Chapter Eight: Out the Window

What a day! According to the ladies here, today was a classic Haiti day. We ventured into Port au Prince with a full schedule of things we had planned to accomplish. After a long week at the clinic, we were anticipating a nice reprieve as we made a day of getting groceries, going out for lunch, and picking up three more HHM volunteers from the airport! Yes, our hands were full of plans... until the moment right after our first stop, when the truck wouldn't start!

With the help of a kind stranger who helped us pop the clutch, we got the truck going, but not without some minor hitches: something called the glow-plug light was flashing, the A/C didn't work, the horn was the equivalent of a soft whisper on the noisy Haitian roads, and the power windows worked inch by slow inch.

Needless to say, we had to take those plans and throw them out of our wide open windows as we inched through the heavy traffic, dust hovering in the air, trying to get the truck to a dealership where it would be safe for the weekend. (We didn't make it - but we called reinforcements, and so we were able to get both the truck and our new volunteers back to HHM safely!

Driving through Port au Prince is an overload to the senses. The sights, the sounds, and the smells all seem to compete with another. There are so many people - men walking cows and shining shoes, women balancing baskets on their heads and washing their vegetables in the muddy water as they sell on the roadside, motos weaving in and out of traffic. Makeshift shacks constructed out of whatever resource was available offer shade from the hot sun, as goats scale garbage piles as high as my waist scrounging for a snack. This is a way of life. I am a stranger looking through the glass at the houses stacked on the hillsides.

Today, once again I find myself so frustrated by the constraints of language. This time, it's not because I can't speak the language of the Haitians, but because even in my own language, I am limited in trying to paint a picture for you who speak and understand the same language as I. Words seem so insufficient. They lack so much... or maybe it is I who lack the ability to string together the right words. How I long to find the words to truly express what I see... to have words to share my heart as we drove those streets.

I was reflecting on this tonight, and my mind wandered to this verse:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" - 1 Corinthians 13:1

As I read this, I felt as if God was saying "LOVE is the language I have given you to speak. You are perfectly equipped, through me. Be not afraid. I have made you as a giver of love... so daughter, GIVE!"

I know from my short time here how important language is. I have been so humbled as I have been forced to rely on other people to help me communicate, as I have stumbled over words and sometimes even as I have used very wrong ones!
I love that God doesn't diminish language, but that His LOVE transcends language. And I see that as I employ my very basic creole in the clinic, as I ask people how they are when I take their vital signs and their faces light up as they respond. I see it in a woman's bashful reaction when I tell her that her dress is pretty, or that her baby is beautiful. Sometimes, all it takes is a smile! My interactions with these Haitians has been limited by language, and yet God shows Himself in little, seemingly insignificant moments, through significant love.

Because can you really beat ending a post with an adorable brand new baby goat? The correct answer is no. It can't be done.