Bumpy Ride

Dixon Myers told me that my jaunt down to Haiti for a few months would be "like riding a wild stallion across an open field having never ridden a horse before." 

Today has certainly been a bumpy ride.

It started by riding in the back of a Rotary Daihatsu flatbed truck for over an hour up to Crochu. After a long medical clinic (where we saw 168 patients), I was back in the back of the truck to head back down the mountain, this time with 16 Haitians and 2 blans (white guys) crammed in the back. It was perhaps the most uncomfortable experience ever but something totally worth experiencing and doing...at least once.

And just ten minutes ago, we had a small earthquake, the first one I have ever felt. I was sitting on my bed on my computer and it suddenly felt like my bed was resting on a washing machine. We all ran outside and it was over. Just a nice reminder of where I am living.

The Children of Crochu.
The one in the middle is wearing a Camp McDowell shirt.

Driving back up to Crochu gave me some truly incredible experiences but also a more intense glimpse of the harshest realities I have ever seen. I saw one 9-year-old boy who was so malnourished that he looked like a kindergarden student. I saw another baby who's hair was so red he looked Irish. I also saw some very old people who were not even 50 years old. Every woman of child-bearing age had at least 4 children, with some having up to 8. And yet they haven't enough food for a single one.

These people live in the most horrendous conditions and have so very little. 

There were many children who remembered me from a few weeks back. And I was met by the same phrase every time:

"Daniel, Daniel...mwen grangou" (Translation: "Daniel, I'm hungry)

Its so very hard because I can't give them anything. I could go to the grocery store and buy them hundreds of dollars in groceries but when they run out, they will be back where they started. This has been the toughest experience of my time down here.

So I have been thinking a lot about their predicament. This whole country's predicament.

They truly have nothing but faith in God.

So, what do you do when everything you once had, all the resources which once sustained you, are completely gone. And you are left with nothing. And its no one's fault but your own.

How could we, they, whoever, allow it to come to this, living in a tropical desert, a place where life should flourish but instead there is only famine, disease, and dust?

What is the first step in establishing a foundation upon which you can build the rest of your life?

Who needs to help?

Where does God come into this?

Can there really be a second chance? Or are there indeed certain situations where we should just cut our losses and move forward, abandoning hope on revitalizing and rebuilding and instead focus on relocating and restarting?

These are questions relevant to not only Haiti and not even the environmental movement at large. But everything of which we are part which is not sustainable, which is failing. Our relationship with the land, our relationship with our neighbors, our relationship with our very best friends. 

I do not seek to find answers tonight or tomorrow. But hopefully they will one day become apparent.

Until then, may we all ride the bumpy ride up the mountainside, holding on to each other for support and singing songs in Creole.