What's the Solution?

Sometiemes when we've been in Haiti in a clinic, the waiting room overflowing with sick and poor children, I want to scream, "Why doesn't the world do something?" Why is it that the suffering children of the world don't command our attention, our compassion, our action?

Calm-headed sages might take me aside and say, "Maria, fixing this problem just isn't so simple." How do you go about making life better for these children? To use a hospital analogy: if sick poor children are the patient it seems the disease requires both the emergency room and long term chemotherapy.

Aid from the developed world is one of the accepted solutions to developing world poverty. Well, not according to Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist with a book coming out called, Dead Aid. In this interview in the NY Times, when asked what she thinks has held back Africans, Moyo responds,

I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

She believes that things like capitalism, microfinancing, small businesses are the way to change a country as she says is happening in China.

Perhaps she's right and this is a better solution. In any case, how many children will have to die before things change?

Katia Needs a Job

Katia, pictured above with my dad, had successful surgery in Joliet in 2004. She had a heart damaged by rheumatic fever. I vividly remember the autumn day that we got her U.S. visa. What a time of celebration!

After recuperating for a couple of months, Katia returned to Haiti in May 2005. We see Katia when we travel to Haiti and keep her supplied with the medicines she needs.
Katia sent John the following e-mail last week:

i got a problem, i don't work i don't go to school but you know in my country the situation isn't good but i want to make something to live; i haven't no one,then i want to ask you for seconde if you can help me in that case but i let choose for me any way you give i will accept to do it.please you know i considere you as my father. i don't feel me well cause every day i stay in my house.my mother would to help me but she can't.then please try to understand me. when you stay to do nothing that's bad please thinking about that for me please. i pray god for you for give you the possibilty.god bless you.kiss for every body.

Katia concerns embody Maslow's Hierarchy of psychological needs. Now that she has her pressing health need met, she can turn her attention to higher level needs. One of these is to be productive and contribute.

Katia's note is a good reminder that we work to restore people's health in part so that they can make their unique and necessary contribution to the world.

Walls

In the past year, my 77-year-old father Ed has been to Haiti twice. These have been his first trips to the island nation. Each time, my husband John has invited dad to help escort patients back to the States.

I must admit that I have been a little nervous about my dad going, mainly because if he were to have a health problem there would be little chance that he could get adequate care. But each trip has gone well.

There's really no substitute to going to Haiti for understanding the country. Hmm. . . understanding might not be the right word to use; perhaps encountering would be better. I have spent so much time in Haiti that I was interested in what a first time visitor's impressions were. Following are some comments John made about my dad's observations.

The first morning Ed looked at me, chuckled, and said, "We are surrounded by walls." Ed had surveyed the neighborhood that morning. And he was right. There were walls everywhere. The top of the walls that surround private homes in Haiti have broken glass and razor wire embedded in cement. One would really have to want to get inside the walls to run the risk of going over top. . .The formidable walls in our neighborhood in Haiti's capital startled him since he has spent most of his adult life trying to tear down walls.

Later that first morning in Haiti we piled into a pickup and traveled south and east of Port-au-Prince to an elite suburb called Petionville. We wanted to visit the site of La Promesse, the school that had collapsed suddenly one morning in early November. This tragedy had riveted the world's attention on Haiti and its courageous people. The UN soldiers in Haiti dug through the rubble. International disaster experts were flown in. Pope Benedict sent his condolences. The world seemed to care about these Haitian students and their families.

When we arrived at the site, a small contingent of UN forces from Jordan was walking up the street from the collapsed three story building. A big empty spot was apparent on the side of the street overlooking a steep ravine. About 30 Haitians were milling about on top of broken cement, rubble, and twisted rebar. Many were staring down into the ravine. Most people were quiet. . . I wondered about crushed little bodies that may lie just beneath my dirty shoes. One mother had lost 5 kids in the crush at the school named " The Promise".

Madame Telemak, a neighbor lady, standing in the debris with us, told me she heard a loud noise at 10 AM the morning the school fell. She ran over and witnessed the panic and screaming that enveloped the neighborhood. Family members and neighborhood people dug with their bare hands attempting to free anyone they could get to.

Walls of adjacent homes that had been attached to La Promesse were hanging in various states of disarray and shambles. The walls had been partially ripped off when the school collapsed and again with the process of extrication of survivors and victims. . .After a short time, there wasn't much more to see or talk about. Helpless doesn't describe the situation. A few pictures and collective shaking of heads, and it was time to leave. . . I agree with my sagacious father-in-law. Walls everywhere, not just in Haiti, need to be removed so places like La Promesse don't collapse and crush the future for all of us.

Host Families

Haitian Hearts could not do what it does--bring children to the States for life saving surgery--without the generous contributions of host families. Actually, "generous contributions" doesn't do these families' involvement justice. For they open their homes often for months to poor children with serious medical problems from another country who don't speak English.

As you can imagine, in addition to not feeling well, these children are often afraid and homesick. In a short plane ride, they have been transported from their familar world to one that, however more prosperous, is jarringly different and filled with strangers.

Thanks to our host families, these children are soon among friends. Our families feed, hold, play with, rock and in all ways help these children make the adjustment to the States and prepare and recover from surgery. They take them to appointments, sit by their beds, and act as their surrogate parents with as much love, caring, and effort as they do for their own children.

So many dedicated families have helped Haitian children through the years, but I'd like to mention one in this post: Jim and Jane Ebel of St. Louis. Jim is a physician and Jane is an art teacher. The Ebels, who have four grown children are a close knit family, who are devout in their faith. Jim and Jane make a good team and have provided a wonderfully loving home to children from the ages of 10 months to 17 years. Jim monitors the children's health and Jane does art projects with the kids. They take them to church, to family events, and to the sights of St. Louis, as well as everything mentioned above that goes into caring for a child who has had major surgery. Actually, this list seems woefully inadequate because what the Ebels really do is make the child part of their family.

They have done this for five children and even two of the children's mothers. Jim and Jane keep in touch with some of their guests after they return to Haiti. They have really given of themselves to these children.

I think I know Jim and Jane well enough to know that they would say that they have received as much or more as they have given. In a awesome and mysterious way, isn't this how it works?The Ebel Family is an inspiring example of the principle. We thank them and so do a lot of people in Haiti.

Heurese Update

Heurese, the young woman who had surgery a couple of months ago in Cleveland, is doing very well. She is continuing to recover in Cleveland.

