(This is a journal entry from last Thursday morning)
I got back from my morning run, looked at the calendar and cringed. It’s June 3rd. I have to go home in 2 months. I don’t even want to think about leaving this hospital carrying three bags, pungent images, and a tear monsoon.
Two weeks ago, in the moist heat of the afternoon, Florita, a retired nurse from California who continues to channel her energy in medical missions, wiped drips off her glistening forehead and asked me, “Gee, do you really think you can make it till August?”
I smiled because that was not even a question in my mind. There is no “making it” in my schema of this summer. My mind reads, “I only have until August. I can’t let any bit of this experience slip between my fingers.”
I realized Florita sees me through her discomfort sunglasses. It hurts her to break inside over the orphans, to shower 2-3 times daily and still stand in her own sweat, to be away from her California kitchen with its rainbow array of home grown vegetables.
And all of that is here, but that is not what I am seeing in Ayiti. Yes there is sweat, there is a cloud of wet around me when I sit, stand, clean, sleep, eat, play and work. I am surrounded by pain and poverty. I see protruding rib cages, distended stomachs, and despondent eyes. I see the quivering chest of sickness, the thick maroon blood ooze, the arm reach of desperate loneliness. But, I do not see those things because I am in Ayiti. I see hunger, fear, despondence, and pain because I am a human being living in a world that maintains misery for other human beings.
The things that sting me here in Haiti will sting me while I memorize names and pathways at my desk in my air-conditioned bedroom in St. Louis. Distance may create an illusion of separation from human pain, but if I put my contacts in, I will see it in the mirror, in the sloppy letters I scribble on pages like these, on my way to and from rooms with chairs, desks, and a lecturing professor. I realize I don’t want to leave Ayiti because it is tangible human pain. Not only can I see and feel it, I can hug, feed, clean, and hold it. I will never be done with Ayiti, never be safe from the “inconvenience” of reality for human beings who reflect my character and values to me. I don’t want to be safe or far from Haiti.
I know I have to leave eventually. I have a 8.5 by 11 plane ticket sitting in the drawer under my nose to remind me, but I know that piece of paper with a return date that makes my stomach sink is not my last flight itinerary with “Haiti” written on it.
There is a feeling when you try a puzzle piece in a spot and it slides in snuggly and that is what being in Ayiti has been for me. My life’s contours are complimentary to my position here. I didn’t have to cut off bits of me just to fit or tape pieces of cardboard on to fill in my empty spaces.
I am here and for now, I will leave my ticket and suitcases in the drawer, away from my visual field and my first thoughts. I don’t have to leave—not yet.
