| If I hadn’t been so naïve I never would have gone. Now I’m just
thankful I did. When you see and smell naked, grinding poverty
up close you never forget it. Poverty is ugly and confronting.
Poverty makes you feel sick inside. I was about as far as you
can get from this scenario when I made a decision that changed
my life and ultimately led me to island nation of Haiti. Lounging
about on a houseboat enjoying New Years Day, some talkback radio
babble caught my attention. People were ringing in their New Years
resolutions; you know the usual boring stuff - ‘I’m going to give
up smoking, drinking , picking my nose. ’ But then came one out
of left field. ‘I’m going to sponsor another child overseas.’ |
| Well hey, I’d thought of doing just that for quite a while.
Why hadn’t I organised it? Hell, I’m doing it right NOW! I had
some magazines lying around, all I had to do was find the advertisement
from Foster Parents Plan, fill it in and send it off. The fact
that I was 21 yrs old, had a child of my own and a partner on
a minimum wage with a mortgage to boot never really entered into
my reasoning. Geez, these people can barely afford to eat, what
was I worried about? |
| A few weeks passed and then a photo and history of my sponsored
child arrived. I studied the small black and white photo intensely
and a small, shy 7 year old Haitian boy stared back. Gerald Paul
was cute. He lived in a mud hut in a small village called Croix
de Bouquet with some siblings, his mother and step-father. The
family lived a hand to mouth existence. I wrote letters and sent
a few photos and postcards and received simple translated letters
and drawings back which I cherished. Twelve months on my situation
changed. My short marriage over I was looking for myself and a
few answers. With a flight fare on credit card and very few dollars
in my pocket I made my way to a country I wasn’t at all prepared
for. Things did not start well when I almost missed my flight
from Miami to Haiti’s capital Port-a-Prince. Fortunately the last
two people (besides me) were arguing heatedly at the check-in
counter in rapid Creole. I literally jumped on board and sat wheezing
breathlessly for several minutes as we taxied out for take off.
It was hot and humid in Florida and I quickly realised that many
of the passengers who had embarked had a rather unsettling body
odour. The body odour situation didn’t improve however when things
started to get seriously scary. It was evening and the dark outside
soon revealed an horrendous electrical storm. Our little plane
was buffeted by howling wind and bombarded by sheets of torrential
rain. Lightning cracked all around us. The perspiration flowed
freely as all around me nervous if not downright terrified looks
manifested on everyone’s faces. White-knuckled I clung to my seat
and prayed and asked myself what the hell I was doing and prayed
some more and tried not to look out any windows, and prayed… Eventually
after a tense and nerve-wracking hour the pilot guided us down
and bumble jumbled us onto the runway in one piece. As if on cue,
everyone, including me, applauded loudly and with gusto just so
we could reconfirm that we were, indeed, still alive. |
| Little did I know that the terror had only just begun.. After
watching with great humiliaton as my belongings were flung unceremoniously
out of my suitcase in full view of everyone during customs inspection,
I managed to convey to someone that I required a taxi. Shortly
an elderly black man was stowing my luggage in the back of a battered
old chevy, sorry – taxi, and we were heading out into the unknown.
Expecting a fairly short ride to my hotel I started to get very
disconcerted as we banged and jolted along unlit, unkept gravel
roads. Through the inky void outside my window I tried to make
out anything that resembled civilisation. Nothing. We passed shantys,
people walking aimlessly about (in the middle of the night?),
juddered in and out of pot holes and almost came to a stop when
the road degenerated into a muddy slush. Seriously, I started
to feel absolutely terrified. I was alone, a small, young female
with a stranger in a car somewhere in a country I knew little
about where I couldn’t speak the language an! d it was nearly
midnight. How easy would it be to take me out some rank back road
and do me in for my money or worse. After all I was a wealthy
white foreigner in this guy’s eyes. Tears of terror ran silently
down my face, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I
broke out in a cold sweat. After enduring this never ending car
ride into hell for 40 minutes I truly thought I was in all possibility
going to raped, mugged, murdered – possibly all three. Then at
the depths of despair I started to see street lights, buildings,
cars. In a few minutes we suddenly pulled into the hotel. Holiday
Inn my Saviour! |
| Sunrise brought me a new and refreshing perspective. Things
outside looked survivable. By mid morning a Foster Parents Plan
driver had picked me and we were making our way through the city.
