It is Saturday and I am back in Santiago. I got in last night around 8pm from Haiti. After almost two weeks of investigation, service and travel I entered my apartment grateful for a hot shower and a warm bowl of soup. I know it may sound funny to think about being in the DR and eating soup but it was cold yesterday dipping into the low 70s temperature wise. I know, I know people are thinking John your blood really has thinned out after 8 years on the island of Hispaniola. Let me explain for just a moment what occurred yesterday.
Dad, if mom is reading this have her skip the next two or three paragraphs. Yes my mom still loves me and cares about my health.
After awaking at 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am almost on the button I finally stayed awake. I was in Venbal, Haiti. My buddy Tim Krauss calls it the “happiest place on earth” and he also says Disney World has nothing on Venbal. It is the home of the Timothe family. They are simple God fearing people who clearly love life and each other. This is their joy, to be with their family.
I too enjoy being with their family. I especially enjoy Malik the matriarch of the brood. She is about 70 and has outlived the typical Haitian age for male or females by more than twenty years. Every time I have been to Venbal over the last 6 years I have stayed at Malik’s stick and mud house. Malik has a habit that I can only envy and look forward to everytime I visit.
At sometime between 4:45 and 5:30 everyday, from what she says as long as she can remember, she awakes and strikes a match for a candle to illuminate the darkness and softly, beautifully, sings songs of praise. Usually this singing lasts about 7-10 minutes but it is oh so golden. I would describe it as majestic. Malik does not have the prettiest voice for her age as a Haitian woman she is in good shape but it is not the power of her lungs that is so fantastic and it is not the songs themselves because I really cannot understand her when she sings in Creole. No, for me, she sings in an angelic tone that I can best describe as holy. In the bible it states that there are angles singing, Holy, Holy, Holy, around our Lord all of the time. I imagine they have beautiful voices but Malik’s voice is not so. Malik sings not with her voice but with her heart. One can hear Malik’s heart in the way she sings in that barely lit room at 5am even as I wake out of a sleepy coma.
and me in front of their stick and mud home.
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In leaving Venbal, the best thing to do is go by motorcycle and that is where yesterday was a long day. We started at about 10am after distributing food in town. So we took off. It was overcast as we rode. The first hour went well on the usual goat path roads of mountainous Haiti. We stopped in a town called Carise to switch motorcycles and rented two and two drivers for 300 pesos for the 90 more minutes to Ouanamenthe. As soon as we left town it started to rain. The roads became a mess. Once out on the open road traveling through puddles and ruts filled with water, of course the motorcycle fell to the mud. I was covered. I soon became a joke on the road as people began to tell my driver that he should have not allowed the “blanc” to fall.
As we were getting closer to our destination we stopped at a river to get cleaned up. There were three motorcycles and a handful of people there. Still being the joke I thought I would just stay uncleaned to give some others a laugh. Well laugh they did when we fell again but I am glad I was not cleaned the first time giving me the last laugh so to speak.
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There was good news on the baby, Mackinson. I have received email and notes and people telling me they are praying for this little guy. Well prayers work. The other day when the mom and the baby came into the hospital to get checked for the malnutrition and AIDS the doctors had a long talk with the mom. If you recall the mom has had two babies die on her shortly after birth. It seems the pediatrician had some kind of impact on her and she decided to give the baby up for at least a little while to the Sisters of Charity Catholic Mission in Jacmel.. They have agreed to take the baby and raise him even with a clause should the mom decide to want to raise him later on that she can have him back. This is what the mother seemed to indicate she wanted.
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