The Rake

The Rake

Every morning under the trees next to Blains living room we have chapel.  A number of simple wooden benches were buried in the ground for people to sit on, some large concrete rings in the ground add additional seating.  I would often go early just to sit and think under the coolness of the trees.

The base is pretty clean in most respects.  For example, each morning before devotions a national rakes the chapel area to free it of debris, leaves and any trash that accumulated during the night.  He always uses a branch from some sort of tree, probably a thorn tree judging from the multiple tines and general ‘ugliness’ of the tool.  It is too short and the man is always bent to the ground as he rakes.  I noticed a couple of weeks ago that someone had given him a regular rake to use.  It was new, had a long handle and was red.  I watched as he used it for three or four minutes, and when, so he thought, no one was looking, he leaned it up against a tree and resumed using his branch.  Once again, he was bent over and doing twice the work as the branch only covered a half of the area as the rake.  I wondered about it.

At dinner yesterday Sarah was telling me how frustrating it was to try to explain things to the Haitians.  “They listen and nod their head in understanding, but then they go and do something the old way.”  An example was shared how a company came in a couple of years ago and provided solar ovens for the locals to use.  They normally use wood for all their cooking fires, but wood is scarce and a valuable commodity in Haiti.  Most of the land has been deforested and the vegetation replacing the hardwoods of long ago isn’t really suited as a fuel.  The solar ovens worked great because the sun is intense here.  The locals used for a short time but when the donators left the area, they resorted back to using their wood to cook with.

A great asset here are deep water wells.  SP sponsors a program to drill deep wells in order to get to the cleaner water in the aquifers.  The shallow wells, which are common, are heavily polluted from the trash and dumping throughout the countryside.  The issue with deep wells is that, in order to get the water to pump, the well has to be primed with a little water.  The people have been taught and shown time over how to do that.  It’s been noted that some of the wells go unused.  It is because nobody will go through the trouble to prime them.  “It’s not my job”, they will say in response to inquiry.  So the shallow ones are used and the deep ones are not.

I experienced this myself when I was loading cement bags onto skids with Junior and Betta.  I took some time to show them that the bags need to be interlocked to hold the load together.  They just couldn’t grasp the concept and kept throwing the bags on in any order.  I had to stack many of the bags because they wouldn’t conform.  Eventually, after many attempts, they did adjust; but I noticed later they were stacking cement bags haphazardly again.

A culture is defined by how it changes over time.  As technology improves the people adjust in how they live.  The States is an example of this.  The industrial age offered great change to the citizens and they embraced the future.  Automobiles changed our lifestyles.  So did the mechanization of appliances and tools.  The generations of today have morphed into a computerized society with social networking, instant information and knowledge at the fingertips.  The fast changes in the last twenty years have forever changed who we are.

Haiti is different.  They adhere to the old and simply refuse to change who they are and what they do.  There are idiosyncratic changes that I see; like telephones.  Everybody here has a cell phone.  Even the poorest person dressed in the worse garb will be seen on a cell phone talking to someone.  Maybe it is the only mark of status within grasp and affordability.

A number of NGO’s (non governmental organizations) that I have talked to have said the same thing about the Haitians.  “They will not change,” is the term heard most often.  I think of God’s dealing with the Children of Israel during their forty year wander in the wilderness.  God did these amazing things for them in miracle time and time again.  But they seemed to always resort to their old ways like idolatry.  He called them sticknecked and unteachable, unwilling to change to His new technology of faith and trust.

I mentioned a couple of months ago about picking up trash on jobsites.  The crew pretty much understood that I liked to pick up trash and put it into a container to take back to base.  I’ve observed that when ‘I’m not looking’, they toss their trash aside.  It is their way.  When with the white man, do what he wants; but when he is not there, do what you want. It is a custom ingrained from old; from generations of prior training, taught from grandfather to father, and father to son.  It permeates every aspect of their lives and their spiritual being.

It is deeper than just the outward expressions.  I had a different interpreter yesterday at the river. He attends the church Robert has been working on and professes to be a strong Christian. He was telling me how he was deported from the States a year ago because he had come illegally as a boy.  He had an American wife and an eleven year old daughter and said he was trying hard to return.  On the other hand the conversation had started out how he was wooing a Haitian girl to marry him.  It didn’t make sense.

Another man, who also professes Christianity, has a nine year old daughter with the woman he lives with.  A year and a half ago, he lost three children, two of them one, the other two.  I’m not sure they were with the same woman whom he is currently not married to.

Our actions dictate who we are.  That concept also flows from our innermost man.  The earlier statement mentioned doing what the white man wants while he is around and then do what you want after he leaves seems to be who these people are. It too carries over into their spiritual life.

So, how can these people really change?  I think the only way to help the Haitians is for God to do His kind of spiritual makeover, the kind that comes from the inside that bypasses the understanding of the mind and results in the changing of the heart.  Then those nationals that have that real change will be able to spread it to those who don’t.

How does that come about?  I’ve heard of missionaries that have been here for twenty or more years who still have the same issues with the Haitians, “they nod in understanding about changing ones’ life, but then go and do it the old way.” Some of those missionaries have left Haiti in frustration, unable to grasp the concept of ‘stiff necked and rebellious’

I don’t have an answer for the question.  It is a difficult issue that, I feel, is compounded by unchecked giving to a people who will be whoever you want them to be, for the moment.