Port-a-Prince was much like any other city until we started to
get to the outskirts. The stench from an open air market had me
reeling in the front seat of the air-conditioned four wheel drive.
Even with the windows up I had to keep a hand over my nose to
keep from gagging. People dressed in raggle taggle mismatched
clothes glared at me as I swept past. Occasionally someone would
make rude gestures at me. My driver pretended he didn’t see them.
Wiry, weathered individuals were cooking nondescript things over
little fires under corrugated iron shelters along the roadsides.
Everywhere rubbish littered the streets and in some places was
piled metres high. Dirty, thin children roamed over the heaps
with the odd dog, goat and chicken. |
| As we found our way into the rural village areas I started to
get a glimpse of the landscape. Rolling hills green but seriously
denuded from deforestation surrounded us. Serious soil erosion
was evident in places. We passed no vehicles out in these areas,
but many people on foot going about their business. Sometimes
a little donkey would trundle past pulling a cart laden down with
produce. The donkeys were thin and walked stiffly and were dull-eyed
and I felt sorry for them. |
| After some time we arrived at the Plan Compound and I was introduced
to the Director of Plan operations in Haiti. I spent a very informative
hour talking about the way Foster Parents Plan was helping the
local people and their communities. Out in the yard was an amusing
sight. Lines of toilet bowls neatly arranged, ready to be taken
to their new owners out in the villages where previously the toilet
was an open field. After a tour of the local school and health
centre we continued along the rough dirt track in search of Gerald
Paul and his family. Along with the driver I now had another Plan
representative and a female interpreter accompanying me. The family,
I was informed, had been told to expect me ‘either yesterday or
today sometime’, ‘we weren’t entirely sure when you were arriving.’
Past small clusters of mud huts, hedges swathed in bright freshly
hand washed clothes, little churches painted in bright turquoise
and pink hues. Again! st a backdrop of dull brown and green, bright
colours seemed favoured by the local people. |
| Abruptly we turned off the track and swept into the midst of
some huts. There was Gerald and his parents and brothers and sisters
and grandmother. All the family, very obviously dressed in their
immaculately clean ‘good clothes’ stood assembled together in
front of their home. They had not raced out just as we approached.
They had been standing there for the best part of the day before
and that morning waiting for me. A lump came into my throat and
my eyes filled with tears. To think that for these people I was
important enough to go to all this trouble. I felt seriously at
a loss. The interpreter introduced us all and we sat looking at
each other and felt awkward and wondered what to say. A child
was dispatched to the hut and out came a little tin with all my
letters and cards kept carefully inside. It made me feel funny
to see them here so far from home and obviously looked after with
almost reverence. Gerald’s mother thanked me for my support for
the family. As I looked at this woman I could see how hard this
was for her. Here was a strong, hardworking woman with great dignity
thanking a young, white foreign girl for providing for her family.
I didn’t feel worthy of her gracious thanks. I felt spoilt and
ignorant and selfish. I was able to get on a plane and travel
all the way here to gawp at these people and their unfortunate
lives, on a whim, to basically make myself feel good about helping
them out with what was in reality a token amount of money in my
first world existence. I couldn’t bear to take photos. It didn’t
feel right somehow. In the end I took just three photos of the
family in front of their hut with the leaking thatched roof, shook
hands and waved farewell. My mind was a whirlpool of mixed thoughts
and emotions. It was hard to make sense of all I had seen and
experienced in such a short time. My contributions were making
a difference. Plan would help Gerald’s family fix their roof.
Water was no longer kilometres away but accessible right there
from a clean well and pump. The children were all inoculated and
were going to the village school. But why did people have to live
like this when only an hour’s plane ride away wealth and affluence
beyond their imagination existed in abundance? |
| Ten years later Gerald Paul is all but grown up and I now sponsor
another child with Plan International as the organization is now
known. But the same questions still remain and still I have no
answers. But there is hope because although there may be millions
of children that I can’t help; there is one that I can. |
| |
|
