Stories Shared

January 18, 2009

Sunday morning. I’m enjoying a second cup of hot coffee before we depart for church. Nice to sit in the quiet of morning and just “be” for a little while. The sounds of traffic lurching to life tell of a world already awake and active outside the guesthouse walls. Patrick is working on his sermon. He sits bent over his notebook deep in concentration. The coffee is extra strong this morning, and I'm happily content writing you all.

Friday night we went dancing for the first time. We have met a man in the guesthouse who had previously lived in Haiti for about a year. He is French, and a connoisseur of nightlife, and he finally convinced us to explore Port-au-Prince after hours. We went to a place largely occupied by UN and NGO workers. The atmosphere was styled like a beach cabana, the music caribbean with a latino influence. The owners of the bar were from Dominican Republic, and the atmosphere represented their origins. The restaurant felt like an oasis from the reality of the streets outside. We had a fun evening.

We also observed a phenomenon of nightlife here. What was hugely apparent was the number of foreign men frequenting the bar, and the equally large population of single Haitian women. The women were young and beautiful. The man we were with made a comment, “ah the women are beautiful, but they charge.”

My heart felt heavy with such a statement. Rather than being on a fun "girls night out" some women had come to such a place in order to partake in the oldest business in human history. Perhaps others were simply in search of prince charming in a white SUV who could take them from their shack into a castle. Certainly we saw Haitian couples there celebrating an evening out as well as other women who looked to be having a good time. But I did watch one beautiful, young Haitian woman dancing with an over-fed foreign man twice her age. She had no joy on her face, and her dancing seemed almost programmed. I suspected why. This was work. This was not a carefree night on the town to relax from stress from the day. Such is the reality for some women here. International workers are a source of money and potential opportunity. It’s a complication of foreign presence in a country where people are desperate for income. And its yet another way that we, the relatively rich and powerful, can take advantage of and, in-essence, colonize the poor. I felt myself hoping for this woman's safety, hoping that her dance partner would treat her well.

Despite the window into another reality, we had a fun evening. I don’t often have the chance to dance with my husband, and to do so with twinkly lights overhead hanging from a thatched roof, Caribbean music pulsating on a cool tropical night breeze made for a beautiful moment. I am one of the lucky women in the world. I have a partner I love and that I trust. I am liberated through education and social circumstance. I can spend an evening dancing just for the fun of it. And I won't ever take that for granted.

Yesterday, was indeed a full day. We had the second of our family seminars in the morning, this time in a church in Petionville. Yesterday’s session went better than the first, likely because we had learned a lot from our initial attempt. This morning's audience also seemed more interested. After our presentation, a lively group discussion followed for over an hour. Sometimes questions were posed, other times people stood and shared the story of their life, of relationships gone array, of the challenges Haitian families face, especially when a mother or father had died or left unexpectedly. Often there was no “right” answer we could dare give, no solution we could offer. We could only validate that their situation was extremely hard, that we appreciated their sharing, and that the church could serve as a larger supportive unit to help such families get by. Like last week, the most popular subject of discussion was the area of conflict and conflict resolution. The issue of domestic violence came up, and we talked about it openly. We felt good about having a very diverse forum to speak our mind about a subject we feel so passionately about. And I felt like everyone in attendance was very receptive. Sometimes permission is sought out from some perceived authority such as a doctor or a pastor before some people can really believe that getting hit is not ok. For those people needing such permission, we made our thought clear.

One woman stood up and told us that she had 8 children, that her husband recently died, and she has no good job to support her family. She told her story fighting back tears, and spoke of her reliance on the church and on her faith that her luck would change soon. Her sharing prompted other women to stand and give their own story, often of hard luck or impossible circumstances. I noticed more wavering voices than usual… making me wonder whether this seminar on family was evolving into a support group of sorts.

So often in my time here, new ideas for mission, for outreach arise. Haiti could certainly benefit from someone's expertise in leading support groups for various things, to encourage sharing, discussion, group counseling. It isn’t a concept well known or practiced here, but witnessing what was happening in our seminar made me believe that it could certainly work.

In the my mobile "consultation" clinic that followed the seminar, I met with an 80 year-old woman who has outlived her entire family, children included. She lives alone with no one to help her. She suffers from back pain, and falls often. She has no income, no social security check and relies on faith alone to get from day to day. What does Haiti have for the elderly here? Often families are left to take care of such folks, but you can imagine if parents can’t feed their babies, likely they can’t feed their elders either. Given the fact that the average lifespan of a Haitian is 52 years old, the elderly make up a small portion of the population, but certainly a part of the population in need. So as CONASPEH paid for arthritis medication for this tiny grandmother, and as I hunted for a sturdy stick she could use as a walking cane, I dreamed up another outreach vision: a refuge house for the aged and elderly, a place to allow people to live the end of their life in an atmosphere of honor and respect. The elderly amaze me. I look into their wrinkled faces and am in awe of just how incredibly strong they have had to be to survived life here with its history of incredible violence and turmoil. Certainly they've experienced such heart break and loss, disease, and possible violence. Yet they are the survivors. And I can’t help but be in awe.

The beautify of our experience here is having such opportunities to observe, to hear stories, to be a listening presence, and then to be in a position to validate a person’s worth, their accomplishments, to celebrate their inspiring strength that helps them persevere through such incredibly hard life circumstances. What an honor to share life in such a way. Such is my experience in the clinics, as was our experience in the seminar yesterday.

Patrick just peeked his head in. Time for church. May you all have a happy end of your weekend. Thank you for listening to the story of our days. Until next time....