Haiti Journal -- Day Four

January 22, 2011 -- I woke up late today -- about 7 am. It's Saturday, and there are no rehearsals taking place outside my window. After our pancake breakfast we took an excursion with David Waters, a young engineer working here with Partners in Health for the past six months. We went down the pumping station that provides water up here. We walked a mile down the road, then down the hillside 600 vertical feet below to the lake.

What a gorgeous view -- and fortunately there are stairs going most of the way down. The station is very impressive -- built by Episcopalians from the Diocese of Upper South Carolina -- civil engineers like Pierce Williams, Clarkson's dad, 25 years ago. It was quite an engineering and construction feat. Very impressive system of turbines that pump 72,000 gallons a day up a 600 foot hill to the village of Cange and Zanmi Lasante.

David is a super young guy from Maryland, recent college grad who loves putting his engineering degree to work doing good in the world. He's also a very reflective guy, and made a wonderful addition to our group last night during our reflections.

We were back at Zanmi Lasante by 10:30, did some shopping at the art center, then set out on our next field trip with Marie Flore to a few of the 18 missions of ZL. The first was a place along National Highway 3 (a part of it that is nicely paved -- unlike Cange). In spite of the good road it has only the most rudimentary school/church building, much like the place we visited yesterday. And this place doesn't have water. They have to walk a mile away to get water. The second place we visited was a similar community, but one that has developed a partnership with a church in North Carolina over the past 10 years. They now have a beautiful school and a church building nearly complete. We're eager to find out how this community in NC built this kind of support in their parish to fund such a project!

We then drove through another town (Doman) then back-tracked to yet another, where ZL in partnership with Digical (the largest telephone provider in Haiti) has built a beautiful school. They're still looking for funds to build a church to follow.

We were back to Cange by 1:30, had some lunch, then an afternoon of rest, journaling, soccer game for some (with one of the indestructible soccer balls Clarkson brought), walks, talks, and more rest. I ventured up to the top of the hill where the cross is and met a group of four Americans -- two doctors from Asheville, NC, and two youngr guys from Oregon and somewhere else. The two younger ones are volunteering with an NGO doing water projects to get clean water to schools. Had a good conversation with the two doctors, one of them now on his first trip to Haiti, and the other one has been coming once or twice a year for 25 years.

Dinner was a special spread with typical Haitian food -- stewed mean on bone, a white rice with a brown (like mole) sauce, and fried plantains. Drinks included beer this evening which all of the guys indulged in. Following dinner we had entertainment by the band we have heard rehearsing so often outside our windows. Fr. Lafontant and Marie Flore joined us, as well as some of the other staff.

We closed the evening with a brief time for reflection on the day's experiences, once again in awe of all that we were seeing and hearing.

Haiti Journal -- Day Three

January 21, 2011 – After breakfast we went to Jackie’s studio. On the way I noticed a large gathering in the church, and walked up the steps to see a full church where a funeral was beginning. The singing was beautiful. Clergy and servers were lined up across the front in good Anglican fashion. I didn’t go in, because I was clearly not dressed for the occasion. Hard to believe that people who live in these conditions have such lovely dress clothes – dresses and hats, suits, neatly pressed and starched white shirts.

At the artisan center I began a conversation with Jackie about Haitian funerals. She said she refuses to go to them because they are so filled with dramatic excesses of emotion – crying, screaming, fainting, jerking. She told us that Fr. Lafontant is trying to tame things down a bit – stops people when it begins and says, “We all will die someday. It’s a natural part of being human…” She said the emotions begin when the open coffin is brought into the church, which had not yet happened when I stopped in the church.

Jackie gave us our morning assignment, which was to go into the village outside the compound to pick up trash. We all felt a bit odd about this, but you don’t argue with Jackie. So, off we went with two big white bags she had had a young woman in her class sew for us (under some duress), two pickers, and a box of surgical gloves for us all to wear. She walked us to the head of the lane through the village and turned us loose.

We attracted no small amount of attention – mostly curiosity, some noticeable resentment, and at least one young man who was so happy to see us that he joined us, bringing a couple of plastic bags from his house. He wanted us to be sure and see that his house was neat, and trash-free around the outside. He was clearly the local evangelist for cleaning up the neighborhood. We figured that whatever other reactions there might be to our presence (intrusion? Invasion of privacy? Cultural imperialism?) perhaps it might at least spark a good conversation among neighbors about caring for their environment.

