Studying to be a midwife in Haiti

During the earthquake, Haiti's only midwifery school was destroyed and the country left with a dire need for trained and skilled midwives to be able to care for the women and babies.  Most of the mothers continue to be cared for by traditional matrones who, however skilled and loving, have no access to diagnostic tools or life saving medicines.  In response to this need, Midwives for Haiti was born; a school for women already having completed two years of nursing school who want to be midwives.  The one year school sends trained midwives out into Haiti's hospitals and small clinics with the skill to prevent, teach and handle many emergencies.  Training programs are needed throughout the country to begin to meet the needs of so many. Here a student midwife practices skin to skin after the birth of a baby.  Typically the baby is swept away and dressed but here I explain the benefit to the baby of a sweet 30 minutes to rest with mom on her chest.  The baby crawled to the mothers breast and shortly began breastfeeding on her own.

Waking up from the zombie curse

Waking up from the zombie curse….

Many people, when they think of Haiti, recall images of zombies rising from a deep, death like sleep to walk on earth in a trance like state.   It has similarities to the many western European fairy tales in which a person is poisoned and drifts into a deep sleep for many years waiting to be woken up, most often by a true love’s kiss.  The person may be locked in a tower, banished to the forest or may be enslaved but always they are in a state of waiting for someone or something to free them.   In real life, both here in Haiti and Europe, people were given poisons, imprisoned unfairly and cast out as refugees looking for new places to live.  They reflected our deepest fear of being powerless and out of control when perhaps the greatest danger might be that we walk on this earth not fully awake or waiting for someone else to save us.

Western fairy tales and the tales of zombies are one way for us to better understand ourselves and the world around us.   In the Jungian way of looking at the Zombie Curse, we are all the people involved.  We are the one giving the potion; the one allowing ourselves to go to sleep and drift into a deep unconscious about what is happening in the world.  We are the person who is acting like the living dead, unaware of the world around us. We are also the one to lift the curse and wake ourselves up.   We are waiting to be woken up, to have the curse lifted and emerge loved and whole. 

Each day we are presented with many anecdotes to the “Zombie Curse”.  We are offered the cool breeze blowing through the window, the smile of children, the cycles of the moon on a dark night, friendships and good conversations.  In Haiti, there are the songs of praise and worship before and after everything we do.   The midwives I am teaching will face untold deaths as a result of poverty in the hours to come, but first they stand in a circle of pink scrubs to sing and pray.  At those times, I pray to protect and be protected and most of all to be awake there, in what seems sometimes a place of the half living; of small eyes peering out to remind us they are there within the body that cries in pain. 

If we read the news, we are shocked, each day out of our zombie sleep.  It is too terrible out there.  If we can; we sleep, eat, shop, watch movies, use drugs – anything to keep us from feeling and knowing what is going on in the world.  We work too much, hide, build walls, spin cocoons; all the while creating our won zombie state while still living in this world.

We are shaken awake by heart breaking events; school shootings, bombs, natural disasters, nuclear disasters, epidemics.   We are exhausted by our grief and if we allow it, it drives us deeper and deeper into the zombie like state of the living dead.   

The gift of understanding both Sleeping Beauty and the Zombie Curse is that we can try each day to stay awake to what is good and beautiful in our world as well as the terrible injustices and the pain that others live within. 

The effects of colonialism, imperialism and unleashed corporate greed have turned sustainable communities into places of extreme poverty and environmental degradation   the result of destroying cultures, ancient market economies and natural resources shakes us awake day after day.  We loose our children through illness, war, and violence and yet we cannot stay awake long enough to look beyond the one event and see the world as a whole. 

 I watch the nuns feeding hundreds of children, housed in iron cribs and I want to crawl under my mosquito net and sleep.   A baby, in the hospital, dies needlessly and I want to collapse.  

In social sustainability, we live, fully aware of our communities and where we get our food and the things we use.  We need never worry that the clothes we are wearing is the cause of another’s suffering; that our inherited wealth has its roots in the slavery and exploitation of a not too distant past.   It asks us to wake up and be present.  It asks us to study and understand history and to know where the things we use and consume come.  Above all, it asks us to make connections so that we don’t sleep though the root causes of hurt and suffering while living with joy in the present moment.

In Haiti, the people cherish their mountainsides.  Each community I have lived in has a special place high on a hill where they gather for prayer and singing and a time to reflect and be quiet.  From there I can join them as they watch sunsets and sunrises and the gentle comings and goings of the countryside.   

It is there that we pray to be protected from the” Zombie Curse” and ask that we have the strength, determination and bravery to wake ourselves up in time to live life fully and simply.   We pray that we do not need violence to be woken up and that we will try, each day better than the one before, to shed this curse and live with gratitude for all that we’ve been given.

Midwives for Haiti - Spring 2013

 It is April and I am in Haiti.  I have decided to work with Midwives for Haiti; an organization that trains Hatien midwives, provides prenatal care in mobile clinics and works with local matrones to increase the safety of the births they attend.  This work combines three of my great loves; education, community and birth.

I come to Haiti in the midst of considerable thought about social sustainability; that is how a community creates a good and healthy life for its people both now and for future generations; knowing that it requires these things for all people in order for it to exist for anyone.

