Jesus is my girlfriend

I cook for the boys. They ask why I am making them cut all these vegetables and why I will put them in pasta. I tell them, wait, wait. It is raining. It is raining a lot. I feel like I haven’t eaten all day. I wonder if the people who eat once every few days, feel this same way. I wonder if my body is as strong and tolerant as theirs to even survive without food for two days and live a high energy day. the pasta is done. They all come with their bowls, dirty bowls, saucers, small plates. I laugh. D, asks why I won’t give him a second helping. I only cooked 6 packets of pasta for stirfry, not 20 I tell him. He cannot see, but I tell him he’s my favorite and I gave him an extra serving.

After dinner I sit with Cl in the kitchen. I finally get to eat. I give him some Gatorade. He tells me he has had problems in his chest since he was a little boy so thats why he's extra sick when he gets ill. He asks if my parents are alive. I tell him yes both. He tells me how his parents died. He asks for my phone to call some people. He tells me he has called the orphanage and that his best friend is there and he is good. He is happy. His best friend and him grew up together. He lies down on the floor and points to the rain and says this is how they used to sleep on the streets. He asks if I understand. I do. His English is broken but we always seem to understand each other well.His friend is back in the orphanage. He says what happened to him during the earthquake. He says Jesus, Jesus, again. Jesus saved me. I joke about his girlfriend when he asks for my phone again. Jesus is my girlfriend he says. Jesus is my everything. My clothes, my money, my friends don’t matter he tells me. Jesus matters. Jesus.

Comfort Zone

There is a party on the beach with the school. My heart feels heavy that morning. I don’t get out of bed until 9. 9 feels like 1pm for me. It is so late. i feel more militant this weekend. D never comes out he is slightly antisocial. I do not blame him. At noon I tell him I’m taking him to the party on the beach. I drag him off the couch. He disappears. I find him hidden under the bed behind the suitcases in between shoes. This is how badly he doesn’t want to go. I call the director, I tell him D has to come with me. Finally he comes. I know he doesn’t like me, but I always manage to tease him and make him laugh. We get to the beach everyone is surprised to see him and tells him to come swim and do something. He just sits there. We sit along boats. I sit on the upside down one, I lie down across it amidst 50 kids all around us. Something about Haiti has made me stop caring what I do and when. I do my own thing. Nobody every seems to mind, perhaps because I’m a foreigner. We go back, I don’t know if D has had fun but I am glad I forced him out of his comfort zone.

My heart is big enough to hold your pain

The next time we meet I ask A what him what he wants from me. I ask him what he will do when I leave. I only have two weeks left, I don’t know how to help you so tell me how. A starts crying. He puts his head down. I’m sorry I say. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I keep repeating myself. I ask him to promise he won’t cry that night. I tell him I will never understand him because I can’t. He says I have become his family. I tell him I will never abandon him when I’m gone. I tell him he cannot think he is hopeless. He cannot think life is not important enough to pursue. There is only so much he can promise me. I tell him about ladders, I tell him about stars. I say you need a ladder to get to the stars. I tell him the stars are reachable, I tell him he needs a strong ladder. He is young, he is so young.

I will not forget these few nights of tears. I will never forget his talent. My heart is big enough to hold your pain I tell him. My heart is big enough. I am in so much pain. My heart is big enough, it is big enough, I tell myself.

Half way gone

I have started to spend a few nights with A, listening to him, he says he needs me. I sit there. I look away. We are in downtown Jacmel, A and I. I finish asking him about what brings his sadness. I am worried about him. He talks to me, he tells me he needs to leave this all. He needs to get out to save himself and his sanity. I don’t know where he will go or what he will do. I wish I could comfort him with hope. I know there is hope. I don’t know where to find it during that conversation. My thoughts pause. hear the church in the background. The people are singing. I continue to look away in the other direction. Tears stream down my face. My eyes burn. I never had a lack of options. I never had a lack of opportunity. There was always a outlet in front of me, somewhere, somehow. And there were so many more I couldn’t see. I look straight ahead into nothing past the metal fence into the darkness. I pray, I pray for the people, I pray for him. Our whole lives we search for satisfaction and the lives of the people we would find least satisfying sit satisfied and okay with their situation. I cannot understand it, but my heart does. That moment has killed me softly. Tears flood my face again. The fall slowly, securely somewhere. Each tear in Haiti has left a small needle size puncture in my heart I feel. My heart needs to be wounded, I knew that before I came. It takes a broken heart to be receptive to Gods light and truth. I am so thankful for the few things I have with me in Haiti. It is very rare I cry with such clarity ever. It is rare I even cry. It takes something to drown me fully before tears come down my face. I am wounded.

