This morning were invited to another church in City Solei. Silvy and Jerome, our French friends, joined us this Sunday with their son Christanor whose biological family was from City Solei. Since Silvy and Jerome had never been to the Port-au-Prince neighborhood, they were anxious to join us for church and have a chance to see the place where their child had been born.
After emerging from the 3 hour church service filled with singing, dancing, clapping, sweating and more serene moments of prayer and communion, we were quickly swarmed by the tiny bodies of the neighborhood children. They stood barefoot, dirty, in oversized shirts hanging loosely on their thin frames. They were eager to smile, anxious to interact, crowd in, be touched. Although we are often subjects of great curiosity anywhere we go, this particular neighborhood’s children were especially heart warming and heart breaking. We suddenly were pied pipers, and desperately wished we had more than a song to offer.
I was most struck by a toddler who couldn’t have been more than 1 year of age. He solemnly stood in a little t-shirt looking up at me with dirt-smeared cheeks, red hair and serious eyes.
No diaper, no pants, no socks, no shoes. His feet were black with dirt, his belly round, in his hands was a little stick he had been using to draw in the dust. His brown eyes stared up at me with neither happiness nor fear. When I picked him up to move him out of the way of an oncoming car, he didn’t whimper, didn’t fight, didn’t smile. He merely regarded me, then followed along after the crowed of laughing, talking, pushing children ahead of him. I fought the overwhelming urge to rescue him, to bring him into a world of bubble baths and bedtime stories, fire truck pajamas and milk and cookie snacks. But his mother was likely working somewhere in the maze of houses, a mother who loved him, who fed him, who was doing her very best to work miracles out of nothing, to nurture him from the dust. And the community in this little nook of Port-au-Prince was her daycare: the children grabbed his hand and lead him out of the street, the men of the church dusted him off when he fell. He was loved by a community, even if that community is struggling to provide him with the very most basic of life’s needs.
My heart broke for our friends. The experience in the churchyard was overwhelming, even for Patrick and I. So many children desperate for attention, for food, for affection, for interaction and not enough hands or arms to hold them. They posed for photos, asked us for money, practiced the only English phrase they knew, “Hey You.” Silvy was having a hard time keeping it together. I think the reality of the origins of Christanor’s life was too hard to take in all at once, in such a rush of tiny hands and faces. I found myself having to fight back tears as well, especially observing the littlest child, hoping the mob of older children would continue to look after him, or that his mother was somewhere close keeping a watchful eye from the shadows.
The children here bring such a tumultuous mix of emotions. They make you laugh, they are impossible not to fall in love with, they break your heart in all your helplessness, they shake you in midst of an encounter with a different reality, and they inspire anger at a world that isn't universally gentle to all its babies.
Children are beautiful everywhere you go, no matter if their faces are freshly scrubbed or covered with dirt, their clothes straight from the latest Gap Sales rack or third-hand clothes 3 sizes too big. Children seem to adapt to their playground, whether it be the fields of Kansas, swing sets tucked away in urban America, or the dusty paths of City Solei. But how much should we expect them to adapt to? They are innocent beings born to a world full of realities. Some children get to grow up protected from hunger, violence, lack of resources or neglect. Others are not so lucky. We adults with the power to nurture, to love, make decisions, to form policies, to build bridges, to educate and govern, have a duty to expose the imbalances of the world, to question how we contribute, to fight for a world that is softer to grow in, cleaner to play in, more plentiful to eat and drink from, and that holds the promise of education and opportunity to all.
Today we drove home, Christanor tucked safely in our truck leaving behind the streets of his first home, Silvy dabbing tears out of the corners of her eyes, taking care that her son didn't see her cry, and all of our thoughts haunted. I pray that the children we met today are survivors, that the world will wake up and see them, will change enough in their lifetime to offer opportunity and hope. In the meantime, they play, they look to strangers for kindness, they look to us to get some work done in their name. May we all rise to the challenge.
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