Trying to wrap up

Sitting at home in Bakersfield, trying to wrap up the last of the applications (JJF), but since my mind has been really distracted, I'm trying to at least be distracted by doing something useful, namely, the accounting for expenditures done in Haiti.

Of the 3 kids, I've now sent out AV and MJ's applications by Fedex, and emailed the pdf's to someone who'll send them on to the appropriate government office. JJF's application is the last of the 3, and I must admit, one that has been hard to focus on. Distraction is my ever present enemy.

My sister called me the other day and asked how AV was doing, and I have to admit that I don't know. Since that scary voicemail a week and a half ago, I haven't heard anything good or bad. I hope that means he's doing ok.

Hopefully in the next day or two, I'll finish JJF's application, and turn in the accounting, and get on with preparing for an entirely different kind of work in Boston for the next 6 weeks, which will be consuming in its own way.

Still, I've stayed in touch with By, and I hope to be able to help or advise him with anything that comes up while I'm there.

Related to this, it turns out that I've escaped two burglaries. When I got back to Bakersfield, my roommates mentioned to me that the house we're renting was burgled (is that the right word?) recently, and that my roommate's laptop was taken. They didn't know if anything was taken from my room, but they did notice that the door was open, and they told me they'd left it closed the whole time I was in Haiti. I haven't noticed anything missing yet. (I left my room in a rather chaotic mess when I left for Haiti, so I have to kind of wonder if the burglars opened my door, looked inside, and realized that finding anything of value in all the mess wouldn't be worth the time.)

Anyway, it also turns out that a week ago, By came to the house and worked there during the day, along with the house staff. They left in the afternoon and locked everything, including the doors to the house and the gates to enter the premises. When By returned Tues morning, the house had been burgled. The office laptop, the house electrical inverter, and a container of gasoline were taken. Fortunately, they didn't find the other valuables that were there.

The security guard we hired works 6 nights a week, but he has Mondays off. It kind of makes us wonder whether folks in the neighborhood have been watching our comings and goings and knew that that evening was the time to break in. Or maybe it was an inside job. Hard to know.

Alright, need to get back to the work. I do intend to write more stories and observations from Haiti in the next couple of weeks, if for no other reason than to preserve my memories of the trip, and to think through them.

Please do keep praying for the 3 kids: AV, MJ, and JJF, that I'd finish JJF's application, and that the powers-that-be would look favorably and quickly on their applications, and that God would preserve their bodies, especially in the next few weeks.

Prayer request for a heart

I wasn't able to finish the applications to the US government to allow 3 kids with medical issues to enter the US. But I'm really close, and I think I can assemble everything in the next few days and send them out by email.

I arrived last night in LAX. Even going inside the airport in Port-Au-Prince was like entering another world. Large open space, clean airport lounge to wait for those waiting for flights, restrooms available to any inside that had working toilets and handsoap.

Anyway, I was picked up by S (who had flown to LA a few weeks before), and a little while into the drive, she let me listen to a voicemail she'd gotten about 1 of the 3 kids, AV, the same baby mentioned in the previous post.



AV has a serious heart valve issue and needs surgery badly. Because of his condition, his heart works a lot harder than normal, and any added strain could cause him to die. He's also severely underweight, which is apparent from his numbers (at 6 months old he weighs 7 lbs 12 oz), but also visually apparent by comparing him with his twin brother, who doesn't have any health issues and has been growing steadily.

The voicemail said that AV's condition has gotten a lot worse very recently. He really needs to get surgery soon. He's started to have rapid breathing because of fluid buildup in his lungs. If you're reading this today, Fri 6/18, or within a week of today, please pray that God would preserve his life, his heart, his body.

His application is really close to being done, but there may also be another way to get him to the US, which others are working on. Also, we'll need permission from the Haitian government to allow him to leave Haiti. So pray as well that we can get permission from both countries for him to travel very soon.

Thanks for your prayers.

Final push

My time in Haiti is drawing to a close, and there's still lots to do, some of which I hope to do in CA by email. But much of it really ought to get done today.

