On my third and fourth days in Haiti, I had the opportunity to accompany part of the NVM medical team as they set up a “mobile clinic” outside of a growing tent community on the edge of Port-au-Prince.

These tent “villages” are springing up all over the place here. Some of the residents have lost everything they owned. Others are simply terrified of moving back into their unstable houses. Both types of people have one thing in common: they are living on the brink.

When we pulled the bus up to the small cliff overlooking one of the tent camps and began unpacking our supplies, people streamed out of their tents and up the hill. Within minutes of our arrival, lines started to form in front of the canopy we had set up… adults on the left, parents with babies and small children on the right.

Two boys in line for the mobile clinic take cover from the hot Haitian sun.

Some people were clearly in pain. Wincing and limping, they were dragged up the hill by their friends who begged the doctors to see them first. Others waited patiently with more “routine” ailments (more on that in a minute). Somehow, word had spread that we were there to help, and for the next two days, there was a constant stream of people in line.

The doctors and nurses began sitting down with patients. Our team of interpreters worked hard to communicate medical jargon across cultural boundaries while the doctors attempted to diagnose problems and prescribe medicine accurately with limited resources and equipment.

Taking in the view

Once things were well under way, I decided to take a look around. I walked up to the small ridge overlooking the tents and took in the view.

My very first thought was how shocking it was to see so many people in such a tiny area. Hundreds and hundreds of men, women and children living in just a couple of acres.

The view from the bus of the quickly growing tent community.

This new “village” has sprung up in what was once nothing more than a dusty valley next to a dried up riverbed (click here to see the site from the air). It’s essentially just a giant trash pit, filled with rusty metal cans, plastic bags, broken glass, and now, families.

“Routine”

As I mentioned above, most of the people our team helped had “routine” illnesses. But what is routine here would be viewed very differently back in the U.S.

The NVM mobile clinic was directly above a huge trash pit.

For example, many, many people came in with complications due to malnutrition. Children were faint, weak and tired. Mothers had a hard time producing breast milk for their babies. Young women complained of a lack of appetite and severe heartburn (which can come from a lack of food).

Gastro-intestinal illnesses were common as well. With no clean water for people to drink, diseases like intestinal worms, parasites and diarrhea were rampant.

Just about everyone we saw had respiratory problems. Right upwind of this specific tent village is a cement plant spewing up a cloud of thick white dust all day long. Down among the tents, it was literally snowing white powder.

Combined with the ever-present dust and thick automobile pollution here, there are few that can last a week without developing a cough, pneumonia or a sinus infection.

And then there were the tiny, simple things that had turned into problems much more severe. Small cuts had become raging, life-threatening infections. Simple diarrhea had dangerously dehydrated children. One man had lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) in his leg simply from being bitten by too many mosquitoes.

For a lot of this stuff, you or I would simply run over to the closest Walgreens to pick up an armful of cheap medicine. We might call in sick for a day and lay on the couch eating chicken noodle soup. Or if things wouldn’t just clear up in a day, we might run over to our family doctor and have the lab run tests.

For many Haitians, none of that is even an option. Their only choice when they get sick is to simply keep moving. To suck it up.

This old man was resting after constructing a tent by hand.

Sticks and Trash

On the morning of the second day, I looked out over the tent village again. From the time that we had left the evening before, more than 25 new tents had sprung up. People were constructing more every hour. I wanted to see it all up close.

I decided that the best way to find out what life is like down there would be to get my hands dirty. So I went down with a roll of duct tape and my big, sturdy camping knife. I helped people dig holes and set up their new tents, and made a nice mess of things since I had no idea what I was doing.

While I was down there talking with people and soaking it all in, I made three simple observations.

First, the “tents” these people are constructing are quite literally made out of sticks and trash. They stick flimsy, inch-thick twigs into the ground and tie them together with leaves or torn fabric. Over the top they drape trash bags, old sheets, rice sacks… anything they can find. It’s hard to even call that “shelter.”

This boy's face is covered in white powder from the nearby cement plant (click the image to see a larger version).

