The 1000ish words this picture says are coming up in a poem I have been working on.

I’m curious though, what does this picture say to you?  

Prompt courtesy of Verne via Facebook.

Said situation:

son has opened a package of cue cards before confirming that they were the right size and therefore wouldn’t be returned.

They were the wrong size.

Budget waste = $1.47.

Grrrr.

Every dollar counts.

I am an optimist deep down and through and through.  It’s not that I don’t know how to be negative - I can be as blue and desperate as a pimply faced teenager without a prom date, but somehow even in the deepest of pits I continue to get the occasional provocative jab of hope.  

On these travels to these war-torn, conflict-ridden, unstable, and impoverished destinations and everywhere I have been, I have always come across hope.  Well, almost everywhere.  There are two countries that are remarkably similar despite the ocean that separates them.  As I stood on the dock in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo watching a crew of men moving supplies from a large truck to the tin-can-rust-bucket ferry below I could not shake the feeling of deja-vu.  These men were not ordinary men.  They were being treated like, and acting like slaves.  In the human chain of 40 men there was a hierarchy - those that worked and those that watched and made you work.  In this melee of slick dirty thin brown skinned men, my clean bright blonde hair was a distraction that drew many sideways glances, which occasionally earned the workers discipline from the management.  There was little life behind the eyes of those men.  In all of my life experience, I had only observed a place as joyless one other time.  

That place was Haiti.

I have only been to Haiti once and it was only for a brief time in the late spring of 2005.  I was there as part of a team completing some surveys and reports on the region.  We spent much of our week getting to know all of the pockets that make up Port-au-Prince - we saw what we could of the dangerous suburb of Cite-de-Soleil, and the local landmarks like the Presidential Palace.  We sought ground truth through meetings with aid workers and met some amazing people at the UN Headquarters.  We stayed in the nicest hotel in the city - I shared my room with a number of cockroaches who liked to hang out in the shower.  On our last evening there, our team was invited to a house party in Petionville.  The road to our host’s place was twisty and turny and poorly lit.  We passed a large crowd gathered in what looked like a washed out sports field - they were there to watch dogs fight one another.  This was a local past time.  Our host’s home was a mansion by most country’s standards.  It was large and spacious and immaculately decorated with dark woods and fine colourful tile.  It was difficult to reconcile the beauty of the home with the desperation of the crowded inner city 15 kms downhill.

There were very few Haitians living in Petionville.

I could not reconcile that with the image of the naked woman I saw bathing in a puddle in the middle of a crowded street around Cite-de-Soleil earlier that same day.  I could not reconcile it with the stench of human life that pervaded the city, entirely made up of slums.  Corrugated steel.  Shanty shacks.  Six foot by ten foot by four foot, some stacked one atop the other.  Despite the majestic homes of Petionville, there simply was nothing nice about Haiti.

And the faces of the Haitians were remarkably absent of joy.

There were people everywhere in the city.  A dense population in an exceptionally small space with very little to do.  There was no meaningful work in the city.  For the men aged 18 and over, there was an 89% unemployment rate.  Many Haitians spent much of their day in line.  In line for aid.  In line for work.  In line at an Embassy.  In line for a way out.

They were surviving.  But only just.

Haiti has endured a remarkably long history of poverty and instability, and while the earthquake has left them in a state of extreme devastation, it will most certainly act as a catalyst to bring about some form of order and some form of meaningful aid delivery to the country.  It is both not a blessing and a blessing.  But this is not the first time they’ve received this type of mass injection of support and aid, and I wonder if, after all is said and done, the world will find a way to continue to support Haiti … to help it find some traction to right itself. 

Both then and now I have caught myself wrestling with a tension that I have come to call affluence guilt.  In the international arena, I am a country of origin lottery winner.  I have worked hard and I live well - I want many things, but if I never again got anything new, I would probably still do too well to be described as “just getting by”.  The fact that my soul found its way into this body, this life, this country … well that is part mystery, part divine intervention, part good choices, and part luck.  In Canada we too have poverty - I see it frequently in my work as a law student at a local community legal clinic - we even have extreme poverty, but with our health and social welfare systems and stable (albeit sometimes kooky) government, our poorest still have a chance for hope to find them.

Many of us are asking ourselves - what can we do to help Haiti?  And after much reflection, I can honestly say that I don’t know what individuals can do to provide meaningful help, beyond continued financial giving where we can for as long as we can.

Beyond financial support, the best I can do is to do as the Haitians do by living the life I’ve been given. Appreciating my good fortune.  Checking my complacency.  Reminding myself to take nothing for granted. Despite the magnitude of destruction, they continue to move, they continue to breathe, they continue to survive.

They continue.

And so must we.  Let’s not forget Haiti.  I challenge you to mark your calendar - one year from today you should donate to Haiti again.

I will.  Will you? 

The above post was written for the Great Experiment.  Click here to read more great posts from a community of bloggers who have been gathering monthly on The Girl Who, and vote for the one you like best in the comments section.  This month we are going for the glory only - ALL funds raised will be donated.  Through Monica’s website, you can give to fundraising efforts in support of Haiti Or you can click on one of the links to my favourite three charities below.  Thanks for reading.

Canadian Red Cross

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

World Vision

“Goooooood.”  I say awkwardly.  Melodically.  Reluctantly … distracted by my brain busy running through its internal catalogue of faces, voices, places, acquaintances and connections.

