This is INSANE! We don’t need t haul our troops half around the world. We CAN do something to help here – more than simply tossing a couple of bucks in their general direction. But no one can shake The Bush and get it to notice. So maybe it is time for the People to take some real action. All we need is a leader to help us sort out what would truly help.

I’ve been following your series of posts on Compassion International with interest. Our family has been sponsoring children in Asia (China/Vietnam) through Holt International Children’s Services since we returned in 1996 with the first of our four daughters adopted from China. We’ve sponsored one little boy since 1997 — a profoundly disabled child in Vietnam. He has severe cerebral palsy and lies on a mat all day and night with no interaction with adults on his part. He’s 11 and weighs 30 lbs. The caregivers feed him and provide medical care when he’s sick, but there is apparantly no real response from him.
My husband visited him a few years ago…..didn’t think he could bear to do it because he knew it would break his heart to see this child who was incapable of responding. It did break his heart, but he did it because it occurred to him that he would probably be the only person ever to enter this child welfare facility and ask to see and hold this child. We’ve arranged physical therapy twice a week, so we know he gets some attention, and we’ve purchased a new bed and a wheel chair so he can be taken into the sun and put in a more sitting position.
I’ve gone into orphanages and child care facilities in China, and I know I’ve been changed profoundly. We live a very comfortable life and have everything and more that we need. Eight children, six internationally adopted. Orphanages change you, and I don’t know how anyone can return to life as normal after being in one.
There are probably a lot of agencies providing sponsorships that aren’t fully ethical, but I can’t say enough for Holt International and the work they do for children who will never be adopted.
Elaine in Montana