We filled several bags of both trash and plastic recyclables (Jackie assured us they really DO recycle plastic here). George ran the full ones back to the compound to empty and bring them back to be filled again. We worked for about an hour, then started back to the compound. Halfway there we heard a marching band coming toward us up the dirt path. It was leading the funeral procession from the church to the burial site. As they approached us, we stood off the side of the road respectfully as they came by. The members of the band were dressed immaculately and playing the instruments that Clarkson and Lisa Williams had provided some years ago – trumpets, clarinets, flutes, baritone horns and tubas, drums and saxophones. Behind them came the mourners engaged in all the excesses of emotion described by Jackie earlier. Some people carrying others who were weeping uncontrollably, others jerking and falling to the ground, some being tended to by others. Some were carried onto nearby porches to calm them down – all while the procession continued with most of the people maintaining a dignified and respectful posture appropriate (my cultural bias) to a funeral procession. Six or eight men carried the gleaming white casket as they approached the burial site, which was apparently just about at the point where we had stopped picking up trash. We told ourselves that our invasion of their neighborhood to pick up trash had been our way of honoring the deceased by clearing the path of debris to make way for the funeral procession.

As we approached the artisan center, I saw Marie Flore and began a conversation with her. She was visibly upset that we had been sent out to pick up trash. “We have people to do that!” She wanted me to know that this was not a normal part of a group’s visit to Cange, and that she was having a hard time letting Jackie be in charge of our group visit, as this is clearly one of her responsibilities normally when groups come. I assured her that we had not minded, and that we understood Jackie’s desire to “take charge” with our group, given her unique relationship with us.

Marie negotiated with Jackie to get us for the afternoon to go to a fairly remote village on the other side of the lake. The last half hour was like driving on a sometimes vertical, rock-strewn riverbed. Cars seldom travel this road, and in fact, Marie had never been here in a car, since she usually crosses the lake by boat, then walks the last 45 minutes to the village. She had not been able to schedule a boat for our group. Once we got there we were ushered into a stick-built enclosure roughly 20x60 feet with a grass/palm frond roof. This is the school for 260 children who come from the area to go to school. We were introduced to a wonderful man who came to the village in 1978 to start the school. He spoke to us about the students and the challenges they have here in the school. We could see the two well-used blackboards propped up along the sides of the enclosure. There was no evidence of textbooks or any of the normal things one sees in a classroom, and the desks were simple wooden benches on which the children sat to learn. In spite of all this, the teacher told us they had had good success in students passing the national primary school exam – 18 out of 20 who took the test this year. Those who go on to secondary school do so in Cange where they board with local families.

We were shown the field just adjacent to the school where they hope to build a new school – if they can find partners to help them. Fr. Lafontant’s strategy is always to build a school first in a community, then a church – and perhaps a clinic to follow.

There were lots of children around and we had fun taking pictures, then showing them to them. The videos were even better. Marie had brought our lunch of cheese sandwiches (standard fare for lunches on the road – a single slice of cheese between two slices of white bread), and then the community served us each a large green coconut for its milk. I had never drunk directly from a fresh coconut before. Tasty and fun!

After being in the village for about an hour, we began the long trip back to Cange – over the same roads once again.

Following supper, our evening reflection time was especially good and rich. We had had lots of material for reflection during the day. I started us off with Richard Rohr’s daily meditation from yesterday (from the Center for Contemplation and Action), beginning with a quote from Carl Jung about the problems of life being fundamentally insolvable – “they can never be solved, but only outgrown.” Rohr’s theme this week in his daily meditations is about moving from judgment to contemplation to action, which also gave us much to consider in our own judgments of the Haitians (or anyone for that matter) and even of ourselves, particularly around questions about “why am I here?” -- questions that can haunt you in a place like Haiti. What ARE we doing here? And does our being here make any difference whatsoever? And isn’t there something wrong about coming here simply to experience some kind of transformation of ourselves? Our conversation was one of those times when you wish you had a recording that you could go back to and hear once again everything that was said. Every single person in the group had something profound and meaningful to say – no definitive answers to our questions, but deeply reflective offerings of thought and feeling. It was definitely a sacred time we shared. Doug led our closing prayers for the evening, and we went our separate way, some to bed, some to further conversation.

George and I had a chance to connect – just the two of us, for a brief moment before he left for the night. We had a big bear hug like we like to have, and he told me how happy he was that he had come on this trip. I took that as a good sign that he was getting something important out of the experience.

Clarkson informed me that Marie Flore would like a copy of my sermon before Sunday since she was going to be my translator, so I stayed up late into the night writing it. It came easily after my time with the text this week (the calling of the disciples in Matthew 4) – and our experience here this week.

Haiti Journal -- Day Two

January 20, 2011 – I woke up around 4 am and never really went back to sleep. Not long afterward the Zanmi Lasante community began to come to life. Roosters crowed, voices began calling, musical instruments began rehearsing, and the whole place was humming by about 6 am. I showered and went down by 7:30, but no one from our group was around yet, even though breakfast was to be served at 7:30. Turns out that we’re only 4 miles from the border with the Dominican Republic, which is a different time zone an hour ahead of us, and my phone must have picked up that signal. I might actually have been awake since 3 am!

