Four last things I Need to Share with You

You know me, I could go on forever but there are four things I just wanted to share with everyone.

The first is that we also went down the road from our medical clinic to a nearby orphanage for special needs children. My husband Paul wanted to also help check and treat the children and the nuns and workers there a day after our clinic closed. I had been told about what was in their building by the TV crew but was hoping I wouldn't have to see it myself. In all fairness, the nuns and workers there are overwhelmed, many are older and none of them are properly educated in how to deal with special needs children. They simply do the best they know how. But what was inside is not something I can easily accept. Paul tells me to not be so hard about this but I cannot help it. There is a girl there who when she had an eye infection in one eye years ago, the local doctors simply proceeded to remove both eyes. She also eats her mattress materials and messes herself. What they do though to keep her in one location at night was what I saw for myself when going upstairs to get some new croc sandals for the nuns with foot problems that our teams had brought them. I followed the head worker up the dark and dank stairs. There is nothing on any walls, everything is brown and yellow tiles with metal bars on all the windows. As I get to the top of the stairs, I followed the lady into the children's room to the left. Straight ahead were just simple metal beds, very orderly, not a problem. Then, to the left I saw it.There was a very large metal animal cage on legs. No mattress inside it, no blankets, no pillows, nothing. The bottom of the cage was also just cold metal bars. This is where they keep the girl with no eyes at night undressed... I can handle guts hanging out of someone, bad smells when need be, but this made my stomach turn and it took everything within me to not say a word. I wanted to take a photo of it but the woman was watching me like a hawk. I couldn't risk her catching me taking a photo. I just wanted to get as far away as possible from this building as quickly as possible but couldn't. There is also the boy they tie down with ropes behind his back and our special needs team that also came to help saw the permanent rope marks in his skin because of his seizures. There is also the older boy who they lock in a bathroom for hours while he goes to the bathroom because he smears his feces everywhere. When finally done, they just go in and clean up after him...

Also, the Voodoo temples. There is one directly behind the clinic where Paul and Andy stayed and also one down the road from the orphanage. Paul and Andy talked about the beating drums, squeeling animals and singing for hours in the middle of the nights. Anna heard the pigs squeeling near us for sacrifice through the nights. There was also the women yelling while this all occurred. It was disturbing. They say that around 80% of all Haitians also practice Voodoo. I learned something else about Voodoo. There are the zombies. The locals believe people die and then the high priests and priestesses bring people back to life. The truth is that if someone crosses those who practice Voodoo, they poison them which temporarily slows their heart rates to the point that uneducated people do not think they are breathing and also causes their muscular systems to freeze up. They then wrap the bodies in white sheets and "bury" the body. Within about 3 days, the poisoned people come back out of their misfortune and dig their way out of the shallow graves. The high priests know the timing of it all and just happen to show up to "bring them back to life". This enforces their "satanly power" that people believe they have over everyone!

The third thing is I quickly learned to do exactly what was needed to get the heck out of the airport in time before missing our plane after this HUGE corrupt scheme was setup by the local Avis rental car company at the airport.Remember the cash they fold into a tiny wad and then place in the palm of their hand as they shake on something for a bribe? Well, I won't go into the long drwan out details or how entirely incompetant many "businesses" are but Julie Berger proceeded to payoff a police officer to simply get Avis from charging us for a totally bogus charge that has no validity!! I felt like I was living inside the TV screen while in an episode of The Sopranos or something. I do not like that show about the mob, but at that moment in time, if I hadn't done something we might have still been sitting in the airport in Haiti, while 6 police officers showed up early for work in uniform just to watch the World Cup but when we needed a police report to be filled out saying the car had lost a tail light because of a slight mishap, they look right at you and tell you they have the authority to sign off on the form BUUUTTTTT, they are not on the clock yet and so too bad but no one can help you. I could give you example after example but you get the idea. I had one man throwing a pen at me because I was not the type of woman who was going to let Haitian men look me in the eye and flat out lie to me from sentence to sentence, making things up as they go along. They really don't like women like me but then again the older high school boys had no problem telling our children in their school when I went in with them to take photos how they think I would be perfect for their fathers!! Okay...

And the last is the schools that people must pay for, uniforms to purchase that they cannot afford. Old books being used with missing pages and all men teaching the classes because they are the ones who are able to get educations many times (only 33% of the population are able to attend school, so they are also the only ones who actually speak French) even though it is the official language. Go figure. Creole is the real language but President Aristead tried to change all that when he took over before the current president. You will see the photos and the classrooms are nothing more than cinder block enclosures from the ground to the walls but there are no ceilings and there are no roofs where I was. The floor is nothing more than dirty cement with mud and water to walk through in places. There is one blackboard for each enclosure. I would compare the "classrooms" to a larger size office cubicle but that's where the comparison ends.It is so sad when I looked around me on the streets later, the doorways of shacks, the kids walking with animals everywhere but none of these children even have the opportunity to ever go to school.Never a chance to know there is a bigger world out there, never believing they can be anything they want, never thinking they matter.

So, that's my thoughts about the environment set in place by those who don't care about the people around them and how much suffering surounds them. But the local Haitian people and the landscapes that have always existed since first created are like nowhere else I have seen. We must learn from the Haitians. We must understand that when a Haitian waits in line for 8 hours in the heat, no meal since they left home early that morning and never complains there is a reason we have not yet learned. When I am told that one of the mommies that works in our orphanage STILL sleeps on top of cement slabs in a tent while three of her family members below her have been buried alive and their bodies still are laying where they fell, they are the ones we must admire. When a woman is willing to give up two of her children in order to be able to work and survive even though her heart is breaking, she must not be forgotten. The stories go on but our minds seem to have left them so very long ago. I only hope that if we are ever faced with the incredibly horrendous situations as they are, we will be able to stand up just as they do and keep on wanting to live without anti-depressants, therapists, spas, airconditioned buildings with clean water or medicines to keep our family members or our own children alive. How strong are we really? Or are we merely hiding behind our fears of what it would be like if we had to face what they face? I believe in all of us and in the simple things that makes us human beings who share the same blood, no matter the skin color. We all love, we all hurt, we all want happiness and to see our children do well in life. I will hope that we can all just reach out to others and show them they matter, they are loved and they have some sort of hope to hold onto in this thing called life...