Second, the women and children who have no men to help build much more flimsy structures. Several times I came across tiny, 10 year-old boys scraping the dirt with pickaxes or thin old women poking the ground with machetes. I can’t imagine what will happen to their new home the next time it rains.

Finally, I noticed the conspicuous absence of something I’ve seen in every single slum and village I’ve visited over the years… cooking fires. Nobody was boiling water. Nobody was frying plantains. People were simply sitting in their tents… Waiting.

For what? I don’t know.

50,000 More

As the sun dipped behind the clouds on the second day and we packed up our equipment, I took one last look at the tent camp. Even since that morning, it had grown.

But this tent village is only one of thousands springing up around the city. Right now, preparations are under way for a massive new tent community just a ten minute walk from the village of Chambrun (where Nehemiah Vision Ministries operates). The plan is for 50,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) to begin living there soon.

A man and woman sitting in their new home.

Like the “village” we visited by the river-bed, this place will be full of sick, weary, and hungry Haitians who need ongoing help and development. But unlike the village we visited, these IDPs will not have to rely on a single bus-load of doctors…

In fact, NVM is just months away from building a brand new hospital and kitchen/cafeteria next to their existing clinic and school in Chambrun. They will be there as a beacon of hope for this new tent community.

Imagine… Instead of sitting sideways in a cramped bus seat, patients will be able to recline in a well-furnished hospital room. Instead of relying on a bin full of medicine, they will have access to a fully stocked pharmacy. Instead of checking the horizon each morning to see if the medical bus has come, these people will know that help is always just around the bend.

Very soon, children like this one will have a chance to be healthy once more.

It is no accident that Nehemiah Vision Ministries has been led to work in Chambrun. After having an incredible impact in one small village, they are now in a position to touch the lives of tens of thousands more.

In the midst of this devastating earthquake, God is using his people to bring hope, comfort and support to the broken people of this nation.

It’s clear to me now that nothing can stand in the way when the kingdom of God starts breaking in. This world is meant to be restored, and you and I are meant to be a part of it.

Now let’s jump in and get to work… there’s a hospital to build!

About half-way through my time in Panama, I had the chance to visit a different part of the Comarca (a region home to the native Ngöbe people).  What I saw gave me a whole new appreciation for those who long to bring clean water to those who don’t have it…

For the last couple of years, Dead Wheat International Foundation has been working with the Peace Corps to build an aqueduct that will bring potable water to the neighboring villages of Kwite and Calante.  Our mission for this four-day trip was to install a sediment filter at the water catchment area two hours into the mountains.

To get to the village of Kwite, we had to take a four hour ride on a motorized canoe.  The boat’s tiny engine propelled us for a few miles along the coast before turning into the mouth of a wide brown river.

Kwite's river... a source of life and of death. (Click the image to see the full size panorama)

As we headed upstream, we passed villages on stilts, fishermen in canoes and wide stretches of dark, dense jungle.  Every minute of our journey took us farther from cell phone towers, farther from electricity and farther into the empty spaces on the map.

Hunkered down to keep my head out of the rain, I had plenty of time to reflect on just how remote we really were.  But I had a hard time concentrating with the number of distractions in the boat.

The motorized canoe we took to get to Kwite.

Every time someone shifted their weight, the canoe would rock to the side, threatening to tip us all into the muddy water.  Whenever the rain picked up, the lady behind me would open her umbrella, stabbing me in the back of the neck with its poles.  The village store owner sat in front of me, slamming down beer after beer with his son.  By the time they had each had seven bottles, they were practically yelling in my ear.

Finally, we arrived in Kwite, a village of 15-20 elevated huts perched on the side of the river.  We got out of the boat, strapped on our water-tight backpacks and started marching toward our destination…

As we trudged toward our camping site, we slipped and slid down muddy paths, climbed hills and waded through streams.  We reached our camping site as dusk was closing in.  We set up our tents at the edge of a cow pasture, less than half a mile from the aqueduct’s water source.  With headlamps shining, we tried our best to avoid stepping in the many piles of cow dung covering the area.

