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It was a typically busy day when Daniel Louis dropped by my office. He was obviously distressed and just needed to talk. He shared with me that the Evangelical Baptiste School in his native area of Lambert, Haiti had to be closed due to a lack of chalk.
"Why?" I wondered aloud. "Why is the school going to be closed because of chalk?"
It was a typically busy day when Daniel Louis dropped by my office. He was obviously distressed and just needed to talk. He shared with me that the Evangelical Baptiste School in his native area of Lambert, Haiti had to be closed due to a lack of chalk.
"Why?" I wondered aloud. "Why is the school going to be closed because of chalk?"
Daniel explained that his father, Rev. Dantus Louis, worked in a parish consisting of very poor people and there were no books, paper, or pencils in the school. Everything had to be taught on the chalkboard. And now because of the United Nations economic boycott, even the chalk was not available.
"Life is really hard there," Daniel said.
Daniel's story of the importance of chalk intrigued me so much that within three weeks I was traveling to Haiti with my associate Harold Millard.
In Haiti Rev. Dantus Louis took Harold and me to visit different parts of his parish. One day as we were traveling it started to rain very heavily. We hadn't taken any rain gear, so we headed for the first shelter we could find - a little mud hut.
That's how I first encountered Jeanette and her family. She lived with her three children, her husband and her mother all together in this small, bare home. The house had hardly enough room for her family, yet Jeanette graciously invited us into her home to wait until the rainstorm ended. She offered to me the only chair in her house. Jeanette's ten-month-old baby kept crying the whole time we were there. The child's discolored red hair showed her extreme malnourishment. Jeanette tried to pacify the baby by breast feeding, but it was evident that malnutrition had dried up her breast milk. She was down to skin and bones herself. Jeanette cupped her hands and lifted them to her mouth. I knew what she was saying in Creole: "If only I had food, my family would be able to live."
The shrill cry of this baby screaming at the top of her lungs for food, her mother totally unable to help because of malnutrition, left a deep impression on me. We did not need a more vivid image of the tragic situation in Haiti.
Immediately upon our return to the parish office we sent a fax to CARE asking if there was some emergency food available. They faxed back saying that food was available at the docks but transportation was a problem. There was an extreme gasoline shortage.
We pooled our funds to buy some gasoline on the black market, and soon two pickup truck loads of emergency food was brought in for families like Jeanette's.After we returned to the U.S. and the United Nations emergency was lifted, members of the parish told us that now it was important for them to build their community so they could do things for themselves. Could we help?
That's when Trees for Life came to mind.
Rev. Dantus Louis came to meet with me, and I introduced him to people at Trees for Life. When he returned to Haiti, he started a Trees for Life project at the school.
In April of this year I returned to Haiti for the third time along with a medical/construction team of volunteers from the United States. From the time I arrived at Lambert, it was obvious that the Evangelical Baptiste School was the pride of the community. Everyone wanted to show me the Trees for Life nursery, where hundreds of small tree saplings were growing. I observed row upon row of trees, all planted with seeds collected from the countryside. Rev. Dantus showed me the different types of trees they had planted: the banana tree, the grapefruit tree, a shade tree, and a firewood tree.
People gathered in the nursery each morning for a time of devotion. They spent ten minutes singing, and then they all went to work. Some people were watering, some were planting " everyone was actively involved.
Then came the most joyous moment of the trip.
One day the construction team building cement walls at the school ran out of sand. The people working on the Trees for Life project immediately volunteered to help get the needed sand from the nearby riverbank. They all walked down to the river, scooped up the sand, and carried it in buckets to the school building site.
In the line of people I saw a young woman, standing tall and carrying a pail of sand on her head. "Jeanette," I said.
She looked at me and smiled. The light in her eyes told me all I needed to know: "Yes, I am somebody." She was obviously proud to be a part of this group effort.
Seeing Jeanette brought everything full circle.The memory of her baby's shrill crying had haunted me. Now the ray of hope in Jeanette's eyes replaced that memory. I saw how the planting of trees brought the community together, demonstrating that they can do things for themselves. It provided a powerful spark to ignite the human spirit. Jeanette and her neighbors had caught that spark, and were already sharing it with others.
