We walked for an hour, reaching, at the apex of our walk, the crowded main street where market was being set up. Mopeds and dilapidated trucks rushed past honking and like frightened ducklings we stirred and milled in confusion on our corner before opting to return the way we came to breakfast. It has been great getting to know some of the medical team a little better. Dr. Ilona is quite engaging and down to earth. She recently spent two years with her husband and two small children practicing medicine in Malawi. She has a great sense of adventure and seems pretty fearless and content with life. Pat is similar in that respect. Though much softer spoken and quite possibly one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. She is a nurse and joined the team with her youngest daughter, who is also a nurse. Aimee and I have had a few adventures and misadventures over time already and those are all tremendous stories for another day. Barbie, is yet another story and because I have not mentioned her much yet, and because she is becoming less of a mystery to me, I invite you for a closer look. (Much to her chagrin, I’m sure)
If you spend any time around Barbie, you know her as a woman who chooses her words carefully. There aren’t many but they are choice. For a few years, I thought she did not care for me but I concluded that her face is in repose most of the time and her far away gaze, which is so steady as to be unnerving, is the result of lofty thinking. All those choice words are running through several filters. She’s sharp. I would love to hear the unrefined product or merely glimpse the sub thoughts that hit the cutting room floor.
Her method for processing information seems to be fine-tuned by queries. She will ask questions before she speaks. Here you see her processing furtively. Her jaw is set and her eyes travel slowly to regard the breadth of her circumstance. She is such an honest and humble servant. Willing to set herself aside to serve where she is needed even though it feels way outside her comfort zone. She is compassionate and gracious in her giving of skills and self. However, she has been looking at life here from the corners of her eyes, uncertain, because it so dramatically culturally different, raw and exposed. Day by day, Barbie is processing Haiti. The first morning she rose and intimidation hung, unconfessed tears at the hem of her eyes. This morning somewhere between praise and supplication, she thanked God to be in such an amazing place.
At the other end of the day, we took Brian and Johane (an interpreter – really sweet young man) and we revisited these places with our cameras. We also visited the tent cities located on our adjoining property. It was good to see our land being used to house people out of the streets. However, it was just heart wrenching to see these children playing half clad in this flimsy environment, knowing that the rainy season and hurricane season are nearly upon them.
Tonight Marc arrived and he is meeting with the Haitian board. They are gathered beneath the mango tree and they are excited because they are discussing how we are going to start to help our leaders, staff and community rebuild their homes. They are discussing ways to help. Getting the school up and running will be key to helping restore a sense of normalcy and forward motion. Sessions will begin in the large tent donated by City Church of Kirkland, WA. For two reasons: 1) It is an ample structure to keep out weather and accommodate many students. 2) Many students are still just too afraid to spend any time inside buildings.
The doctors and nurses noticed with many of the patients, as they came into the exam rooms in the residence building, that they cast anxious glances repeatedly at the walls and ceiling.
We saw over 120 patients yesterday. Today we saw a few less probably because of Market. We held our vision clinic, essentially, an opportunity for those who appeared to need glasses to read a chart and try on reading glasses until they found the best correction. This was a rather delightful station to observe, as the end result was that they were provided such a small thing, a pair of reading glasses, which could significantly impact the individual. To boot, they are considered rather stylish and bit of a status item. The smiles were just brilliant.
The highlight of the day for me was the children. Everywhere, children in the street, between tents, playing in the smears of standing water, playing soccer on rutted roads. Their smiles and obvious desire to engage with us was so infectious. They do not seem to see their circumstances to be as forsaken as we see them; sadly, life is not that different for many of them, than what they have always known. Children are pure hope. They gravitate to life and motion, a place where running fast or playing tag are enough to fill you up again for a time. And laughter is good medicine. Their laughter, their smiles were good medicine for me today. Two children whirred past us in the dusk as we returned to the campus tonight; they dipped past and through our configuration like barn swallows. Their cries of delight in the game of chase that pulled them along, rose between the rustling of the palm fronds and the slow turn of banana tree leaves and filtered back upon me with the withering light of day. Their laughter, like the small shifting motion of that shadow and light through foliage, took up residence in my heart. Even now, it rustles and soars in vibrant tones of delight, percolating hope and joy.
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