Steve Bliss from Dead Wheat and I installing the water filter.

Finally, after setting up our camp, we went for a quick bath in a nearby river, zipped ourselves into our tents, and feasted on a dinner of plain tuna and granola bars.  With nothing else left to do, we went to bed.

The following day we woke up, put on our wet clothes from the previous day and headed off to the water catchment area.  There, we spent a couple of hours building a makeshift sediment filter out of PVC pipes.

Later in the day we walked the line of the aqueduct to see the work that had been done by several of the men from Kwite.  Although poor, they were able to contribute “sweat equity” to the project, and had been working tirelessly to cut a path through the jungle for the pipes.

The aqueduct cutting through the jungle.

From its source all the way down to the tank where it ends, the aqueduct is roughly four miles directly through the jungle.  We hacked our way through overgrowth with machetes, plodded through muck and mud and fought with the razor grass lining parts of the path.

As we slogged down the trench beside the half-finished PVC pipeline, I thought about how significant this whole project was for the people of Kwite.  For decades, they have been drinking, cooking, washing and bathing with water from the polluted river.

Looking at a map of Panama, you can see that there are 10-15 other villages upstream from Kwite, and all of them use the river as a latrine.  Cattle droppings, trash, chemicals… they all get washed into the water.

And with no other source of potable water (except for exorbitantly expensive bottles from the city), villagers drink in parasites, bacteria and harmful chemicals every day.  Many adults lose valuable weeks of work to painful diseases.  Many children die.

So for the people of Kwite, the aqueduct isn’t just a fun project.  It’s literally a matter of life and death.

One of the villagers of Kwite.

It struck me, as we followed the line of the aqueduct down into a swamp, just how simple the whole thing is.  These people are getting sick and dying because they have no clean water.  With a little hard work and dedication, they can drink safely once again.

But as we headed back to our campsite that evening, I wrestled with the reality of it all.  Sure, it’s simple, but it still seems so huge and impossible.  I mean, it took a whole team of people months of hacking and digging to bring water to just a single village.  How can we possibly hope to bring drinking water to the millions of people in the world who don’t have it?

Eventually, I realized the truth.  It is impossible.  You and I cannot bring clean water to the entire world.  We just can’t.

But do you know what?  We can bring clean water to the people of Kwite.  We can invest our time, energy and resources in the initiatives like Dead Wheat that are already there.

We can't help everyone. But we can help them.

And when that aqueduct is done, there is another village right across the river that needs help with their water.

Sure, these villages are remote.  On the global scale they are rather insignificant.  But because the people of Dead Wheat long to live out the Kingdom of God in their part of the world, these villagers will not suffer forever.

This is a truth that has been growing in my heart for a while now.  When I look at statistics about billions of people suffering needlessly, I realize just how small and insubstantial I am in the struggle for social justice.

I can’t fix the world.

But here’s the beautiful thing.  I don’t have to.  That’s not my job.  God will restore this world.  I just need to love and care for “the least of these” (Matthew 25) that I encounter in my life.  He will take care of the rest…

At the end of our time in Kwite, we once again boarded the boat, this time headed back to the land of cell phones, TVs and tap water.  Behind us was a tiny jungle village that will soon have clean, fresh water.

To the world, it wasn’t much.  But to the villagers of Kwite, it was everything…

From October 27-November 3, Curtis Honeycutt (a WND board member) and I traveled to Chambrun, Haiti to see the work of Nehemiah Vision Ministries.

One of NVM's beautiful children.

We came expecting to see an extremely poor country and that is what we saw. We came expecting to see communities mired in generational injustices and that is what we saw.

But I don’t think either of us expected to see such incredible seedlings of life and of the kingdom of God springing up all over the village of Chambrun.

In the end, our one week trip to Haiti was at once challenging and incredibly uplifting.  The country is by far the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, but because of the work of ministries like Nehemiah Vision Ministries, I believe that Haiti has a chance…

A Difficult Road

Haiti is impoverished, barren and underdeveloped.  That’s why it’s so shocking to realize that it is right in our back yard.

