November 28, 2008

the day after Thanksgiving...you ALWAYS wish you had it off too! Oh, well, we only had a half day today for school so that wasn't bad. We have chapel service in the morning and then Bible classes for the middle and older age kids. My class of kids ranges from about 8 to maybe 12 years old and for the most part they are ok, just being KIDS. In my regular class one of the students, Kensson, is close to expulsion. He is passive aggressive and just doesn't want to cooperate. Gary told him today he can't return w/o his aunt coming with him to discuss the situation. I pray he relaxes a little and can have this be a good experience for him, but that will be up to him. Also, please pray for Tara, she is an older girl, daughter of two of the Haitian staff members. She is about 18 and a pretty girl, but you can look at her and see she just doesn't fit in well socially. She is a loner when the kids have free time, only really spending time with the smaller kids in horse play. She appears most comfortable one on one, and tries to do this with the older boys. PROBLEM! I know she is lonely and just doesn't know how to make friends easily. I fear she will do so in a very inappropriate way, but reality is that it happens all the time here as well as everywhere else. She is looking for someone to make her happy, you can see it in her eyes, I hope it turns out well for her.

It is difficult to not get involved with the kids and staff's personal issues because you can see them so obviously much of the time, and you want to do something to help. The sad part is when you really can't help, all you can do is put a bandaid on it and make them feel better for a short while, then reality relentlessly returns and they are right back where they started...in Haiti and poor. The truth is the biggest problems you see in people arent' really economic ones, in my opinion. They are interpersonal, relationship, spiritual ones. It seems Haitians are, well, angry often, at whites and at each other. While they support each other, it is mostly out of cultural duty, very legalistic in a sense, and leads to more resentment, etc.. I guess what I don't see here is freedom in any real sense. You can be poor but free, and it seems to me that Haitians for the most part are not. They seem bound up in poorly conceived relationships often (you know them, dysfunctional meets dysfunctional and they create a dysfunctional home to teach their kids how to be....dysfunctional) and they don't know how to get themselves right. Maybe that is poverty and it's results in some way, I am not a sociologist or psychologist. So many of the problems you see really can't be fixed by money. Kind of like in America, most people need personal growth to change their lives so that their circumstances don't have such a hold over them.

well, onto the future. Tomorrow a team comes in from the States, an eye clinic team that will test and provide glasses and treatment for visual problems as they can. It will run next week in St. Marc 2 days, then in Mountrois for 2 days before they leave on Friday. I am told these clinics are usually loaded with people seeking help and can get very hectic so I look forward to some busy days. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures also. Hope everyone is having a good day after Thanksgiving, bye for now.