Please pray that I'd be able to finish well here. There's a lot on my plate, and I'm starting to become forgetful of details, little things here and there. And feeling a little anxious. And you never know in Haiti how much circumstances will allow you to get done in a day.

One little incident I had last Fri. There's a baby AV, who has a congenital heart defect, and needs an operation to fix it. He's 1 of 2 twin brothers, and his twin has been growing and is healthy, while he is severely underweight and needs a lot of care.

So his mom went to a particular orphanage to ask for help, and the directors decided to help. There's a nurse from UCLA who's been living at the orphanage for a number of months, and she's been helping to care for him. Still, as far as I know, there's been no legal documentation to show that AV is in the orphanage's care. He's living there, and his mom comes by every once in a while to see him.

They asked us to help with arranging Haitian and US permission to go to the US for heart surgery. Most of the application is done--a hospital and doctor in PA agreed to treat him for free, and there was a host family found that agreed to care for him during his stay in the US (most likely a few months).

For various reasons, I wanted AV's mom to sign a Power of Attorney (POA) form. I couldn't have the orphanage director do it, because he didn't have legal custody of AV in Haiti.

Through various conversations and questions and emails, I heard that a PA hospital would probably need a notarized signature on a POA form. I also heard (turned out I misunderstood) that a particular type of national ID card (there are 2) for AV's mom would be needed for a notary.

I'd received a 3 page POA form in English from another orphanage director, but also wanted a French translation, because any official business in Haiti is done in French. And I wanted her to understand what she was signing.

So I emailed someone at the orphanage to see if they had a French version. About a week later, I got an email with 2 jpeg images of 2 pages in French. Looking at the formatting, I figured out that I didn't have a French translation of the 1st page.

So, I used Google Translate on the first page of the English version to get a loose translation into French, and asked By, our Haitian staff worker, to revise it. And also arranged a day for us to meet AV's mom, so that we could take her to a notary.

That done, I realized that AV's mom might not be able to read French. Or might not be able to read at all (remember, about 80-90% don't finish high school). So I prepared a Creole translation, again with Google Translate, so that someone could at least read out loud the Creole version to her.

So, with English, French, and Creole versions of the 3 page POA form, I drove to the orphanage. Turns out AV's mom had a CIN, one type of ID card, but not a NIF, which was the type of ID I believed would be necessary for a notary.

Well, the reasons I had for wanting her to sign didn't absolutely require notarization. So we decided to go ahead with just a signature, along with a witness signature.

We decided to go over the form at the orphanage, at the kitchen table. The nurse was there, and a 17 year old Haitian guy (one of the orphanage kids) was there to translate for us.

I had to leave to take care of something else, and came back about 45 minutes after they'd started. The nurse had explained the basics of the medical procedure to AV's mom through the interpreter, and when I arrived, she had started on the beginning of the POA form.

Remember this is a 3 page form, single spaced, detailing all the bad things that might happen, and saying that the person signing wouldn't hold the person who was granted the Power of Attorney responsible for the bad results of any medical decisions he or she made.

So a little bit into it, we get to the word "sue", and the translator talks to her in Creole, and she replies, and the translator asks, "What is 'sue'?"

Hmm, something that was never explicitly covered in law school (or at least if it was, I didn't remember).

So I explain: "it means you won't ask a court to force these people to give you money if something goes wrong with AV."

Her response: "I trust in God's hands. Whatever He wants will happen to AV."

A little while later, we get to the end of the form, and we ask her to sign. She doesn't know how to sign her name. So I ask her to put an "X" on the signature line. She's not so sure about that. So we show her on another piece of paper how to draw an X, and she copies that slowly on the English form. Then does it again for the French form.

Clash of cultures: American medical liability forms and an illiterate Haitian woman's faith in God's hands for her son.

Anyway, please pray for me, especially for today (Wed).

First contact and celebrity gossip

My last post triggered a number of responses expressing concern for my safety. I very much appreciate the sentiment, and safety and health are certainly things for which we appreciate your prayers.