Heurese had a state-of-the-art artificial heart valve put in to replace her defective valve. One of the really excellent things about this new valve is that she shouldn't have to be on blood thinners for the rest of her life.

You may know that blood sometimes clots around artificial things in the body. In order to prevent this, patients with artificial valves have to take medicine that thins the blood for the rest of their lives. For people who live in Haiti, this is problematic because they have to monitor their blood to ensure that it doesn't get too thick or thin. This can be done in Haiti, but like many things, it is extra difficult. For reasons I can't explain, Heurese's new valve will not require her to take blood thinners.

Heurese is a very industrious person. With her health restored, she is helping her host family with chores and in any way she can.

She is a blessing to all of us.

Frandy

Life is very hard for poor people in poor countries. All their energy and attention is focused on survival: getting enough food to eat, having safe shelter, obtaining clean water. It's hard for people to try to better their lives or the lives of their children in these circumstances.

Once in awhile, though, you come across a person who for many reasons, is able to think of and work toward a better life. We know such a person in 20-year-old Frandy. We met Frandy seven years ago when he came to John about his heart.

Frandy lives on top of a mountain with his mother and two older brothers in the seaside slum of Carrefour, next to Port-au-Prince. He is very thin. I remember when we went to Frandy's home. We hiked and hiked and came to a two room, concrete block structure with a tin roof. Frandy welcomed us, and his mother served us Coca Cola that they had gotten for the occasion of our visit.

Frandy had a hole in his heart, and he came to St. Louis for medical care. His mother accompanied him. On the first night here, as his mother soaked up the incredible luxuries of this country, she said, "We are in paradise."

Frandy did not have to have surgery, which was a blessing. Another blessing for him was an opportunity to experience the blessings of the United States.

He returned to Haiti after a two month stay. Frandy was already a driven person who excelled in school. He was now motivated to work even harder and with the support of people in the States, he saw a way that he might attain the almost impossible goal for a poor Haitian of going to college.

Frandy's supporters paid for his education in Haiti. He studied and studied. He listened to the Voice of America. He practiced writing English through sending e-mails and speaking English with anyone he could. He became quadralingual in the process. Frandy speaks French, Haitian Creole, English, and Spanish.

He passed the Haitian equivalent of high school, a huge achievement for someone from Frandy's background. Later this month, he will take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Passing TOEFL is a requirement for a foreign student to attend college in the United States. Say a prayer that he does well, will you?

I think Frandy is succeeding because he is: intelligent and driven. These may be God-given qualities, but Frandy is making the most of them. He also has people willing to invest in him. Without this, attending college in the United States would be a cruel dream.

Frandy sees a better life for himself and his family and that vision draws him on. I admire him a lot. God willing, he will succeed.

Stop and Think Some More

I've been railing to anyone who will listen--as I'm sure many have--about the outrageous greed, arrogance, and even criminality of the corporate executives whose companies have received bailouts from us and who are using money to reward themselves with bonuses that are insane in the best of times and to buy lavishly appointed jets and outrageously expensive office furniture that doesn't even make sense. And then to justify their actions, they say things like if we don't pay these bonuses, we won't attract the best talent. The best talent?!!! You mean the talent to drive the financial system and everyone's 401K into the ground?

I remember in the 1980's when Reagen took on the welfare queens--women who were scamming the system and collecting multiple checks--regaling us with stories about a Cadillac-driving, fur wearing welfare mom. These guys from New York make her look like a piker. The sense of undeserved entitlement is mind boggling. These guys think they are playing a game--a winner's game--where there are no consequences and no matter how badly you screw up, you never lose. And in this game, we all are the bank, like in a Monopoly game, dispensing endless qualities of money whenever they want it. What kind of fantasy universe are they living in?

Apparently the same one I am and this is where this post finally relates to Haiti. For I don't want to let the above guys off the hook--they truly are criminal--but when I examine my assumptions and expectations about my standard of living as it relates to the majority of people in Haiti and other developing countries, I find my world view too similar to that of the head of Merrill Lynch. I have my comfortable, warm, water tight home, a never ending supply of food, vacations to look forward to, my own car, my own computer, and really all the books I want to buy. And the Haitians? Well, they're eating too many mud pies or not at all.

How do the terrible living conditions (to put it mildly) of the people in Haiti relate to the way I--or you--live? Well, they do, my friends, they do, even if it's as simple as that I could use more of my disposable income to buy food for people in Haiti. The more complicated, systemic reasons that the developed world's standard of living comes at the cost of those who were unfortunate to be born in poor countries is detailed in Paul Farmer's book, "The Uses of Haiti" which I will summarize in future posts.

For now, suffice to say, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Stop and Think

The picture of the above little girl is one my husband took on his most recent trip to Haiti. She lives in Carrefour, a large slum adjacent to Port-au-Prince. We have this picture hanging in our kitchen.

So one day this week, I was getting my lunch together in a hurry, kind of stuffing my face, to be brutally honest, and discontent with the offerings of our refrigerator. I turned around and my eyes caught the above picture. It stopped me in mid-chew.

How can I live my life the way I do when so many children are suffering? Why doesn't it matter more to everyone?

Painful questions with unsatisfactory answers.

Patient #136

One of the things that I'm most proud about John and Haitian Hearts for is the commitment made to patients. So despite my numbering Ronald patient #136, the fact is that he has a previous patient number also.

In 2004, Ronald and his father traveled from their home in Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince to see John because of Ronald's poor health. Ronald indeed had a heart problem, and in 2005, we brought him to the United States for heart surgery. He stayed with a wonderful family in upstate New York.

When Ronald was staying with his host family, and after consulting with Ronald's parents, this family decided they wanted to adopt Ronald. As is the case with many Haitian families, Ronald's parents were delighted that someone in the States wanted to adopt him. Life is very difficult for poor Haitian families, and the parents would love to give their children a better chance, even when it means giving them up. This is particularly true when the child has had serious health problems.

The idea of giving a child up for adoption like this is often very difficult for Americans and others from developed countries to understand. As heartbreaking and as un-ideal of a solution as it is, we would probably understand better if we spent even a day enduring what these families endure. They are doing it out of love. We need to work hard and urgently for a more just world where these kinds of Sophie's choice dilemmas don't exist.

So Ronald returned to Haiti to await the completion of the adoption paperwork. Haitian Hearts continued to keep track of Ronald so that we could monitor his heart. This ongoing contact allowed us to diagnose that his heart needed more surgery.

