If you follow Route 8 east out of Port au Prince, past Fond Parisien, almost to Mallepasse and the Dominican border, there is a little town called Fonds Baillard and a school house full of people who don't exist. Refugees, deportees from the DR, who are living here until classes start again in the beginning of September.
And, they very much exist.
Their kids join 150 others in a dirt floored church building where workmen mix concrete as we sing and teach, smoothing a new floor onto the half of the room not currently filled with children. They play games outside or stand to talk with us, listlessly befuddled when we suggest running during a game, as if, surely, even the crazy blanc yo understand that it is too hot to think about running in the middle of a drought.
Water is precious here, and the parents scold that the children shouldn't play games right now. So, we talk instead, in a wild mixture of Creole and English and Spanish that is differently accented than anything that I have ever heard before. Names and ages, families and favorite colors and anything else that we can manage in this mix of children who haven't come with labels identifying their primary language.
A young teen in pink alternates bites of popsicle between the four year old running around at her feet and the baby perched on her hip.
"You can take the baby." She offers the American staff member who is standing beside me. "Her mama is dead, and her papa is gone."
The gesture is off towards the Dominican, and I am reminded of the complications to every bit of this situation. Because, it is entirely possible that Dad is Haitian, living and working in the Dominican, while these Dominicans are living in tents and empty school houses in Haiti.
How foolish we must look sometimes to the Divine, othering each other and sniping over bits of paperwork when there are mouths to be fed and bodies to be housed and hearts to be loved.
The half finished church, this refuge with its haphazard roof and drying floor and chalkboards that double as doors, rings with the persistent squawks of two hundred paper cup roosters, damp sponges scraping down cotton yarn in the sort of absolute cacophony that seems to be an international source of childhood pleasure.
Snack and water, and the adults whose names are on the refugee list filter back into the church as the kids clear out. Silent. Waiting. Familiar with the routine, certainly wishing that, in this tiny camp, there was an alternate way to feed their families. Crisis means relief work, and relief work is what they have found themselves a part of. Sit down and listen as the indomitable Ms. Betty gives a short sermon, and we arrange ourselves with the interpreters in quiet whispers. This is only the second food distribution for our team, but, already, our habit creating students have settled into roles.
These ones pull the food from the bags. Those ones hand it in careful stacks to the translators to distribute. These ones stay up on the stage with duct tape and extra baggies in hand to repair rips and salvage anything that might be left in the bottoms of the sacks. And, always, always, if we can help it, the food goes from Haitian hands to Haitian hands.
We may be an excuse to be at these churches this week, the way that we used short term teams in Kenya as an excuse for building desks or running clinics. But, an Excuse is a far cry from a Savior, and our kids are astute enough to try to keep it that way. Confident enough in their relationship building to realize, without being told, that simply being fully present is far more important than a job description on a piece of paper could ever be.
So, the next morning, they slip their feet into sturdier shoes for hiking, and we, once again, load the bus with rice and beans, oil, water, snack, and a light, easily transportable craft that was surely Grace preparing a way for us long before we set foot in Haiti.
West, towards Port au Prince, for just a few minutes, and then south down 102, up into the mountains. Past Village of Faith and the vista of the empty river bed. Turns and switchbacks until the blue of the lake no longer watches over us with it's steady eye. Past the cluster of elaborate voodoo graves and into the town of Thoman, where we park the bus and unload into a cluster of bodies.
Part of the congregation has come down to help carry, and forty sets of hands - and one set of hooves - make light work of a twenty minute hike further up the mountain, while our bad back, back knee, bad hip, bad ankle, bad toes collection does their level best to keep up with the crowd. Through empty fields and under a papaya tree, past workmen filling in the worn away bits with fist sized chunks of limestone and up the steep parts that could almost be stairs. We're still eyeing the top of the mountain, uncertain of how much further we have to go, when music breaks out around the corner, and, instantly, we have arrived.
Arrived to middle school aged hands that jump in to pass gallon bags out rice out of American back packs into this tiny church that will surely not hold this many people, already full to overflowing, as more and more littles arrive to be squeezed in the front door while the adults ooze out the back.
And, our kids who don't fit into the building barely offer a word of question, let alone complaint. Simply get down to work holding babies and making friends.
There is good soil here, rocky but rich brown, and, for the past two years, too dry to allow anything to grow. So, the fields stand empty, hundreds of kids and adults joining hands to play Kopye and Hot Potato, to laugh and talk and tease and practice stupid human tricks in places that ought to be covered with beans and corn.
Not all of these kids can read or write their name, but their eyes light up with creativity and curiosity, with compassion for each other, and it is clear that there is a richness here that goes deeper than the soil. Children in Bertrand are highly valued, and they value one another highly in return. Snacks and water never touch adult hands, and kiddos break open cookie packets to share with those who were in the back of the church and didn't get their own.
Older kids find us again and again for simple, repetitive jokes that are the best our broken language skills have to offer. Little ones instinctively curl in when the wind whips up clouds of heavy, gritty dust-that-is-really-soil, well accustomed to bigger hands that shield and protect. And, mama's stay close, to keep a watchful and yet trusting eye on their babies.
Generations have built roots deep into this mountain.
There is poverty, sure, mud walled construction and broken benches, simple homes and oversized, well worn shoes. But, there is also a wealth that would spend hours simply talking and playing with these visitors, even long after any hope of food is gone. That would have us collecting our kids from around every possible corner when it finally comes time to leave, would bring them down the mountain still busy with the act of holding hands and memorizing faces, would fill their heads and hearts with memories of bright colors and gorgeous landscapes and let them feel so very at home in a place so different from any that they have ever seen before.
Beauty.
When they are wide eyed and searching for beauty, they can be at home anywhere. In Fonds Baillard, Fond Parisien, Thoman, Bertrand. The places don't matter so much as the people, these walking, talking, breathing glimpses of Glory. Stardust indued with the breath of God.
Someday, eternity will stretch long before us, and we will see the temporal ends to each of these stories. But, for now, it is enough to see stardust and rich soil, clear blue lakes and the pale cut of limestone. Enough to wonder at these carefully formed images of Divinity that laugh and cry and bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Enough to have eyes to see.
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