One of the greatest things about being in Haiti is meeting the people I been reading and writing about for months. Today, I got to spend time with Marjorie, who I wrote about when she lost her hand in the earthquake. Heartline Ministries nurtured her back to health and built a house for her family to live in. Marjorie is sweet and shy and wonderfully kind.
I also go to meet Emmanuel, a 20-year-old young man who lost one leg in the earthquake. Heartline is helping him go to school, and he is even able to ride his bike to school with his prosthetic leg. He loves practicing his English with the short-term missionaries like us who are with Heartline for a few days or few weeks.
I also got to meet the woman who will receive the house that I fundraised for with the blog. I'll make that a separate blog entry. It was an especially tragic story and it didn't go at all how I thought it might.
Getting from point A to point B in Haiti is completely crazy and you wouldn't believe the things that people do here as a matter of daily life. Things that are considered totally unsafe and illegal in the USA are done here without an eye blink.
Soon I'll post soon the pictures of the truck I've been riding around on every day--a huge truck with a railing on the top-- and we sit on the roof of the truck and hold on for dear life. It puts you up so high it is like riding and elephant--if you can imagine riding on the roof of the cab of a semi-truck, that's what we are doing. You have to contiuously be aware of tree branches and power lines and many times we have to quickly lie down flat on the truck roof to avoid being hit in the head by anything.
You can do incredible things when you come as a missionary and stay with people who know Haiti and all it's ways. These are things that would never, ever happen in the USA and would be totally crazy to do if you weren't with someone who knows the area intimately. Today, we went to Cite Soleil in downtown Port au Prince for a meeting/party with 50 children that Heartline sponsors to go to elementary school. The United Nations considers Cite Soleil to be a highly dangerous slum and sends their people into that part of town only when wearing hard helmets and armed with heavy guns.
Cite Soleil is ruled completely by Haitian gangs, but the head of Heartline Ministries, John McHoul, is known and respected even by the gang leaders in this roughest, poorest part of town. The leader of the gang is a gianormous guy named Franz.
We saw the Cite Soleil children put on a little program of singing and recitations, and when it was over, an incredible thing happened. Franz, the big, tough-looking leader of the gang (did I mention he was huge?) took my hand in his. As if I were his mother and he was taking care of me, he helped me climb into the Heartline truck. He treated me and all the women of Heartline with the utmost kindness, respect and care.
In Franz's eyes, I was with Pastor John, so I was automatically considered OK by him. Franz had his gang guys standing guard all around us as we were leaving and he made sure that no one messed with us or our truck. That was a totally wild experience! I am a typical Briargate suburban mom-- I do not usually hang around with tough-guy gang leaders.
As a side note, there was one little thing that happened today that made us all laugh in the middle of a really hard part of Haiti. On the building that hosted the Cite Soleil program, someone had taped up a handmade paper sign put there for today. It was written in broken English, and totally cracked up everyone in our group. The sign said, "Welcome Pastor John and HER Staff." John may never live it down. Naturally we had to take a picture of him with the sign.
Getting very late here, must sign off for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment