Rain

Friday,

This is the rainy season. For the first time today I understand why it has such a distinction. At 11 am today, the skies opened up and the clouds began to release the rain, and it has been coming down in a heavy downpour for over 2 hours, with no signs of it letting up. So, Nixon brought be home. It wasn’t safe for us to try to go where we had planned to visit. I am safely back in John and Merline’s home, writing email messages, resting, reading, and taking some Sabbath rest.

Before the rains came, we stopped by the Mennonite Central Committee to connect with a remarkable woman from the Albany Mennonite Church, who came to Haiti to do some trauma counseling training. Many people are living with trauma, unable to cope with life after the quake. Many people are sleeping in tents, because they fear being inside thru the night. And a significant number of people are just wandering the streets aimlessly, some without any clothing. That is why she came to Haiti, to train people to deal with the trauma. But her work was already completed and she left Haiti to return home yesterday. I am sorry to miss seeing her.

Our next stop was to connect with Brother Michael at St. Joseph’s Boys Home. I won’t attempt to tell his story here. You can look it up on the web http://www.heartswithhaiti.org/ We first connected with Brother Michael and the Boys Home 15-20 years ago. He is still going strong, with three homes for boys in various parts of the country, to meet a variety of special needs. The St. Joseph’s Boys Home was badly damaged in the quake. One visitor from the US was killed, but all of the rest made it through okay. Workmen are in the process of demolishing the rest of the building, so they can start rebuilding from a new foundation. You can see some photo’s on the blog of the damage, the workmen hard at work, and one of Brother Michael.

Because of a building damaged in the quake has continued to collapse into the street, we had to find an alternative route back to the main road from St Joseph Boys Home. The only way was through a large crowd of people who had gathered to receive food from the Red Cross. They started to gather at 5 am, and when we passed through at 11 am, over 2,000 people were standing in line. The orderly line of people, 3 and 4 abreast, was over 3 city blocks long. When I asked Nixon how to describe what we were experiencing, he made the following comments:

 These people have no way to get jobs.
 Without jobs, there is no money
 Without money, there is no way to buy food,
 So, when people hear of a food distribution, they gather early and wait until the food is distributed.
 The food distribution will not start for another 3 hours. And it has started to rain even harder than it does in Oregon.
 Sometimes people fight for the food, for their children and themselves, because they are desperately hungry.