Language of Legos

Today we learned that all boys love Legos, and it is possible to build creative contraptions together without being able to speak more than a few words of each other's language!

Lessons from a third world puppy

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when people struggle to survive, people mistreat animals terribly. Haitian dogs are beaten, starved, kicked, and abused every day of their lives. We have seen little boys chasing and beating a three-legged dog, we have seen puppies being kicked and burned, and we have seen multitudes of small unkindness, the pulling of tails, the hitting with sticks, and the many cruelties that add up to a society that does not care for its weaker species.

This morning as we drove a borrowed truck to church, we splashed through hurricane Sandy’s dirty brown runoff and anticipated a day spent speaking English with friends. We had to swerve to avoid three small puppies running/splashing across the flooded road. They were tiny and bony. I convinced Carl to stop.

I approached them cautiously. They were obviously starving and freezing. Two ran off down a swollen river embankment. One paused to look at me and wag his tail. I picked him up. He was just a pile of little bones and a wiggly tail. We couldn’t leave him, and we couldn’t reach the other two puppies.

After a wonderful day with friends and fellowship, (and our first Chinese food in over 4 months!!!) we got our little guy home. We bathed him, fed him, and I cautioned my kids that he may not survive. We discussed why Haiti has so many abandoned and abused dogs when compared to, say, Southern California. My kids are filled with compassion and love for the little guy, helping me bathe him and dry him and feed him.

I hope my kids keep those tender hearts of theirs forever. I hope that the world never teaches them that it is ok to hurt an innocent animal or person, or even to look the other way when an animal or person is being hurt. I hope that in the greater scheme of learning to grow up and finding their own way in the world that my kids are never too busy to stop their car, to pull over, and to rescue a puppy from certain starvation.

Carl's day doing Hurricane Sandy relief work

Yesterday Carl had the privilege of helping an amazing Operation Blessing team that was providing assistance to a nearby riverside village. The village had 60 families whose homes were lost to the raging river waters, and hundreds of people were left homeless, wet, and cold. The pictures speak for themselves. 

Thanks for safe passage through Hurricane Sandy, now worries for those facing a difficult day.

From an observation point in Santo, Carl took these pictures this morning of the river bordering Port-au-Prince, Santo, and Croix des Bouquets. It has overflown its banks and has begun to wash away houses. He watched two houses sink into the swirling brown water, as neighbors all around tried to remove and save their tin roofs and belongings. We are hoping that the rain stops and the flooding calms down , as there is a large tent city in danger, just inches above the raging water.

The river is high above its normal banks and threatens many homes as well as a large tent city.

Friends and family stare at the spot where their house used to be.

Hurricane Sandy

Ms. Hurricane Sandy is about to pass us in on the Eastern side. While we will not bear the brunt of her windy exuberance, we know that Jamaica is getting the full force of her winds and rain.

So far today has been breezy, with occasional spurts of rain. The local school cancelled its afternoon classes due to the weather. Hopefully this storm will not be too violent to our little island.

Please pray again for all of the people without adequate shelter tonight. I am watching our neighbor's tin roof bounce up and down in the wind, I hope they and all of the people here in the Caribbean can stay warm and dry tonight!

How we should be spending Haiti's earthquake relief money.

The Clintons and Sean Penn are throwing a party here in Haiti and I wasn't invited. US politicians and celebrities are gathering today in Northern Haiti to celebrate the opening of an industrial complex built with $124 million of relief money. The complex is controversial among local Haitians, many feeling that the US is helping other countries to take advantage of relatively cheap Haitian labor (minimum wage is $5 per day).

A link to a detailed NY Times article HERE

So what are we really celebrating? This money was supposed to help the country recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake, yet the facility is located 100 miles north of the damaged capital, Port-au-Prince. Life is hard in Haiti, and it is very hard in the poor North. Small villages cling to steep mountains. People have to walk miles for clean water, most use mountain streams to bath, wash clothes, and drink.

A typical hut in Northern Haiti

The US's answer to the poverty in Haiti is to build a giant industrial building in a place where Haitians are trying to conserve some of their mostly stripped vegetation, then to allow foreign companies to come do business in Haiti. A South Korean clothing giant rents the majority of the space in the complex.   There are at least 5 better ways to spend money helping Haiti.

