Stuck in the Middle (with you)

As I am being lead behind a building to a group of small houses with tin roofs, I can’t help but think “man I wish I had a GoPro on so everyone back home could see this”- so they could see how people get by with so little.  As we reach our destination the young girl says “you pee there”.  She points to a small drainage pipe sticking out of the ground.  She shuts the tin door that has multiple large holes in it and leaves me to do my business.  Needless to say, I suck at the whole squatting and peeing over a hole thing.  I’m out of practice.  I’m not sure which collected more urine, my feet or the drainage pipe.  Although most would be disgusted, I couldn’t help but smile and miss this life.  

People have often asked what the hardest part of all of this is for me.  Surprisingly it’s not the constant poverty or need that I am faced with while in Haiti. The hardest part is being stuck between two very different worlds.  The world of consumerism and fast paced living and the world of survival and island time. The world where it doesn’t matter if you pee on your feet and hop in the car and the world where “Ew omg you aren’t getting in my vehicle like that”.  There’s a constant tug between the country I left, and the country I am currently living in.  Both have become an integral part of who I am, and I often find myself stuck in the middle between the two.  

In Haiti, the people that surround me are in survival mode.  The need is so great here and it doesn’t stop after you help a couple of people.  It’s never ending.  It’s always in front of you.  It’s hard for people who haven’t experienced this type of life to fully understand it or grasp it.  It’s hard coming from a country full of resources to a country where the government rarely (next to never) offers support to those in need.   There’s no programs here to offer assistance to families who are homeless or in need of food.  They can’t just simply sign up and be guaranteed enough income each month to at least feed their children.  Here, you can give and give until you have nothing left.  After selling all of my belongings and giving up university and the life I had in Canada to move to a developing country, I felt like a vagabond.  But here, you are the government program- you are looked at as the wealthy blan who is going to take away their problems.  You are the person who’s going to make their lives better.  They look at you with hope.  And sometimes that pressure can be a lot to take.  Back home, you are looked at as the annoying humanitarian that is constantly asking for more and more support from their community.  

How do you choose who to help? How do you decide when to stop? How do you go back to your home country and see the consumerism (that you yourself partake in) and still sleep at night? How do you swallow the pill that you’ve won the lottery of life while those you love in developing countries are laying down tonight with pangs of hunger in their bellies? It’s all so hard.  It’s something that you can never just shake.  I’ve had to learn to try to put it in the back of my mind.  I’ve had to learn how to try to shut it off.  I have to shut it off in order to continue to live in my developing home country.  I have to trick my brain into saying “it’s okay to consume.  It’s okay to buy all of these Christmas gifts and spend all of this money on decorations to make my home look pretty”.  And although I convince myself of these things at times... the guilt never truly escapes me.   I still sit and wonder how our worlds became so divided.  

I think back to families we have helped where the kids were literally eating mud and then I think of my own son who wants cookies every 5 minutes.  I think of how easy it is for me to just walk over to our cupboard and give him one when he’s hungry.  Or how easy it is for me to walk over to the sink and give him a glass of water when he’s thirsty.  Then I think of the mom who has to walk miles in her bare feet to a river to take a small bucket of water for her children.  I think of the bucket she has to carry back on her head and the game of risk she takes by giving her child that water not knowing what illnesses or infections may lie ahead after drinking it.  I think of my son being sick and how immediately I can take him to the hospital.  I don’t have to think it over it’s just second nature to take him in right away when his fever is over 100.  I think of how when I’m here and faced with an illness I can just jump on a plane and head home to our incredible healthcare system.   And then I think of the mother who has her dying child in her arms and decides there’s nothing she can do except watch her baby suffer.  She doesn’t have money for transportation to the hospital and she definitely doesn’t have enough money to pay for the hospital bill and continue to feed her other children.  So, she decides that her baby will have to die.  Can you imagine that? Then I think to all of the new clothes I just bought back home.  I think of how I’ve been “keeping up with the joneses” and how jealousy and greed easily come to me when I’m in Canada. I think of how much I now love the comforts of home and how I’ve become comfortable when I used to lead a life of being comfortable being uncomfortable (if that makes any sense at all).  I think of all that my Haitian friends have been through, and yet how much faith, hope, and positivity they withhold.  I look back at my friends in Canada and how negative and angry they become because someone simply cut them off or because the food they were served in a 5 star restaurant wasn’t cooked to perfection.  I look at how these trivial things can completely upset our day and how easily we lose hope and positivity.  It’s actually quite mind blowing.  

For any of you who have recently watched the Netflix special “Bird Box”.  The only thing I can think of after watching it is how it’s such a metaphor for the real world.  If you remove your blindfold off and are exposed to  the rawness and reality of our world it can consume you.  It takes your life and you cant go back from it.  You can’t un-see it.  

I recently read another Missionaries blog post about this same subject (which actually inspired me to write this) and what she said hit me right in the heart strings: 

“Those of us in the middle carry a pervasive struggle in our hearts.  You can’t really articulate it because it’s a kind of schizophrenic leap between guilt and jealousy, gratitude and shame, pitying others and pitying yourself, anger and sorrow, generosity and greed, a bleeding heart and a shocking coldness due to compassion fatigue.  It is a fight and we get tired of living in it often.  We want to enjoy moments and people and things, but it isn’t that simple anymore.  Our highs and delights are tempered, and your pains and sorrows often feel unworthy.” 

So, I remain stuck in the middle (with you- sorry I had too).  Learning to accept my two very different worlds that offer very different perspectives.  I remain stuck battling between abundance and need.  A battle that I will never win.  However, I know that I am blessed to be a part of this battle.  I am blessed with the opportunity to learn from both worlds.  To be able to step back and see life from one perspective or the other.  To have my heart in two places at once.