Click here to read this article…

Stuck in a Rut

With our truck stuck in the Haitian countryside, I learned the true meaning of community…

Click here to read this article…

Photo Gallery: Children of Chambrun

While staying with Nehemiah Vision Ministries in Chambrun, Haiti, I got the chance to see what hope for the future really looks like…

Click here to see this photo gallery…

Culture Guide: Blending In

How does someone whose skin has been described as “translucent, ghostly, and slightly phosphorescent” deal with the intense Haitian sun? Well, I’ll tell you!

Click here to read this culture guide…

The Sleepover

After spending a night at the NVM orphanage in Chambrun, I learned some startling truths about what it really means to be an orphan…

Click here to read this article…

When Martha Mude, grandmother to 6 and the wife of a former diplomat, informed some of us at Karura Community Chapel that she was collecting food to feed starving people in her hometown, and that she was riding in a truck over 18 hours to personally deliver it, she made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.  With an endearing combination of passionate concern and unassuming simplicity, Martha has a way of taking ordinary concepts, like “love your neighbor” to extraordinary lengths.

WND: We’d like to hear about your story and your passion for the needy, but first please introduce yourself and your family.

MM: My names are Martha Lalo Mude.  I was born into a Christian family of 10 children, and I’m the fourth born.  I got married to a man from Marsabit of my own tribe.   God blessed us with 5 kids: 2 girls and 3 boys, and at this moment, 6 grandchildren.  So I’m so grateful to God.

WND: Tell us about Marsabit, the town, the district, and why you have a burden for the people here.

MM: Marsabit is my home.  I was born here 63 years ago.  I was brought up on Marsabit Mountain where it was a green place with forests.  We can grow any kind of food and fruit trees.  But as you go out of Marsabit (town), it gets drier and drier and becomes desert.  Marsabit is the biggest district of Kenya, and it is the most dry.

My father and a few others were the pioneers here.  They came from southern Ethiopia and they settled here in Marsabit.  We are a farming, agricultural tribe, called Burrji.  And the others are nomadic tribes who are around Marsabit.

I went to the Christian missionary school here for class 1 and 2.  The missionaries came in the 20^th century and converted quite a few people here.  Then I went to a government school for class 3 and 4, and I went to another district for intermediate school.  I qualified to go to high school, so I was there for 4 years and completed high school.  I had done well on my exam and I wanted to continue with education, but I couldn’t.  I went to Nairobi, but my father could not afford for me to go to school.  So that is how I opted to just be employed.

WND: How did your desire to help Marsabit begin?

Martha takes a break from sorting donated clothes before distributing them to the orphans. When older women showed up, she started pulling clothes out of her own suitcase to give away.

MM: I desired to study community studies, to come back to Marsabit and serve the community because there are so many needy people.  I’m the first girl from Marsabit to go up to high school, so I wanted to come back to help, especially girls, because the culture was demeaning the girls so much.  When you reach 14 or 15, you are just married off without you even making your own choice.  It’s the families who choose.

WND: Your work and your family took you around the world.  You say that exposure increased your desire to help Marsabit, so tell us about your time in the United Arab Emirates especially.

MM: My husband joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  He was to be posted outside of the country as a diplomat.  And so we had to get married very hurriedly.  I left my job and joined my husband who was posted to what was then Zaire, but now is the Democratic Republic of Congo.  So that is how I left my service and joined my husband.  For several years we were in Sweden, Ethiopia, and Australia.  And then our last station was in UAE, the United Arab Emirates.  Fortunately, there was an international Christian church, so we went to that church, and we learned more about the Bible and about our Christian faith.

And just one day, there was a burning within me, this desire of mine just became on fire!  God put in me the vision to serve the Lord, the desire, after the way that He placed me (around the world) over all these years, to go and serve my people.  I said, “Lord, use me as your instrument because you have done so much for me, and there are so many needy people.  How can you use me to help them?”  I was out of my country, and I could see these first world countries where people are so rich.  And the Emirates, they are so rich! They have petrol, and I could see the abundance of their wealth!  And I could see the people at home are so poor.  When I came home, my heart was broken.

