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Friday, November 12, 2010

A House for Figi's Family

I have learned over the years to try not to have any expectations when you are talking about life in a developing country. It's human to have expectations, so often some sneak in...but I try not to let them.

For example, if you expect to get someplace in the developing world that normally takes 10 minutes to drive to, it can easily take an hour and half. More often than not, something will happen to cause a delay--your vehicle breaks down, or the driver gets sick and doesn't show up, or the road is closed for some crazy reason, or some other random thing happens to make you late. Other times, things swing the other way and something that you were expecting to be hard goes better than expected.

Another example of this would be adopting our daughter from Vietnam ten years ago. While the adoption process was going on, I purposely tried to NOT think about what it would be like to hold her in my arms for the first time. Because there were so many things that could have happened that would have prevented our ever adopting her. Thank God, Cece's adoption was one of the precious, grace-filled times where things went easier than is typical for Vietnam.

So, all of this is a rather lengthy way of saying that as I was trying to raise money to pay for the building of some houses in Haiti, I tried NOT to think about what it would be like to give away a house. I tried to keep my expectations low.

I left the picking of who would get a house to John and Beth McHoul, who have lived in Haiti for over 20 years and pour their hearts in their ministry every day there. John and Beth have personal relationships with hundreds, if not thousands of Haitians. They know their stories and are infinitely more qualified to pick one family out of all the needy families to get a gift of a house. The house, is, of course what you all made possible with your donations.

The tent camps in Haiti are like nothing I've ever seen before. In every public park, in every vacant lot, by the side of the road and even in a median strip there are tents and tarps where families are trying to survive after the earthquake. Nobody really knows how many people are living outdoors, but most of the estimates agree it is over 1.3 million people living in tents in Port-au-Prince alone. The tents get hot as ovens during the day, and offer lousy protection when it rains. The ground around them turns muddy and the water runs off onto whatever ground is lowest--usually the tents of many unfortunate families.

Tents are not secure, so the few belongings a Haitian family may have after the earthquake often get stolen because there is no way to effectively lock anything up. John says many times families who go to their church and live in the tent camps will trade off Sundays going to church--the husband going one week, and the wife going the next Sunday because somebody needs to stay with the tent and watch their possessions all the time. The tent camps are extremely noisy and crowded with tents strung up right next to other tents. I can not imagine living this way with my family.

Heartline has been trying to provide simple wooden houses for families they know have special problems. Many of the houses they build are for people who lost limbs in the earthquake and who Heartline cared for weeks and months while they recovered.

I didn't know when I arrived in Haiti who John and Beth would pick to get the first house this blog/fundraising effort would pay for. They told me they had prayed about this decision and chose a lady named Figi. Figi is not her real name -- which is Marjorie (a different Marjorie than the young woman I wrote about a few weeks ago who lost her hand.) "Figi" means "face" in Creole. John loves giving people--Haitian or American-- nicknames. John has the kind of crazy, outgoing personality that people just love and therefore they embrace any nickname he bestows on them.

He calls this lady Figi because she has seven children and John says all the children look exactly like her. They have her face, so he calls her Figi. As it happens, all her children are girls. Marjorie came to the Heartline field hospital after the quake with extremely high blood pressure. John and Beth fear for Figi's health and for what would happen to her children if she were to die. They have arranged for Figi to get treatment for her blood pressure and they have her come into the clinic every week, monitor her blood pressure and give her free blood pressure medication.

About the time of the earthquake, Figi had a baby and stayed at Heartline hospital for weeks after the birth while the doctors tried to monitor her health and get her blood pressure under control with medicine. Then Figi stayed in an outdoor ward with a tarp strung up over head, but at least she had a cot to sleep on, medical care, was fed every day and had the Heartline staff to help with the newborn baby. Her oldest daughter, about age 17, had stayed with Figi at the hospital also to help take care of her mom and her newborn sister. John and Beth know the whole family well. Figi eventually got well enough to go back with the rest of her family in the tent camps.