Thankfully, the same hospital and surgeon that first operated on Ronald are going to do the second surgery. He will once again stay with his host, soon to be adoptive, family.

Ronald's heart is very sick, so the news of his acceptance came in the nick of time. Now, we pray that the passport and visa paperwork will go quickly.

Ronald is pictured above.

Upstream and Downstream

Do you know the difference between upstream and downstream work? Sometimes they're called justice and mercy work. Upstream or justice work addresses the root causes of a problem, while downstream or mercy work concerns itself with delivering immediate help to people who need it now. It's prevention versus cure.

For example, Haitian Hearts mainly works in the downstream or mercy arena. We provide medical care to poor Haitians and bring children and young people to the United States for surgery. We respond to these emergency problems, most of which have their root in poverty. We don't more broadly address this poverty.

Some of our patients with heart problems have these problems due to rheumatic fever, a preventable disease. For rheumatic heart disease, upstream work might focus on educating doctors and people on strep throat and its treatment (penicillin) so that rheumatic fever doesn't develop. Work further upstream might be getting funds for more clinics and doctors and nurses in Haiti so that health care is more widely available.

A nun I know frequently talks to me about a friend of hers who runs an orphanage in Ecuador. This orphanage takes in mainly disabled children who have been abandoned. This seems to fall under the category of downstream or mercy work. But then it struck me: any work that benefits children must be considered upstream work, too. Children, we have so often heard, are the future. They will grow up and create the world anew. Helping children contributes to a just future, a future that is downstream for us now.

What could be better than that?

Bring on 2009!

Whoopee! Happy New Year's everyone. It's a very big day in Haiti, as January 1 is also their independence day. In 1804 on this date, the bloody, more-than-10-years-long Haitian Revolution finally came to an end, with the former slaves defeating Napoleon's finest. Haiti became the world's first and only country established through a slave rebellion.

Here's an interesting and important way that the Haitian war for independence affected American history. As Napoleon and France went down in defeat to the Haitians, the Emperor decided to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15 million dollars, or less than three cents an acre. The Louisiana Purchase, which now comprises 13 states, doubled the size of the United States.

With the loss of Haiti, called the Pearl of the Antilles for its rich agricultural output, as a French territory, Napoleon lost one of France's cash cows. Some thought that Napoleon had designs on North America, but the difficulty he had in Haiti forced him to forfeit these plans and sell the Louisiana Territory.

So the United States owes Haiti. We repaid them by not recognizing Haiti for more than 50 years, as we didn't want our own slaves getting any ideas about revolutions.

Fast forwarding to today:with four hurricanes and their resulting damage, skyrocketing food costs, widespread malnutrition and even starvation, more kidnappings, etc. etc., 2008 was not one of Haiti's better years. I guess that's true for the rest of the world too, Obama's election notwithstanding.

And on a personal level, I'm glad to see 2008 come to an end.

Let's work to make 2009 a better year for Haiti and all of us.

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."

Heurese had successful heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic on Tuesday. She had her faulty aortic valve replaced with an artificial one and an existing patch, which covers a hole in her heart, was reinforced.

There are so many factors in Heurese getting this surgery that can only be described as miraculous. Here's one of them.

Heurese has been a Haitian Hearts patient since 2001, when she first came to the United States for surgery. Since then, my husband John has been bringing her medicines and checking on her a few times a year. However, because of a family situation, he hadn't been to Haiti at all this year until November.

Sometime this summer a young man named Frandy, who is a healthy Haitian Hearts patient and who helps us with certain tasks in Haiti, entered a cybercafe in Carrefour, a huge, poor, suburban slum (if that's not an oxymoron) of Port-au-Prince. Frandy needed to get in touch with John about a patient, but he didn't have any money to buy minutes. So he yelled out as he entered the cafe, "Does anyone have a couple of minutes I can use for an emergency e-mail?" A young man sitting at one of the computers raised his hand. Frandy sat down and began typing out his message to Dr. John.

When the young man saw who Frandy was writing, he said to Frandy, "Do you know Dr. John Carroll?" Frandy responded yes. Well, it turns out that this young man was Heurese's brother, and he wanted to get in touch with Dr. John himself because his sister was very sick.

As Frandy later discovered, the brother wasn't exaggerating. Heurese was at home, too weak to walk, having sent her two young children to live with relatives. With Frandy's help, John was able to get Heurese medicines that stabilized her situation. Then later, she went to Providence Guest House in Port-au-Prince to rest and receive good nutrition until her trip to the United States.

An encounter at a cybercafe that strains the boundaries of coincidence was necessary to the chain of events that led Heurese back to the United States for life-saving heart surgery. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. As Willa Cather said, "Where there is great love, there are always miracles."

Heurese pictured above in her home in Carrefour.

Live From Haiti: A Recap

I started Live from Haiti three years ago. My husband John and I were spending several months each year in Haiti, and rather than just keep a journal, I thought I'd blog about our experiences.

In those three years, we've made several trips to Haiti and spent close to a year there. In that time, I've written about many subjects, including John's work as a doctor, babies being born, orphans, Haitian Hearts patients, adoption, miracles, Father Gerry Jean-Juste, ordinary Haitians, book reviews, funerals, and Cite Soleil.

So how did we get so involved with Haiti? John first went there in 1981 when he was in med school. He had always known that when he became a doctor, he wanted to help poor people. Haiti was it for him; since becoming a doctor, John has spent part of each year in Haiti.

I went to Haiti in 1990 with my church, which had a sister parish in Haiti. I didn't return until 2003, about a year after I met John. Besides all of his working in Haiti, in 1995, John started an organization called Haitian Hearts. In his Haitian clinic work, John kept running across children and young adults with heart problems that could be surgically corrected; however, there is no open heart surgery in Haiti. Haitian Hearts brings these patients to the United States for surgery. One of our patients, 28-year-old Heurese, will have surgery in Ohio next week.

John and I got married in 2004. With the exception of this past year, we have continued to travel regularly to Haiti. I try to help him with his work as a doctor, and we also spend a lot of time on Haitian Hearts--trying to find hospitals for patients and then coordinating the myriad of details it takes to actually bring a Haitian to the United States. In 2006. we took our involvement with Haiti to a new level when we adopted our son Luke from there. He is the joy of our lives.

A family situation has kept us mostly home this past year, but we plan to stay connected with Haiti all of our lives. I'll keep writing, too. Haiti is a place where problems are real, people need help, life is vivid. It is terrible and beautiful at the same time.