1. Make education free. Use the earthquake relief money to pay teacher's salaries, to set up additional schools, and to provide books for the children. Educating every child in Haiti would do more for the country than any project or grand building. Many Haitian parents cannot afford to pay the school fees, or to buy uniforms and books. Their children are uneducated, without a chance at a job even if jobs were available. Our next door neighbor makes his living as a motorcycle taxi driver, he does not make enough money to send his kids to school. His four children literally play in the dirt all day long. They have no running water, no electricity, no books. The destructive cycle of poverty and ignorance must be broken, and free education is crucial.

2.  Build and staff a teaching hospital. Medical care is severely lacking in Haiti. A friend of mine recently needed gallbladder surgery. She went to a local hospital, but ended up having to remove her own IV and fly to the States. You can read her story: HERE. The US and other countries regularly send medical teams to the Haiti. These kind doctors and nurses have to bring their own medicine and often travel to remote places providing the only medical care that many Haitians will ever receive. As a step toward independence, these groups could be organized to teach their medical knowledge to locals at a teaching hospital so that the local "intern doctors" could then set up clinics to provide long term care across the country.

3. Provide better training and salaries to the local police, craft laws to protect Haitian citizens, as well as build up a small, well trained military. The UN's presence takes a toll on the country's sense of self. UN convoys destroy already poorly maintained roads, and their militaristic presence is a constant reminder that the country is unable to police itself. Under the UN watch, human and child trafficking, violent demonstrations, kidnappings, and armed robberies are all part of daily life in Haiti. With training and support, Haitians could do more to make their country a peaceful place then the UN could ever achieve.

4. Jobs, jobs, jobs. The US's solution to the staggering unemployment in Haiti is flawed. Building an industrial complex that foreign companies rent opens Haitians up to exploitation. Instead, the money should have been spent establishing Haitian businesses, run by a joint Haitian/foreign board, with clear parameters for managing profits. I picture Bill and Hillary sitting down with the CEOs of major construction companies, asking them to partner with Haitians to create Haitian construction companies. The businessmen would be partners that would provide training in business and in the trades lacking, but once the Haitian companies became successful, the foreigners need to step away and let the companies be purely Haitian run. If a company did not work then it would fold and be started again with different people and business plans. Within a few years, enough of the companies would survive so that Haitians would be bringing their economy up with their own hard work, not dependent on the South Korean clothing business.

5. Power, factories, and fields. Ah, industrialization. Haiti desperately needs reliable power instead of the fitful and sporadic electricity that it currently receives. The relief money donated could have been used to provide Haiti with a reliable source of power, and provide training and safety materials to Haitian electrical workers. With reliable power, factories could be built to process Haitian crops: the coffee beans, the sugar cane, the avocados and mangos should all be exported and sold, the money used to modernize Haitian farming and expand current crop yields.

Any one of these issues would improve life for all Haitians. As a teacher and perpetual student myself, I believe that without free education for all children, a country will not be able to advance itself.

Haitians do need help from their richer and more powerful neighbors, but Haitians do not need to be patronized. They need the tools and training to pull themselves, their families, and their country out of poverty, then they need the rest of the world to step back and let them succeed.

Confession

OK, I admit it, I am homesick. We had no power the last two nights and that makes for hot sticky pillows and closed-eye desperation of hoping for a breeze. Without good sleep, life becomes a bit blurry for me, it takes me longer to process what I hear ("Mom, can I go outside and play in the old well?" "Hmm... what... sure. No wait. No. Bad idea, kid.")

Last night I struggled with my asthma as well as the heat. Our neighbors seem to have an endless supply of tires and other rubber that they burn right next our wall, the smoke drifts into our bedroom window and chokes us while we try to sleep.

I almost admitted that I was homesick last week when Carl brought us this bag of oranges and I could barely keep from bursting into tears. I may have spent a little too much time holding the poor bag, wondering about its own journey from California to Haiti.

So it's Monday morning in Haiti.

I will try not to think of all the friends, family, and places that I miss back in the States. I will instead focus on the joy of spending the day with my children, and the simple goodness of a ripe Haitian avocado.

Have a good week, everyone!