Here in Haiti, I have come to find the deep interconnection between my country's history, with all its wealth and the deaths of mothers and baby's in this country.  I have heard well meaning people comment that perhaps they have too many babies anyway and so it does not matter so much.  In healthy sustainable communities people plan how many children they have with reasonable reassurance that this child and the child's mother will live.  They know that baby will be offered a free education and will be given the health care needed for a productive life.  The parents in Haiti want this as much as anyone.  It is the song within a mother as she caries her child.  Always when the baby first opens it's eyes for the first time, the mother has hope.

If one fourth of all the children in your community do not live to be five years of age, you do not meet the most basic elements of a healthy, good life. And yet in Haiti we see many, many ways of living day to day life that are at the heart of healthy, sustainable happy lives.

In my time here, I hope to reflect on how the lessons of motherhood and birth are passed down through informal and formal systems of sustainability; how a country shaken with disaster and poverty maintains that which we in the United Sates struggle to hold onto and try to imitate.  I hope to share stories that illustrate the best of how people create goodness for now and future generations.

Dancing with Sean Penn in Haiti

Dancing with Sean Penn in Haiti

Now that I am back in the United States, many people ask me if I saw Sean Penn in Haiti. Maybe I am in the grocery store or walking down the street with my grandkids or carrying a load of plants for my garden.

“Hi Sarah. How was Haiti? Did you see Sean Penn?”

And then, I can’t help it, my mind drifts and I am walking down the dirt road outside the birth center. There is me, Michael Jackson. Sean Penn and yes there is always Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog. There are all the people I knew in Haiti. They are well fed, alive,happy and carrying tools of their trade. There are cows and horses and goats and chickens on every shoulder. We spread across the street and the parade goes on for miles . I am right up there in the front with Sean Penn and Michael Jackson and the president of Haiti and Bill Clinton and we are singing “Life’s A Happy Song” from the Muppets. There is a marching band from a high school and the ra ra bands from carnivale. Everyone is singing in unison.

Everything is great.

Everything is grand.

We have the whole wide world in the palm of our hand.

Everything is perfect. It’s falling into place.

La, la. La.la.

It is so great. Bu then I remember where I am and that I have to answer, “Actually I never saw Sean Penn. I never saw any singers or movie stars…..

I try to explain that I was in Cap Hatien and that maybe all the movie stars are in Port Au Prince but by then they are walking away. I return to my musical version of helping Haiti.

There is nothing we can’t do

The skies are blue when its me and you and you and you and you…

Life’s a happy song when there is someone by your side to sing along.

I heard Sean Penn told the Canne Film Festival that the whole world forgot Haiti. I sigh but take some comfort that my co-star in Hait; the musical is having trouble explaining the situation and he’s an actor.

Sometimes I try to tell myself that it was a dream, or that it never really happened. It was a movie or made for television drama. Someone made the whole thing up. It could not possibly be real.

I guess that’s why they ask me about Sean Penn. The real questions are just to hard for any of us to ask or answer.

Happy Fathers Day to the 1000 fathers per day.....

Each day 1000 mothers die from pregnancy related deaths worldwide. A special fathers day wish to all the men left to make hard choices about the babies the mother left behind. Here are two of the many fathers I met in Haiti, who lost their wives shortly after childbirth. The twins were placed in an orphanage and baby Dafka is being raised, with help, by her Dad. They must put aside their own grief while they work to care for the infants who have no food while continuing to support for the family. Happy Fathers Day to these very special dads.

Monumnet to Haiti on the Washington DC Mall

The monument to Haiti on the Washington DC Mall

Being back in the United States has forced me to examine the relationship I had tried to create with the people of Haiti and to look more closely at my country’s influence on those people’s well being. I had to ask myself again and again, how one can be a global citizen, committed to the well being of others, without repeating centuries of colonial and imperialist ways of thinking. I saw my life and everything around me through the lens of Haiti and the lessons she so generously taught me.

Shortly after returning to the United States, I went to Washington DC for a Helping Babies Breathe conference. I got up early one morning to ride a bike around the monuments that stand as testimony to what the country stands for. I had not had the opportunity to ride a bike in some time so having the wheels beneath me on a morning washed clean by a warm, summer rain felt delicious.

I rode comfortably down wide bike lanes, reflecting on the many ways US cities have come alive with pedestrians, housing, art and gardens. Efforts to recycle and collect rainwater were everywhere and there was even a beehive in the White House kitchen garden.

As I approached the mall, memories of tear gas, singing, marching and prayers swept over me. Most of my memories of Washington DC were as a demonstrator and not as a tourist.

As I rode past the statues, fountains and monolyths, I saw them with my Haiti lens. I began to see the monuments within the monuments; the spaces between the marble where the unwritten stories were told. In my imagination, I saw the monument to Haiti; a monument celebrating the second independent republic in the western hemisphere and the first and only successful slave revolution in the world.

I saw Haiti in the other monuments too.

