When I arrived in Port-au-Prince, in November, I arrived in a third world country for the first time. I was in awe of everything I saw. However, I was too busy adjusting to daily life here that I did not work through the poverty issue. And the longer I'm here, the more I see and the more confused I get. I don't know how to process everything and therefore I chose not to think about. I see the people living in poverty all around me and I am more aware of how I spend my money. But there are other things I see which I chose not to let affect me.
Today I was again reminded of the poverty in this country. I was in charge of a few ladies from the team that is here for the week and they helped me out in the schools, teaching art. We taught art at one school and then walked to the other school. This was my first time at the school; there are about 44 kids in attendance and two teachers for all of them. Now, in our American schools this is not really a problem because most of the kids are very well behaved. But at this school, for the orphan children, the kids are crazy! They act like, well, kids! This is to be expected...but when there is only two teachers helping with all of them it is a little hard for these two men to control them.
I was sitting in one of the classrooms, with the other ladies, taking it all in. I wasn't sure what to expect at this school, so I didn't make any assumptions. Some of the kids were peering into the room, looking at us. The rest of them were outside and inside, running around playing. I looked over at one of the ladies from the team who was sitting next to me. She had tears in her eyes. I knew they weren't happy tears. Earlier in the day we had been told about how poor some of the people are in this country. When she saw all these orphan kids she began to cry, thinking about the situation they are in. I immediately began thinking, great...is there something wrong with me? Why have I not cried yet? Shouldn't I be more affected by this? I didn't really know what to say to her to comfort her. So I didn't say much of anything.
I will eventually have to work through the poverty issue. I cannot keep distancing myself from what I see. God and I will have a great discussion when the right time comes. For now I will continue to take it all in.
Some friends of ours that arrived in Haiti a few months before I did have been struggling with this issue too. They had a great blog post about it- click here to read it. The first picture on their post is a crippled lady who lays on the route between the house and the schools. I see her most days and today we saw here again. She was sitting on the side of the street, covered in dust. She sits on the street all day long.
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