WND: Now that you’ve retired and you’re back in the country, based in Nairobi, and there’s been a drought in Marsabit for 3 years, what is your vision to help?

MM: My vision became more urgent now at this moment because my children have grown, they have all gone out of the house, thank God, and now they are all working.  I said, “This is the time.” And because of this drought which has been in Marsabit for a long time and which has devastated the people.  The animals have died, and there is an acute shortage of water.  What of these ordinary people? The poor people who have no income to buy the water? And then also, food: the government gives food, but the food which reaches the very poor man, it is not in a form for eating.  If he is given just maize and beans, you need water and firewood, to cook that.

Once the feeding program in Marsabit was underway, Martha took joy in inviting strangers to come over for a meal, such as this elderly woman (center) who had approached us on the road for help.

So I’ve just been suffering inside.  The water is not there.  People bring water from very far in a lorry and sell it very expensively.  I have seen mothers who wake up at 4am and go looking for water in a very dangerous environment.  They go and can come back home empty.

So I thank God I was enabled now to mobilize other people, churches, to come together to help me to come here to start a home, a feeding program where I get these destitute, the very needy people, together and take care of them.

WND: Now tell us what you’ve done this first week on the ground in Marsabit.

MM: The [Karura Community Chapel] congregation contributed some money, and well-wishers, and a few relatives.  They gave me some money, clothing, and also we bought some medicine with the help of the church.  We have now started to put this program into action, to get these destitute children together, and it has been successful.  We started the first day with 34 of them.  We washed their legs and their hands, and we gave them meals.  They are infested with jiggers, which was very shocking, so we applied jigger medication.

WND: And we’ve seen quite the transformation!  By the fourth day, how are they doing?

MM: Yeah, a great transformation!  The children are so happy, so grateful, and they are just overjoyed.  Today was a great success because we gave them an entire bath, and we treated the jiggers and dressed them with the donated clothes.  One destitute lady who was here was singing and clapping her hands, and said (to her grandchildren), “you have come from darkness to light…now you are a light!”

Before leaving Nairobi, Martha could hardly contain her excitement at seeing her dream finally realized.

We really thank God.  God has made us successful, and we have hope for the future.

WND: What do you hope to see in the future for this project?

MM: Now we are going to form this organization, called “Partners in Action for the Needy.” So we’ll look for financial support, and material support.  And I have hope that we’ll make a big change in the life of these people.  We have even planned to have a home where we give them all care, and then we take them to school.

WND: So for a final question, what advice do you have for those people who have a dream to act on social justice issues in their own cities?

MM: I think God expects of us to help our neighbors, and more so the needy.  So please just release yourself and share and just love your neighbor.  If we love God and we love our neighbor as the commandment of God, I think you cannot really see your neighbor hungry and sick, and not attend to them.  And especially as the Lord has said, “Whoever does good unto the little ones, it is like doing it unto me.”  And he says, “Let the little ones come unto me.”  It is about bringing up these small ones in the way of the Lord and helping them grow in that way.  It will make a big impact for them to experience the love of God by others sharing.

It is really fulfilling.  It’s a great happiness, when you really help.  And you know that the sacrifice is really worth it.  That is how Christ is really.  If we are truly children of God, we should be like Christ himself, with that love, to be able to share.

Through the generous support of her friends and family, Martha is now renting a home to serve as a care center for needy families in Marsabit.  Members of Karura Community Chapel in Nairobi are currently fundraising to ensure the Partners in Action for the Needy continues its food support and jigger treatment programs.

For the last 3 years, severe drought has devastated the economy in the Kenya’s Marsabit district, resulting in failed harvests and shrinking herds of livestock.  According to one government official, The International Red Cross determined last year that 45% of the population there was food insecure and in need of relief food.  And since the rains failed again this year, they have increased their targets to support 80% of the population.