The Beat Goes On, Even Better

Another miracle happened this week. Miterlande, who could barely walk herself onto the plane in Port-au-Prince a couple of weeks ago (and in fact used a wheelchair to negotiate the airports) had open heart surgery at Provena St. Joseph on Monday. And, boy, was it successful! John drove up to Joliet from Peoria and was in the operating room. Miterlande had a badly damaged mitral valve courtesy of rheumatic fever. To compensate for its lack of function, her heart got huge. As John says and speaking in a strictly physical sense, "A big heart is a bad heart." Medical teams in the United States aren't used to seeing hearts this big, especially in a teenager.

Here are a few numbers to give you an idea of how this surgery has helped Miterlande. Prior to surgery, her cardiac output was 1.9. Once the new artificial St. Jude's valve was in place and before she had even left the OR, this number went up to 5.0, which is in the normal range. Another figure, the oxygen saturation level in her brain, or the amount of oxygen that was getting to her brain pre-surgery was 20 ("Beyond bad," said John.) After surgery and again while she was still in the OR, this figure improved to the mid-50's.

The good nurses at the hospital had Miterlande sitting up the day after surgery and on Wednesday, she was walking. Her heart is much, much happier now and this increased function improves all of her bodily systems.

I called this a miracle, and I think it is. First of all, open heart surgery is a medical miracle. I mean, they stop the heart! Then they fix the problem while the bypass machine oxygenates and circulates the blood. Then they restart the heart. It's unbelievable, when you stop and think about it.

The second part of the miracle is that Miterlande, a 16-year-old from a poor family who lives in Verette, a village two hours north of Port-au-Prince in the Artibonite Valley, where the hurricanes destroyed her mother's garden, a family that has no electricity, no running water, no computer, no car actually came to the United States, the richest country in the history of the world to have this technologically advanced surgery.

We at Haitian Hearts want to work toward a world where people like Miterlande get the health care they need without it taking a miracle. Because it shouldn't.

What to do? What to do?

A few posts back, I described some of the many problems facing Haiti that were compounded by the four hurricanes that hit the island nation. A commentator quite reasonably asked, "How about offering some solutions?" At the talk John and I gave three weeks ago, a sister asked basically the same question: "What can we do?"

Yes, it's a lot easier to detail Haiti's problem's than it is to figure out what to do about them. Sometimes I'm a little afraid by describing the many hardships in Haiti so often and so thoroughly, I will scare off people. They will shake their heads and say, "The problems are too big. There's nothing I can do." I've heard people say that Haiti is hopeless.

Well, Barack Obama had a great line in the speech he gave election night: ". . . while we breathe, we hope." Despite their hard lives, Haitians do have hope for themselves. Those of us who've had the opportunity to go to Haiti, to meet Haitians, and in some maybe small way, become part of their lives know that they are special. I'm trying to think of how to describe their specialness and all I can come up with is a bunch of cliches: hard working, hospitable, persistent, love of laughter and song, the desire to better their lives. The end result is that, as one fellow traveler put it, when you go to Haiti, you leave part of your heart there, and you can only get it back when you return to Haiti.

But you don't have to travel to Haiti to make a difference. Let me list some things that you can do.

1. Educate yourself. There is lots of stuff on line. Check out Bob Corbett's website. I will write a post about Bob's list serve soon. If you want to start with one book, I would recommend Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. I believe that there are links between our political and economic policies and habits and some of the tragedy in Haiti. This is worth learning about.

2. Examine your life. I believe that there is a connection between how we in the developed world live and how those in poor countries live. (Check out Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti for more evidence). We can all make changes (and the current economic situation may force us to) in our lives that will help not only the poor of the world, but also ourselves. Some examples: recycling, living on less and upping our charitable contributions, becoming more conscious of our choices and how they affect our communities and our happiness levels.

3. Give of your time, talent, and treasure. Giving money is an obvious way to help. I like to have some kind of personal connection to the places I give money. Here are some organizations to consider if you want to help Haiti.


The What If Foundation. This wonderful organization runs a feeding program and other programs for the children of St. Clare's parish. We have witnessed this feeding program in action; the children get good meals with lots of protein.

Partners in Health.This is the organization started and run by Dr. Paul Farmer, who has changed the way that poor people in the developing world with HIV-AIDS are treated. Which is to say, they receive treatment.

The Daughters of Charity. This international order has 32 sisters in Haiti who run feeding programs, schools, and health clinics. My husband John frequently works in their clinics and, we see the good work they do.

Hands Helping Haiti (H30). This small, effective organization works to educate children in Haiti. Education is definitely one of the keys to solving Haiti's problems.

These are just a few of the groups that do wonderful work in Haiti. If you are interested in giving money to help Haiti, I encourage you to check out their websites.

Solving the problems of Haiti so that fewer children die will take a long time. But that's no reason not to start now.

Blessings

Today, Thanksgiving Day, 29-year-old Heureuse, a mother of two young children will be on a plane from Port-au-Prince to the United States, where she will have heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic. As Heureuse has been sick for a couple of years, this is indeed something to be grateful for. We give thanks for her doctors, nurses, host family, helpers in Haiti, medical technology, and most of all for the grace of God, which animates all good things.

Many of Heureuse's fellow Haitians aren't as fortunate today. Below is a letter written by my friend Tonya Sneed. It was published in the Peoria Journal Star on November 21, 2008 and is posted here with her permission. May we all continue to examine our lives, question our government's policies, and work hard to alleviate the awful suffering of many of our brothers and sisters.

On Thanksgiving, while Americans raise their cholesterol feasting on hormone-fed turkeys raised in horrendous conditions, another atrocity is taking place. Children in Baie d'Orange, Haiti, are starving.

It's official that at least 26 children have died from severe malnutrition, a direct result of the four tropical storms and hurricanes that ravaged Haiti in August and September.

Their deaths are connected to us in ways too numerous to count. As one of many examples, consider that the U.S. government has in recent years "liberalized" Haiti's trade. Just a few decades ago, almost all the rice purchased and sold in Haiti was grown there. Now more than 80 percent of the rice purchased and sold in Haiti was grown in the U.S. Through the dumping of our heavily subsidized rice into their market, we have destroyed Haiti's food security and have run an untold number of peasant farmers out of business.

In short, we have made Haitians more hungry, not less, and have forced them to rely on the whims of the international markets.

