Even as tired as I am, I still recall that there are only 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, hearing, taste. But, on this travel day, I think we have all been overwhelmed by our senses. The fact that this is my second trip makes it no less stark to experience it all again. My first thought as we landed was “Thank God” (I don’t like to fly), but my second was, “This is something you just experience.”
Words do little justice for it. And for those who are able, I would say, “make a point to do something like this.” The sights are stark: Piles of garbage in the streets, stick, one-room houses, poverty which makes anything you would see in the states look luxurious. There is the strong smell of waste and you can taste the pollution. The feel of the wind as it whips around our faces as we climbed into the back of the truck to drive from the airport in Cap Haitian to Terrier Rouge. The sounds of motorcycles and the trucks, many of them serving as public transport overflowing with people. The roads from Cap to Terrier Rouge are now paved and we watch as people walk, donkeys carry people and goods, goats and bulls wander in and around the road, and our truck maneuvers through it all.
The most beautiful sense of all is the sense of welcome and gracious hospitality we receive when we arrive at the place which we will call home. We stay in “cubes”, camp-ground like rooms which are around the school, but we can see the medical clinic, a short walk away, and we experience the bounty of the agriculture project on the table. This evening, we walked around the school. The first room we visited was one for three-year-olds, where they school 70 three-year olds in one room, with three teachers.
Then we walked through the elementary school, and upstairs to the auditorium where we will have church tomorrow. I was thrilled to see that there is a communion table that has been lovingly carved and is gorgeous. It stood proudly in the room where all eyes are drawn to it proclaiming that this is a place where God is at the center. That is the most powerful statement of what goes on here: God is at the center and people strive to listen for God’s guidance and live out God’s will.
We learned about how there is now a middle class developing in this community, as a result of the efforts of Bethlehem Ministry and other similar organizations. Bethlehem Ministry employs 100 Haitians total here: teachers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists. They pay living wages and teach the children so that they may take hold of their own destinies. The only way to affect change is to empower the young to claim it for themselves.
So often we define community as those in our immediate geographic area or worse yet, those like us, but neither is God’s definition of community. God’s community is every place and every child and as a community, we seek to share God’s love with one another.
No comments:
Post a Comment