Hardening Up..

“how does one not harden up in the face of such sadness and seeming despair?”

The question is one that has been asked not so directly to me in the past few months but I guess around me. My friend Brian wrote about it on his blog and its something that I have thought a lot about the past few days. Even now as I try and get a little rest on the last leg of my epic journey home, eyes red and sore, stomach rumbling from I’m not so sure what, I find I cannot stop the question from bouncing around in my head…

I’m not sure I have any real answers to the question…knowing that the only answers I would have would be mine alone and therefore only apply to me…and I am not convinced that I have found the real solution for how to remain soft and open when it would be so much more beneficial to harden up. And I think more for me the better, more appropriate question is “how do I remain soft, open and loving?”

And I’m just not sure how to do that but I feel pretty confident that I will find the answers. There is too much that love can accomplish… for me the question is akin to probably my favorite quote

“And the day came that the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful then the risk it took to bloom”

To harden up would be to remain safe and comfortable in the bud not daring to open myself up to the pain that could come with remaining open…

Just some thoughts....

Pictures!

After a pretty intense posting I thought I would lighten it up a bit with a few more pictures! Enjoy!

Sunlight..

Funny how we end up in situations that seem so natural at the time but when reflected upon just seem surreal…the other night was like that for me… I found myself lying in bed at the foot of the mountains of Haiti with 2 other women and 3 severely malnourished children…of course I was...why wouldn’t I have been….


I’ll give you a bit of background on how this situation came into being… Many things affected me on my last trip to Haiti in March but none so much as the severely malnourished boy that was brought into our clinic. After that encounter I knew that working to assist those aiding these children needed to be my focus. In what capacity I have yet to figure out but I am exploring..thus what lead me to the mountains of Haiti the other night. Now there are many malnourished children in the big centers of Haiti, children hungry on the streets, in homes but some children have been fortunate to have found a way into rescue centers like the one run by the amazing people of The Real Hope for Haiti. I have at time caught myself saying things like “I’m starving to death” we all do and in the context it’s a harmless comment but what I saw the other day was literally children who had been starving to death!

Now there are many thoughts that people have, myself included that center around why people have children they cannot afford to care for etc but that is a topic I won’t address here. That’s a discussion better had in person. But the one thing that I have learned is that it is a mixture of education (and the lack of), poverty and lack of access to appropriate healthcare and I will leave it at that for now…


The reality of the situation, the reality that I saw time and time again is this…there are children dying each and every day of malnutrition, lack of access to clean drinking water and preventable illnesses. Children I saw the other day were up to 5 years of age but looked like they were 1-2. 5 year olds that weighted 12 pounds, expressionless unable to interact due to lack of energy required to smile. Could you imagine not having enough energy to even smile?

Children looking at me their eyes hollow..lacking the light that illuminates the eyes of the children I know in Canada. In the Real Hope for Haiti rescue center there are approximately 55 children with differing levels of malnutrition. Some are able to walk, some unable too, some too weak to sit let alone walk, some too weak to cry. I watched as The little boy in the above picture tried to bring a piece of bread to his mouth, his hands trembling so badly because he just didn’t have the strength…

The majority of these kids have parents who just can’t afford to feed them…I cringed at the thought of how much food I alone throw out on any given day (which I will never again do!) I only took 1 picture…one of the little boy who spent the night in my room, the little boy who spoke so clearly because he’s 5 although he looks like he’s 2. I didn’t take pictures of the other children…It just didn’t seem right…they didn’t need me snapping pictures… what they needed was to be held, to be interacted with, someone to lie on the floor beside them when they were too weak to even sit up, they needed Medika Mamba syringed through their NG tubes…they needed to know that hopefully one day the suffering would end….so that’s what I did instead.

That morning I watched as a severely malnourished boy tried to catch a sunray in his hand…It was all at once so beautiful that it stopped me right in my tracks.

There are many things in this trip that have brought tears to my eyes…tears of sadness, tears of joy, tears of frustration and tears of amazement for all that is good in the world. Just glad I can be involved in it…Like the little boy I am just trying to catch the sunray for the light it can bring me…even for the brief moment that it exists…


Check out the link to see more about Real Hope for Haiti and pictures. http://haitirescuecenter.wordpress.com/

The work this family does with not only the feeding center but with their medical clinic (that sees over 300 pts a day on average with 4 nurses and no drs.) is essential and amazing! I hope to return soon

Lise

Joy..

I just wanted to share with you the beautiful view from my hotel room in Ft. Lauderdale this morning...nothing like a comfortable king size bed, warm shower and the sun breaking in the sky to make me smile....

“Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. She gives most who gives with Joy.”

—Mother Teresa


I hope you all find a bit of joy in your day today....I know I already have!

Look for more posts soon...I seem to have a lot to say these days....now I'm off to get my latte :-) !!

Business as usual....