I have reached my halfway point in Haiti this week. I sit there, my face sticky. There has been clarity. I came to understand how to be thankful. During those moments of epiphany in prayer I have understood so much more than I thought I ever would in 20 days, and there’s only so much more to come. I stand at the crossroads, Haiti has transformed me slowly, but it has also killed me softly. Soft and slow is beautiful. Half way there, and half way gone.

HasbiAllah

There have been two days where I felt the need to leave soon. I do not know why I came here I tell my debrief roommate. She keeps me sane. Those two days I realize I cannot handle so much pain. I could not handle so much blood for more than one day. I cannot handle their depression and ptsd of certain people without triggering on my own. I feel the need to leave tomorrow and escape. Then I feel the need to stay longer, to help them longer. It is only once every few weeks where I go through a short handful of minutes feeling this way.

I remember panicing on the airport. I remember I texted Faraz from Toronto who was one of main reasons I was here. I told him panic has started. He has prepped me for Haiti and what might happen the night before. I was breathing heavy that night. I started to feel internally uneasy the night before at the airport when I realized what I was really doing. I remember texting him that I’m panicing. His response was, it was one statement. HasbiAllah

I am in God’s hands. HasbiAllah. God has changed me, in ways I haven’t been able to imagine. Each day I experience enough to make my normal self panic or have an intense stream of a million uncomforting thoughts. But with each thing I am calm and digest it. I am not able to explain what God has done. Usually we see the changes in retrospect but everyday there has been retrospect here, I see myself change in different ways. I am so grateful, I left myself completely to God when I got off that plane. I had no idea what would happen. I had no idea. I still have no idea what’s to happen tomorrow and how much more I will change. Coming to Haiti I have become Haitan in the sense of reliance. I have been reminded God is my everything. HasbiAllah.

Teaching

This week is exam week and last week of school for the local children. I start teaching again. We have visitors come. All the children line up. They are given colored bells. They try to have a song with bells. Each color makes a different sound. Everyone gets a beanie baby, the children all want their favorite pick. There are many. They empty out a suitcase of clothes. All the children run. The 3 and 4 year olds are too small to do anything. I left them up and push them through. There are no clothes for them but the girl in my hands grabs a pair of shorts. There is never physical fighting or stealing. This always seem so to impress me how outside of verbal arguments and minor yelling for demands, everyone is always civil to one another. I feel like clothing distribution is survival of the fittest, whoever grabs in time gets in time.

One of the girls falls over the roots of a tree. Her lip is bleeding. Everyone watches her. She did not go home right after school they say. I take her inside. I try to carry her. I do not get far. She reaches my shoulders. I have become the house nurse since one of the boys busted his chin. How I got this position I do not know. I don’t know anything but how to clean and patch up a wound.

The last day of school the children close out. They move all the tables and desks attached to benches up to the house, where their original classroom used to be. One bench seats five students and is made out of wood. The children start carrying them across. Most are between the ages of five to ten. Two carry one bench table. I’m impressed. I help two girls. One is at the front and the other lifts from the middle over her body. The bench is still too heavy for me. They lift it up the stairs, I lift the bottom.

Haitian children are stronger than me. Even the 10 year old boys grab my hands and squeeze them so strong I yelp. Perhaps my runner’s legs will compete with their lower body. The upper body strength of the children amazes me. I feel so weak in front of them. How fast they bounce back to life, play and work barely eating is beyond me. simply stated- their strength in life amazes me.