David, This was GREAT for you to show. Thank you for doing it!!
I just wrote this based on your post and the film clip. I hope it’s ok that I put it here. I didn’t know where to send it. – Sheilagh
Haiti.
This is what a lot of people fail to see. The wonderful thing about Haiti is that it is so so small! We forget. We talk endlessly about sending aid to the entire continent of Africa. We don’t talk about why. We don’t argue about questions of political interest or the corruption of their governments. We see the need and we just help. And we should. But it’s just a drop in the bucket of suffering. Each life is valuable. Each life is worth saving. But our resources are so spread out. It’s hard to bring lasting changes, just bandages.
In Haiti, it could be different.
I think last week, 2 columnists here asked for people’s bucket lists. I didn’t get to answer. But if I did, the number one goal on my bucket list would be to go to Haiti, not just with plane loads of supplies, but with people and equipment that could help them.
I went to Haiti for a service week my senior year of college. What I saw there changed the direction of my life. Piercing the veil. Somewhat like what just happened to you David. So many things I saw were beyond comprehension and really frankly it blew my mind. From the little things – like they had no idea what a toothbrush or a napkin were. To the really big heartbreakingly sad things. I’d like to tell you just one.
When we were staying at an orphanage for boys in Port-Au-Prince, we woke up one beautiful sunny Carribean February morning and went down to breakfast. They gave us homemade croissants which were excellent. But no napkins. Never heard of them. [We had no idea what an incredible luxury croissants were in Haiti.] Then the priests stood up with the itinerary. Today we were going to City Soleil, the local slum. We should make sure to leave everything of value in our rooms. No watches. No jewelry. But if we wanted, we could take a facecloth with perfume on it to help with the smell.
That’s all I had as when our crew of clowning kids piled into the brightly colored Tap tap bus that would take us down to City Soleil. At a certain point, the driver stopped, shook his head, and wouldn’t go any further. So we got out and walked past row upon row of thin, rusted-out, wavy corrugated tin shacks. 5×8 with dirt floors and so many people inside. Much weaker than even a house of straw and so many wolves were lurking about. And somehow incredibly the conditions got progressively worse until we reached our destination in City Soleil.
The first person I met was a little girl named Veronique, maybe 6 or 7 years old. She rushed up to me when I entered her neighborhood. She looked up in my eyes and said “Papa muir, Mama muir.” I’m ashamed to say I didn’t speak Creole or French. So I just gave her a smile. Later someone told me what that meant. ‘Papa dead, Mama dead’. I held her hand tighter. And she walked me through the streets. Muddy filthy paths is more accurate.
What you can’t see from the pictures of the rusty tin shacks, are the sewage canals. Between two rows of shacks, less than 8 feet from each front door was this nasty, awful canal filled with years of everything. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look. The only way to the other side was to cross over it by walking on a board – one wiggling board! And then another. End on end. At the other side the priests were carrying a jug of gasoline. They said that if you fell you had to immediately douse that part of yourself in the gasoline or really you could catch something. I think one of the dental students with us kind of stepped into it just a little. And I watched him having his pants cut and being gasolined shortly after I crossed. Veronique walked in front of me. I was just a little apprehensive. But this was her life. This was what you do. The local priest said that often children dazed by hunger and the dizziness of starvation would fall into these sewage canals. If they weren’t caught immediately, these little children, they would die and parents would walk the canals searching for them. I couldn’t get over that.
But there were a lot of things I couldn’t get over. Yet still Veronique walked with me, holding my hand and smiling at me. As if to say ‘I’m really glad you’re here’. When it came time to go, I wanted so much to give something to her. All I had on me was the facecloth with perfume that I had taken to mask the smell of her world. I can’t express the humility in my heart when I handed her that completely inadequate and almost obscene gift. Veronique took it in her hands. I showed her that she should sniff it. She put it to her face, smelled and smiled. And then she did the most amazing thing. She danced. She danced and twirled in a circle like any 7 year old girl would. She had never smelled perfume. She had never smelled anything so beautiful. She held it to her heart. She thanked me. And then she turned and walked away. I stood there crying, feeling so guilty and so sad and so glad that she was happy. Who am I to have met such a beautiful soul?
Again do people realize how SMALL Haiti is? It is half of one tiny Carribean island. It is the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere. Our hemisphere. Instead of always spreading our wealth out to the point of almost insignificance, why can’t we target Haiti? What would it take to give those little children bridges over those horrible canals? Even bigger, what would it take to provide a sewerage system for City Soleil? This is America. We could do that in a heartbeat.
Food is trickier. But smart sensitive people could come up with a plan. We have to be careful of unintended consequences. Direct food subsidies wiping out the local farm economies. Later in the same trip, we narrowly averted the anger of a dangerous mob standing and yelling at us during Catholic Mass(!)at a country church. Yes, I know in Church, with guns, frightening. Our translators convinced them that we weren’t the government. Thank God. But people were consumed with anger because during a huge flood, helicopters had dropped thousands of pounds of grain into communities, emblazoned with the words ‘Product of the USA’. Common sense question. What is the only food crop that could probably survive a huge flood? Yes, rice. And we had wiped out the market for rice. Maybe it wasn’t direct cause/effect. The rice had probably been sitting in warehouses for a long time. And then was pulled out for this emergency. But nonetheless, the consequences were heaping misery onto disaster. Same with the USDA imposed slaughter of ALL the pigs in Haiti to prevent the spread of a disease, with new pigs only being given to those who could provide a place for the US pig that was more lavish than where each farmer lived. Turns out pigs are an important source of income to these farmers. Each year families would kill a pig and use the revenue to pay for their chilren’s schooling. So now these working people were left not only without a pig, but without a means to provide education for their children. Lesson learned? Insensitive policy, without understanding of how it fits into local customs and economies, can damage more than help. Hopefully we’re not repeating that same mistake in Iraq.
But given those two small examples of the suffering American policies have brought to Haiti, Why can’t we as a people think about redeeming acts? Ways to build bridges and bring hope and lasting change? It wouldn’t be a fraction of the cost of African Aid or Iraqi Aid for that matter. And they’re our neighbors. We may not rid the country of its thugs – and when I was there there were plenty of thugs. But couldn’t we just find a way to share our good fortune, not our Republican, Independent, or Democratic blessings, but our nation’s blessings with the poorest of the poor in Haiti? I’m talking about systemic infrastructure changes and not just bandaids. But bandaids could be a part of it. Bulldozers, bridges, pipes, clean water. American ingenuity. Think what we could build.
We can. I know we can. And if not now when? How long will the people of Haiti need to eat dirt while we feast on a banquet of God’s blessings? Remember Veronique’s dance? Hers is the face of our humble God. To God be the Glory. Amen.
Be their voice.
http://www.foodforthepoor.org