I know that I posted in my only blog from Haiti that I was feeling uninspired to write anything..well as I am 35000 feet above the ocean my mind is racing…racing with thoughts and ideas I want to share, victories I want you to know about, dilemmas that are floating around in me…maybe I should catalogue them before I start but I know that they will return to me as they are needed….

Today I found myself sitting in the airport waiting to leave Haiti, many thoughts going through my head when a small group of business men started to chat me up. It turns out that they were a group of developers who had come to Haiti to pitch a development project. They were supposed to be attending a conference set up by a group of expats for the redevelopment of Haiti. Now I say “were supposed to be” because as it turns out the conference had started this morning and they were already leaving….they had had it with Haiti they told me, had it with the lies and as one in the group put it “that’s where the adjectives will end before I become too, well let’s just say more descriptive”. As it turns out they had had somewhat of a “Haitian experience” in the 3 whole days they had been there. They had experienced behaviors that permeate Haitian culture (behaviors that were unbeknownst to me prior to my first visit to the country)… non-truths, mistrust, secrecy, events occurring on Haitian time or not at all…
As I(yes me…?) tried to talk to them about the utopia of redevelopment they were seeking not existing in any nation requiring redevelopment they basically expressed their disgust and contempt for the people “not wanting their help”. Business as usual I guess depends on your usual?!

The reason I tell you all this is because it really got me thinking…was it all helpless? Is the nation of Haiti a lost cause? Should I just turn my back..walk away back to the peace and serenity of my life in Canada? Until January 12 Haiti didn’t really even exist for me…it could be easy to walk away right? I mean really if you look at it it really is hopeless…things will never change…Right!?


Wrong….because for me life isn’t as easy as changing my return flight so I can make it back in time to watch game 4 of the Lakers/Celtics series… because it will never be that easy for little Rose to find shelter from the rain or little Emmanuals mom to forget about the 3 children that are still buried under the rubble of her home, unable to dig them out, give them a proper burial and have some closure or easy for Rosemon to live his life without his parents and not feel like a burden on his aging grandma and I could go on…
So for a millisecond I thought about walking away..saying “sorry Haiti but you’ve got this one, let me know how it turns out. I’ll be watching….” A millisecond where the frustrations of dealing with a culture new to me would have been easy to walk away from, where the potential to have my heart broken is huge, where my guilt for a life easily lived could be too strong…but and this is a big but I (and you along with me) CAN make a difference..it may be small and it may only affect a few people but the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. And that’s a step that I am willing to take…
And because to me sometimes life isn’t about walking away just because you don’t understand or agree with the way things are done or because things seem hopeless…To me that’s when life gets good..when it get to be worth living..if I can make just one person’s life different, if I can just help ease the suffering of one person then its worth all that goes along with it!

I guess in all fairness the development guys are talking about larger steps and I think it’s the small bits of hope that were lost on them...so I guess it just wasn't business as usual...oh well I think eventually Haiti will do just fine with us and not the development guys..but that's just me!

Sweet ones....

There are a lot of bad things in Haiti but I thought I would share a few sweet ones....Enjoy!!

Sorry...

I know that I said I would kept up with this blog while away on my second trip to Haiti and I have been negligent in that..I am not so sure why. Each time I have sat down to write I have felt uninspired and I guess I don't want to disappoint...I'm not sure. So tonight is my first night shift and I have committed to myself that I will at least write something so my apologies even before we begin!

After 30 hours of travelling I again arrived into the warehouse that is the Port Au Prince airport the heat and the humidity more intense then I have ever felt before...then waiting an additional hour and fighting the masses (of same colored t-shirt groups..."Hope for Haiti" being my favorite!) for my baggage I made my way outside to be greeted by a familiar face...(I wonder how the Hope group fared)
This time around I am staying at the Heartline guest house and although a wonderful place I can't help but feel immense guilt..especially when the rain clouds role in and I sleep soundly..dry and cooled by the power of 2 fans....
As I sit here and write the beautiful voices of the "patients/family/friends" of the Heartline hospital are singing out with such conviction and hope...its a beautiful thing...

The other night I started to write about what my trips to Haiti have taught me and instead of writing a crazy long blog I think I will just list them here..maybe I will elaborate at a later date but for now the heat and my 4 days of babysitting sweet Rose have kicked me in the butt...I wonder how I will survive this night shift( maybe the thought of the rat that scurried its way into the treatment center about 1 hour ago will keep me awake!!!)

So here goes:
People are resilient and hopeful even in the worst of situations

My heart may be big but there is always potential for it to get bigger

I can and at times should shift my thinking, be more open to others and their situations

Life is really hard for some and really easy for others but...
both have their struggles even tho they may not always be apparent to us

More can always be done and we must not keep from giving...no matter how spent we are...

and speaking of giving..i think i am going to go and sit in the doorway and watch sweet Rose sleep and listen to the rest of the service..open that heart a little more...understand a little more and give a little more of my time to the people here!

goodnight
Lise