Break Down to Break Through

image from dailymail.co.uk




I boarded an airplane for the first time when I was 15 years old. I flew from Akron, Ohio to Miami, where I transferred to an Air France jetliner which would take me to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I would spend two weeks there as part of a group of high school missionaries, working with students at a Catholic school for handicapped children and making overnight trips to Cap-Haitien and the Albert Schweitzer hospital in the central part of the country.

This was during the rule of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the military dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist. The school which hosted our group was around the corner from the blazing white Presidential Palace, but as Americans, we were not permitted to walk on the same side of the street as the official resident. We stared at it from a distance, a symbol of the exotic, intoxicating and dangerous place we were in.

I've spent the last few days riveted by images of devastation of Haiti. The landscape is surreal. The aerial views look like a patchwork array of chalk-like debris. The view at ground level is a thousand times worse. Fearful, injured people in the streets, covered in concrete dust and blood. And those are only the ones who are mobile, freed from the rubble of the collapsed buildings.

Once again, the presidential palace serves as a symbol. A building that once stood like a big tiered wedding cake in the Caribbean sun now is flattened, as though the hand of God Himself had smashed it.

That could be a metaphor for the nation of Haiti. From the time the first European settlers arrived, it has been a land of struggle. The indigenous people struggled with the settlers. The plantation owners struggled with the black slaves they imported from Africa. The slaves mounted a revolution and liberated themselves from French rule, then struggled to gain recognition and economic parity with its neighbors. The nation has struggled against nature and hurricanes and malevolent leaders who served their own interests instead of the people. It struggled with the oft-repeated label of being "the poorest nation in the western hemisphere."

Now, Haiti faces its biggest challenge. It literally is broken -- structurally, economically, environmentally.

Yet it still has its people. Resilient. The Haitian motto: L'union fait la force -- Unity is strength.

With support -- and a lot of it -- they can rebuild. Maybe even moving beyond past shackles to build the country they deserve.

There's a phrase: "Sometimes you have to break down to break through."

Haiti has been broken. I pray this is the beginning of its breakthrough.

Here are some links to donate to Haitian relief:

https://co.clickandpledge.com/advanced/default.aspx?wid=23093

http://photos.pih.org/home2.html

http://www.state.gov/