Hi David,
This is a piece a friend wrote after he traveled to Haiti with us. We went to Cite Soleil in Port au Prince, Haiti. I often tell teams we take that we probably won’t change Haiti in a week, but Haiti will more than likely change us in a week.
David, thanks for cashing in on your luck by continuing to talk about what’s going on around us.
love, marcia
A Toddler on the Rubbish Heap
by Greg Boyd
Cite Sole is a ghetto district of Port au Prince, capital of Haiti. It is an unimaginable site. Mile after mile of people squished together in tin huts and piles of infested rubbish. The stench on this hot June day was putrid. During our time in Haiti we had decided to drive through this hell on our earth for ‘educational purposes.’ It was certainly educational. More than that, it was life transforming…
The streets were so packed with people we could only inch along in our van. Multitudes of faces stared at us: hot, hungry, and listless. As I beheld this sweaty mass in these ghastly conditions a stream of questions flooded my mind. That person there, what is his name? Where is he walking to now? How does he survive? What does he hope for? What will he eat tonight? Where will he sleep? What does he believe? Does he know love? What does he think of us rich white people riding in this van with our windows shut, staring at him as he stares back?
Aside from an occasional expression of awe, grief or bewilderment, our van was mostly silent. What really can one say? For my part, I felt I had entered a sort of twilight zone. There was something surrealistic about this whole episode. These are real people, human beings, just like me. They are wired just like me. And yet they live like this. They get up in the morning, every morning, and face this. They go to bed and it is still there. Ten years later, if they are yet alive, it is just the same.
I had always known the sad statistics about third world countries. Now these statistics were taking on flesh. And I was in a moment learning the world of difference, which exists between the two.
One scene in particular I shall never forget. I caught the eyes of a young boy standing naked on one of the reeking smoking piles of rubbish. He was obviously malnourished and was looking for food — in a pile I couldn’t stand to smell. For a space of perhaps 30 seconds — but in essence it was timeless — we stared into each other’s eyes. His eyes were sunken, sad and listless, but they penetrated my spirit. I shall never forget looking back at him as our van inched on, his head slightly above the crowds in the street owing to the heap he stood on as our van moved on. The naked, dirty, toddler continued to stare until we were out of sight.
What is his name? I wondered. Does he ever laugh and play as I did as a child? Or is his entire world a search for food among the rubbish?
Will he find a ‘supper’ today? Where will he sleep tonight? Will anyone sing to him before bed? Does he look forward to anything? Will he be alive a year from now?
The boy got on the inside of me, and it hurt. The statistics had become a toddler.
Eventually my thoughts turned more philosophical. Why, I wondered, was I on the cool inside of a van looking out rather than a starving toddler on a smelly rubbish heap looking in? Was there any reason at all why I was privileged and he was not? Was there anything I, or he, had done in a previous lifetime that warranted this grotesque inequality? Was there any reason why I am allowed to feed my children well, to protect them, and to give them all the opportunities life can afford while the parents of this toddler have to watch him scrap all day long just to survive?
The answer is obvious. There is no “reason.” NONE. I did nothing to be born where I was born, nor he to be born where he was born. It was, I realized, simply a matter of LUCK. And then a moment of clarity came upon me: it was the most profound insight I gained on my mission trip to Haiti. The only real question I as a “lucky” Westerner must answer for myself is this: HOW MUCH AM I GOING TO CASH IN ON MY GOOD LUCK FOR MY OWN PERSONAL GAIN?
I am blessed beyond measure. Most of us in the West are, at least by comparison with the Haitian toddler on the rubbish heap. What will we do with it? The question pierces our core as we allow it to. The question is: what do we REALLY live for?
The face of this little boy has continued to profoundly disturb me in the months since I first saw him. And that is a good thing. He should disturb all of us. He and the whole experience in Haiti has further opened my eyes to the reality of the war-zone we live in. He has caused me to call into question the extent to which I have been unwittingly co-opted into the self-centered dream of American capitalism. He has inspired me to investigate the responsibility of those who are fortunate, through no credit of their own, towards those who are unfortunate, through no fault of their own. He has forced me to try to find the balance between ungodly guilt for having what I have and healthy responsibility to share what I have with those who have nothing.
In short, he has changed my life. Now I wonder, how can I change his?

Hmm, it sure looks ripe for the rise of the Anti-Christ anyday now. Also, it appears that “American capitalism” keeps the overwhelming majority of Americans well-fed and quite healthy. Umm, shouldn’t this be spread to all of these African communities that seem to have the exact same problems no matter where they are located (Uganda, Haiti, New Orleans, Detroit, Compton, etc., etc.,) throughout the world? I’ve been a capitalist American for my entire life and have never been starving, attacked people or stores, or looted and shot at anything or anybody. I do notice with fascination the common theme of the poor and violent places all over the world. Don’t you think that reality and logic should play a role in helping people? And why doesn’t the NAACP have missionaries and outreach programs and volunteers in all of these African-based communities worldwide?

Shaun Groves also posted on the same topic -Haiti it has been decades building (Haitian refugees were swimming or floating ashore in Florida in the 80′s) but allowing a country to starve is incomprehensible.