The World's Biggest Origami

Don't they say "All I needed to know I learned in kindergarten"! Well, I for one believe that.

Mark and I traveled seven states this week to get the biggest sheets of plastic cardboard you have ever seen. Left over stuff from Hurricane Katrina relief. They measure 8'x24' or for the metrics among you 2.4m by 7.2m  and we are going to do some Origami with them in a few weeks in Haiti.

After the dust is settled we hope to have three temporary houses. They will be used by earthquake victims who are going to build their new houses on the land we bought for that purpose. I sure hope that the folding will go as easy as they tell us. I have my doubts though, you should have seen us slithering in the rain trying to fold the sheets in neat packages to put on my little truck. But we got it done and the tents are now waiting in Florida for the airlift to Haiti in a few weeks.
Just wanted to share some of the pictures with you so you know what I mean with Origami.

First you do this!

Than this!

poor little truck it's flipping backwards!

than you hope to get this!

Feel free to cast the first stone

I am frustrated! I just tried to read an article written to stand still by the six month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. I just had to give up reading because it overwhelms me with this feeling of despair. Another journalist who is going to prove some points we have known about Haiti for many years. The place is corrupt, uneducated, people fight for their own good only, they protest and they wait. But what do we expect! They don’t know any better. This is all they have learned and mostly from us! Has anybody noticed that most of the “teaching” that has taken place (and I am not talking about the efforts of private mission organizations now) has been wrought with dominance from foreign military forces and greedy businesses that have and still are benefitting of the few dollars these poor people have in their hands!

I saw a picture of a helicopter in Pakistan, trying to take off with a cluster of desperate people hanging under it. That’s what's happening with Haiti. The people, at their wits end, often hamper an effort that could help them, by trying to get something out of it for themselves.

But can you blame them? How can I blame people for being dishonest during a food distribution when all they know is hunger, hunger, hunger! How can I even have angry thoughts about men and women who have children sitting at home with eyes dulled by malnutrition and who cry through the night because they have nothing in their stomach.

Just a few months ago I was telling some sick people the importance of drinking enough clean water to keep their bodies from getting sick. I felt so ashamed when they answered that they do not drink much because it makes their empty stomach hurt more. I get fed when I am there but I am a privileged person. Even our orphans are above the crowd. We feed them every day at least two times that’s not the norm in Haiti. Yes, it should be but it's not.

So now to all of us who are standing on the outside please let’s not discuss Haiti over our lunches and cry wolf with the media of this world. I know they have an important role in reporting what goes on. But let’s use our heads before we have our judgment ready.


Let’s use our education to help educate the Haitian people in how they could do better. Let’s not do it for them, but give THEM responsibility and a chance to learn from their mistakes just as we have done over the centuries that it took us to get as smart as we are now. And are we really that smart?

Jesus said “let those who are without sin cast the first stone"

I want to get out positive news about Haiti. Uplifting stories about many people who work hard to get past the problems created by the earthquake or long before that. Heartwarming accounts of new beginnings like the feeding centers we are,one by one, getting back on line. Stories of little tiny hands digging in bowls of rice and stuffing little hungry faces. Stories that you can relate to because you have given for that kind of relief. Things that you would have wanted to do if you were there.

Let's challenge the media to come up with the positive things that have happened in Haiti when the time comes for the first anniversary of the earthquake. A first annual  celebration of what can be done instead of another litany about corruption and incompetence.

I am already a little less frustrated.

Why another Blog?

According to Google there are 100 million blogs so why even bother to make another one?

Here’s my reasoning. Just like with all the wealth in the world, the people that need money the most to survive do not have any. So also with the ability to communicate: the poor don’t have a way to do it.

A few weeks back I was in Haiti with a team from Fayetteville North Carolina. I know they must have wondered how it is possible that such suffering, so close to the US, goes largely unnoticed. When you ask me I think it is because there is not enough “news value” in it. Everyone knows that there are a lot of people in the world who are hungry every day. So what’s new? 

New is that I am going to try as much as I can to get in the face of the wealthy world using a blog. Maybe no one will read it, maybe it will get some attention, I hope and pray it will.

The little baby I am holding in this picture was almost 4 months old. She was barely back to her birth weight. Her mommy was sneakily eating food in the feeding center we operate in the village of Kalbasye.  A few minutes later she tried to nurse the baby but I’m sure that her milk was not much more than water. It is a shame that  mothers like her have to feel guilty when they eat some food that was intended for their small children. She did it for her baby. Chances are that in a few weeks when I am going back, hopefully with the good news that we can reopen the feeding centers in 12 more villages, this little baby will have died. I have seen it happen way too many times lately. It makes me mad! But I have to keep my cool. I want to be taken serious for the sake of the lives of all these children and their parents. Emotional people often are not.

We did a survey for a USAID grant. I am not sure if this will get us anywhere but it’s worth trying. We found that in the area where we have or want to reopen our feeding centers, there are almost 30,000 people living in places where we would hesitate to put our dog for the night. Right now,their eyes are focused on the sky waiting for the next hurricane system that might wipe out their shelters. It doesn’t take much, it happens all the time. The grant questions were largely redundant. Questions like: where do these people buy their food in local or regional markets. These people are so poor they will rarely if ever have some money in their lives, leave alone go to the market to buy food. They will have to live of what their little garden grows and that is very limited. Maybe handful of corn every two days.

If only Haiti had something to offer to this world in terms of minerals or oil, but all they have is rock.

Rock, disease, hunger, illiteracy and since the earthquake, large piles of rubble.

But maybe we need to start to see things different. Maybe THEY are what all of us need more than anything else.

In them, maybe God is giving us a last opportunity to really make a difference, to be His Love to them. Maybe THIS is why we have all that we have.

In a few weeks my wife and I hope to become grand parents for the first time. May our little grand daughter grow up in a world that knows its responsibility towards the ones that are in need.