Toddlers, Tiny Twins, and Transitions

This could easily be three different posts (and may indeed turn into that if it gets too long). It seems like months have passed in the 3 weeks since I last sat down to write. Such is the time warp that is living in Haiti...


School for the older kids started 2 weeks ago, and so did "preschool" in the toddler house.  We have circle time, centers, story time, recess, snack, and we follow a visual schedule. Sounds like a typical day in preschool, right? Until you throw in relatives of children (who are supposed to be in your class learning) coming to visit on the first day of school, a fellow missionary arriving with bullet wound in the shoulder that needs medical attention and prayer support, a mission team from another site who want to visit with half the kids in the house since they met on a previous trip, and a host of other inevitable and unavoidable interruptions to my "lesson plans". And somehow in the midst of all of it, the nine children in my house are flourishing...and learning! We are reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and learning animals and colors in English, Kreyol, and sign language. Jameson, the youngest one in the house at 23 months, is giving the older ones a run for their money. :) He remembers the animals in the book (in English) and knows what order they go in! His favorite one to say is,"Yellow duck!" So cute!! While all this is going on, we're also tackling potty training. We had a group from Franklin, TN, a few weeks ago that brought 2 cushioned potty seats for the toddler house. This was a tremendous blessing, especially since prior to that, Tabi (one of my nannies) told me that I shouldn't try to potty train Luckson, "because he is too skinny...he will fall in!" We are chugging along, with two fully potty trained and 2 more (who may or may not be wearing bottoms on any given day) in line. Last week Marie-Denise told Tabi she didn't want to wear diapers anymore because she liked panties instead. We don't have much to choose from, but I'm happy to oblige them with whatever motivates! So goes the adventures in the toddler house...

A Baby Story - Episode 2
Just a week after I posted about the tiny twin with no name who was brought and then left in a strange series of events, we had a mother show up in the driveway with a set of even tinier twins, a boy (Wendy) and a girl (Wendia), weighing less than 6 lbs put together at 16 days old. Another tragic story, but this one has a much more hopeful continuation. Christella, the mother, is a 23 yr old widow. Her husband died from cholera in June. The twins were born 4 weeks premature and very underweight. The doctor told her she couldn't have any more children, so she didn't want to give them up, she just wanted help. "What kind of help?" we asked, expecting the usual answer of diapers and/or formula. "Just help." She replied, with a look of total exhaustion and desperation. Upon further questioning, we learned that she has no family (her mother died recently as well) and she (and the twins) had been sleeping on the floor of a friend's house, eating only sporadically and feeding the twins sugar water because the doctor told her she was anemic so she couldn't breast feed.
We quickly concluded that the best (and basically ONLY) option for keeping this family together and monitoring the health of the babies was to invite them to stay at Hands and Feet temporarily, to give Christella the support she needed to care for her babies and help the twins stabilize and gain weight. She was so exhausted, she slept the entire first 2 days she was here. We took shifts checking on her, feeding both her and the twins at regular intervals. With nothing more than a portable bassinet on the kitchen counter, a portable oxygen machine, and a bundle of baby blankets for an "NICU", we prayed it would be enough to sustain these tiny miracles. Days went by and they ate, slept, and pooped just as they should. On October 12th, the twins turned 1 month old. As of today, they weigh 3lbs 12 oz (Wendia) and 3lbs 12.5 oz (Wendy) and continue to grow and get stronger and more alert every day. Christella is a wonderful mama and I have faith that they will live long, happy, healthy lives as a family.

Time for Transition
Change is an inevitable and sometimes unexpected part of life. It doesn't get any easier as we get older, just more complicated. In August the staff here learned that Hands and Feet had chosen new leadership to oversee the day to day operations at the orphanage. Dr. Ken & Diane feel called to stay in Haiti and God has already opened new doors for them to start a surf ministry and infant rescue house. Their daughter Emi is returning to Hawaii this week to begin college. Tamara, one of the Hands and Feet interns, will be partnering with the Pierces when her 3 month term at HAF is finished. Cameron & Stacie, who have been interns here since January, have both decided to return to the States to finish school in order to have even more impact when they return to Haiti in the future. That's a pretty big chunk of our team leaving to pursue God's call for each of them individually.  It's bittersweet as we prepare for major changes individually, and at the same time welcome the new directors to Haiti next week. It reminds me a bit of the lessons learned from potty training...We have to be willing to face the unfamiliar, to balance the things we know to be true with the uncertainties of life, to celebrate small victories, and clean up and move on from the inadvertent messes we create along the way while letting go of the familiar. We can approach transition in two ways: kicking and screaming, or we can put our big girl panties on and deal with it. I choose the latter, and hopefully along the way I can teach a few more little ones to do the same.

A Baby Story

If you're a sappy romantic like me, who loves kids, you've probably seen the TLC program "A Baby Story" a hundred times, and shed a tear or two at the end of more than a few of them. They always start the same: with the sweet back-story of how the loving parents met and whether or not there is a big brother/sister anxiously awaiting their arrival. Throw in a plush nursery, a baby shower, and a smorgesbord of delivery options, including but not limited to: home birth with a midwife, water birth, a good "old-fashioned" hospital delivery (with an epidural, of course) and the occasional scheduled C-section (just to make life a little MORE predictable) and that's pretty much the gist of every episode.

