Waiting to come home.

I am sitting under a tarp at L’Aeroport Toussaint Louverture as I write. It’s a pleasant day for Haiti in January but dusty, and dirty and hot enough. Various types of aircraft are taking off and landing as soon as they can clear the runway. We left our house in Bon Repos this morning at 7:30 with roughly half our team. The rest are staying until Wednesday or longer. Although I wish I could stay, I think it’s time for me to go home, pay some bills and start planning for the rehabilitation effort that is going to be sorely needed in the coming months. I have had so many messages of support and good wishes for our team and the people of Haiti. It has been one of the few bright lights during this dark tragedy. I hope that everyone will continue to remember Haiti when the next big media event pushes the earthquake from the headlines.

Haiti always gives those who visit a moral headache. There is so much need, so much sorrow, where do you begin? And whom do you choose to help? Two of our drivers are in their mid twenties, speak English well, and desperately want to study at a university to learn skills that are critical for their country. Daniel’s dream is to study mechanical engineering. He was enrolled in engineering classes in Haiti, but it will be at least a year, maybe two before any kind of higher education becomes available again in Port-au-Prince. He wants to go to BYU in Provo Utah, but needs a visa and a sponsor. Dino our other driver wants to go to BYU to study architecture. I am asked over and over for help in obtaining visas every time I come to Haiti. Daniel and Dino are two of Haiti’s best and brightest. They would be a credit to any university in the states. I don’t know if their dreams will ever come true.

We have been on the tarmac now for four hours. We could have gotten on a plane sooner but one of our group isn’t a US citizen and this has held us back. We are watching a C-17 transport plane being loaded with orphans who have cleared immigration and are going to their new families in the states. Brandt, our “get things done” guy is working on getting him on that plane to care for them during the flight. The children emerge from an old school bus painted robin’s egg blue. Some are frightened, some excited, most are too young to understand that they will be leaving their country forever. More and more children come out of the bus and my heart breaks for each one, and for each one left behind.

One member of our group, a medical student, got a message from his wife a few days ago. The two of them had been considering adopting a child and she told him that she had prayed and come up with the address of an orphanage near Port-au-Prince. “Go and find our daughter” were his instructions and she gave him a description of what she’d look like.

How do you choose a child?” he asked. “It’s not like going to the pet store for a puppy”. If those kids only knew how their lives would be changed if this young “blan” happened to choose them. I imagine a young Haitian-American growing up with only the tiniest bit of memory of living in Haiti. No doubt that life in the US would bring challenges that most American kids don’t have to face, but isn’t a home filled with love and attention, enough food and water, and a good education, what all parents wish for their children? I imagine the emotional turmoil of this young child after she grows up and one day decides to return to Haiti—to the orphanage where she was picked by a stranger on a day so long ago that she may not have any memories of it at all.

How do you choose a child? The medical student wandered among the children. They were running, shouting, pulling at his hand, excited at by the break in their routine occasioned by the visit of this stranger. He looked across the dirt yard and saw a shy little girl standing under a tree. After a minute, she looked up at him and smiled. “And I just knew” he said with tears in his eyes. “She was supposed to be my daughter”. He took her back to where we were staying, cleaned her up and watched her eat and eat and eat. Our host and his wife promised to make sure this beautiful little girl was cared for until the paper work can be cleared. Some of our team went back and helped put up a tarp over the other kids’ bunk beds so they wouldn’t have to sleep in the open. The building where they lived was destroyed by the earthquake. I look over and notice that today, even after only a few hours of separation, this new father already misses his daughter.