Thursday, March 18, 2010

Haiti March 2010

Finally back in Haiti after a long three weeks away... I seems so right to be here for the precious people of oft troubled nation.

Spent some time at the HHI Recovery Camp on the Love A Child compound... amazing to see the progress and impact that has been made in the lives of hundreds of severely injured people brought here literally since the earthquake struck two months ago.

Walking through the rows of jam-packed tents, I was favored to meet a beautiful princess named Emanuelle-- her photo graces this post.

Around the corner of a tent corridor she came, hobbling with her walker with a BIG smile and excited to try out her English on a 'blanc'. She saw the Bible that either Pete Sumrall, the President of Feed The Hungry was carrying, or the one sticking up out of the knee pocket of my cargo pants. It caught her attention like a moth to a flame cause right at the beginning of our conversation she brought it up & asked if she could have a 'Bibla'.

Emanuelle showed us to her tent... it was a long, s-l-o-w walk :-) and we got to learn a little about her...

Emanuelle is 18 yrs old and has been at the recovery center here for 21 days; prior to that she was on the USS Comfort. I asked where did she use to live... Delmas 28-- her home was flattened & her father died in the crash. She didn't say anything about her mother or family, but in her tent of four persons, she was alone. Once on her cot, she was quick to call "Mr. Peter" in to show him her medical file... a broken & pinned femur, a broken tibia or fibia in the lower leg, and a broken foot on the other leg.

We chatted it up for a little bit with nominal English on her part and broken, rusty, high-school French with a pinch of Spanglish thrown for good measure in on my part. Needless to say, we laughed a bit at the confusing and mostly senseless conversation that followed, but boy did she rejoice when Pete gave her the Bible.

It's hard not to get choked up being face to face with these wonderful people. They have literally lost life and limb, yet the resilience of their spirit is beyond belief.

In another tent we gave the second Kreyol Bible we had to an amputee mom living in a tent with her kids and others and she threw her hands up in the air, praising God, and did a happy dance with her arms upward... then kissed her new Bible and hugged it.

Tomorrow it's back to the displacement camp in Carrefour that Feed The Hungry has cared for since the earthquake hit.

Goodbye for now from the place where I would love to spend the next year or three of my life with my family should God permit.

Stefan