Yesterday we went to the Arc Ten City, where more than 5,000 families live. It’s a city all right but a very different one from the ones back home. No electricity, no running water, no streets, no lights, no stores, no street signs…just tents so close to each others that the paths to walk are for a single line only.
In the Tent City there is a school that Mission Youth has been supporting since it opened in January (We help with the salaries of the teachers: $75 per month). As I said at the beginning of this week’s blog, this mission could be called a “Shoe Mission.” We had more than 600 pairs of shoes and a fair amount of clothing. The day arrived that all missionaries had been waiting for: distributing the shoes! We arrived early in the morning to start setting up our “shop” inside the school house (It reminded me of the one room schoolhouse of Laura Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie). We were all set: we had our “sales girls” in their posts, the donation collectors at the entrance (we charged 5 gourds = 25 cents to benefit the school) our greeters and shoe experts. Finally the doors opened!
The smiles of those children when they got their new shoes and clothes were priceless. Soon the word was out around the Tent City: “There are shoes of all sizes and styles. They even have toiletries”. The crowd started forming outside the school house. The line of children at the entrance was getting longer and longer. Within minutes the area outside was crowded, not only with kids but with adults, moms, teens, elderly, young men and women…soon the crowd started pushing and the little school room couldn’t contain all the people. There was a “run on the shoe store” like the banks experienced during the Great Depression. The crowd became too much for us and it was time to close the shop and leave!
Our missionaries were a little shaken up and very amazed to see what desperation and misery can do. It can bring out the best and the worst in us. The people at the Tent City saw “some hope, some light” — for the first time in a long time — shoes, clothes, toiletries…they were not going “home” without getting a new pair of shoes!
For all of us missionaries the experience was a learning experience, a big lesson. There we were passing out simple flip flops and T-shirts…and people were so happy with that – even fighting to get in. And us? When we need a new pair of shoes or sneakers we just go to the nearest mall, with air conditioning, beautiful floors, decorations, nice store windows…sometimes we even go window shopping just to relax and walk around. We don’t have to form a line to get in. We even can choose the color, the size, the style. Here in Haiti things are different, very different!
Once again, Haiti missions did it! A lot of lessons learned, a lot of eye-opening experiences. Life is seen in perspective. And all of this by passing out shoes, with in a crowd that became like a mob.