But those are just the statistics.  Let me introduce you to one person who made the drought in Marsabit much more tangible for me.

We found lots of hungry people, especially young faces, when we arrived in Marsabit.

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Barwaaqo (in the dress) and her family were timid and even scared before they got to know us.

Barwaaqo is 6 year old orphan living with her 3 siblings in her grandmother’s house.  Her family is so poor that even if they received relief food, they would have trouble buying the necessary firewood and oil to prepare it.  The government provides water cheaply, but rations the supply to a few containers a month for each household.  The rest of the time, it must be purchased at often exorbitant prices.

The lack of water and food leads to other problems for Barwaaqo besides hunger.  Bathing and washing clothes are rare privileges, and the lack of sanitation makes her susceptible to jiggers, tiny mites that live in the dust and burrow into feet and hands.  Everyone in Barwaaqo’s family is infected.  That means they don’t go to school or work because walking is painful.

When Barwaaqo’s family heard through a social worker at Gospel Outreach Assembly church that someone had prepared a free meal for them at the pastor’s home, they showed up timid and unsure what to expect.

Keeping shoes clean helps protect against jiggers, but water is often too expensive.

It was at this meal that I met Barwaaqo for the first time.  I traveled across the country to Marsabit with Martha Mude, a member of my church in Nairobi who had collected clothes, medicine, and food to help needy families in her hometown during the drought.

On my first day there, we fed 34 people referred to us by the church social worker.  When we washed their feet and hands before dinner, we discovered the jiggers and invited them to come back the next day for medicine and more food.  We weren’t sure how to start a sustainable feeding program, but with the stock we had, meals could continue for at least a few weeks.

Over the course of the four days I stayed in Marsabit with Martha, I started to recognize Barwaaqo’s recurring face in the crowd of children who came for meals and baths.  She usually arrived with her siblings earlier than the rest, and gradually they became bolder in interacting with those of us staying in the pastor’s home.

Martha’s motherly instincts came out when she took over the job of bathing each of the children.

It was clear that the food and the attention they received were having an impact.  None of them talked with us the first day, but by day three, they were running around with smiles on their faces asking us to hold them.  Both their energy and their dignity were restored.

On the final day of my visit, I witnessed a real transformation in Barwaaqo and her family.  We decided to give them full baths, new clothes, and jigger treatment in the morning before lunch.  Barwaaqo was the first to undergo the bathing process, and she patiently let herself be passed from woman to woman without even making a sound.

After it was all over, and she walked outside in her new outfit, she was absolutely beaming.  For about 10 seconds she hardly moved for fear of getting dirty again, but it wasn’t long before she was flitting around the yard watching her brothers and sister get cleaned up and receive treatment for their jiggers.

Then she discovered the mirror inside the house.  I found her staring at her clean hair and glowing skin for minutes at a time.  She would giggle, run outside with the others, then come right back to stand in front of the mirror again.

After a bath and new clothes, Barwaaqo couldn’t stop smiling.

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Barwaaqo’s youngest brother beamed whenever someone picked him up.

When I agreed to go on the week trip to Marsabit, I knew we weren’t going to solve the water crisis or even find a way to make destitute families more self-sufficient.  But I had no idea the incredible impact we would make in this one family’s life.  Barwaaqo’s youngest brother summed it up as he repeatedly dunked his hands in a basin of medicated water, just so he could be extra sure to get rid of all the jiggers; with a smile he exclaimed, “I’m being healed!”

And the healing is still happening.  Martha’s plan is to establish a more permanent care center so she can continue providing food and treatment for Barwaaqo’s family and others in the neighborhood.  Once they are healthy enough, all the kids will go to school.

After returning home, I learned that Barwaaqo’s name means “oasis” in her language, and I loved the picture it brought to mind.  In the middle of a very dry land, she unexpectedly found food and water and hope.  And in the face of daunting problems like drought and hunger, I had discovered the promise in the gift of a clean start, the joy of unlocking the potential in a girl called Barwaaqo.