And the Disciples Asked Jesus
“When did we see thee naked or hungry?”







Flashbacks of Haiti
I thought that I would have sleepless nights as a missionary
But I sleep very well,
It's my daylight hours that are restless.
Instead of nightmares
I have daymares…flashbacks of Haiti.

The Whole Story
3 teachers
152 children
No books
No paper
No pencils
No crayons
No scissors
No posters on the wall
No alphabet or number cards
Just one ratty Teacher's binder
Full of yellowed
Crinkly edged papers

You Do The Math
I WAS FURIOUS. We were sending monies to the school to sponsor teachers. $1800, was suppose to cover a teacher's salary for a year, all of her supplies and books and one meal a day for each of her students. I saw none of this. I lit into one of the missionaries in charge.

“Where is our $1800 going?”

He informed me that “A teacher is fully sponsored only if all of the teachers are sponsored. Only 10 of 41 teachers are currently sponsored at this school. So the money for the 10 is divided amongst the 41. Yolantha, you do the math.”

Oh how I wanted to give a real inner city snake bite reply, but I couldn't through the sting of holding back the tears that threatened to splash down the math side of my brain. It was so difficult at times not to allow the dragon breath of my past to incinerate and obliterate the insensitive obstacles that blocked my path and caused my heart to cringe. Oh God, America, we can do better than this.”

And then when His time here was over, He encouraged His followers that they would do even greater and grander things than He.

Spitting Into The Ocean
Who do you think you are?
Oprah Winfrey?
What's the use
There is no excuse
For the degree of poverty I see
Compared to the abundance
of American opulence I live
There's no way to rearrange
And affect change.
It's like spitting into the ocean
One tic-tac
No matter how strategically placed
Won't change the stench of a pile of cow manure
A scented candle won't mask the aroma of a skunk
A boy scout knife won't win a revolution
It's like spitting into the ocean.
Yet I return to Haiti once again, my ancestral hope won't die…
It's tea dumping time!
I pass out a one quart baggy of rice and a one quart baggy of beans
That is suppose to feed a blended family of 18, one American sized meal.
But I leave the home visit
Knowing the Haitian mother will ration the meals
Stretching her one quart baggy of rice and her one quart baggy of beans
for the family of 18 so it will feed them for a full Haitian week.
And I spit and I spit and I spit
Does the ocean even notice?


Get An Education
Teechuh say
“Get an education.”
Get an education
But din fo whut
So I will be abul to add?
Add the numbuh of deys since I last ate?
So I will be abul to subtract
The numbuh of babies from duh village
That died las mont
So I will be abul to conjugate death
I die
You die
He and she dies
Yesterday I died
Yesterday they died
Tomorrow we will all die
“but teechuh,
At this moment I am dying alive!”


Alive
(From a student dying from the indignities of being alive with hopeless hope)
I study my geography
My social studies
Learning of people in other lands
That are fat with pride and
Wasteful with hope as they plan
Their day around the sounds of
Doing many little nothings
While I plan my day around sighing and dying.
How much education does it take teacher
To die with dignity?
Teacher,
What is the answer to the square root of
A life without food or clean water?
What is the equation with “X”
That will give me
A future?
To die with dignity is
My response
To any academic question
You can pose.
That is not just my educated guess
That is my final
Answer to Haiti.
To be able to die with dignity
Oh teechuh
How will you grade my ansuh?


Calling All The Africans
Later on, high on the mountain top
I was watching Eddie,
Our team leader
Play
With one of the little Haitian boys,
Laughing and tickling
And tussling and just enjoying life
A little while later,
I asked the little boy, again caught up
In my American arrogance,
“What do you want to be when you grow up?
The little sun baked, coal black boy thought for a while,
Grinning brightly at our team leader he ventured,
“I want to be a white man just like Eddie,”
That night I lay awake
Surrounded by my mosquito net
Listening to the mosquitoes sing.


Whazza Missionary To Do?
Before my first trip there had been only teams of men going to the mission field of Ranquitte. Up until the year 2000 the living conditions were considered too rough for us American women. Before the women, the male missionaries proudly adorned the naked children with Nike, Adidas, Wild Cats, Cowboys, Steelers, Chicago Cubs…tee-shirts. They didn't think to bring…underwear. After our first female team left in the year 2000 we made sure the following year, 2001, that we brought the children underwear…and girlie girl blouses for the girls. Since then, because of the vastness and grossness of the poverty, I've seen many of my daughter's blouses being worn by some of the boys. What's a missionary to do?

The Good Deed
We were building a Happy Haitian Home. The children from the village stood around naked and watched. We had brought clothes with us from America, but they were still neatly folded on the huge conference table in the front room of our missionary compound. I couldn't understand what we were waiting for? Why not distribute the clothes now to these children? At lunch time we went back and had a scrumptious meal. After getting permission from the other missionaries I stuffed a backpack full of clothes to take to the children and some granola bars, because I knew they were just sitting at the building site waiting for us to return from our scrumptious meal. They waited, naked, without any lunch.

We returned to the site. I passed out granola bars and clothes. We continued to build. Out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing a blue flurry of fighting movements. I turned to see what was the matter. There was a little boy wrestling with himself over his little blue shirt. The first shirt he had ever owned. I had graciously given him a shirt, but had ungraciously, neglected to teach him how to put it on.

“the Missionaries gave me a shirt but didn't teach me how to put it on”


“maybe next year, the missionary will have something for me”







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