Consider global warming. The experts agree that global warming won't necessarily cause more hurricanes, but the hurricanes themselves will come with greater intensity. That seems to be the case. My friends in Jacmel, near Baie d'Orange, have never seen such devastation. It's a cruel irony that the poorest of the poor, who don't eat much meat and who don't drive cars - things that contribute substantially to global warming - are the ones who are suffering the most as a result of the changes in global temperatures.

Consider the elephant in the room: our despicable use of public funds. We spend more than $1 billion every day on the wars and the Pentagon's budget, and yet give Haiti pennies in aid. If we could take one day off from this insanity, no one would need to starve. A billion dollars would make all the difference in the world to the people of Baie d'Orange and to all of Haiti.

But there isn't any profit for Blackwater, KBR and the other war profiteers in feeding Venecia Lonis, a 4-year-old from Baie d'Orange whose tiny body is so miserably emaciated that even our mainstream media could no longer ignore her. Perhaps the only real hope for Venecia is that this Thanksgiving we Americans open our eyes to the harsh and bitter realities of this world, especially those that are of our government's making, and demand change.

The Mystery of Haiti

As I mentioned in the last post, John and I made a presentation on Haiti to the Sisters of St. Francis of the Immaculate Conception, who live just down the street from us on Heading Avenue. The Carroll family has a long-standing relationship with these wonderful sisters. Fifty-one years ago, my husband John attended the convent's preschool. His teacher was Sister Elaine. And would you believe that exactly 50 years later, our son Luke was a student at this preschool? Guess who his teacher was? Yes, the ever youthful and superlative Sister Elaine. John and his brother served Mass at the Sisters' chapel and continued to attend Mass there as adults. I currently volunteer at the Convent and the Sisters provide Communion to my mother-in-law, who is housebound.

Earlier this year, we applied for and received a grant from the Sisters' Little Portion Grant Fund. On John's trip to Haiti last week, we used the $1,500 grant to pay for food, medicines, vaccinations, and doctor visits for poor people who go to a clinic outside of Port-au-Prince run by the Daughters of Charity.

After the Sisters awarded us the grant, they invited us to speak when their congregation met last week. We had a really good time giving the presentation. We can talk about Haiti all day, and the Sisters were such a good audience; they were rapt and asked lots of good questions. They've inspired us to try to give our talk to other groups.

One of the good questions a Sister, who had been to Haiti, asked was, "Isn't it difficult to know the truth about Haiti?" The short answer is yes, especially for non-Haitians. Haiti is such a complex place: Creole and French languages, the widespread and extreme poverty and a few very rich families, the history of 64 different classifications based on skin color, voodoo and Christianity, poor treatment by the world of nations and internal corruption, gentleness and cruelty, joblessness and a good work ethic are all intertwined together in a way that reminds me of what Winston Churchill said about Russia: Haiti "is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." There are many seeming contraditions about the place and it is hard to sort them out, interpret them. I think one of the keys to understanding Haiti is knowing that inhuman deprivation does terrible things in all kinds of way.

If you're interested in the complexity of Haiti and how that applies to the current situation, check out the following short story, "Ghosts," by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Dandicat

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/11/24/081124fi_fiction_danticat

A Haitian Reflection

John and I gave a presentation to the Heading Avenue Franciscan Sisters last Sunday. Following is a little reflection that we ended the program with.


This is Haiti

And so is this.

Life in Haiti is sometimes the same as here.

But often, it is different.

We here in the United States are so fortunate in the material sense.

We live in an orderly world with building codes and paved roads.

And plenty of doctors.

We have regular meals, plans, goals, and schedules.

We can begin to think that how we live is just the way the world is.


In Haiti, many parts of life are different. It is dirty and smells.

And too many children

Die.

When there is no electricity, schedules are set by the rising and setting sun.

Haitians hopes for the future



Are in some ways the same as ours

And in some ways different.

To get through the day.

To feed their children.

And send them to school.

To work hard so that life might be a little bit better for them and their children.

And to smile.


In the lack of structure, people hear and see God more.

They aren’t caught up as much in their own plans and in many ways have less control over their lives.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” is a prayer Haitians understand very well.

Perhaps they will be more interested in talking with a friend, singing a song, and praising God for any little blessing.

I’m fearful that in talking like this, we will be tempted to say, “In their poverty,

They really are happy.

But the poverty exacts

A terrible price.

We do have much to learn from the poor people of the world. In living in such dire circumstances, they realize what is important.

Like how great God is.

They realize what is important like we would if we were told we had six months to live.

But the poverty exacts a terrible price, a price that the developed world should not tolerate. When we turn out heads, it hurts our souls.

A Polish sister we know runs a health clinic in a very poor area. She has been to the United States and echoes Mother Teresa when she says, “Americans suffer from a poverty of the heart. So what is the solution?

Perhaps a clue can be found in the Haitian motto on the Haitian flag: L’union fait la force. Through unity, strength.

Or to put it another way, we need each other.

She needs your time and talent.


They need your treasure.


All need your prayers.

But we need them too.

To save us from shallowness, self-absorption, and materialism and lots of other causes of sinfulness and unhappiness.

To remind us that the most important thing is how we treat one another. That the Way is both a means and an end. That we are charged with bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth.

To do our part to make the world a beautiful place. For everyone.

The Real Story?

I think the way the media reports the news is sensationalistic and not always reflective of reality. (I know; stop the presses). Whenever a major disaster occurs in Haiti—hurricanes, school collapses, political upheaval—the country gets a little bit of ink in the newspaper and a few seconds of time on TV. Of course, this isn’t unique to Haiti. News all over the world is reported in this manner. We seem entranced by disasters while the more fundamental issues that create our world and affect us profoundly go unreported.

So when the school collapse in Haiti was widely reported last week with a death count approaching 90, I wondered the following things: how many children in Haiti died that day of malnutrition or diarrhea? How many died from malaria or typhoid fever? Of tuberculosis or HIV? What are the reasons Haiti is such a poor country? What are the policies and practices that keep them mired in a failed state status? Why don’t many people have access to clean water? How is the foreign aid that goes to Haiti spent? What are the well to do Haitians doing—or not doing—to make Haiti a more humane place? What are the stories of all the people who live in those two room cinder block houses across from the collapsed school?

Where is the reporting on these kinds of questions?

Obama!

