I sit on the bench, breathing in – hands warm, fingertips perched unevenly upon ivory and ebony – noting the anticipatory curl of my fingers. I breathe out, and firmly down they plunge, eliciting a fierce and mournful cry, hammers hitting string.
In it, I can see them: their shining faces, their cheerful smiles, their eyes too knowing. My hands still in the silence of a half-rest, and my mind's eye watches as they shovel cement blocks across the road. A plaintive trill sounds, accompaniment for the horns blaring in my ears and the chatter of a busy street jarring my senses. The key changes, and dogs cry just moments away, and trash crumples underfoot, its fumes coating my tongue. Bittersweet melodies erupt from the sound board, and I see children in the rain. A dark note falls gracefully into a somber arpeggio, my fingers falling and floating and stumbling across the memories, caught in the emotional undertow.
By the end of the piece, my face is sticky with salt. I find reprieve for a moment as I lean against the instrument before me.
Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp minor was the first piece I played when I got home from Haiti. It took me a couple days before I had the courage to sit down on that bench, because I knew that all I had witnessed and endured and left behind would come crashing down on me.
Although much of what I remembered while playing that piece was touched with sorrow, what I was feeling was immense anger and frustration and despair.
We left Haiti in the midst of what were the beginnings of a lengthy period of political and social unrest brought about by resentment for a government embroiled in corruption. And I don't use that word lightly. On the Corruption Perceptions Index, an internationally recognized measure of governmental corruption, Haiti ranks 168 out of 180 countries.
In those four days we spent trying to reach the airport, I was repeatedly affronted by how that number was tangibly affecting the lives of Haitians from Saint Marc to Port-au-Prince and beyond. The protests and riots were ignited by the government's plan to increase the price of gasoline, diesel and kerosene by 38%, 47% and 51% respectively, a decision that would be highly contested anywhere in the world.
But this wasn't just anywhere. It was Haiti: a country whose poverty rates make it the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; a country where children share food and a pair of shoes, because they can't buy enough to go around; a country with the most beautiful, selfless and kind people who don't deserve any of this.
And all I could think as I played my heart out was how could they? How dare they.
Earlier in the week, before everything happened, I had made friends with one of the campers. She was actually in an older age group, which meant she was supposed to go to the following week's camp with another group of missionaries. About half-way through
the week, we had to send home the older kids who had snuck in. Unfortunately, that meant I didn't get a proper goodbye.
Then the riots stuck us in place. On Monday, the kids showed up. They walked through the gates of the compound just like they would have every other day. But today, we had to tell them their week of fun and games, privileges they don't often get to enjoy, was cancelled. When our group leader announced this to them, some left, but many stayed, wandering around the courtyard, playing with each other. So, we decided to go down and play with them, to give them back at least a small part of what their government had stolen.
And there she was. The moment I stepped into the courtyard, she found me and immediately began introducing me to her friends and showing them the clapping games and playing jump rope – all things we used to do before camp.
We took the kids upstairs to the shade of a little room just outside our dining area. She then looked at me and asked a question in Creole. I couldn't understand, so I shook my head. Then she started to demonstrate, kneeling close to the ground then standing with her arms spread then balancing on her hands and feet. She was asking if I'd play "rock, tree, bridge," a game we had taught the kids the week before.
I smiled at her and nodded showing my understanding and looked to Christine expecting that we would need to teach them. But before I even took a breath, she began speaking to her friends, making the rock, tree, bridge positions, explaining the rules of the game.
It nearly knocked me off my feet. Not only had she remembered the game we had taught her, she readily passed the knowledge on to her friends with compassion, knowing what they had missed. In that moment, despite all the wreckage and strife occurring outside the walls of the compound, a bright light poked a hole in the sorrow that consumed me.
Hope. Hope for their future. Hope for their country. Hope that these beautiful, kind, smart children would grow up to change the country that deprived them of their week. Watching as she taught her friends to play the game was like staring at a glimmering star shining out on the darkest of nights.
What we witnessed during those four extra days was more true to Haiti than anything we saw in the seven days we were supposed to be there. It spoke to the heart of why we were there.
The plight of Haiti is not just poverty: it is a people held trapped, sitting stagnant in that poverty because of the corruption and greed of leaders who are meant to lift them from it. It is a leadership that teaches its people through its own inaction that it is all right to leave your fellow men and women behind as you climb higher up the ladder of wealth and prosperity, each rung slick with the blood of those who perish in the wake of that selfishness.
But these children, the poorest of the poor, they know better. The 11 Days Blog is a testament to that. They are the gleaming stars that shine brilliantly against the deepest onyx night sky. They are the hope. They are the future. And I believe that they can change the world ... or at least the beautiful part of it that they call home.
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