Islor's Red Jumprope

Islor’s Red Jump Rope

Two volunteers send a box from the United States. By the time we get to the airport to pick it up, the rats have chewed through the cardboard and many people have picked through the contents and taken the things they want most. It is discouraging but there remains many treasures including a long red jump rope for Islor.

I find her and with, an odd sense of hope, place the jump rope in her reluctant hands. I wonder, for an instant, if she does not know how to jump rope or if she can not believe that this gift is really for her. I realize that I have never seen children jump roping or playing with any toys at all.

I prepare myself to teach her to jump rope but soon it is in her hands and my instruction not needed.

For some time, I can hear them playing jump rope; the soft thud of barefeet on the cement driveway of the birth center.

I can smell the plantain frying for dinner and know that Mona will add sweet potatoes that we will cover with spicy picklies; a relish of cabbage and hot peppers. It is not too hot out and I bask in the goodness of my life in Haiti.

A woman comes to the gate in early labor and I quickly become lost in the work of checking her in and making sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable in the early hours of birthing. I create systems to prevent complications and to protect all of us from heartbreak. I know I am not just protecting the mother and baby but the community and indeed myself. I go through the familiar steps of allowing the mother to stay even in early labor; knowing if it a long way home and she can rest and be cared for at the center. Too many women who were sent home ended up coming in later to report giving birth on the “road” on the way home or on the way back to the center. I tell her to sleep or walk ; to drink water and help herself to a bucket shower. There is no hurry.

But then Islor is running in with tears in her eyes; frustrated and mad. They have taken her rope for the goats. No matter how I explain and ask that the rope be given back, her rope is never, ever returned. I tell people who are suppose to make sure there is no stealing at the center. But it is only a rope and it is only after all a little girl and an orphaned one at that.

Later Islor is banned from the center for stealing. I never heard exactly what she stole but I know that she knows the red rope was never returned to her ; that the words of adults are crooked and broken.

I watch her on the outside of the wall that surrounds the center. She grows dirty and the dress given to her in January; the one covered with bright red and yellow flowers fades and the shoulder strap rips and hangs. She never wears shoes and is out after dark.

When we have an Earth Day Fete, we buy rope for swings in the field we convert into a park for the day. The rope seems very expensive and by the end of the day each piece has broken and some group of children have landed on the ground. It is re-tied and rehung and eventually taken from the children.

In Portland, I see jump ropes left on sidewalks beside chalk drawings and swings that have hung in my yard through twenty rainy winters still strong and able. I see swings hanging by the trees along the city streets for anyone to stop and use. I wonder who makes the rope in Haiti and why it falls apart so easily. I think about the worth of a piece of rope to people trying to improve their lives.

Islor’s mother died when she was very young; one of many motherless children in Haiti. Like many children who are left without a mother, she is vulnerable and develops the skill she needs to survive. She can climb trees to find food and toughens both her feet and her heart.

I see her standing by the graveyard gate, watching a funeral as the children often do. They listen to the bands or the singing and watch as the casket makes its way down the long road. The gates are open and so it easy to stand in small groups and listen to the music. It is a graveyard for the very rich; people no one ever knows buried in a place they know they will never be buried in.

A few feet away a goat is tied to a tree with her once red jump rope. She looks at me and says in Creole, “ I am hungry.” I give her a hug and pretend I don’t understand. Her body stiffens beneath my hands and she looks away.

And that’s when I decide to help Islor build a small herd of goats.

Melove's World

Closing words / reading this blog

I wrote this blog as a way to communicate easily with family and friends. At times I used it to reach out to anyone who was listening when I was afraid or heartbroken or just wanted someone to join me in my prayers. I also found myself wanting to defend Haiti and to help the world to see the history, its people and the landscape in a different way than it is often portrayed in the media. I wanted to show Haiti through the lives of the people I met and interacted with everyday. I was not expecting to feel so much love and support over the many miles through this experience of a blog and I appreciate the many people who offered me their prayers and support.

In the upcoming weeks, as I work in my garden and spend some much needed time alone, I hope to add some pictures and a few pieces I never published. This time with the blog will, I trust, help me to reflect on my experiences and re-visit with the many people I loved.

I hope to place things in chronilogical order but for now, it is backwards and it might be best read from start to finish. Haiti was a great gift in my life. I felt grateful that I was able to spend the many months there that I did and grateful for all the volunteers and most of all for the Hatien men, women and children who I met.