Four years ago, John and I were in Haiti during the U.S. presidential election. Most Haitians we asked were pulling for Kerry. They were also highly knowledgeable, knowing that the electoral votes in Wisconsin were up for grabs. When Kerry wasn't elected, they were stoic; Haitians are used to disappointment.

Well, I wasn't in Haiti yesterday, but I know the general reaction: jubilation. The happiness of having someone who has African roots, like they do, being elected president of their powerful neighbor to the north is a huge cause for celebration. The United States isn't just any country to Haiti; thousands of Haitians have relatives in the U.S., the promised land, who send money back to their poor, trapped relatives. I would bet that per captia, more Haitians have a dream of coming to America than people from any other country in the world.

And then there's this: the president of the United States often has a more profound affect on the lives of non-Americans than he does Americans. Just ask the Iraqis. Or the Haitians.

For example, in the last 15 years, the Haitians saw one American president, Bill Clinton, restore to office the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and another American president George W. Bush, depose the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. When you study Haitian history, you realize that it's impossible to overestimate the influence, if not outright control, the the United States has over Haitians politics and governance. That is, when we pay attention or care one way or another at all.

So the hopes and promise that Obama represent are not just for Americans. The people of Haiti have a stake in these dreams too.

Adoption: Part II

I have something in common with the person who left the above comment. For 13 years, I worked for Catholic Charities, a child welfare agency, in the Diocese of Peoria. I spent five of these years as a special needs adoption worker.

What does a special needs adoption worker do? Generally speaking, we work to find adoptive homes for children in the foster care system who have become available for adoption because their birth parents' parental rights have been terminated. In my experience, 85 percent of the time the existing foster parents wanted to adopt the child, which was a good thing. In the remaining situations, we worked to find homes to adopt children who were often older, part of a sibling group, or had some kind of special need (behavioral, medical, educational, etc.). As you might imagine, this could be a challenge. There are lots of people in the United States who want to adopt healthy white infants or toddlers. That isn't always the case for older children.

When people would call to inquire about adoption, they generally fell into two camps: people who were looking for a baby or young chilld (possibly these inquirers couldn't have any biological children) and those--far fewer--who were open to adopting older children or more than one. Again generally speaking, I think it's the first group of people who pursue international adoption. I wish there was more publicity around the children in the United States who are waiting for adoptive homes. After safety, permanance is the next priority in a child's living circumstance. Children who wait, whether they are in foster homes in the United States or orphanages in other countries, long for the permanence of a loving home and forever parents.

When people are thinking about adopting a child, it's important for them to realistically consider their motivations, skills, and the kind of child they think they are best able to parent. After they have done this, they should realize that the most important consideration is what will be best for the child. It's not so much about finding the perfect child for a family as it is finding a capable, loving family for a child. The child's, not the family's, needs must be foremost.

If this sounds arrogant, I don't mean it to be. I know from my work in child welfare that, for lots of reasons, my husband and I would not be good candidates for adopting an older child or more than one child. Which raises the question, "How did you decide to adopt your child?"

Like many ventures, it seemed as if Providence was leading the way. John and I hadn't even been married a year when we met the boy who would become our son. Prior to meeting him, we hadn't talked about adopting. As far as becoming biological parents, we were both older when we married and knew that having biological children wasn't too likely. John posed the question about adopting Luke shortly after I met him. We talked for several weeks about whether we would be good parents for this little boy. We had many strengths: financial resources, the maturity that age brings (this can also be a weakness), accepting immediate and extended families, appreciation and knowledge of Haiti, a strong faith foundation, and ultimately, the belief that God was calling us to be parents to this little boy. We knew that becoming parents would mean big and often challenging changes in our lives, especially as it pertained to our travel to Haiti and the other freedoms that being childless afforded us. However, in the end, it wasn't a difficult decision.

As I mentioned earlier, our son's biological family is not known to us. I don't think there is a day that goes by that I don't think of his mother and father--what they are like, what they are doing now, how they wonder about Luke. Luke is only five, but he understands that he was in another mommy's tummy--his Haitian mommy. I would love for Luke's Haitian parents to see him. and for him to know them. It is a big wish of mine that somehow, some way, we will meet Luke's Haitian family this side of eternity.

Adoption: Part I

I do work for the Dept. of Social Services..I think it should be difficult to adopt from foreign countries.. especially when there are neglected and needy children in the USA. I know the process can be difficult in either case. Best of luck. and thanks for bringing attention to need of Haiti.

The above comment was made in response to this post, detailing the burdensome process we went through to adopt our son from Haiti. I agree with the person who made the comment, that people wanting to adopt children from other countries or from the United States should be checked out thoroughly. Children--especially children who aren't living with their biological parents--are very vulnerable and their safety must be the first priority. The process also must ensure that the biological parents of these children weren't deceived or paid money to offer their children for adoption.

The United States has procedures in place to safeguard the integrity of the process. My husband and I had to be fingerprinted and undergo a criminal background check. Actually, we did this three times: in our home state of Illinois when we began the process; at the U.S. consulate in Port-au-Prince two months before this first set of fingerprints was going to expire; and a couple of months later in Miami after we discovered that the U.S. consulate in Haiti lost our fingerprint cards. We were also interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Port-au-Prince. Had our son's biological parents been known, they also would have been interviewed by USCIS to ensure that no fraud had been committed.

While the United States government wasn't blameless in delaying the adoption, most of the fault lies at the feet of the Haitian government. I won't bore you will all the stories of bureaucratic ineptitude. I cycled between being upset about the delays and what they meant for us and more importantly for all of the children who were waiting in orphanages (and all the children who were turned away from these orphanages because they were full) and stoicism, thinking about how difficult it must be for people in a poor, black country to see all these relatively wealthy white people swoop in and "take" their children.

I have something in common with the person who left the above comment. For 13 years, I worked for Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Peoria. I spent five of these years as a special needs adoption worker. . . to be continued in the next post.

A Note to People Who Have Left Comments

I used to receive e-mail alerts when someone left a comment on this blog. I changed my e-mail a couple of months ago and even though I changed it on my blog too, the alerts stopped coming. So I apologize to those of you who have left comments. I appreciate your reading my blog and that you take the time to leave a comment.

The comments are good, and they have provoked ideas for future posts. Stay tuned.

Thanks to everyone who reads LivefromHaiti.

