HAITI -- Luc and Rosanna Joseph have worked hard to make our stay here comfortable. The area they live in would be comparable to Yorktown by Haitian standards. But it's still incredibly impoverished and lacks basic resources I've taken for granted.
Clean water for example. None of the homes have running water, but there's a Unicef well located in their neighborhood, about a quarter mile from the Joseph home. It serves the small community of about 100 people. Children gather around the well and wait their turn to slide their five-gallon bucket under the spigot and take charge of the long handle to pump. Most will balance the full buckets on their heads for the journey back home.
The water is fine for cleaning, cooking and bathing. But we Americans can't drink it. We spend the week nursing bottled water, Coca-Cola from glass bottles and fresh-squeezed juices. For us, visiting the well is fun. We get to play with the neighbor children and take pictures of them. But I can't imagine having to make this trek multiple times a day, every day to sustain life.
Flushing toilets are a great invention and a luxury you won't find in this neighborhood. The Joseph family is one of few in the area that has an outhouse. I preferred visiting it more in the daytime than at night when the flip-phone-sized cockroaches would come out and watch you from their perch on the wall. We showered under the stars using a bucket of water and a bowl.
The family had been waiting for electricity for a year. On day two of our visit there they finally got it. When they turned on the light in the middle of the day the 27 children and family started shouting "Praise Jesus," and they broke out into a song that I couldn't understand. It was very exciting.
The electrical connection still isn't strong enough to support an electric stove, though, so Rosanna, Luc's wife, will continue to cook using charcoal.
Charcoal is a necessity for the Haitians but it also creates huge problems. People harvest small trees in the mountains and don't bother to replant them, so when it rains, the water just washes down the mountain destroying everything in its path. They use some kind of burning method to turn the small trees into charcoal. Then they sell the charcoal to families who use it for cooking. Polluting the air twice, both community-wide and personally inside each home.
Providing meals is an all-day affair for Rosanna. One day we woke up to find a huge breakfast on the table. After breakfast Rosanna took a tap tap to the market to buy more food. Returning three hours later she prepared lunch, then immediately started on preparing dinner. She didn't sit down to eat with us until the dinner meal was served. Then after dinner, she and one of the girls squeezed oranges and another citrus fruit for two hours. The language barrier prevented me from learning what the other fruit was; it was a little larger than an orange and it was green. The fresh juice the next morning was delicious.
The Joseph family is very blessed; they have money for food and transportation. You don't see the tell-tale signs of malnourishment. They don't have red hair or distended bellies like some of their neighbors.
During the week neighbor children would appear at the Joseph home and sit with us on the porch. Some would quietly enter the house barefoot and leave wearing flip-flops. Before leaving for our trip our young friend Nikki Casler had a flip-flop drive to benefit the 27 orphans. She scored 42 pairs. That small act affected the lives of an entire community a world away.
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