Poverty. Dirt. Heat. Sickness. And even death.
The Haitian women and their children are incredibly beautiful and their stories of their new lives with La Tienda are so full of the possibility of a hopeful future … but the surroundings in which they live cannot be ignored. I haven’t been able to blog about this properly because it takes some time to think about and wrap your head around …
Let me paint a scene of a typical Haitian home, here in Ascension Village. Take Livi, who works at the art co-op creating bottlecap earings. Livi has 11 children & one grandchild from her 14 year old daughter – they live in a cement block home with a rugged tin roof. The windows are two holes in the wall covered up with wooded slatted shutters. Sometimes the house is two rooms, sometimes it’s three rooms – either way, it doesn’t matter as there is very little furniture or belongings. On the cement floor, there are a few dirty pots and pans … and two buckets filled with dirty water and a tin cup – the household sink.
Their stove consists of a coal-burning fire, with one pot held over the fire with their food boiling away inside the oil-filled pot. Little two year olds toddle around the fire and tiptoe on the dangerous line of care. Some mothers have 11 children – but they do not have any beds … if you’re lucky, you will have maybe one bed – and I use the term “bed” loosely. Here in this situation, there are over seven people living in this house – so two children (the older ones, who help contribute to the family income) sleep on the “bunk beds” (which consists of a metal frame and possibly a very, thin piece of scrap foam) while the rest of them – the parents included – sleep curled up on the hard cement floor.
Babies crawl around naked on the floor – for the most part, they do not use diapers – where their sister or brother just soiled themselves. Garbage is strewn in random places. Chickens, dogs, and cats roam freely throughout their land. Boys bathe and drink from the same river which is used to wash the village trucks or motorcyles.
In the Haitian village, the women have not yet understood the workings of sex, their cycle or cleanliness. They have to use one pad for their entire period (so as this point, I would like to thank those that donated pads for the women – we were able to give about five pads per women which was a great blessing for them). The teenage girls are told not to get pregnant, but they are not told what it is that makes them pregnant.
When it rains, the children run into the muddy streets and bathe themselves in the downpour …
They may have a a few clothes but they certainly do not have much – the clothes they do have are ragged & stained and yet still, they put on their prettiest outfit when they found out it was picture day in the village. They may be incredibly poor but they still wish for diginity – one mom requested that her feet would not show up in the image … she felt they were too dirty ….
And then there is Ingrisse – mother to three girls. She works extremely hard at the art co-op (La Tienda) and also holds over three other jobs to maintain financial security of some sorts for her family. I was shocked when I found out she is 24 years old … she looks like a child herself. When I found out her 12 year old daughter was in the hospital, after recently undergoing heart surgery, I was amazed again. She has a 12 year old?! And she had to send her very unwell daughter on public transportation (which, let me tell you, is not a piece of cake or a fancy comfortable ride, even for a well person) ALONE into the city to check herself into the hospital for heart surgery … Ingrissie has been anxiously waiting this entire week for her daughter to come home. She has no way of communicating with her daughter to even find out how the surgery went or if she is okay. Every time someone comes into the village, she turns and looks anxiously to see if her daughter is amongst the group, returning from the hospital …
Ingrisse specifically did her hair beautiful for this photo – she scrubbed down her daughter and put on their best clothes … the photos of the La Tienda women are to bless them as they do not have photos of themselves with their children – other than if a white person came into the village, snapped a photo of themselves with the village people and then mailed it back to them …
Ingrisse then wore this outfit for the rest of the week. I think – I HOPE – she felt beautiful …
Tamara and I talked last night and we really feel like we want to help Ingrisse out – we are going to use some of the money that was raised to hopefully rent a taxi for Ingrisse so she can travel into the city, pick up her daughter at the hospital and bring her home. We’ll find out today if that is possible … I just can’t imagine how anxious she must feel, not knowing if her daughter is okay after her surgery and knowing she, a Haitian child who is very hated by a majority of the Dominican culture, would have to travel back to the village alone.
And yet there is still joy with the children … they are so adorable and yet it’s so sad to see some of them living in such conditions … look carefully in this photo …
There is so much to write, so much to think about and try to grasp and comprehend … so much work still to be done … but with every money sent to La Tienda, more and more women are helped. We are just heading back into the village … today is our last day …
by Gigi
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