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.