before their final stop.
Whereas the open roads have no speed limits, the city traffic has two speeds: crawl and stop, unless the driver improvises by driving down the wrong side of the divider. It seems clear that walking is faster than driving, but somehow, everyone still tries to be "just one more" tap-tap passenger, and each one always succeeds.
Several days later, in a town near Port au Prince, we visit a denominationally sponsored facility that includes a children’s school, a school for training teachers, and a vocational school. Our focus is the vocational school, where we meet with the Director, a man who also pastors on weekends and has at least one other job during the week. This would be quite a challenge for a single person, so of course, being married with children makes it even more interesting. As we sit in his office and unceasingly swat the malaria messengers, daylight from one high window brightens the room all the way up to a dusky gray. The director explains that the school only has electricity when they are not using their one gas-powered generator for welding classes. Welding currently is in session so we sit in the dusk at noon.
The director shows us copies of an assistance proposal he has written for the vocational school. It includes requests for one additional water cooler, one additional filing cabinet, and a computer for filing and records. Of course, without electricity, the computer itself will present a challenge. As for the water cooler and filing cabinet, receiving one of each would increase school assets by 100 percent. Currently the school's staff, visitors, and 80 students must share the opportunity to refresh themselves with a cup of warm water from the single water cooler on campus. The 13 years of records are currently all stuffed into a solitary filing cabinet.The director's request for these items was written months ago and he has waited at his desk, seated in his shirt and tie and polished shoes, but no response has come. I sit too; overwhelmed with a sense of wonder at how this man can find the enthusiasm to get up each morning.
A ray of hope struggles through the noontime dusk as the director tells us of the possibility of adding a curriculum for well drilling at the vocational school, with a focus on La Gonave. La Gonave, a thirty-mile island sitting about 40 miles from Haiti 's mainland, is a slab of volcanic rock covered with trees and a foot or two of topsoil. Its dry season lasts at least four months and sometimes twelve. In the midst of the poverty surrounds us, the director jars me with his words explaining the need to help La Gonave. He says, "La Gonave is not like Port au Prince. La Gonave is very poor."
The director's hope is that students from this poorest section of Haiti might come to the school with scholarships, learn how to drill wells, and return to serve their villages. Safe water is even scarcer on La Gonave than it is on the Haitian mainland. The director shows us the proposal for this new curriculum, and while there is hope, he also waits for these funds as he sits at his desk with no light.
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