So before breakfast I took a walk. There was singing in the church, which drew me in. A young man named Woody took an interest in me and welcomed me in to hear the rehearsal of a men’s choir. Beautiful harmonies. They’ll be singing in church on Sunday morning, he tells me. Took some video of the rehearsal. Afterward, he wanted to play the accordion for me. He also wanted my phone number and email, which I declined to give. This was the first of many appeals from Woody over the coming days. We all got to know him well!

After a very nice breakfast, Jackie took us on a walking tour of the ZL compound. Amazing place. People are lined up for the ophthalmology clinic, the emergency room, and the multi-drug-resistant TB clinic – one of Paul Farmer’s signature contributions to medicine in the developing world. Lots of sick people coming here from all over – even as far as Port-au-Prince, and perhaps farther. We almost had to step over people at times. The pediatrics ward was sad to see – mothers with their sick little children; there was even a neo-natal clinic. I say sad, but it would be so much more sad if this place were not here.

Jackie also took us to see Paul Farmer’s house, just a five minute walk from the compound. It is a simple little bungalow surrounded by a lovely garden and bamboo grove, with a great view from the back from where you can see “mountains beyond mountains.” Most of us (perhaps all of us in the group) had read Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, before coming here. It is, of course, the story of Paul Farmer and Partners in Health – highly recommended reading for anyone who doesn’t know the story.

I learned while here that this phrase, “mountains beyond mountains,” speaks to a deep kind of resignation in the Haitian spirit – the idea that beyond this mountain (or obstacle or challenge of any kind) there will always be another. It makes the Haitian people very accepting of life’s challenges, on the one hand, but also resigned and even fatalistic on the other. Jackie has known Paul since he began his work here over twenty years ago, and also got to know Tracy Kidder during the time he was writing the book. She told me that he originally was going to title it something like “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these…” but the marketing people came up with Mountains Beyond Mountains, which turns out to have been a good title for the book.

From there, we went to the College Bon Sauveur, the school on the compound where about 1000 students go to school every day. Primary grades meet in the morning, and secondary in the afternoon. We were there in the morning. Some of the classes sang for us (including a particularly special rendition in English of “the more we get together the happier we’ll be” – with accent on the “pi” of hap-PI-er). The children are beautiful, all dressed immaculately in their uniforms. The facilities are very nice, and the student/teacher ration is quite low (a little over 30/1 – not bad in a developing country). The teaching seemed to be the rote learning style I’ve seen so often in African schools – lots of repeating after teachers in unison, with the children sitting at benches all in rows.

By about 10:30 Jackie started giving us our work assignments. Three of us (Doug, Linda and I) were sent to the library to organize the French literature section – all the books alphabetically by author last name. We had lots of philosophical discussion about whether “de Montfreid” was to be under the d’s or the m’s. No librarians in the group. We worked hard for a couple of hours, but were very happy to be called for lunch.

After lunch some of us took a little rest (not Jackie – it’s tough keeping up with this lady!). And then it was back at it in the library. George joined us since their work assignment hadn’t really gotten off the ground – someone hadn’t shown up to pick them up. We finished by about 3 pm. We headed back to the art center to check in just in time to begin an English lesson with the hospital administrator for PIH. Jackie proceeded to empty a huge box of various medical supplies and OTC remedies brought by Dave Lewis, and we each took turns reading the directions off the labels to him, then Jackie would have him repeat them back to us. The rote learning method apparently works for adult language learning also. This went on for some time, our student being much more patient than any of the rest of us. After about an hour, three more young men arrived for their lesson. We took turns reading from a children’s picture book of Haitian history, Pouissant and the slave rebellion of 1804. We learned a lot, but we were tired. Didn’t dare get up or try to leave, however. We had another long discussion of current events in Haiti while they all practiced their English, and some history of the Duvaliers and whether Baby Doc had left the country today or not as expected (he had not).

Finally, we had a lovely supper around 6 pm, then a time for an evening group reflection on the events of the past two days. We closed with prayers for the end of the day and headed for bed. Long day. Will sleep well.

Haiti Journal -- Day One

I was not able to blog from Haiti, but I did keep a journal, which I'm now posting here as I am able.

January 19, 2011 – Got up at 2 am to get our shuttle to Logan airport for a 5:30 am flight to Haiti via Miami. We made the trip with no problems, leaving Andover in a foot of slushy snow, icy roads and sidewalks. Landed in Port-au-Prince in 85 degree weather. What a switch!