Beautiful

I take the young boys on my own to the beach again Sunday. They are very happy they run in front of me. A neighborhood boy Alto comes I always see him. He is our neighbor and seems like family. We also seem to have a dog who follows us everywhere. There are two beaches before the main beach which yells beach party booze and music on Sunday. I wonder where these people come from and how many are from Jacmel. We go to the second rocky beach. We are the only ones there. C explains to me that he’s Haitian and he likes people, and he’s not American. I tell him wanting to me a loner on the beach is not an American thing, it’s a Fariha thing.

At night, G takes us to a café bar on the beach. He tells me a few days before his sisters are coming into town. He hasn’t seem them for two years. We sit under the little hut umbrellas. The brothers of his girlfriend tell me they are so happy to be with us and sad they cannot speak English. Everyone is so direct and expressive here. Even the Haitian language, Creole is it or not. One word says a lot and you either are or you aren’t. Love and like are the same, Good and cute are the same; pretty and beautiful are the same word as well.

I’ve realized adaptability here. Slowly my clothes start reducing in number. I notice that I no longer have all my tshirts and that I’m missing half. I start seeing them on the boys. I am glad they have been found I tell myself. Then my pants start getting random paint on them. My dictionaries don’t get returned. My pen supply is scarce. I shrug my shoulders. I planned on leaving all these items here with me so I guess I just left them faster. I will take a backpack back with me. I do not worry.

Jacmel Diaries

I meet the family of A, one of the boys from the town. I hope to get to know them for my writing project. I wanted to write about a family in Jacmel and their trials and tribulations turning it into a bigger writing project. I think after much thought I coincidently ended up at the door of the right people. This is the first Haitan house I have been inside. We go up a one man path of rocks. I see a bedroom and living room and a back room. They ask if I want a tour to see where 20something people sleep, I say no I’m not here to intrude. They don’t eat everyday. His father comes and kisses my cheek. A shares the idea of writing about them. They agree, sister asks me about my pen and paper. I just say I came to get permission tonight and I will return again. I give A a pep talk, he seems to need one. Opportunity is beyond slim. I haven’t seen him for a week, his blues still need healing. I am honored they have agreed to my idea. He writes me later, says thanks for having a dream for me and my family. I still and always will believe everyone has the right to dream. That is why I came here.

Eaten by sharks

I haven’t been going to the beach every day. With the visitors we go to Caye Jacmel. It is farther than the beach that is walking distance from the home. We take the back of a pickup truck. We sit along the beach on plastic tables and chairs. I walk across, I take pictures. We bump into other people we know. I only know the boys and staff at the home and the teachers from the school and a small handful of neighbor boys who live in a tent. Yet everywhere I go we still run into somebody somewhere. I always hear my name. I love the small town feel, I didn’t think 20,000 was small but here everyone knows everyone. I’m always surprised to hear my name. Nobody seems to stay at home in the city. We bump into half the boys from the home and everyone else we know at the beach on the weekend. Small town love it is.

While visitors are in we get 3 meals a day. I’m happy for non Haitan meal and a third meal even, it’s a good change. We hear a local artist at dinner. He plays his guitar and has a folksy voice. His first song is about getting to Florida. He says they’d rather be eaten by the sharks if they get kicked out then return here to Haiti. he says he is not like them, he will never leave beautiful Jacmel. I wonder how many people are like him. I buy his CD.

Feeding the town

Today was the last day of camp. We cooked food for all the students and children who attended and also their parents. It was a family day. After communion and a wonderful closing everyone came to get lunch. I felt like we were feeding the town. I asked why we packed more than 250 boxes, we need more they said. I thought 250 was plenty. People lined up across the dining room leading a sloppy line to the kitchen gate. Boxes lay stacked on the counter, from front to pack piles of 4, two long rows. We distributed food and soda. Lines got crowded, people. We have to feed the camp attendees we tell them, wait wait. People started yelling and demanding. The director sit in the back and smiled. 250 was definitely not enough. We tried to control the crowd. I gave up trying to make one line. The people were still civil. I wonder how many meals they had to eat that week. I wonder how many of them were parents of the students and what the other people were in relation to them. Nobody grabbed food and ran. It was foreplay to a riot, but not riot. If you treat people like animals they will be animals. If you treat people like people they will stay people.