Caribbean for nearly 4 years. I vividly remember arriving in Dezam and not being able to imagine how we would live there for 3 years in the heat, in Creole, without Chapters, or mixed field greens but that was a few days before the community showed up at our door l i t e r a l l y to welcome us with Haitian hospitality and curiousity and before we tried pikliz (spicy cabbage salad) and watercress not to mention mangoes, loquats, and Haitian lemonade. . . Now it’s hard to imagine not being here. Every so often people (Haitians and foreigners) meet us, all three of us, and they compliment us for "saving Gabriela". Every time I hear this the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. So when it happened most recently, I waited until my neck hair when down again and I said to Matt, let's make a list of what we are "saving" Gabriela" from. Here's what we came up with...and we wanted to share it with you.
we saved her from:
• not being able to find books and websites in her first language
• corporal punishment in school
• not having health insurance
• having to work b/c her parents can’t afford to send her to school
• having to stay inside if the protests on the streets get violent
• wearing American hand me downs
• Giardia
• not knowing how to set her alarm on her phone or wake up with anything but the sun or the roosters, or early choir practice
• not ever going tobogganing
• thinking white is better
and we saved her from:
• living with her grandmother
• going to church on Sunday with nearly everyone else
• germs
• trusting in God to meet her in daily needs
• harvesting sugar cane from her garden, loading it on a horse, and riding the horse to the market
• knowing where her food comes from
• shopping in an outdoor market
• having only 1 choice of cereal
• seeing babies being born
• being vulnerable
• seeing sick people and old people die
• knowing how to chill out
• having too few possessions
• riding public transportation
• patience
• mangoes
• fresh juice
• taking her goats out to pasture at dawn
• 363 days of sunshine a year
• rice out of a husk and beans out of a pod
• doing laundry in the sunshine with her feet in the river while chatting with her neighbours (weight machines can’t compete with this muscle toning action)
• having a reasonable ecological footprint
• watching a tarantula spin its legs up effortlessly in marvellous self defence
• knowing how to make rope
• knowing how to make her own soccer ball or kite out of a plastic bag(s)
• knowing how to fix a fuel line with a rock
• pounding her own coffee and not drinking it double, tall, nor with skim or soy
• valuing every drop of water that it takes to fill her jug at the public tap
• looking physical poverty in the eyes every day
• being valued just for showing up
oh, there’s more! we are also saving Gabriela from
• not having the chance to play with toy guns
• not having the chance to watch 4 hours of television per day
• not having the chance to be self conscious about her weight
• not ever finding out what a transfat is
• never going to Walmart
• never having the opportunity to be overwhelmed by opportunities
• not getting to work overtime
• not having the choice to eat local
• not ever having the chance to see 8 lanes of traffic, or even 4
• not having to read a map to get there
• being Afrocentric, or whatever the opposite of Eurocentric
I've noticed that when I pray with Haitians, they say thank you for this food. When I pray with North Americans here in Haiti and beyond, we say thank you for this food and thank you that we are so blessed. What does this blessed mean? Looking at the biblical “blessed”, God blesses everyone, everyone who wants it, everyone who admits they need it.
Specifically...
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5: 3-12
I don’t see blessed are those who work overtime, manage their money well, have a free education, are born in Canada, drink bottled water, drive a hybrid car, or have the biggest wood lot. The possessions we have are not going to bless us or save us. What we achieve by worldly standards is not going to get us anywhere but here (on earth) either (unless the worldly standards start to resemble God’s). These things are manifestations of the state of our hearts that can help us or block us from God’s blessings.
We didn’t save Gabriela. I know without a doubt that by adopting Gabriela and introducing her to a “GWO PEYI” (big country, as Haitians appropriately refer to “developed” countries) she will miss out on the blessings God gives the physically poor. If you have ever visited a peasant in their home, you’ll know what I’m talking about. God chose the poor in the world to be rich with faith and to received the kingdom God promised to those who love him James 2:5 (see also: Mark 12:43).
Also, if we didn’t adopt Gabriela there’s a really good chance she would have gone to Holland (her orphanage was a Dutch NGO). She might have become tulip engineer and she might have even liked dropjies. If no one ever adopted her and she stayed here in Haiti she might have become a role model to younger orphans or a human rights activist right here in Port au Prince or even a banana seller. If Gabriela goes to Canada, she might become the governor general (she’s already mastered the wave), or a secretary, the prime minister, a dancer, or a factory worker. And it won’t really matter what she chooses or what chooses her because God works through everyone. In fact, for those of us who are in the habit of feeling “blessed” because water comes out of our taps or when we buy two and get one free, God might even be working overtime, particularly on the days we are feeling like we’re “blessed” because we’ve earned it and we start preaching the gospel of “do it like us” from our car windows. What would the world look like if we were all “blessed” like North Americans. Would we still call ourselves “blessed”? Does our blessed-ness depend on others not meeting OUR “definition” of blessed? I’m asking.
Haiti has blessed us richly. Three plus years later, I can ride a taptap one-handed, carry bananas on my head, walk by half-moonlight, bathe in the river with my neighbours, and live without lettuce and while these might be guides on the road to “blessed”, these are not the true blessings (although the river bathing gets close).
Three plus years and a Haitian baby later I can let the market women rip me off,
spend 15 minutes greeting people at my office, listen to my colleagues, drink juice with an unreasonable amount of sugar just because someone made it for me, and smile at the guys making cat calls at me (this one was a LONG time coming!) Gabriela has been busy chipping away at my hyper-productivity and to everyone’s honour, I’ve been scheduling time to “pa fè anyen” (do nothing). Soon I just might be able to laugh a nice big laugh when things don’t go as planned.
The hair on the back of my neck is sticking up again, for the guard’s 12 year-old son and
Gabriela who are chasing each other in the front yard as I type, for the way the human heart gets more generous the less we have, for Haiti who’s fighting whether at home or on the streets for the right to have enough to eat, and for the opportunity to be meek. Blessed be.
Us all.
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