Beth told me to come to the clinic at noon on Tuesday, because Figi comes in then for her weekly blood pressure check and never misses her appointment. John and Beth wanted me to be with them when they told Figi the news that she was getting a house and would soon be able to leave the tent camp with her family. They were sure Figi would be very excited and happy.

Figi showed up looking terrible--downcast, hunched over, red eyes and a voice so scratchy and soft she could barely get words out. Clearly something was wrong. With my non-existent Creole language skills, I couldn't tell what exactly was happening but obviously something very, very bad was going on. Soon John and Beth translated what Figi was saying: her oldest daughter, her helper, had died three days earlier.

Figi was deep in morning and grief. Beth nearly started crying herself and we all ached for this woman who already had so many hard things going on in her life. John and Beth questioned her about what happened: had the teenager been sick long? Did she get cholera? Figi gave short answers in a choked voice...she didn't think it was cholera because her daughter did not have diarrhea--the teenager had severe stomach pain. The family took her to a large public hospital and she died very suddenly the same day she got sick. Figi is not an educated woman, so asking for a more precise diagnosis wasn't going anywhere. All she knew is that her daughter had died. Most likely, no one at the hospital ever bothered to explain to her why the girl had died.

Figi looked like she might faint and so we quickly got her a chair and into a side room away from the busy clinic lobby. Figi cried and poured her heart out to Beth. Figi said everyone in the tent camps is sick--coughs and other illnesses are spreading everywhere. She was afraid more of her children were going to die. Figi's husband has not been able to find work since the earthquake and she was afraid the whole family would starve. She cried out she was afraid someone in the tent camp would kidnap her girls and rape them or sell them as slaves. Pain and fear poured out of Figi like a flood.

It was beyond heartbreaking.

All we could do was hold her hands, listen and grieve with her. Allison, the leader of our short term mission trip was there, as well as Beth and myself. Beth told her that this American lady wanted to pay for her family to have a house. That John would find some land to buy and then she would have a free house and could move her family out of the tent camps. With her blood pressure issues, John and Beth are truly afraid that living in the camp is going to kill her.

With a house to live in, Figi's personal security and that of her family would vastly improve. Beth kept saying something in Creole and then "fini, fini" which means "finished." Beth promised her that some of those worries she had would be finished shortly. No more fear of flooding. No more living in a crowd of sick people, no more worries about her girls being kidnapped. Those worries would soon be finished.

Beth tried to tell Figi she must keep taking her blood pressure pills and take care of herself for the sake of her other children. Figi's plastic pill box indicated that she had forgotten to take her medicine for several days.

While Beth was talking, Figi was quiet and somber. She seemed shell-shocked--in her grief there was just no reaction to the news that she was getting a house. She nodded her head, but the news did not really penetrate. It was as though one of your children died and then three days later the Publisher's Clearinghouse Prize Patrol showed up at your house with a check for $200,000 for you. You would be somewhat pleased, but you not be that happy because nothing can replace the loss of a beloved child. This was not the time for joy, it was a time for grief. In that grief God granted me the privilege of lighting a tiny candle of hope in Figi's life.

Allison and I stayed and prayed with Figi for a long time. Allison lived and worked for a year at an orphanage in Haiti and so she is fluent in Creole. At one point as we were praying, I heard a strange sound and half-realized that Beth had quietly taken a picture of us praying together. Beth posted her telling of this whole story and the picture on the Heartline Ministries blog which you can read at Heartlineministries.org (See the entry for Nov. 10.) I am the one in the orangish shirt. Before I left, Beth took Figi and my picture together. As you can imagine, we are not smiling in the photograph. The picture still means a lot to me.

It was a good thing I had low expectations--that I had not spent a lot of time anticipating making someone very happy by giving them a house. It didn't happen that way. It's Haiti, and things rarely go the way you think they might. I could not give this woman her daughter back, but I could give her something else that will somewhat help her.

You all share that role by donating for the house and praying for me while I am in Haiti. Please pray for Figi too, her husband and her six remaining girls. Beth and John promised to keep us updated and as soon as they find some land they will build the house and send pictures.

Today's blog story was a long and hard one that I wish had a better ending.
Fini. Fini.

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