Haiti… the “Pearl of the Antilles”, a land of beauty, a land of many problems, a land of contradictions. A people that freely give verbal credit to God for most everything, a people who are burdened with many superstitions. A people who are not materialistic but have many material needs. A culture that is so interdependent that they are each the welfare and support structure that binds the fabric of them all together. Communal inter-dependency that is so strong that independence and the capitalistic way is frowned on because greed and selfishness (which are still present here) are not the attributes that can in any way sustain them in hard times. In this culture (especially rural areas) this large social inter-dependency is what pushes poor families to have 10+ children. The more they have the more support, hopefully, the children will produce for each other and to parents as they get old. This mutual sharing has many interesting pro and con aspects. For example, someone who is down to his last two dollars and will still give one away to someone who has none. When they both run out they will suffer together until they find someone else who has three dollars who they can each then ask a dollar from. Another aspect to this way of operating is that it keeps them all more on the same level. Like one said, “Haitians are like crabs in a bucket.” If one tries to get out and get ahead there are lots more who reach up and pull him back down. If someone is getting ahead financially here, there is often criticism that the person is greedy and selfish and insensitive. Otherwise he would surely be helping others until he was on the same level again. This limits incentive. In this culture, your friends and family are the first ones you run to in material or financial need. The banking system is unavailable to you and is too cold and unfriendly. To loan to and from a friend or family brings solidarity and warm feelings of togetherness. To be so materialistic that you would record all crop inputs, shows that you don’t trust God enough to just make it somehow work out in in the end. Some would go as far as to say that if you count your expenses God won’t bless the garden. They do not trust their governments and institutions. They see waste and mismanagement in all officials and too often in churches too. So their “giving” is literally done without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing…sharing the bananas of their yard with the neighbors, cooking their last pot of rice and dividing it to the hungry, all the while hoping and knowing that when they are hungry, their neighbors will do it back. They suffer together. They do not criticize each other for poor management. Church circles are just like any other part of their other support circles. When times are tough, all needs, social, financial and spiritual are met by this life support group. Many of these cultural ways contribute to keep people in equality and in poverty, but yet these people also maintain a sense of community and solidarity that we lack in our culture.
We as North Americans, and in North America, tend to prize capitalism, independence, and self-sufficiency. We seem to see this as the one true way. Get ahead financially and then you will have enough to give to all those poor people in third world countries (at arm’s length). We work long hours, and look up to hard workers. Financial wealth is the definition of “success”. We have learned to trust our governments, and institutions, and churches, so that’s where we give our yearly donations, and get our tax receipts. We tithe, and we are generous. We eschew personal one on one giving to a large extent. We may have a financial need yet never go to our friends and family. We don’t want to owe them, or have them owe us, because we understand that the best way to lose a friend is to get involved with money matters. A friend is for emotional reasons, not financial. Church is for spiritual needs. Banks and government programs for financial needs. If we start helping one another financially, we are uncomfortable, worrying that other person will become dependent on us, or on the church aid, and we “feel it’s just not a good idea”. Much more could be said….. But do you get a little picture of what I am trying to show? Both of these cultures are a world apart in the BASE reason of why they each do what they do. Both cultures have positives and both have negatives.
Living in Haiti is teaching me more about them than what I can teach them about us. It’s hard to try to reform their financial ways and culture. And is that really our responsibility to make these changes? It is a challenge to live and work here among the people we love and keep our equilibrium. We no doubt have made many mistakes. Clearly it doesn’t work to be the rich guy in their community and just throw money around till it’s all gone. To NOT help in quiet, personal ways with the many little needs around us, very quickly bars our hearts from connecting with them and them with us. When we humbly and patently listen to their sufferings and sadness and offer a little help in food or money occasionally, our touched hearts open, making us “grieved with the afflictions of Joseph” (Amos 6:6). This enlarges their hearts toward us and we reap the huge and warm blessings of their trust and friendships. To have a “no personal help” policy would be so out of character and out of culture for them that they may not trust that our gospel is good either.
Gospel in action is what really counts with these people. Talk is cheap.
Two examples come to mind. One of their way, and one of ours. I might get frustrated at a beggar who rails on me and calls me “stingy” because I decided not to help him. I self-righteously think, “How dare he say that when I give so much? I have left home and opportunities to come run a clinic for them!” In the second, a Haitian can get frustrated at me if, when I don’t see him paying his church dues, or tithing enough, I try to instruct him on the subject of “giving”. He self-righteously thinks, “How dare you say that I don’t know how to “give” when my whole life is giving to the ones around me in ways you white men will never understand?”
