Pictures from Orphanage

Hope for Tomorrow Orphanage

James discovered an orphanage in a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince during his time in Haiti, and when I came I brought a suitcase full of toys, clothes, sandals, and medicine for the fifteen orphans and abandoned children who live there. The first day we went to visit them and distribute the gifts, I was completely shocked and overwhelmed by the whole experience. The “papa” of the orphanage, Dorleans, is a Haitian man who belongs to the church group that provides the funding for the orphanage. He is a wonderful man who has agreed to care for the children and provide for them with his meager Haitian accountant’s salary. He and his wife live with these kids in a two room hut, and have dedicated their lives to them.

They live in the Carrefour section of Port-au-Prince, a really shady neighborhood that is overcrowded and dirty, just like the rest of Port-au-Prince. Most of the kids at the orphanage have parents, but were left in the hands of Dorleans because their parents cannot afford to feed, clothe, and house them. They live in a dingy, dark, two room building that can best be described as a “hovel”. Three bunk-beds in one room for all 15 of them, and a queen size bed in the living room for the parents and the babies, and this room also doubles as their “school room”, living room, kitchen, and play-room. Outside there is a little porch. This is where the kids have spent most of their lives, and to be honest these kids are probably some of the more lucky ones, kids who have found a home where they are not abused, living on the street, or unable to eat a meal each day.

Despite the hardships of their lives, the kids all seemed energetic and somewhat happy, at least while they were playing. God bless the “mother” of all of these kids. Along with taking care of the three babies she also takes care of the other twelve of them and cooks for all the neighborhood kids once a week. She is a great artist and makes cards, banana bark pictures, and bracelets. She sewed a beautiful tablecloth for me as a present before I left, it depicts scenes of rural Haitian life as well as an outline of the country itself. She is an amazing, amazing woman.

The kids were absolutely adorable and so grateful for everything that we brought. And despite their hard situation and lack of material things, they are just like kids everywhere—always full of laughter, ready with hugs and smiles, and just wanting people to love them and care for them. It’s heartbreaking to see young people affected by poverty and even more heartbreaking to realize that unless an enormous change happens in their lives, they will never know anything except this poverty.

I know my last two posts have been somewhat depressing—but that’s what you get when returning from such a poor country! My next post will be more upbeat, I promise. Pictures from the orphanage to come.
Also-- since I've been back in the States I've been working on a website for the orphanage, so they can collect foreign donations and hopefully get some of the kids adopted to the US. Will post the link when I'm finished with it.

Reflections from Haiti

It has been a few weeks since my trip to Haiti and return, yet I found it really hard to write about while I was there and almost as hard upon being back. It is such a different world there—a chaotic place where nothing makes sense, least of all the suffering of the vast majority of the people. Haiti is a country that reeks of suffering and misery, more than anywhere I’ve ever been. You can feel it in the stifling heat, the relentless sun, the smell of urine and unwashed bodies, and the glazed, blank, hopeless look in people’s eyes. It permeates the atmosphere.

The thing I find the most difficult to grapple with emotionally when traveling to developing countries, and in Haiti especially, is the profound divide between our world in America and their world. We know of almost none of the hardships that they must endure, and they are able to experience none of the luxuries and characteristics of American life. You might as well be going back in time when you step into Haiti—people living in huts, people starving, without clothes, urinating and sleeping in the streets. Huts and cement buildings, corrugated tin roofs and side walls, trash littered everywhere on the crowded streets.

This is how I imagine many people had to live before the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of the modern era. Suffering and pain have always been inextricably tied to life, and there is nothing inherently wrong with suffering—it makes us stronger, reminds us we’re alive and that life is a fragile thing, and is something that can develop and shape our person. Before the last 100 years or so, this kind of poverty was just a fact of life, shared by most of the human race. The difficulty I have in accepting the kind of suffering that people face in Haiti and many other places globally in this modern age is how unnecessary it is, and how unjustly distributed. There is no reason in this age of modernity for people to live like that. It is unfair, and it is morally despicable for some of us to be born into a life where we feel entitled to manicures, private jets, vacations in the Bahamas, and weekly trips to the mall— when meanwhile millions of people wake up in the morning unsure of whether they’re going to be able to find enough work to be able to feed their children a meal of rice that day.

How can we live in a world with such discrepancies? Why do the great majority of people seem to ignore it? How can we live with ourselves? What possibly can justify our continuation of our exclusive lifestyles of luxury and waste, when other human beings-- our fellow human beings-- are born into life on the dirt floor of a thatched hut, born into a life of poverty and disease and a ceaseless lack of security?

These are the questions that continue to materialize as a persistent lump in my stomach when I see how other people, other people just like me but born into a different life, are forced to live. And the worst knowledge of all is the cold facts of history—this is no accident. The reason that some people are rich and some are poor is that history has determined who the victors of society have been, and our wealth has been built on the backs of the ancestor’s of today’s poor. The injustice is not only that the fortunate of the world happen to be born into wealth and a stable society, but that all of their fortune has been taken from others, built upon the stolen resources of others. These others who are now living in poverty. It is no accident of history, but a result, a visible outcome of imperialism, consistent colonization, and historical abuse of resources, human beings, and whole societies. I, like others, may not be directly responsible for these historical (and present) crimes, but I have certainly accepted the fruits of them in my life, without really caring about how they were obtained.

I don’t know what the solution to this, the problem of our times, is—but I do know that it begins with people waking up to the reality of our world and accepting the startling truth that perhaps we are not entitled to something just because we are born to it.