Time after Time

After a long day yesterday, I was almost grateful to get the call that our mobile clinic for today was canceled. Unfortuntately a road had been washed out by a recent rain making the route impassible for the time being, so we wait for another day to take our portable health care to that community. Taking an advantage of a unexpected free day, the Bentrott family escaped to the beach for a little quiet time, fun and reflection.

On the trip this morning while radio surfing, we discovered an old Cindy Lauper tune on one of the stations. "If you're lost, you can look and you will find me, time after time. If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting, time after time." Several decades ago, I used to passionately sing these lyrics into my hairbrush shortly after spraying my bangs to astonishing heights. This morning, they brought me to tears.

I feel like a scab has been pulled off. The little boy last night has unearthed feelings and emotions that have been long riding under the surface of my existance here, that ebb and flow depending on what a day or week brings.

At times over the last 8 months of living in Haiti, I can become too accustomed to the things we see here, to the inhumane conditions under which masses of people live. Sometimes out of self-preservation, I have to put my head down and focus on the little things I'm working on, narrowing my scope to a project I can influence, things I can control. One can only witness pain and suffering for so long without a pocket full of magical solutions before starting to become numb, or worse, accept crazy situations as "the way it is" for lack of no other alternative in a given moment. When answers aren't forthcoming, resources not readily apparent, and you have to stare that hunger in the face without a meal to give, it sometimes is easier to retract or look away from the realities that swirl huge and looming around us. When the real enemy feels too hard, too abstract to defeat with your own two fists, it is easier to get caught up in more trivial concerns and frustrations with faces and organizations you can see and touch; it is even easier to pull away, to focus on all you can't do instead of what you can. And when I'm tired, emotions are pulled inward, callouses are built up, scabs are formed.

But a little boy named Gito pulled them off last night.

We pass children every day who have life stories full of suffering, and who bravely take on their plight doing the best they can. Some we've befriended, give casual high-fives at a stop light choosing not to cry outright at the fact that they work for pennies on a dangerous, heavily trafficked intersection without shoes, without good nutrition, without water on a hot day, without a home to return to. Yet it took an encounter with a child not yet hardened by his situation to rattle me out of my numbness. And I've had a hard time getting the tears to stop falling ever since.

Kids should not have to work for change. Children should not have to be left alone in the street fending for themselves, should not have to be alone and scared as darkness falls in an unfamiliar city. Families should not have to be forced to make the choice to send their oldest to the city to work as an indentured servant for some form of income when the crops don't come in. School children should not have to sit with growling stomachs, babies should not have to have fevers untreated. Young men should not have to live like invalids because they didn't have basic health care to prevent a catastrophic stroke. Injustice does not just live in Haiti.. but its more inescapable here. The reality of suffering is all around us every day.

It is hard to look suffering in the eye and not have an immediate solution, not have the money, the pills, the house, the education, the structures needed to say, "here, I can make it better." It is really hard not to say, "come home with me, it will be ok" when that suffering you see is in the face of a little boy in your car window, tears streaming down his face, a backpack on his back, looking like he got lost walking home from school. What we can do is be a friend, be willing to do what we can every day. We can accompany that scared boy to the police station, be an advocate in a complicated system. We can give a cookie or a pair of shoes when we have them. We tell a joke, hold a hand, listen to stories, laugh, work in our little corners of knowledge for a better overall system of outreach. Some days it never feels like enough, but what is important is that we keep doing it, time after time. There are always 5 more kids at the intersection waiting.

I can choose to feel helpless, choose to sink into despair or rise with hope that maybe our love can make a difference in some small way. I pray that the small things we do day after day are a part of a series of events. I settle on believing that we don't work alone, but as a community of people all doing our tiny share in order to bring about bigger change. I pray that the police commissioner last night took Gito under her protective arm, gave him shelter, reassured him despite his harsh surroundings. I pray a shelter he slept in helped him eventually reunite with his family in the country, that through one hand held after another he was able to get home. I have to trust in that unseen community, knowing full well sometimes it doesn't work, but often it does.

When I'm frustrated with my own limitations, I have to remind myself that we can't do it all on our own. We trust in strangers, we trust in structures, we trust in community and in the fact that our own efforts are augmenting a larger community movement underway to bring about change. I trust that if we call out, our voice will eventually be heard. By someone. Even if that someone doesn't have all the solutions to end the suffering. Because we are not alone. We must answer calls when heard. The hard part is living with the limitations of your abilities. Is holding hands enough? Some days it has to be. And with enough hands reaching out, it will be.