I looked at him and all I could murmur back was, “God bless you too.”
He took his kids and went home. I stood in front of the open gate to our house, the girls already inside, and felt in shock. My mind whirled—not about how nice his comments were, or how sweet his words felt—but how big our God is. How big He is to orchestrate getting me to Gressier. How big He is to set up every step, polish every skill, forge every connection I needed to get me to the point of building a school for this man’s three children to be part of. And how big He is to hold my hand for every step.
When most organizations in Haiti decide to build, the first thing they do with their land is build a tall cement block wall with barbed wire on top. God clearly told me from the beginning that He did not want Respire Haiti to do this. With both Haitians and Americans advising us to protect our land and building material with a reinforced cement wall, I politely disagreed. I knew it seemed naïve and maybe even foolish, but I had to stand firm on what God was telling me.
Shortly after this decision I began to see the fruits of trusting God. We added several more pieces of land on Bellevue Mountain that were adjacent to our first acre. Imagining the cost of tearing down a wall just to rebuild another one, I began to understand more just how wise God is and ultimately how imperative it is that I trust Him and His plan for Bellevue Mountain.
EIGHTEEN
The Binder from Hell
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
—Harriet Ann Jacobs
I call it the binder from hell.
Pastor Charles was slowly flipping through the book as I peeked over his shoulder. My heart sank deeper and deeper into my stomach with each page. I knew the truth of this situation. I knew the background of my children here, but for some reason, seeing it on paper made it more real. The ink and paper made the truth hurt more. It forced me to actually see and pay attention to the real world I am living in.
Inside, we have created a record for every child in Respire Haiti Christian School. When you open this book, it’s like taking the skin off of every child in every classroom. Pastor really understood my heart when I asked him to do this.
Pastor Charles has been my friend from the first few weeks I moved to Gressier. Pastor is the husband of Madame Charles, who served as the director of Respire Haiti’s school. He is the pastor of the church at the base of Bellevue Mountain, where the first tiny school was located.
He is also the person, with his wife, Madame, who prayed me into Haiti by meeting every Sunday morning for twelve years under the tamarind tree.
And, I didn’t know this at first, but Pastor was a restavek. The stories of his childhood are haunting, but instead of feeling sorry for himself or becoming bitter and angry, Pastor has used his experiences as a restavek to fuel his passion for helping the children of his community have the opportunity to live in freedom and to be loved and valued.
He also grew up in a family that practiced voodoo. When he was thirteen years old, some Haitian missionaries came through the area and gave him a small Bible. He read it and turned his life over to Jesus. When he began to talk about his new experiences with the Lord, the community reaction was hostile, and his mother began to fear for his life, so she took him to Port-au-Prince to live with a relative, and from there it was all downhill. He bounced around from household to household, always beaten and treated worse than an animal. He remembers being bitten, starved, and forced to sleep in an outhouse.
He had no money, no family love or support, no education, and no hope for the future. At one point he went to school but was sent home one day for not having forty cents to pay his school fees. From that point he was forced to stay home and get up at three in the morning to work nonstop while he watched other children go to school. The only hope he had was the sense that God was with him. He finally was able to escape his life of abuse and slavery when a sponsor paid for him to finish school. He became a welder, married Madame, and began praying with her that they would always be in the center of God’s will. “Whatever God says” is the guiding principle of his life.
When Pastor and Madame felt God calling them to Gressier, they started meeting up on Bellevue Mountain under the tamarind tree. Madame would spread a blanket under the tree. The first time it was just the two of them. Then they brought their children with them. Soon other believers joined them to pray. They became a large group, worshiping and walking around the top of the mountain, claiming it in the name of Jesus.
Because of the strong voodoo tradition in Gressier, especially on the mountain, there was much opposition. One particular voodoo priest had given a mandate that Pastor not be allowed to build a church, and they lost a piece of property they were planning to use for a church. But God finally answered their prayers and gave them a piece of land, where the church is located today. Pastor chose Titus 2:11 as the verse for their church: “For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people” (NLT). And “all people” includes children, especially restaveks.
Since Pastor was a restavek, he recognizes them. His heart is for truth and for freedom. He understands there is a deeper story behind every child at our school. So when you peek inside the classrooms at Respire, you will see beautiful children with clean uniforms, sitting up straight and smiling. They love school, love learning, and love to be here. It seems most students would stay at the school all day if they could. But once you pull back that thick and hardened skin of protection, open the binder, and see the lines and lines of No mother. No father. Abandoned. next to the names of our students, your blood boils. And when you read the word restavek again and again, you never will be the same. As I look at the binder, I often wonder what Michaëlle’s entry would have looked like if Pastor had evaluated her situation before I became her mother.
When I look at the word restavek, I don’t think about a definition or a statistic. I don’t even associate it with particular individuals. I look at this word and think, Darkness. Evil. In the past some might have said the restavek system started out as a decent idea, almost functioning as a foster care system, where well-to-do families took in a child who was an orphan or at risk for some reason. But the system became corrupt, or maybe it was always corrupt. Children were expected to do more and more work, were treated poorly or abused, and were kept out of school.