Miterlande

I don't know anyone like my husband John. He perseveres to get expensive help in the United States for poor Haitians dying from heart defects and disease in Haiti. Actually, perseveres is putting it lightly. It's more like he's an inexorable force that can't be stopped (to be redundant about things). Miterlande is a poor Haitian girl who contracted strep throat, which went untreated and developed into rheumatic fever, seriously damaging her heart valves. She is only 16. She has no money, no contacts and lives in a country with little to no medical care for its poorer members. Poor people in the developing world who need heart surgery aren't showing up on very many people's radar. Think about the impossibility of Miterlande, who in material terms, has nothing coming to the United States for heart surgery.

But that's exactly what's happening for Miterlande. She and her sister visited John more than two years ago. He examined Miterande and sent her to get an echocardiogram in Port-au-Prince. He returned home with a videocassette of the echocardiogram. Over the past almost two years, due to family circumstances, John has probably spent less time in Haiti than he has since he started going in 1981--only three weeks total. I have to tell you, that when a person returns to the United States from Haiti, it is all too easy to forget about the Haitians who are hoping for your help. I know this because I have done it. And even when you don't forget, the obstacles to getting state-of-the-art surgical medical care for this poor person, who is hoping against hope, that you won't forget about her, that you will try, are beyond daunting. John doesn't forget and he isn't daunted. He sends out e-mails, calls people, cajoles health care providers. Time and time again, he convinces doctors and even more challengingly, medical centers to accept patients.

This time it was Miterlande who was the beneficiary of this effort and conscience. Dr. Bryan Foy and Provena St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois have accepted Miterande. She is Haitian Hearts patient number 134. Not that we're counting or anything. Each one of these patients are precious and unique. They have God-given gifts that the world is deprived of when they die too soon. We rejoice with Miterlande and her family that she will get the opportunity--that should be, that is a right--to get the health care she badly needs.

David Foster Wallace and Haiti

What is the link between David Foster Wallace and Haiti? Well, for me, only that I planned to one day read his magnum opus, "Infinite Jest" in Haiti. I figured Port-au-Prince would be the perfect place to tackle this sprawling, diversionary, real yet unreal novel, Haiti's capital knowing something about these things as well. I thought I would get the chance to do this while the author was still alive, Wallace being a year younger than me. But, alas, this part of the plan was not to be as Walllace committed suicide last week.

Suicide seems to run counter to everything human from the instinct to stay alive to the ability to appreciate the beauty of a Monet painting to the universal experience of loving another person. For all the material comforts of the United States and all the horrible deprivation of Haiti, I believe the suicide rate in the States is much higher than in Haiti. In fact, I've never heard of a Haitian committing suicide. Haitians will do risky things like sail in structures that hardly qualify as boats, but they take these risks for a better shot at life not because they want to die.

Perhaps Wallace left a clue in a 1996 interview he gave with the Chicago Tribune after the publication of Infinite Jest. He says of the success that followed his earlier books,

"In a weird way it seemed like there was something very American about what was going on, that things were getting better and better for me in terms of all the stuff I thought I wanted, and I was getting unhappier and unhappier," he said.

Sister L, a Polish nun, who works near Port-au-Prince, has a term for this: poverty of the heart. She has a job running a clinic and feeding program for some of the poorest people in the world. But she knows there is a deeper kind of poverty, a poverty that is pervasive in the United States. I think the solution for both kinds of poverty is for people in the United States and people in Haiti to spend more time together.

I think about the children who lost their lives to the hurricane pictured in the previous post: they wanted to live. What would they say to David Foster Wallace as his spirit joined theirs? Maybe something like, "We wish you would have wanted to live too."

WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC & SAD PHOTOS AT THE END OF THIS POST

Most everyone has heard about the four hurricanes that have hit Haiti in varying spots. And probably a lot of people have heard about the devastation. Haiti is truly the Job of countries. You don't think it can get worse--awful poverty to begin with, recently skyrocketing prices for food, American politicians and bureaucrats who hold up aid, corrupt and incompetent Haitian officials --and now this: destructive hurricanes on an island with little topsoil to absorb the water and little capacity to help people before or after the storms.

What you get are shown in the pictures at the end of the post. Is there anything in the world more heartbreaking then pictures of children who have died? These children died near Cabaret, a village outside of Port-au-Prince. A Haitian-American friend sent them saying, "Don't mean to shock too much, but I wanted to share my horror." As an allegedly civilized nation and world, shouldn't we be moving heaven and earth to prevent children from dying?

If you've been feeling sorry for yourself or worrying about your problems like I have been lately, at the least these pictures should put things in perspective. Of course, this alone won't help the children of Haiti, but maybe it will lead to room in our lives for action.

As I Lay Dying

Heurese is dying in Port-au-Prince. She lays in her hovel, alone, her two young children staying with friends and relatives. She grows weaker each day. It is hard to move, hard to eat, hard to breathe.

We know Heurese because she is a Haitian Hearts patient. Seven years ago, she came to Peoria and had her damaged aortic valve repaired. At some point in her life Heurese had rheumatic fever--probably due to untreated strep throat--and the disease ravaged her valve. But now the repair has run its course; Heurese needs an artificial valve.

Unfortunately, we have no hospital that will accept Heurese. Without surgery, she will soon die.

There are undoubtably hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries who will die today of preventable or correctable diseases. We know this and in the abstract, we feel bad about it. But it makes a huge difference when you actually know one of these people. Heurese spent five months in Peoria. We have seen her many times on our trips to Haiti. We know her quiet gracefulness. We know her regal demeanor with her high cheekbones and beautiful skin. We know how she manages to dress stylishly on next to no money. We know her chubby children whom her first surgery made possible. And, so, we feel desperate that she is dying. We continue to try to find a hospital to treat her. In the absence of this, we try to find people in Port-au-Prince who will care for her in her last days.

So far, the only person who has come through for Heurese is Frandy, another Haitian Hearts patient. Frandy is in good health now. He is working hard in school with hopes to attend college in the United States. He has little money, but he is doing what he can to help Heurese, bringing her medicines and taking her to the hospital. He reports to us as to how Heurese is doing.

Why aren't there more people who care about Heurese? Why, as my husband John asks, is it so hard to save a person's life?

Above, Heurese with her daughter.

A Voice From Haiti

This is a post from 19-year-old Frandy Dejean. Three years ago, Frandy came to St. Louis where he stayed for two months and received medical care. Frandy lives in Carrefour, a very poor suburb of Port-au-Prince. He and his mother and his two brothers live in a two room house with no bathroom or running water. None of them have jobs. Frandy attends school where he is working very hard. He hopes to pass the Haitian equivalent of high school and an English proficiency test because his dream is to attend college in the United States. Frandy speaks Creole, French, English, and Spanish. No one in his family has a job; the hopes of his family rest in Frandy.