This is not one of those stories. It begins with heartbreak and will leave you (as it did all of us at Hands and Feet) in silent bewilderment, like there's a giant "TO BE CONTINUED..." sign written across the sky...

Shortly after 3pm yesterday, having just wrapped up the in-take process for our newest member of the family, 5-month old baby Rose, we were informed that there was a woman at our gate with a tiny baby, asking for help. We invited her in and began asking her the circumstances for her visit and the age/condition of the baby. "The baby was just born this morning."she said. Sure enough, upon inspection, the umbilical cord was still attached, tied off with an old piece of string. She was tiny, weighing just under 5  pounds. Dr. Ken checked her vital signs and decided she needed some oxygen, so the oxygen machine was wheeled in from the office and started, with the tube resting just outside the baby's open, bird like, mouth.

This is where the story gets heartbreaking. "Baby girl" (because she had no name yet) was a twin. Her twin brother died, then the mother died shortly after giving birth at home.  The woman who brought the baby (from a town NOT close by), is the baby's paternal aunt. She told us the father was in the countryside working on funeral arrangements and she thought that he would want to keep the baby after everything got sorted out. Dr. Ken called a Haitian doctor who works in the area where the mother died to see if he could come and check out the story. Diane called Sarah, a Canadian midwife, who offered to bring over an umbilical cord clamp and tend to the baby further.

Then the story got really confusing and slightly suspicious. After we had weighed baby girl, and put a preemie diaper and preemie clothes on her. We asked the aunt if the baby had eaten anything since birth. The answer was no. It was nearing 4pm, and according to the aunt, the baby had been born 12 hours earlier. On top of all the trauma surrounding her birth, the poor thing hadn't eaten all day. Thankfully, we happen to have a box full of preemie bottle nipples that fit directly on to the 2oz similac newborn formula bottles. After a couple attempts at sucking, baby girl latched on and sucked down half the bottle. A little while later, after eating a bit more, she spit up. The aunt came over to me insisting in Kreyol that somehow the oxygen made the baby spit up and that she was a mother, she had children and the baby didn't need that oxygen tube by her face. I nodded understandingly (not) and put the oxygen tube right back where it needed to be. The aunt then started getting agitated, saying she needed to get on a tap tap (pick up truck taxi) WITH the baby and go back to her town before it got dark. We tried to explain that it was unsafe for the baby, that she still needed to be watched and cared for, and that we were willing to help. The aunt became irate, saying she had to go home with the baby because nobody knew she had taken the baby, her 6 children were left at home, the family of the mom who died would try to kill her if they didn't see the baby, etc. etc... And that she had only come to get milk for the baby. (2 hrs in and this is the first we had heard that story)

In the best interest of the baby, Dr. Ken called children's services and asked their advice. They spoke to the aunt and through a translator, told us to go ahead and allow her to take the baby home. We had done all we could do. As she walked out the front door, another woman came walking up telling her she needed to go now. She had come from the town where she had gone to the mayor to tell him that this woman had taken the baby....Wait, what??!! EXACTLY!! It was so confusing, but all we knew was that we had cared for the baby as originally requested, clothed her, fed her, and made sure she was breathing without difficulty before putting her back in the arms of her aunt and watching her walk out the front gates.

There is no documentation of her birth, no delivery caught on film for audiences around the country to enjoy. Just a couple pictures taken in the brief time we had the privilege of being the audience to the miracle that is her little life. I'm reminded of the the verse in a song I sang in Sunday School as a child,"He's got the little bitty babies in His hands..." And that gives me peace and hope for "Baby Girl's" future, even if I never see her again.

Love Your Neighbor...Hug a Voodoo Priest

We came up with this slogan (which I think would make quite a catchy bumper sticker) as I was walking to the cove down the street from our compound with several of my fellow missionaries. It's easy to say the first part without much thought as to what it really means...


Everybody's heard the story of the Good Samaritan. It was Jesus' response to the "holier than thou" Pharisee who wanted to know the precise definition of "neighbor" in order to make getting into heaven a little easier. "Neighbor" is less about geographical proximity and more about relational proximity. Jesus modeled this in many ways: he touched the untouchables (lepers), befriended the friendless and unfriendly (prostitutes and tax collectors), and forgave the unforgivable (the ones who crucified him). Jesus also said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. (John 14:12)


So how does that translate to everyday life in Haiti? Let's be honest, it's not the safest, healthiest, friendliest place in the world to live. The water is contaminated, the pavement along the road (if there is any) is unsafe, and the culture is unfamiliar. There can be a tendency to be less neighborly in favor of maintaining a sense of safety. We can feel good about the work we do with orphans on our self-sufficient compound with our clean drinking water, high security walls, and double-layered metal gates. But what good is any of that if we don't show love to our neighbors? How can we do that if we don't get out in the neighborhood? What if our neighbors happen to be restavek owners, or unmarried women with multiple malnourished children covered in scabies, or a voodoo priest/priestess who hosts gatherings with loud music, chanting and animal sacrifices that keep us awake until all hours of the night? How do we love them? Some things we do, even if it means stepping outside of our comfort zone (or our perceived safety zone): food for the hungry, clean drinking water for the little restavek girls to carry back to their "owners", medicine for the sick, and every once in a while, a hug for the voodoo priest who lives across the street. Why? Because if Jesus lived in Haiti, that's what he would do...