But let me hasten to add that really, much of the Port-Au-Prince area is safe. Like any big city, there are "good" parts of town, upscale neighborhoods and such and there are bad parts of town. Also, there are areas that aren't safe at night, but that are fine during the day. We've been greatly blessed in having good staff/translators who have advised and directed us on safety issues. Without them, we probably would've gotten into a lot of trouble.

Another factor also is just the large number of expats around. The UN has a very strong presence here. And all sorts of NGO's are around, including the Red Cross (from various countries), USAID, and a host of others.

Side note: a lot of them have put their logo on the tarps and tents they've distributed, so as we drive by a tent city, you can see which NGO's have been particularly well represented on any stretch of road. There's also lots of tarps without any logo. So the logo on the tarp is kind of like corporate branding, but in the disaster relief context.

Anyway, I suspect that for some of the neighborhoods we've gone to, we're the first white people ("blancs") they've ever seen. And yes, for them, Asians are blancs, just like Europeans. And from a safety perspective, this makes them curious (rather than hostile or such. This tends to be more the case in the rural areas rather than the urban ones, though there are also many urban areas where this holds.

And we try to wave and smile as we pass by, especially when we go past kids. It's kind of heartwarming to see how often they respond by waving back at us, though it's also something I've become desensitized to.

Asians are far rarer than Europeans, and while they're both in the same "blanc" category, Haitians do recognize the differences. And, judging from the depth of the curiosity I see in some faces, I suspect I may be the first Asian face they've seen in person.

Though of course, they've watched tv and movies, and sometimes they point at me and say (either to themselves or others): "Jackie Chan!" If you've ever met me in person, you'll know that I look nothing like Jackie Chan aside from us both being East Asian. (Notwithstanding any wishes on my part for anything approaching his athleticism.)

For some reason, when S and R were here before me, they'd point at R (who is Asian), and kind of wonder about her. And somebody (don't know if it was Bl, or S or someone else), started the rumor that R was the sister of Jackie Chan. And so S, especially in the past few weeks, has furthered the rumors and misconceptions by telling people that I'm the brother of Jackie Chan.

It's kind of funny, but it's also a little strange that I might be the only Asian person they'll ever see in person in their entire lives.

I suspect R got back at S by telling some Haitian kids at MOH that S was "Madame Brad Pitt". Some at MOH realized that S wasn't married, so then they thought she was Brad Pitt's girlfriend. Or other girlfriend. Or "other other" girlfriend. (Indeed, the teens here keep up with American celebrity gossip to a surprising extent.)

And apparently, she was asked by one of them why he hadn't married her. ("S, if I was Brad Pitt, I'd marry you!") S replied by saying that she'd been asked, but she wasn't sure he was the right guy for her. This provoked surprise and amazement--the concept that a woman might choose to reject an offer of marriage from Brad Pitt was a shock. And from other conversations, it seems that in Haitian culture, once a woman accepts a guy as her boyfriend, she's already almost implicitly agreed to marry him if he ever asks. So it would be somewhat surprising for her to reject a marriage proposal from any boyfriend, let alone one from Brad Pitt.

Kind of funny, but the fact that it was kinda sorta believed by these kids indicates how little contact they've had with Americans/blancs:

"You're from America--do you know ______ (insert name of celebrity)?"

What not to do in Haiti

S, By, and I visited a sort of medical halfway house for kids today. It's neither an orphanage nor a creche, but rather a place that's trying to help families in the community take care of their kids. We've been there before on several occasions, but today we heard a story. Before I tell that story here, a bit of background on the house.

They operate on a really good model. The first step is that parents who have kids with medical needs visit.

Their first response is to help the parents take care of their own kids. They do so by providing medications, driving the family to a clinic or hospital, helping them cover costs. They'll also provide education and training to the parents in how to administer drugs or such, as needed.

If the parents (or usually, just the mom) can't handle it (or if the kid's health deteriorates), then she's allowed to stay at the house with her sick kid, and the staff help the kid get the treatments needed.

