The Social Conscience of a Missionary

After almost an hour on back-country roads, the team finally arrives at Source Sab (Creole for a source of dirt or sand), a village where about 3,500 people, most of them children, live in huts without electricity, sharing a few water pumps and fifty outhouses. The village's only income comes from a few small wheat fields; the villagers live on rice and beans, with occasional sweet potatoes and dairy from village cows.

A blind orphan navigates her way around the village holding on to a barbed-wire fence. Another malnourished kid runs around half naked, looking like a "for the price of a cup of coffee" charity commercial.

The only school in the area, which runs through fifth grade, is about a fifteen-minute walk from the village. It costs $5.50 a month, and even though that includes one meal each day, most parents can't afford it.

"Every kid should have an education," Traci says. "They should have an ability to speak, to read and not be oppressed. That's Starbucks money, that's nothing." Traci is sponsoring three kids through ICOF and has convinced friends to sponsor two more. "I'm gonna cry soon," she adds.

Soon comes when the orphanage director shows the group where the 24 orphans sleep, in a room where he puts mattresses that they can share on the dirty concrete floor. Traci takes pictures with her "babies."

A woman in the village asks Merlie to take her child back to the U.S., knowing that her baby's future will be brighter anywhere but here. Although ICOF has managed to help only a few of these children, they all raise their hands when Dan asks who is happy.

By early afternoon, everyone is dehydrated from standing in the hot sun, and the ICOF team hustles toward the van so that they can reach civilization before sunset. School has apparently just let out, because hundreds of kids in yellow uniforms who weren't there just a few minutes before now surround the team. They follow them all the way to the van and then hang on to the windows or stand on the bumper as the van pulls off into the dust.

On the way back to the Waney compound, the van makes a quick tourist stop at the presidential palace, which has a clear view of the slums across the street and a monument dedicated to the slavery rebellion that led to the founding of Haiti. There's also a giant, million-dollar torch that Aristide built but never lit — another unfinished project. As the team gets back in the van, a motorcycle with four people on it passes by.

At Waney, ICOF hosts a dinner for six kids it's sponsoring at the school there. Each of the scholarship recipients gets a new book bag, some school supplies and a soccer ball. "Thank you, ICOF," they say in unison.

Seven-year-old Benjamin says he wants to be a pastor when he grows up. Twelve-year-old Johnny wants to be a mechanic. Twelve-year-old Rosema wants to be a nurse. Six-year-old Christelle wants to be a doctor, as do five-year-old twins Cassandra and Cassan.

Their mother may not be around to see that day. In fact, she doesn't expect to survive until the twins finish first grade, she tells the ICOF team, because a doctor told her that she's dying. Rumor has it the doctor was a witch doctor, Dan says.

Voodoo was the country's first religion. But over the years, Christian missionaries have come in and converted most of the population, and the heavy Christian influence has rendered voodoo taboo — in public, at least. But witch doctor flags still hang by the roads across the country, and many Christians consult them.

Before she goes, the twins' mother says, she wants to raise enough money to celebrate her children's graduation from kindergarten. She claims she needs $120 per child — more than the tuition of $100 a year.

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That night, Terrance tells Dan and Stephanie that ICOF needs to get more organized. Everyone on the trip should have signed a waiver, he points out, and the organization also needs to tighten up its accounting or risk trouble with the federal government. "In a lot of ways, I can tell he's used to seeing charity work," Terrance says of Dan. "He's not as new to this as people may think. He grew up around it, watching his mother and father do great things. But right now he's just getting stuff and dumping it off. He's not used to the business end of it, and it is a business — the business of helping kids.

"I think the accountability factor hasn't settled in yet for Dan because he's more used to it in Haiti than he is in the U.S., where the business factor of helping people comes first. In Haiti, the need is so great, it's all about helping people first."