Last month I spent a week in Cap Haitien with a short-term
medical team. It was a powerful
experience, deeply refreshing and challenging. I am no expert, but here are some thoughts from that time:
The
first thing that struck me stepping off the plane was the heat. It has a force behind it from latitude,
backed up by mountains behind the city that block the wind off the sea to
create heat under pressure. I
heard it described as “walking through peanut butter that was warmed up in the
microwave.” This heat under
pressure seems to affect many things: the musical, slurred French vowels of
Creole, the tropical sense of “island time,” and the occasional bursts of
frustration and protest.
There
were the sights, smells, and the sense of desperation from absolute
poverty. The recent storms during
hurricane season had led to an overflow of the sewage system, and a subsequent
resurgence in cholera and intestinal worms. The landscape around the city is brown and barren, and there
is a sadness, hopelessness in the eyes of so many that you meet. It reminds me that poverty is so much deeper
than a lack of resources; it is a social, biological, spiritual disease/evil.
And
in life on the ragged edge of survival, everything has meaning and
purpose. Food, water, shelter,
medicine, security are not guaranteed.
I am humbled by the realization of the artificial dramas in which I play
the leading role here at home: inconveniences and inefficiency in my work as an
American physician, exercise as my right to relieve stress, artificial
war/conflict through sports and television drama to fill a vacuum of
meaning. It is a reminder that
these places on the edge are where I belong, not because I am noble, but
because I am called, and perhaps because I am so easily distracted.
I
have been taught that “It takes a whole world to know a whole Christ.” Haitian Christians opened my eyes to a
sense of spiritual reality that pervades all of life. Speaking to pastors at each stop along the way, I would ask
about the opportunities and challenges they and their churches face. Each one of them turned to me, even
standing amidst absolute poverty, disease, riots, and hopelessness, and they
would speak of the spiritual forces of good and evil. They could see clearly a deeper reality of which I have only
glanced dimly, and have shuddered.
And their prayers sprang from a well of experience, their fellowship an
honor I will hold proudly all my days.
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s
triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him
everywhere.” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