We were met by a Partners in Health (PIH or ZL for Zanmi Lasante here) driver and the indomitable Jackie Williams, mother of Clarkson – a member of our group. Jackie is a legend in her own lifetime – a feisty, steel magnolia from South Carolina. She’s in her late seventies, and a real force! Kind and gentle, but in perpetual motion making things happen. More about her later.

We made our way through a gauntlet of hawkers and luggage handlers to get to our waiting vehicles – bags in one, people in the other. We learned we would not be stopping at the cathedral and convent of the Sisters of St. Margaret because of demonstrations in the streets related to the return of Baby Doc Duvalier two days before. So, we went directly to Zanmi Bene – an orphanage set up by Partners in Health following the earthquake last year. On the way, we passed several blue-tarp IDP camps where people are still living over a year after the earthquake.


Zanmi Bene has 48 children from 9 months to 22 years, most of them developmentally delayed. After the earthquake a wealthy Port-au-Prince couple sold their compound in the city to PIH for “a good price” (Jackie says probably 300-500K US) and PIH opened the orphanage. Several of the 2-5 year olds found us and attached themselves to us. Sweet, adorable children, many of whom lost their families in the earthquake. We ate a lunch of cheese sandwiches at the orphanage while some of the children clung to us. I detected some nervousness in our group about hygiene, particularly as little hands offered to share with us what they were eating. Given the cholera epidemic in the country, the concerns were real, but we were told that there had been no instances of cholera here at the orphanage, and everything we saw indicated meticulous attention to cleanliness.

We continued our journey to Cange, leaving the city and making our way up National Road 3 to the Central Plateau department, climbing for quite some time up the switchbacks on a well-paved road – greatly improved since Paul Farmer’s early days (read Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder for a description of how it used to be).

The countryside reminded me somewhat of Burundi, but even more deforested. The houses here, however, seem marginally more substantial – and there are more cars, fewer bicycles, and not as many people walking along the roads. Hardly a tree anywhere here, it seems. Some of the area between PaP and the Plateau seemed desert-like with an abundance of Saguaro cacti and acacia trees – otherwise only scrub underbrush.

We came to Mirebalais, a fairly large town, still waiting on the newly paved road to arrive. It is the site of a famous slave rebellion in 1804 that overthrew the French colonialists and established the first free democratic nation born of a slave revolt. Between Mirebalais and Cange is the dam that displaced thousands of people in 1959, forcing them to move up the hillsides where there was no water. Jackie and her late husband, Pierce, were part of a team of Greenville, SC, Episcopalians who came at the invitation of Fr. Fritz Lafontant to create a water pumping system to bring water to village in this, the poorest section of Haiti.

We met Pere Lafontant upon arrival, as well as his daughter, Marie Flore. Lovely people. They were both in Boston last week for the funeral of Tom While, PIH’s first major donor and a man who has generously funded the work of PIH here ever since. Together with Jackie we toured Sant Art (the Art Center – in a building named for her) and were then shown to our rooms. Mine is an ample room with a double bed, armoir, table – and even a mosquito net above my bed. Across the hall are Kathy Grant and Linda Borland sharing a room. George, David Lewis, and Clarkson Williams are sharing a dormitory-style room somewhere nearby in another building. Doug and Shane have a room together – and I don’t know where Heather is. After a 45 minute rest, supper was ready for us at 6 pm – rice, a beef stew, fried plantains, and tomatoes. Dessert was a lovely cake with a clear rum raisin sauce. Mmmmm.

At dinner we met some of the PIH staffers. Ali Lutz is the PIH Haiti programs coordinator, who, we learned, lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, when she is not here. I also later learned – after she had left for PaP – that she is a candidate for ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church and that we share many mutual friends in the Boston area. Small world. A couple of young doctors (one still a medical student) also joined us at our table. Sabrina is an impressive young woman, Harvard Medical School graduate doing a residency in anesthesiology here. She graduated from Boston University in 2006. I assumed she was African-American, until she told us that she grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and went to high school there. Now she has come back to her home country as a doctor. Another young man, Dave, who sat with us (and he really was an African-American) is currently in medical school at Harvard, and is doing an internship in surgery here. He was a 2006 graduate of Harvard College. Another Dave is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland in engineering. He’s here working to keep the water system running, making sure that 72,000 gallons of water gets pumped 600 feet up the hill from the reservoir every day. It’s what makes everything else here possible.

There were others whose names I did not get. Impressive young people, most of them with some Boston connection. After a long day it is time to turn in. I was impressed with Jackie’s energy, and said to her something about how hard she had worked today. “This isn’t work,” she said. “Work is what you do when you’d rather be doing something else.”