It is hard to figure out the best way to return to ones loved ones and ones community. I cannot really understand that no one knows what I ma talking about and the reality is too painful for many to accept. In time, you begin to wonder if indeed you are exaggerating or if it was as you remember. Surely children do not starve to death. Surely mothers do not die in childbirth and surely there is an easy solution that involves them just trying harder.

Sometimes I am swept away with grief and longing. I sit with people but they say I seem sad or too thin and my hair is too straggly. I want to pay attention to the present moment but I am not able to- yet.

My heart is filled with many things and I trust that my dreams will grow wings and I will find new opportunities to meet new people, learn new things and to somehow be of service in the world.

I know this requires that I allow my heart to break from time to time so that I can let the hurt out and the goodness in.

Thanks for walking with me on this journey.

Sarah

mama singing Happy Birthday

For a special type of mother on mothers day

Happy Mothers Day to women everywhere who have had to work as a prostitute to feed their children. My heart breaks for you; for the terrible choices you had to make, the shame and the scorn. You are in my heart and prayers.

If you look at her with disgust

Once more

Or scorn her footprint on this earth,

As any less sacred than your own

I will stand between you and her

Like a mother bear and her cub

And I will fight you with my eyes

Until you are forced to look down

And let her pass.

And on her dead child’s grave,

I will defend a mother’s right to

Feed her children however she can

Until those with power and privilege

Help her up off her back with

The God given dignity, which is

Her and her children’s birthright

While you are still sleeping,

She works the fields with

The machete of her husband;

Dead now, these six months,

From cholera spread by those

who squat where they please in

another persons garden.

Do not say her name.

It rolls off your tongue,

With the sour smell of bitter rum

That is not dignified by

Your perfect, private school French.

Do not raise your hand

to silence me

or disregard my words as crazy.

Her song is her weapon

and I hear it deep

within the streams

gathering force from the

mountains.

But do not be mistaken by

The sweet melody

of the morning bird or

the song she sings as she

starts the fire and carries water.

It is a song of unity,

Written by all the women

Of the world who sold

themselves for a piece of

Bread to feed a starving child.

Mothers,

who in my life time or

another will rise up and be free.

Look at her now

and let her pass,

For she and her children

Are the only future we ever had.

Dream

I dream that someone shows me a small glass fish bowl and in it is a perfect replica of the places I knew best in Haiti. I am amazed at the detail and how well the artist created each tiny detail. Then I look more carefully and I see Innocance, Dafka's father, trying to climb the walls of the glass bowl. He is trying to push a cart and he keeps falling backwards into the landscape. It is too steep and the glass is too slippery.

And with this dream, I stop fighting the tears and begin to allow them to tend to the tender places in my heart.

This is my story, this is my song

I wrap Haiti in my arms and hold her tight. I breathe in the sounds of the women singing at the chapel on the mountain, the sounds of people preparing for night, the smell of the small yellow flowers on the path where I walk.

I can see that the baby pigs have grown older and venture further from their mother who is still tied to a tree with a fraying piece of rope. They grow brave and independent but run home to their place beside the muddy ditch, to nurse simulataneoulsy as the sun sets and dark settles into the valley that rests between the mountains.

I sleep beneath a veil of mosquito netting my heart aching with the tender pain one has when saying good bye to what one loves so dearly. Sleep comes easily. It has been a busy day of giving things away and soft, slow good-byes. A day of packing up and helping the new director know where to find beauty and comfort as well as how things might be done.

Then… a car horn beeps and there is banging on the gate and I am, one last time, making my way through the darkness; pulling on clothes, opening the door and welcoming a mother and her baby. The young women call me, “Mama Sarah “ without introduction and I feel grateful to be a known part of her community. The birth is easy and sweet and while the baby is being born, I hear, in my heart, the children at the orphanage singing. “This is my story. This is my song” And in this way, I nearly burst with happiness. I look to the heavens, as the Hatiens have taught me to do, and felt the tender kiss of angels who smile and sing to me. “This is your story. This is your song.”

When the people ask, if I will return, I say what they always said to me, “If God wants me to”. I say this with a twinkle in my eye because that is what they often said to me. I am surprised then when I find myself believing my words. I feel that I can relax into this presence and know that I will be shown a path, as I always have. When asked what I will do next, I say “Find my grandchildren and hold them close, weed some gardens, look out over the valleys of Oregon; at the rivers who travel to the sea and out into the sea that connects us all. I will lie on my back and watch the dragonflies on a summer day and send a prayer to all that I have loved here in Haiti.

Thank you, Senior, for a wonderful birth on this my second to the last morning in Haiti. I have always loved a Sunday morning birth. Isn’t it just like you to remember the small details.

PS

Senior is the Hatien expression for God.