In our school most of the children who are restaveks live with individuals who openly and religiously practice voodoo. Voodoo believes in possession, allowing a Iwa or spirit to come inside the individual’s body, otherwise known as demonic possession. We have seen in our school, and outside of it, the harm and evil that voodoo can cause by this behavior. Oftentimes those who practice voodoo allow the darkness to completely take over their lives, and their houses are riddled with abuse, alcohol, and worse.
Many times we come in and clean the bloody wounds of children who have been beaten by a rigwaz. Rigwaz is a twisted leather strap used to herd animals, but it was also used to beat slaves. And although we have seen parents beat their children with sticks or rods in Gressier, more often in our area we see restaveks beaten using a rigwaz, and these brutal whips are sold openly in the Gressier marketplace.
A teacher once admitted that she had known Michaëlle before I had moved to Haiti. “Michaëlle was in a really miserable situation,” the teacher told me. “I saw it. It was terrible. She was always working, always being treated terribly.” I’d never heard this from her before, and I looked back at her in shock. I knew this teacher had lived close to where Micha lived in the tent on Bellevue Mountain, but I just assumed that because we hadn’t spoken of it, she hadn’t ever really noticed Micha’s situation.
This unexpected conversation provoked a revelation for me—every person in Gressier knows what a restavek is, and they know which children are used as restaveks. But while most people in Gressier know it’s wrong, hardly any people in Gressier know what to do. God spoke clearly to my heart in that next moment, saying,
Point them to Me. Point them to justice. Point them to freedom. Show them how to fight for these fatherless children.
My mind raced as I quickly did the math. There are an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 restaveks in Haiti. My two girls were rescued. We have hundreds of restaveks at our school. We’re working hard, but we’re just one school in one community. We need help. We need the army of God to fight for freedom and be a voice for these children. This teacher reminded me how important it is for the entire community of Gressier, including teachers, not only to be aware of child trafficking, slavery, and abuse but also be shown how to take action, create change, and make freedom possible by treating children with dignity, justice, and love.
Our Respire staff visits and evaluates the homes of students and provides a good sense of the problems and challenges that face households in Gressier. We keep a close eye on the children, and the families and caregivers know we are watching them and keeping them accountable. We often make house calls to talk with our students’ caregivers, parents, and families.
People often ask, “Why don’t you just remove these children?” This was definitely my first thought when I moved to Haiti. Why not just take all of these kids out of these difficult, dark situations? Why not just walk over, grab the neglected child’s hand, wag my finger in the adult’s face, then let that sorry, pitiful caregiver watch the back of my head as I march away with the child in my arms, giving all the love and attention he or she deserves?
Some days this is all I want to do. I do want to swoop in and be the savior. Some days I don’t want to have a two-hour conversation with an adult about discipline after I pull a stick out of his or her hands—a stick that was just used to beat and bruise one of our students from head to toe. Some days I don’t want to have to visit the same house yet again, talking about how to discipline a child with love and respect when that child trusts no one and won’t listen to anyone. Some days I don’t want to clean the wounds of a child that was abused with a rigwaz.
It is so much harder to try to be the light of Jesus to the darkness than to be the white “savior” rescuing children. Sometimes it seems so much easier to take a child and put him or her in a place where he or she will get some good food and care.
But I have to be practical. I now understand that if I go and take a restavek out of a home, more than likely those people will just go and get another restavek and perpetuate the cycle. Suddenly I’ve just created more orphans, more homeless kids, and more restaveks. So I have to dismiss the lie that the only way to help is to spring into action and save these children by plucking them out as fast as I can.
The real truth, loud and clear, that I hear Jesus saying is this: be patient; be loving; be relational. Every day, and I mean every day, I have to pray against my flesh not to think of people who have a restavek as monsters. I want to curse and spit and yell at them for the way they treat these children—our students.
And then, again, I am reminded of the beauty and promise of education. The enemy oppresses people here by not allowing them the opportunity to understand discipline, good parenting, and most especially, children’s rights. The myths that float around, mostly grounded in voodoo beliefs, can make you laugh, but when you realize people actually believe them, it makes you sick to your stomach.
Through all of this we know our school is not a normal school. It is a place where we reach the students, but we also care for and reach out to the parents, the families, and the caregivers. We have a unique opportunity to change the thought process of adults in Gressier. That is why Respire Haiti Christian School does what it does, and that’s why we do it the way we do it.
One day I saw a boy outside the kindergarten room, standing with a group of parents waiting for the kindergartners to finish school. I approached him and bent down to ask his name. No response. I looked at him, his hands in his pockets, his eyes glued to the ground. This was a familiar scenario.
“What is your name?” I asked again. This time a mumble of something came out. I gently touched his chin to make his eyes meet mine, looked at him intently, and asked, “Are you in school?”
