We spent the last two days off-campus at an
orphanage in an area called Saline Mayette.
Getting there involved travelling about 3.5 hours over indescribably
horrendous roads in the box of an old military truck and taking big hits of
diesel exhaust just out of the vertical pipe right next to my head. Other highlights of that journey involved me
performing on-the-road surgery (an overstatement) to remove a homemade ear-plug
from deep within Devan’s ear. All in
all, this is the stuff that dreams are made of….or at least really great
stories. Arriving at the mission made me
feel a little bit like Artoo-Detoo crash-landing on the desert planet of
Tatooine in the first Star Wars movie, lost, out of my element, and just
waiting to collapse moaning on the ground (Brynn,
I love you and I even miss the way you hate my Star Wars references). Have you ever been to New Mexico? Saline Mayette is a bit like that. Sandy, some trees, lots of little pokey
plants, and no surface water.
While some of the kids that have families were home for the summer (they
follow a similar school schedule to ours), Saline Mayette is home to about 130
kids, maybe 10 chickens, several donkeys, and at least one tarantula. All of this is over see by two, yes two,
adults. Fenelon and his wife are in
charge of this lifeline for the children.
With so little supervision, the kids (from babies to late-teens) not
only took care of each-other, but fed us with what food they had. Some of the teenagers would spend hours in
the hot afternoon sun chopping beets and potatoes so the “blancs” could have
supper. In full swing, 140 or so people
depend on an old military water tank on wheels that must be hooked up to a
truck and dragged to the closest town whenever there is a truck around to do
that and that’s no guarantee. We spent
our days playing with the kids. Soccer,
Frisbee, tic-tac-toe in the dirt, colouring, lots of cuddling, and watching the
little girls braid Viktor’s hair. All 40
of us, man, woman, and child, slept on the floors and tables in the dining hall
(which we painted a cheery blue on the second day) in some kind of great
glorious slumber party. I’m totally out
of writing time, and I have not even begun to relate or share the endless
things there are to tell, but here’s one little picture. In the water-less desert of Haiti, there is a
skinny little orphan boy who wears a shirt that says “My Daddy Loves Me.” Believe it or not, he is more fortunate than
most kids here to be in such a place.
His Daddy provides. Jehovah Jireh
is everywhere, even in the most desolate places.
Jordy
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