(Editor’s note: Norman Jameson is visiting Haiti Aug. 22-29 to report on the work of North Carolina Baptist groups working in the aftermath of that nation’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. This is the fourth of several daily impressions from his week there. His previous dispatch is available here.)
By Norman Jameson
We returned with a medical team to Victorious Kids Orphanage today where we delivered cots, blankets and toys yesterday. The children greeted us with genuine joy — new friends who had returned already to say hello.
They did not make a show of it, or even mention it, but they all were wearing the colorful flip flops Chad Holmes’ wife had packed and sent with him, along with a suitcase full of toys. The rest of us were kicking ourselves for not thinking to bring such things for the other orphanages we are visiting, including one in the mountains today that is more of an “orphan village” than an orphanage.
The team saw 136 children that live in groups of various sizes in what look like individual houses. One man oversees the overall operation, the local pastor.
Construction was brutal today in blazing sun and onlookers crowded the workers being curious and hopeful for a handout. To his credit Chuck Demers, who can sling a pickax like a bulldozer, stepped away from construction to engage the crowd. Sometimes in the typical American drive to “do” more, we forget to “be” more.
We’ve been in Haiti long enough now to think about what difference we are making, if any. There is little doubt in the team members’ minds they are making a difference in the lives of those they see in the clinics and for whom they are building shelters. It is the starfish syndrome.
You remember the story of a little boy and his dad walking along the beach the morning after a storm blew thousands of starfish too high onto the sand for them to get back into the water. The little boy dipped and grabbed a starfish and threw it back into the sea. Then he did another, and another.
Finally his dad said, “Son, there are too many starfish stranded on the beach for you to make much of a difference.”
As the boy bent to grab another, he told his dad, “I’m making all the difference for this one.”
Meghan Bender, a member of Wrightsville Beach Baptist Church in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., said the trip has shown her: “We waste so much money on frivolous things. We save money for lavish vacations and spend as much on a nice meal as these people make in annual salary.”
Sheila Goolsby of Scotts Hill Baptist Church in Wilmington, N.C., said, “I’m embarrassed because I have so much,” mentioning her 60 pairs of shoes.
Yet, she said, she has seen so much love from the people, grateful that we have come to help. Bender, a grocery-store pharmacist, said she just loves to hear “Merci” and to see “the pure gratitude in their faces when I give them their medicine.”
This large team is eating Scott and Janet Daughtry out of house and home, so we made a grocery and hardware store run this morning. It was a simple demonstration for me of the difficulty of getting anything done in this atmosphere.
Travel is extremely difficult over one unmarked road. Lanes fluctuate as vehicles find a path through the potholes. Daughtry says Haitians never hurry except when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle. Then the lone road leading from town to the mountain becomes a training ground for Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The irony is that the vehicles look unsafe, are painted like midway rides, and have people clinging to them like sand burrs on a dog flank.
When Daughtry found some roofing screws that looked approximately like those we needed, he grabbed two handfuls and took them to the checkout line, where the clerk counted them one by one. When Janet bought a case of bar soap, the clerk emptied the case onto the floor to count the bars individually … as did the clerk at the checkout line.
In the midst of all the frustrations, the Daughtrys and volunteers remember the starfish.