No response. I knew what that meant. But before I could probe any further, a man walked up and stood beside him. He told me the boy lived with him and was here to pick up a kindergartner who was a student at our school. I must have looked disgusted with the audacity of someone sending a restavek to our school to pick up a child. Just then, Pastor Charles walked up, saw my face, heard my tone of voice, and knew exactly what was happening. The three of us began to talk about the importance of all children going to school, how much our heavenly Father loves us, and how we are all children of God. Even though our enrollment was completely full, I could not stand the thought of this child coming to pick up another child from school every day for the next year. We told the boy, and the man he lives with, that his first day of school would be Monday. I saw a small grin on the boy’s face, the first sign of emotion I’d noticed.
When Monday arrived, the boy was there bright and early. His name was Jean Louis, he was thirteen years old, and he had never been to school before. As I grabbed his hand to walk him to class, it was limp and his eyes stayed on the ground. I prayed silently as we walked, Lord, show him who You are. Reveal Yourself to him. Give him courage, strength, and confidence in You. Help him to find his identity in You and not as a restavek.
Toward the end of the day, his caregiver came to pick up the kindergartner and Jean Louis. We found Jean Louis sitting with four other children and their teacher, Monsieur Michel, going over the alphabet. Jean Louis sat in the front row grinning and talking with a smile. His life—and his freedom—are only beginning.
NINETEEN
Demons in the Trees
For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness.
—Colossians 1:13 NLT
How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I asked Henry.
We were sitting together on a concrete bench at school. I had the binder from hell open on my lap, and I was asking this adorable boy a few routine questions about his family. He had this expression on his face, staring up at me, almost as if he was saying, Do you really want to know? if he was saying, Do you really want to know?
I tried again. “How many brothers and sisters do you have, Henry?”
“Two,” he finally murmured, looking at the ground and kicking at some rocks.
“Two?” I asked, just to verify.
He looked back with wide eyes, then shook his head no. “I did have three, but one of them died.”
He looked a little upset, and I didn’t want to probe, so I stayed quiet. But he spoke again. “My uncle is a voodoo priest, and he took my little brother.”
What?! A cold chill spiraled through my body, and I leaned down to listen. “How did you know, Henry?”
Then the story began to pour out of him. He’d overheard the conversation between the voodoo priest uncle and his parents, who were arguing and wanted to keep the little brother. He heard his uncle shouting that the parents owed him money and he was going to take the child as payment. So he did.
After the uncle took Henry’s little brother, he never saw him again, and he overheard his parents grieving about how the priest had killed him.
A few weeks later the voodoo priest came back again, this time for Henry. He told me how he remembered his uncle demanding that his mother give him up, just as she had with her younger son. His mother began to cry, and Henry became frightened and ran outside. He went behind the house and squatted down to pray, squeezing his eyes closed.
“Jesus, save me,” he called out. “Please help me and keep me safe,” he begged out loud.
After a few minutes Henry opened his eyes, and it took a moment for his vision to clear. Confused, he realized he was no longer at the back of his house, and he believed that he somehow had been supernaturally whisked away from that place of danger.
“Jesus saved me,” Henry said to me. I can still hear his earnest voice saying those three words. They’
re engraved on my soul.
I sat there in near disbelief. I’m sure my jaw dropped, and Henry could see the shock on my face, but he didn’t flinch, not one bit. I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to think of something light. I blurted out, “So you love Jesus?”
Henry looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Of course. He saved my life.”
I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me as I sort of nodded my head and managed to say, “Henry, you can go back to class now.” Then my head and my heart started to fight. Should I believe him? Should I not believe him? I heard his words over and over in my head and wrestled with whether it could possibly be true that Henry had prayed and immediately Jesus had physically transported him from a very evil and life-threatening situation to a place of safety. And now here he was, enrolled at our school.
I finally surrendered to the fact that this was Henry’s story. Who am I to judge whether it is true or not? But after that moment I prayed to keep an open mind and heart about what the children say. For starters, they often talk about having terrible nightmares—being pulled under the sea, hearing awful sounds, or seeing terrible things. One thirteen-year-old student told me he didn’t want to go home for Christmas break because there was a voodoo altar in his front yard and he was tired of seeing “demons jumping out of trees.”
My heart aches at hearing stories about parents paying voodoo priests out of fear, instead of paying for a child’s education. Or a child dying from malnutrition because the family owed the “spirits” too much so they continued to offer their only food to the cross in the middle of their yard. (In Haiti crosses are often related more to voodoo than to Christianity.)
There are times we see white powder sprinkled on the mountain or on the roads in the shape of circles or other symbols, most times with broken glass, candles, or even blood or bits of bone left behind. We’ve seen blood sacrifices on Bellevue Mountain involving chickens, cows, and horses. There are whispered stories about the sacrifice of children, but there are plenty of people in the global community and Haiti who deny these stories and defend voodoo as a longtime cultural practice that we should not interfere with.
Miracle on Voodoo Mountain Page 13