Nothing.

I got noth-thing, my brain says.  No iota who this cheerful blonde lady with a tall athletic daughter and handsome teenage son standing closeby could be.   The kids see us talking and carry on with whatever they are ogling.

“How did law school go?”

She knows about law school.

She’s someone from school.  A teacher.  She lives in Belleville you dolt.  Not everybody commutes to Kingston.

No wait.  She’s someone from Zach’s school.

Kids too old … someone from Zach’s sporting activities … kids still too old Einstein.  Yeah, well she might have younger kids that just aren’t here … or maybe those closeby kids aren’t her kids … they just look freakishly like her.  I argue with myself.

“Yeah, you know, made it through exams.  Lots of stress.  I’m so glad they’re done now and I can get down to enjoying some of this beautiful weather we’re having.”  I say nonchalantly as if I’m totally honed in on this conversation and this moment as opposed to the internal massacre I’m experiencing while killing myself trying to figure out who the heck I’m speaking to.  “You’re just here picking up a few things?”  I say in an attempt to divert the conversation, hopefully towards an end that involves going separate directions before I really embarrass myself. 

You can ask her who she is you know, the battle starts again.  You know the whole - I’m so sorry, I know that I know you, but I just can’t figure out from where, and then yeah you can totally play up the whole stressed out travelling army law student single mom you’re kind of crazy with only so much room in your brain that is the reality of your life.  I picture us laughing it off, but remember that I’m a total social coward and would rather fake it than be real with this lady.

“Mmmyeah,” she says nodding towards the kids that look just like her.  “The kids are between sports, so we thought we would run in and grab some Kraft Dinner.  KD night - good for the weeknight rush.  But then you know, once you’re in you realize that you need all kinds of other things too,” she says acknowledging her basket heavy with things that aren’t KD. 

I nod along approvingly thinking about how much I love KD.  Mmmm, especially when you get just the right amount of butter and milk and it turns out on the verge of creamy, and mmmm, ketchup …  it’s all good.  Maybe I need a KD night too, I think.

“We better get going.  It was good to see you Norma.  Take care of yourself and I hope you get a break.”

“Yeah, see yah later.  Enjoy the KD.” 

Weird.  Who? the heck? was that?  I keep her in my peripheral in order to keep comparing her to the images in the hazy catalogue of my mind, and to maintain avoidance.  I realize I’m done.  Done trying to figure it out and decide to let it go.  Oh and done shopping, so I head to the cash.

There she is again.  In the lane beside me.  Loading up her cart.  We’re going to be through at the same time.  Lots of eye contact and more chit chat ensues.  Gahd, soOO much chit chat.  Me there, wondering if she has any inkling that I’m at stage 5 of total recognition failure.  The stage where you know it’s going to completely consume you until 4a.m. when you suddenly jolt upright and say aloud, Jane Doe, and collapse in relief.  Too bad her name isn’t Jane Doe.  This would be over right now if it were, I wish to myself.

So we start walking out together.  “Any big summer plans?” I ask.

“Not really.  No not really too much,” she says, “we’re sooo busy this week.  It’s window cleaning season <ding> and a lot of clients have asked us to do some spring cleaning things around their homes, so it’s hard to foresee a time when things will let up, you know?” she asks rhetorically.

I nod and wonder if I’m glowing under the illumination of the moon size LIGHT BULB and WHOOP WHOOP that just went off above my head.  She’s one of the two housekeepers.

“Oh, this is my daughter, X (yeah, her name went in one ear and out the other as I basked in the relief of realizing the blonde close talker is my cleaner),”  she says.  “X, this is Norma, the lady I was telling you all about … the one in the Army who travels all over the world to neat places like Africa.  She was just in Africa.  So neat.  And South America too.” She turns to me.  “That’s right eh, you were in South America as well.  AND she goes to Queen’s and has a little boy named Zach.”  She turns back to X.  “Neat eh?”

Neat.  I picture her cleaning the mementoes I’ve collected this past year during my travels to cities on five different continents.  Wondering if she ever thinks “Goddamn knickknacks … I hate dusting,” because you know, that is so totally what I would be thinking.  Nahhh, judging by the enthusiastic expression of “neats” she has formed other far more positive opinions of who I must be based on what I own. 

After a few more brief and relevant (on my part) pleasantries, that include my own order for window cleaning, we part ways.

I load my car and I contemplate.   I wonder what story my possessions tell her.  And I think about her being in my home every other week.  I wonder if she notices the tears on my pillow, senses the doom I routinely feel on account of the stress of my life, or if she just sees my things and rationalizes them in a way that makes sense for her.  World travelling over-achieving super-human. 

Neat.

And I realize, to her, the stranger in my house . . . is me. 

“That’s not how it works,” she discovered … “you can’t nominate another, you can only apply for yourself.”

Her name was picked!!!  Yippee!

I couldn’t be there to watch, but I thought of her during the time she was running.

She looks more thrilled and honoured than I could have imagined.

Marj’s life is a collective of experiences in service, generousity, and grace.  I am touched she would think of me as worthy to carry the torch.  Random or not, it is so fitting that she was picked.

But I don’t believe it’s random.

It’s karma.

Yay Marj!