A visit to a tent camp.

A rainy day most of the time, but not ferocious rain.  No wind at all.  If this is a hurricane, I’m not impressed.  However, the day itself was extremely impressionable. We started after breakfast by helping to sort and inventory the many tools and medical supplies left by dozens of previous teams to Haiti.  They had no idea of how much of what they had stuffed in boxes and abandoned suitcases.  We haven’t yet finished with that, because we got to do something great.

Another team invited us to join them in bringing food to a tent community.  We first drove with them to the Christian Light orphanage, stopping to pick up Kez Furth along the way.  Kez is an American nurse, 26 years old, working in Haiti for the past 3 years.  She is one of those amazing people who make you feel as if you have wasted your life.  She was here during the earthquake and is credited with saving many lives.  Apparently she has been interviewed on CNN about that.  Kez got us organized at the orphanage, filling 106 bags with rice and a smaller bag in each one full of beans.  A man here from Mississippi had brought the large plastic bags with him to Haiti.  He didn’t know why, he just felt moved to bring them.  We had the smaller bags with us, and nobody knows why we had them.  But, the bags were all present, and we filled them with food for the tent community.  Then we drove there while some of us walked.  At the tents, each tent received one bag of rice and beans.  Each also received a tiny bottle of water purification tablets.  Four little kids from the orphanage explained to each tent how to use them.  It was sort of organized chaos.  Lots of crowding, lots of kids, lots of babies, lots of adults.  Tents were very crowded together.  People enjoyed having their pictures taken.  Several moms or dads asked me to take photos of their children.  Many kids had the orange hair of malnutrition.  One had a very bad cleft palate.  A proud mom displayed her two chubby twin babies (just a few weeks old).  This went on for about an hour, and then there was a more or less sudden order to get back to the truck.  Evidently things were getting a bit rowdy, and Kez was worried about our safety.  So, now we have a much better idea of what a tent camp looks like.  But, to actually live there for months and months and months is unimaginable.  The vast chasm between the comfort of our lives and the poverty of theirs is nearly beyond belief.  We need to fix this.  We need to do more.