Ministries

/ paigepugmom / Leave a comment

 

DSC_4174

This young girl in Haiti lives very much without the basics that we take for granted.  And now, when we’re chaffing at the bit about having to stay inside and social distance from our routine, I wonder how she is doing.  While we’re hoarding toilet paper like it’s the zombie apocalypse, she still has to fetch water from a common tap.  We have the luxury of Grubhub and Doordash.  Of working indoor plumbing.  We worry about the coronavirus but don’t spend any time fearing an outbreak of cholera.  I don’t mean to minimize our fears, because they are very real with very real consequences.  I am still recovering from a serious lung infection and, while I feel 100%, my body is still healing.  This coronavirus could send me back into ICU, or worse – so yes, I am concerned.

This situation is a wake-up call for the world.  Of just how interconnected we are, and how no “big beautiful wall” can keep out danger, real or imagined.  It is also showing our penchant for prejudice.  Here, Chinese-Americans are being spit on, yelled at, or otherwise verbally attacked, according to an article in the New York Times.  It doesn’t help that our “leader” insists on calling it “the Chinese virus”.

This is the time to face facts, to react with calm deliberation, and to look out for our neighbors whether they be across the street or on the other side of the globe.  We can’t directly help China or Italy, but we can stop bigots from attacking people for simply being of a certain ethnic origin.

We can stop hoarding supplies and stop the self-fulfilling prophesy of shortages.  Buy what you need, realize the supply chain is still intact and that the coronavirus does not give you diarrhea so there’s no need to turn your bathroom cabinets into your own version of Sam’s Club.  We can, if financially viable, get a take-away from a local restaurant a little more often.  We can pray for those who cannot work from home and have lost their precious income, but as an old Russian proverb goes, “Pray to God, but row towards shore”.  In other words, keep giving to your house of worship, keep donating to food banks, keep giving blood, keep supporting international aide groups.  It is all needed now more than ever.

 

 

The price of helping …

/ paigepugmom / Leave a comment

It’s a good thing to help someone, right?  I think so … but have you ever encountered a situation where, by helping one group – you’re hurting another?  This happened to me, quite by accident, and now I’m in a real quandary as to what to do.

For ages, I’ve been a blood donor … not the most regular donor, but I hit the one gallon mark years ago.  It’s important, for me, to donate blood.  I know someone who, because of her particular type of cancer, depends on occasional blood transfusions.  And it’s not just putting a face on the need for blood donations – it’s the fact I’m very popular with the Red Cross.  They call me, email me, text me … it’s somewhat akin to being stalked by a jealous ex-lover.  In defense of the Red Cross, it’s not them – it’s me.  I’m O negative, the universal blood donor type.  Anyone can receive O- but, here’s the rub, O- can only receive O- … how unfair is that?!  Anyway, because it doesn’t hurt (except the part where they stab your finger for a tiny drop of blood for iron levels testing) and I like adding to my growing collection of Red Cross t-shirts, it’s a very small and super easy task.  You just  sit there (or lay there) and read a magazine or cruise facebook for about 20 minutes.  According to The Red Cross website, one pint of blood can save potentially 3 lives, and every day (yes, every day!) 56,000 pints of blood are needed.

Here’s the unfortunate pickle in which I find myself.

Last year, I went to Haiti with the mission team from St.Timothy’s Episcopal Church.  We support 25 children in Chapeteau … a village which, well, is barely a village.  There are no roads, the shacks have no electricity and no running water.  They are the poorest of the poor.  We support local industry, we don’t go in and -shazam- build for them, we help with resources to help them build.  We go to maintain that physical connection, to show them by action rather than just words, that someone cares.  Someone out there in the big world knows and cares.  You are not alone.  That is why we go.  Last year was my first trip to Haiti and every day since, I feel changed by the experience and can’t wait for the next trip.

And that’s the problem.  That is where the crossroad of help one and hurt another meet.  As long as I go to Haiti, I cannot donate blood.  According to the Red Cross, one must wait a year after traveling to certain countries in order to donate blood.  If I go to Haiti every year, I’ll never have that one year buffer, and I’ll never be able to donate blood.

Haiti is very important to me, for many reasons – but so is being a blood donor.  I cannot do both.  I have to choose.  But how?  And who?

Culture shock

/ paigepugmom / 8 Comments

DSC_3939

Not arriving in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  That wasn’t the culture shock … it was returning back to Northern Virginia … to the United States … to the land of plenty.  A veteran of the Haiti ministry, Genevieve, gave me this first hand observation and she was right.  While this wasn’t my first trip to an impoverished country, it was my first trip to Haiti and to a situation far removed from my daily life.

Electricity.  Safe drinking water.  Running water.  Toilets.  Convenience stores.  Infrastructure.  Good roads.  Trash collection.  So much more … we have such an abundance of stuff above and beyond the  basic structure of life.  We take it for granted, we forget it’s there.

We passed people walking, riding horses or donkeys, people packed 3 or 4 on motorbikes, crammed a dozen or so into brightly painted trucks.  They balanced large buckets or bags on their head, some hands free, some steadied with one hand while holding the hand of a small child.

As we traveled further and further from Port-au-Prince, the shacks and huts thinned out.  Fewer vehicles jostled and jockeyed for progress on crowded dusty and garbage filled streets.  There was still a great deal of garbage and trash … and the road was still in fairly good condition, with a few washouts and boulders.  The countryside has been largely deforested … valued trees being cut down for cooking or turning into charcoal.  Here and there in the distance, a think spiral of smoke rose up.  Quarries shaved into the hillsides.  Footpaths crisscrossed into the distance.

This trip was a yearly visit by the Haitian ministry at St.Timothy’s Episcopal church in Herndon Virginia.  We support a church and school in Chapateau which is barely more than a collection of huts and shacks on the side of a mountain centered around the church and school.  There are no roads.  To get to Chapateau, one must travel by boat from Cange, and then up a steep and winding footpath.  It’s rough going but the people there do it because they have no choice.

Where we stayed in Cange, electricity came and went.  Sometimes there was running water, but often there wasn’t.  We learned quickly to adapt, to plug in when the power was on – to take showers when the water flowed.  But, we never once even thought of complaining … we were too humbled to even consider it.

I realize this piece is a little chaotic … it jumps around, like my thoughts and feelings.  I think about the kids who laughed and giggled as I took pictures of the chickens running through the schoolyard, of the young people who knew where we came from and how much we had, of how hard their lives were and how uncertain their futures.  As I sit here in my air-conditioned living room, everything I need either readily at hand or a click away … it’s mentally dizzying.  One emotion barely forms when another shoves it aside.

Haitians are people, just like us.  They want what we want – education for their children, a good job for themselves, respect, acknowledgment, to be happy and productive.  We have so much in common, more so than can be counted as differences.

For more information, go to the following site:  Haitian ministry

DSC_4174