In Haiti, an orphan can have two living parents. The system is different than America, the word “orphan” is a broad categorization that covers children with both dead parents and parents who decide to put their children into the system. The latter is almost like foster care here in America, except not nearly as comfortable. A week or so after the earthquake, some Americans, Baptists mostly, loaded orphans onto a bus. They were taking them to the Dominican Republic, to an orphanage. As they began to drive away, a young woman threw a bundle through one of the bus windows and ran off, in the bundle was a baby.
They stopped the bus, chased the woman down, and caught her. We’re sorry; we can’t take this baby we don’t have the paperwork to get her across the border.
Eventually the young mother took her child and left, the bus started again, they reached the Dominican Border, were searched, found clean and let through.
This isn’t the story of Laura Silsby, I don’t have anything to say about Laura Silsby, because I don’t know anything other than what you’ve read in the New York Times. But I did know this story, and you’ve probably not read anything about it.
The nicest orphanage in Haiti abuts the Port Au Prince Airport. It doubles as one of the city’s largest Protestant Churches and is reminiscent of 1900’s Hacienda in both layout and architecture.
The orphanage/church consists of five two-story buildings laid out in an open rectangle around a dusty courtyard about seventy five by fifteen yards. Around the perimeter is an eight-foot tall cinder-block wall topped with civilian razor wire. Brinks security is now Broadview Security, except in Haiti, where it’s still rock and metal. 200 miles North in Florida, men protect their homes like George Jetson, and in Port Au Prince they do it like Fred Flintstone.
Their way works pretty well.
There is no glass. Glass is expensive and stops the breeze, windows are big and opened and look out on wide hallways like balconies. The roof is corrugated metal and held above the tops of the building by steel girders to help with the air flow.
The actual orphanage building caps the closed end of the rectangle. It’s a poured-cement building, gray and square. There’s a balcony on the second floor where the girls live. They can see the airplanes taking off from there. They think that this will fascinate us newcomers. It does, I take dozens of pictures there. But there’s nothing to stop the sounds of the plane’s engines, which can go on well past one in the morning. From what I was able to gather, the kids really have gotten used to the noise, they sleep fine (the heat maybe?), but maybe they shouldn’t have to put up with it, bad for their health or something. Honestly, I couldn’t say. They are where they are.
The orphanage and church was started by a man named Pastor Edmond. Edmond’s story is difficult to piece together, he’s become somewhat of a folk hero among the short-term missionaries, so details and numbers are a bit smudged there. And, Edmond didn’t speak the best English, so it’s fuzzy. The best I can piece together.
In the early 1970’s, a young man named Edmond was called into the ministry. He didn’t go. Instead, he went into business, I think. But, he did get an education, the faded photographs on his office wall held evidence of a graduation with robes and caps. God called him again, a few, I think three, years later.
At this point, he either followed, or waited for a third call depending on the story. Either way, by the mid 1970’s he had started the first Church and orphanage, I think that it’s the one we’re sleeping in. But this could be the second or third, that part of the story was unclear.
So began Pastor Edmond’s ministry. It’s grown a bit. I think that he’s started twenty two, and all of them, would seem to be orphanages as well. Some versions of the story had orphanages at only a few of the churches, but that take was in the minority.
This was the biggest Church and orphanage. There were 85 kids here when we visited, about the same level as before the earthquake. Immediately after, the numbers dropped dramatically as parents came and took their kids. Most of the original kids tricked back in a couple of weeks, and there were a few new orphans brought in as a result of the quake. But the number’s stable and huge really. None of the other orphanages have this many kids (and, well, adults too, some 25 year old former orphans still live in the orphanage and work as cooks).
Edmond has a son named Wesley. Wesley is quiet, about five foot eight and 200 pounds. When he was a teenager, Edmond sent him to Miami to live with family and attend school. Wesley stayed in America and went to college and got a job. About a year ago, Wesley left his family in Miami and moved to Port Au Prince to take over management of the orphanages. His English is impeccable, so is his Creole. Wesley is the ideal guide and translator. One day I asked if we could try some sugar cane, that afternoon our bus pulled over and Wesley bought us a bundle of canes. He was a truly good man.
Every night, in a small, open hallway, with concrete walls spattered with chipping yellow paint, the orphans worship. The floor is linoleum and old, it’s turned the same color yellow as the paint on the walls. A generator floods the air with noise and smell. But they fill it too.
They fill it with the Holy Spirit and they fill it with their voices. They fill it with worship sung aloud and with passion in Creole. The hallway’s acoustics are negative, laughable. But the sound is rich and soft, like smoke over ice. It is beautiful and weak and strong and rich and poor and full of truth.
The first night, they asked us why we are here. They don’t understand. Randall, a middle-aged pastor with the spirit of a child, tells a story through translators. It’s something about breaking a window at his Church as a child. The story didn’t carry across the hallway nearly as well as the singing. I only got bits and pieces of the tale through the noise of the generator. Someone tells me later that he’s talking about Christ’s grace, illustrating it with his own mischief.
Randall walked down the hall a ways, and finished his talk. This wasn’t the best thing that could have happened. Randall, as I would come to find throughout the week, was a gifted speaker, glorious, simple and pure… for about the first 3/4 of his speaking. Then, he’d go on too long, and say something stupid. His words were harmless, no one ever took offense to them, and he meant nothing negative by them. But, he would step in it from time to time.
This night, I witness the Randall phenomenon for the first time. He starts asking questions of the Americans in our group, and then repeats them to the translator who asks the orphans the same questions in turn.
“How many of you have a car? How many of you have a college education? How many of your have your own home? How many of you have a job?” Every Americans raised their hands to every question, raised them slowly and awkwardly. This was bad, really bad. Dear Randall: I think we all know that there are a few… differences among the gathered.
His point slowly became clear; he was talking about how Jesus loves us all the same no matter what we have, no matter who we are.
A good message, a true message. But within its truth is the sorest issue for the Christian missionary in Haiti. We have everything, they have nothing. Everyone in our group felt this, we were pained by it, and we were doing what we could to help the children sitting in front of us, never raising their hands to say “yes, I have this thing”. The children knew, they understood that we had everything, and that they had nothing.
For both groups, the issue was a wound. Randall was throwing salt in it. We could have used the reminder, it was good for us. We must never forget the disparity in our wealth else we become callous and self-centered. But they didn’t need the reminder. They knew well enough.
But Randall meant well, we all meant well. I went to bed hot, mosquito-bitten and blessed by Pastor Edmond’s children.
There were many more blessings to come.
End Part 2.
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