I saw Haiti at the Washington monument; saw the not yet written engraving that said, “The father of the American Revolution, tired, overworked and misguided sent $400,00 in arms and supplies to help defeat the second revolution in the Americas. He, who gave so much for the freedom of some, failed to recognize that until everyone is free, no one is free.”

As I turned past a group of school children, lining up for a photo, I thought of the young Henri Christophe who had been a 14-year old drummer boy at the Battle of Savannah in the Revolutionary War. He along with four hundred and fifty men from Haiti came and fought in our war for independence! That same boy went on to be a revolutionary leader in Haiti’s own bid for independence. I see the invisible statue of that young boy, with his drum, there amongst the monuments. Did our revolutionary leaders accept the young boys offer to fight their war and then deny him help when he too strove for the very same independence?

I ride past the Jefferson Memorial as school children are getting out of the first buses of the day. Jefferson refused to acknowledge Haiti as an independent nation and in 1806 declared an embargo on Haiti; a legacy that was to hurt the Haitien people for many years to come. There can be no doubt that save for the revolutionary efforts of Haiti, France would not have been forced to sell the Louisiana Purchase to the United States and Jefferson’s great legacy would have been told differently. The efforts of the former slaves in Haiti had caused the landmass of the young US republic to double.

Haiti was not recognized as an independent nation, by the United States, until Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. Haiti’s recognition became a battle cry of the abolitionists. When the south succeeded, there were, at last, enough votes to recognize the tiny island as an independent nation.

I think about the fourteen year old Henri Christophe leading the long march against colonialism. I think of Jefferson and Washington and how some guidance, friendship and support might have caused Christophe to choose democracy for his new republic instead of declaring himself king. I think of Washington who turned down an offer to be king and how that might have been a model for Haiti had our founding fathers shown a little kindness and believed the words they themselves wrote. If there had been support instead of embargos perhaps the Hatien revolution would have been less violent and easier to achieve. Perhaps today the ease and standards of schools, health care and clean water would have been a given and not an on-going struggle.

In my monument to Haiti, I see Fredrick Douglas, the first ambassador to Haiti and there is a plaque that quotes Douglas.

“Haiti is black and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black. After Haiti had shaken off her bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, we continue to refuse to acknowledge that fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”

I peddle into the new monument to Martin Luther King Jr. He is is the only statue but I see many others come to stand with him and it is there that I put my imaginary monument to Haiti. I see Martin Luther King surrounded by a crowd of people who fought to destroy slavery and its legacy. And there in the group that stands beside him is a farmer/ soldier from Haiti; arm in arm with all those who fought marched, prayed and sang their way to freedom.

As I ride away, the sun high in the sky, I think about all the untold stories of the Washington monuments. I think of the shadow of Haiti and other countries like her who were always there providing labor and natural resources that in some way helped build the clean, smooth streets I ride on.

I find myself wanting to apologize for Washington and Jefferson’s tolerance of slavery; for their lack of support for Haiti; for so much. I want to explain to the visitors that it is not quite the way it looks.

But our history and the history of Haiti are always being created each day. There is more empty land around the pools and still time for the monument to our mistakes and vulnerabilities; for the places where we failed and a monument to the places where we keep trying. This is the monument that I love best. The one that allows me to love my country because of all the goodness in the people and for their fight to keep trying to be better while learning from the past.

I love living in a country with a rich history of immigration but I am sad for all the conflicts that caused them to flee or be forced off their own land. My monument is the monument of this dichotomy; the place of discomfort and the place of pride.

Remember David

David

Remember my brother, David
for the way he tickled my toes and
kissed my outstretched fingers.

Remember the funny faces
that made me laugh;
the way
he carried me upside down
when our father was gone
and we went looking for a
neighbor to give us food.

Remember David for the
way he cried the night our
mother died; for the way
he held me;
All of us wrapped inside
our fathers arms
in the darkness that
seemed to never end.

Remember David in his
new clothes when and my sister
got to go to school all
proud and clean,
looking back with a wave
as my father held me
and sighed; the first
smile on his face in
a long, long time.

Remember David
for the dark, handsome
face that was the first I saw
each morning and the last
that kissed me at night.

Bouncing, running, jumping
never resting.

Remember his new shoes;
the ones Dad bought
him in Port Au Prince.
The way
he looked when he first
put them on
runnning fast
through the field to the
one room where we all sleep
together.

The bed where I was born;
the place where we were once
five and now are just three.

Remember David,
Gone to Heaven with Mama
who dad says was lonely up there
without any of her children.

Remember David;
whose jumping on clouds
in Heaven and tickling the
toes of angels.

Remember David who
through years go by
and time passes will
always be my brother.

Dafka

David is a six year old little boy who died from complications of a UTI in Haiti. He is the older brother of Dafka. Their mother died last January leaving three children; one who was baby Dafka. Dafka was kept alive by waves of volunteers at MamaBaby Haiti who brought formula, fed her,held her, bathed her and gave her medicine. David seemed a strong and resiliant little boy and I never feared for his safety in all the days and nights I worried about Dafka's ability to survive. I wrote this poem from Dafka's perspective; trying to celebrate his hard, young life as I struggle with the waves of grief that I am feeling.

He is one child, of thousands, in the world who dies each day from a lack of adequate medical care.