If this isn't possible or isn't working out, then the parent leaves the kid at the house with an understanding that they need to make periodic visits and the kid will be returned once their medical condition no longer requires the care provided by the house.

Most of the time it works out, and often the stays are a couple of months or so. However, in some cases, the parents agree to this, say that they'll visit, and then walk away and never return. These are the sadder cases. For a handful of cases, this may have been related to the social stigma of HIV/AIDS. (Parents who have an HIV positive child don't want their neighbors and community to find out. And the needed drugs often have to be administered at particular time intervals, in particular dosages. So the mom often decides to simply abandon her child). For other situations, there are all sorts of other reasons why they do so.

But in any case, it's a good model. Stands somewhat in contrast to orphanages in that the goal is to empower parents to take care of their kids, rather than providing a place for parents to give up some or all of their responsibility for their children.

Anyway, unrelated to the above is the story I meant to tell. It's a story we heard from a guy who was there at the house. Within 20 minutes of meeting him, we hear this story from him.

He tells us that a pastor left a bank to go to the Nissan car dealership to buy a car. He was with a bodyguard. Group of guys stopped him on the street just outside the dealership, killed him and the bodyguard, took the money and left.

We're all a little shocked. The guy was a pastor. And he had a bodyguard. And he was robbed and killed just outside the place where he was going to buy a car, which is a busy open public street that all of us have been on many times in the past.

Later, in the car, By (our Haitian staff, who also translates when needed) tells us that he'd heard the story before from others. And he was familiar with this type of story, because it's happened a number of times. What he thought had happened was this:

The pastor had gone to the bank to withdraw the money to buy the car (don't know how many thousands of dollars it was). What almost certainly happened was that an unscrupulous bank employees saw the amount of the withdrawal, and made a call on his cell phone to someone outside, gave him a description of the pastor, and told him that this guy had a lot of cash on him. The person who received the call gathered some friends or gangsters or such, took their guns, and followed after the pastor and the bodyguard. They probably killed the bodyguard first, then killed the pastor, took the money, and got away.

The 3 expats in the car had different responses. Dr. M, who was with us at the time, remarked that it sounded like something the mob in a particular country would do. She's from a country geographically close to that country, and has traveled much around the world. Still, it was a little bit surprising to S and I that this was her reaction.

S thought about how it sort of showed that there was good reason for the fear and suspicion that she's been told about by locals, and that she's seen in different ways herself. This is a big underlying component of the culture.

She also commented that the Lord seems to have put in her in different cultures where she's had to actively resist different cultural currents. In the city she's from, she feels that materialism is a huge thing, and shI e saw it, and really felt she had to actively work at not becoming the same way. And perhaps here, she'll need to work at not becoming fearful, suspicious, distrustful of others (while at the same time trying to learn to live as others do, including taking appropriate precautions).

It also reminded her that there's some amount of money that people would be willing to kill for. I asked By whether he knew whether or not the bodyguard had a gun. By didn't know, but thought it wouldn't have made a difference even if he did. The people who killed the pastor and the bodyguard wouldn't have been deterred by a bodyguard with a gun--they would've killed him first, to eliminate the threat and to make it harder for the pastor to communicate with others, then probably demanded the money from the pastor.

I thought of how the problem came from the failure of a good consumer financial system. The banks, which you can see every once in a while on the street, always have huge long lines. There's no checking system that I've seen, and there's not many places that take credit cards (restaurants and stores for expats being the exception). Wire transfers are possible, though (don't know whether the percentage they take for the transfer is a reasonable rate or not). Still, this pastor wanted to buy a car, and decided (and apparently, from By, isn't the only one who has done so) that he'd withdraw cash from a bank to buy the car.

I thought a bit about why credit cards and checks aren't used here. One of the contributing factors, I'd guess, is the lack of street addresses. You can't really send bills to people here, because there's no postal system, no mailboxes.

Anyway, I thought the takeaway message from the story is that carrying large amounts of cash with you is really not a good idea in Haiti. Letting untrustworthy people know that you're carrying large amounts of cash is an even worse idea.