This is a bad moment for the Haitians. Most of the Haitians are hungry.

Haiti needs the world to keep it from starving. Education is unaccessible for thousands children.I think we should put hands together to help those who are in problems. (Education and medical care, food) are important to save thousands people here. Once the children find education, they may take decision for their own lives after recieving instruction.

We should struggle against violence in the slums here by helping the poor children to recieve education. Haiti needs school for the kids in all zones such as Cite soleil, Bel-Aire, Martissant and Raboto (Gonaives), Carrefour etc. We are living in Technology and it requires school to catch a better life, we can not stay in a world where most of the children don't have oportunity to go to school and to eat.

The Haitian children are calling everyone because they don't want to carry guns anymore and they don't accept to be used by someone as slave.They are malnourished.The Kids in Haiti are saying no to drug and no to prostitution and also no to gun and no to the illegal transportations in Dominican Republic. Stabilisation of Haiti depends on those specific matters "Education, Medical Care and Food.They are asking protection.

It says in the Bible "Anyone who receives the children, receives also the kingdom of God".We should give an eye on them.Thank you very much for your understanding and may God bless you.
Haiti, Dejean Frandy

A Conversation with Jesse Sullivan

This post kicks off an occasional series in which I talk with people who have some involvement in Haiti or the developing world.

Jesse Sullivan is only 23 but he already has had a very accomplished life. He has twice been a valedictorian, founded two organizations and a magazine, and won many awards. A 2007 graduate of Saint Louis University, Jesse majored in theology and international relations and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. He is currently a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at Oxford University, working on his masters in Global Governance and Diplomacy.

What may be most remarkable about Jesse, though, are not his accomplishments, but the concerns toward which he has chosen to devote his time and talent: the developing world and social justice. What was his inspiration? "I looked up to my dad's cousin Johnny," Jesse said. For the past 25 years, John Carroll, a physician from Peoria, Illinois, has spent months each year working in clinics and hospitals in Haiti, the impoverished island nation only 600 miles from Miami. [editor's note: John Carroll is my husband the subject of many of the posts on Live from Haiti] "I thought, "What I want to do is what Johnny's doing--set up clinics in poor countries.'" In high school in St. Petersburg, Illinois, Jesse was valedictorian of his class and also did mentoring. "Faith was a big part of my life. I felt called to do something with God."

Jesse's interest in practicing medicine in developing countries led him to be accepted to SLU's pre-med program and medical school. While in school, Jesse had the opportunity to spend five months working in El Salvador as a researcher, counselor, interpreter, and health clinic worker. In El Salvador, Jesse held a baby who was dying of starvation. It was a profound experience. Jesse writes movingly about this child on his blog http://www.jessesullivan.blogspot.com/.

With this first hand experience of the hardship of life in the developing world, Jesse returned to the SLU campus and founded The One World Organization, dedicated to promoting international social justice issues. One of the organization's major functions is publishing a magazine. Jesse also began thinking that he might want to work in the developing world at a broader level than medicine, where people's urgent and immediate needs are addressed, which led him to his current study at Oxford.

Having majored in theology at a Jesuit university, Jesse was exposed to all kinds of thinkers. Father John Sabrino, a Spanish priest and liberation theologist, who lives in El Salvador, has been a major influence in Jesse's philosophy.

"Father Sabrino's experiences with the poor have led him to believe that there is no salvation outside of the poor," said Jesse. "Loving your neighbor in need--that's where Jesus resides, that is how you get close to God." Loving people who are poor often involves speaking up about the truth of injustice said Jesse. But it's not just the wealthy who are saving the poor. "We can be saved by our interactions with the poor," said Jesse. "I knew from my experiences in El Salvador that I was being transformed."

Other writers who have influenced Jesse's thinking include novelist Albert Camus, particularly his book, "The Plague" and his long essay "The Myth of Sisyphus." The works of this writer whose paradoxical thoughts about God are embodied in his statement, "I don't believe in God and I am not an atheist," had the affect of strengthening Jesse's faith.

"Being faced with a challenge you can't overcome is transforming," Said Jesse. "My hope has to be in something greater than myself."

Another Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello, impressed Jesse with his Eastern-influenced thoughts about detatchment. In a world where everyone seems to be striving for something, de Mello defines happiness where you don't need anything to be happy.

In much the way that Jesse became well versed in theology while at Saint Louis University, he is becoming fluent in the language and theory of politics at Oxford. " I came to SLU and majored in theology hoping to come away with a blueprint on God, but what actually happened was that all my previously held beliefs were just broken apart. I came away with so many more questions than answers. But what it did offer me was the confidence to face people who were adamant or fundamentalist about their beliefs and know that their interpretation is just one among many ways of looking at the question. Basically, I realized that anyone who claimed to have all the answers was probably the one furthest from the actual truth. So in short, I came wanting a blueprint and got the exact opposite. After the intense year of study and learning at Oxford, "I will be able to have a debate about how the world works and I won't be able to be trumped because of lack of knowledge."

Jesse, whose dissertation is entitled, "Just National Interests: Religion's influence on U.S. Foreign Policy towards development," believes we have to build increased human dignity into our foreign policy considerations. Valuing "one life over another doesn't further your own national interests," said Jesse. Joseph Nye, the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, another influence of Jesse's, talks about how we have to start considering others' interests in the formulation of our own foreign policy.

Jesse's immediate plans after Oxford are to get some more hands on experience in the developing world. He hopes to one day be able to work in areas affecting U.S. foreign policy. Jesse believes transforming change will best come from the bottom up. "It's important to get other people involved at the community level, to establish relationships."

By any measure, Jesse's life has been a huge success. He has accomplished much and yet is aware of how seemingly intractable some of the world's problems are. His experiences have revealed to him the brokenness of the world and also the brokenness inside himself, a brokenness that is a legacy to all of us humans. His faith helps him bridge the gap between the actual and the ideal, a chasm that isn't fully reconciled this side of eternity. But there is much room for improvment. Jesse is using all of his gifts--his intelligence, enthusiasm, work ethic, faith--to prepare himself for an adult life of service to those who often aren't given much weight in foreign policy considerations or as Mother Teresa would call them, "the poorest of the poor." We wish him godspeed on all his journeys.