Ok, enough said on that. Nurse Angela Toews heroically fulfilled her one year here, and a month ago headed back to her digs in North Carolina. Rosalie Nichols, an RN from Kansas, is here now working for a while till another nurse can come. The people here appreciate about the clinic is open every day, and they can count on that. We don’t shut down for lack of nurses, and we don’t run out of meds. Although people who walk from long distances are sometimes hampered by rainy weather, there are still plenty of patients each day! Recently I visited a similar sized clinic in another part of Haiti. They just had a small trickle of patients coming in, allowing the four nurses and one doctor to spend a nice amount of time with each one. I envied the personal time and care they were able to give to them. But, with so few clinics or health care providers in our whole area here, we are generally buried by the work load of 50-120 people every day. Recently, having not seen one of our patients (a single lady named Rosalyn) for a while and knowing she is sick and needs her meds, we decided to pay her a quick house call. We found her in her bed sick, and out of meds. The children were very sick, too. So sad. I convinced her to come to the clinic the next day and we were able to give her and the children what they needed. That night a man who had been coming by her house for “favours”, came by again. She had earlier declared to us her intention of becoming a member of our church and on the strength of that desire, she refused him entrance. He got mad and beat her to death. We were sickened and heartbroken. Those three young children she leaves behind haunt me.
Though not all born in the clinic, there are several set of twins in clinic care. One mom had triplets. The locals laugh at moms who have multiple births and call them “mama goats”. Seems like these people struggle enough to feed a child without having to be blessed with twins. Too often the breast milk doesn’t last long enough as it is and then, of course, kwashiorkor (protein deficiency) sets in with many resulting problems. Most of the ones who come to the clinic are women, and women with children. I doubt 20% are men. Because these women lack vocabulary to describe their issues, making a diagnosis always challenging. What do phrases like “waist is broken”, “water under my heart”, and “milk mounted up into my head” really mean?? There are many such things. One recent interesting case is of a young boy who got his finger chopped off. With Todd and Angela’s good efforts, the bone was trimmed back (with a sterilized wire snippers), the skin shaped, and sewn around the end nicely. It seems to be healing beautifully. Recently, I was reminded of the advantages of having Haitian church brethren here to help guide us and give us sage local advice. During our revival meetings, a couple of the Haitian ministers were visiting with me about the clinic, and they warned me that we need to start watching that the clinic profile doesn’t get too big, drawing too much attention from the government. Jealousy and envy of a good clinic could cause enough feelings that they would look for ways to take us over or shut us down. Help us pray that doesn’t happen.
The church here seems to be in good spirits and founded on the Rock, Jesus. Last weekend while the world celebrated Mardi Gras and carnality, our Haitian church gathered at one of our congregations for an annual three day fellowship time. I was sick the whole three days, but what I was able to take in was inspiring. About five hundred people were there. I have been lately reading history and the personal faith stories of many of our martyred brethren from 800 AD to 1600 AD. It impresses me that the active faith that I saw and felt in St Marys while we were there is the same active faith I see in Oriani, and I see the same faith in the old accounts in the Martyrs Mirror. But why am I surprised? God is the same yesterday today and forever. What a security we can take in this.
I could mention that during this last two weeks I have been quite sick with DHF Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever and a double whammy of kidney infection to boot. I want to really thank you all for your prayers and support that I felt. Honestly, I was very low for a couple days. My white blood cell count was dangerously low according to the doctor who read my blood test results. I seem to be on the way back up even though I feel very weak and tired.
Our family went back to St Marys, Ontario, for Christmas and then we stayed to participate in revivals and communion. What a wonderful time we had. The snow…. So white, so pretty, and so cold!
A tailender story I want to tell is about a poor, lovely, lonely little 11 yr old girl called LoveMy. She is Christina’s friend and one day when Christina had a lot of yard work to do, LoveMy wandered over and started helping. LoveMy’s dad is not with the family and they often don’t have enough to eat there, so when the work was finished I thought it only good to give her a little money for her effort. I was going to give her 25 GDS which is about what a child could expect, but I decided to double it to 50 for her. She was so happy! She skipped out of the yard towards town. But in 10 min she was back. She had used most of the money to buy a Coke just to be able to give to me. I just about cried. I really enjoyed that Coke. Computer says I have typed 2271 words. Time to go to bed.
G’nite, and God bless each one of you in His service.