HFF volunteer Ross Haskell describes his recent visit to Jamie:
Just after I boarded the plane in Miami bound for Port-au-Prince, I began thinking about how I got there. I stared out the window watching the conveyor belt jerking it’s cargo ever upwards and was suddenly overwhelmed. I started to get a bit choked up until someone sat next to me. It had been two years since I’d been to Haiti and I knew that I wasn’t going back to a place I’d known. I was going someplace I’d never been. The night before, I’d texted my wife about it:
Ross: I’m nervous about going tomorrow. Nothing will stop me from doing it, but I expect it to be pretty emotional. Also, my iPhone keeps changing color while texting. It’s some kind of international thing. I think it believes it’s smarter than me.
Jean: Don’t be nervous. Jamie will be with you and she really needs you to see stuff. I’m really jealous I can’t go!
Ross: I’m just nervous to see it. If it’s still debated, I’m going to lose it.
Jean: Debated?
Ross: Devastated–stupid iPhone! If the drive from the airport is filled with tents and rubble and, “we can’t go that way anymore,” I’m going to lose it.
Jean: Just remember this is the first chance you’ve ever had to really hear people. Listen. I hope you get to meet Junia–she is so awesome!
Ross: Ok, you’re right. I need to see the strength and not the stone.
Jean: They’re the same thing in Haiti.
I wiped my eyes, realizing that what had brought me there was the simple complicated truth of 40 years of choices. Every choice I’d ever made had been what brought me to seat 14A on American Airlines flight 575. It was freeing in a way and sad too. I was about to land in a country where people had to make a different set of choices. I expected that to put my own choices in perspective, but it was Jamie who really did that.
We were having a drink at a restaurant in Port-au-Prince and talking about the future of Haitian Families First. We’re worried about money because, even though Jamie is perhaps the most frugal person I’ve ever met (next to my 96 year-old grandmother), we still need money to help the families that we do. I, wearing an ill-fitting “Chief Finance” hat, told Jamie that she might need to make some hard choices–she might have to turn away families in need in order to ensure continued support for the ones already being assisted. Jamie’s answer wasn’t stern, but it was full of conviction. “Then you come down here and tell a mother or father that their child must die.”
Jamie, thankfully, chose not to listen to me.
I chose to learn something about the importance and reality of what this organization does.
Even though my trip was just a day or so, it was filled with examples like this one. Perhaps you’ve seen the “Roads Jamie Travels” video on this blog. What you didn’t see was the conversation we had after my terror subsided.
Ross: Jamie, even though you nearly killed me back there, I’m glad I know you. You are an inspiring person to me. I can’t believe you do this. I can’t believe you don’t want what everyone else wants: a beautiful house, a new car, nice clothes . . .
Jamie: But, I do want those things. I just want to do this too.
Choices.
NGOs all over Haiti try to help children and families, each in their own ways, each with their own beliefs and assumptions about Haitians.
HERE ARE OURS:
This is Clercine and her children. You’ve read about them here. Their faces tell a story of poverty, sustenance, and survival.
But also of dignity. This is what we see in Clercine.
In this short video, Jamie succeeds in terrifying her passenger and HFF volunteer, Ross Haskell, simply by driving on the roads she always does. Haiti is, after all, ‘the land of mountains.’