Palanca

Palanca

“To give lift; to rise”

So many wonderful things happen in the world. Each and every day, in every corner of the globe, ordinary people undertake extraordinary tasks. Sometimes we see these people featured on a popular daytime talk show, or maybe a network news outlet picks up the story. Countless others go unrecognized; invisible faces sometimes doing immeasurable work, the benefits of which we may not know or even understand.  Celebrities give millions of dollars in aid money, and invariably walk away, satisfied with their high profile efforts and unwilling to be bothered by the subjective realities people face in this world. It’s the everyday people on the ground, those without recognition that make a tangible difference in the lives of those they serve.

In my four weeks at Be Like Brit, I have received countless emails, facebook posts, letters, phone calls and tweets commending me for the amazing, courageous work I am doing here in Haiti. While the sentiment is genuine, I feel sometimes as if it is unwarranted. I do this work because it is what I want to do. On many levels, I do this work for selfish reasons: It gives me a sense of purpose, and even the recognition I lament and dismiss in this very piece of writing is something that reaffirms my place in this world. I truly believe I am doing the kind of work I want to do forever, and it is exhilarating. Having stumbled for years, dare I say decades, I am where I want to be, and I am where I am supposed to be.

A very new but very dear friend recently spent some time with me here in Haiti. We were strangers when we met, but after two weeks together, we developed a bond that is somewhat indescribable; the kind of bond that develops in doing this kind of work. Authentic, genuine regard for one another is the foundation upon which this friendship is based.

This new friend shared something with me tonight and I felt compelled to pass it along. An email from her at around 9:00 this evening propelled me into a frenzy of thought and reflection, contemplation and consideration. She sent me a palanca: a letter of encouragement, meant to “give lift”, or raise one’s spirits. I received my first palanca this evening – which I appreciate so very, very much, and secretly hope to receive more of. My response to her email got me thinking, and so I felt compelled to blog about it – and even more compelled to share with you a small part of that reply. To my new friend whom I met in Haiti and adore with every ounce of my being, I wrote:

“It's funny when people express these well-wishes, don't you think? I mean, I am sure that you get plenty of your own Palancas when you are on your trips, and I am sure you likely brush them off as unnecessary or unwarranted - we're just here doing what we do because we love the work. At least that's how I feel about it. To me, this position at Be Like Brit was a gift. I am beyond honored, humbled, and so thankful to have been chosen as the program director here. I knew the experience was going to be awesome - and meeting people like you is just what my friends and I refer to as "gravy" - it's just extra - a perk - but it's what makes the experience so meaningful.”

“I don't doubt that I'll do good things here in Haiti, though I don't presume they are any better deeds than those that countless others do. I earn a salary, after all - and those missionaries who come and do it for free, doing the work that Christ Himself would be doing if he were on earth - well, I don't know how I measure up to that. The courage and the strength are not in people like me. They are in the people we serve. The people who manage to get up each and every morning and face a world of uncertainty and anxiety. The people who labor until their bones ache and their fingers bleed, just to take enough home to maybe feed their family the only meal they will eat that day. The children who laugh and smile even after enduring such horrendous loss and tragedy - the smiles that brighten my day and make me feel as though I have some purpose on this planet - as if somehow I were part of the plan all along - complete with my flaws, my shortcomings, my past mistakes, my faults. The three year old who clings to me so tight he leaves marks on my flesh yet moments later is all smiles and filled with joy and love and affection – as if somehow he’s forgotten that just two days ago he was brought to a strange place and left with strange people. Those are the courageous people - the ones who fight every day to make it to the next. Not me - no. Not the one who can retire to his room at night, crawl into his double bed with blankets and access clean water, food, and medicine. Not the one who doesn't have to worry about falling ill and being unable to purchase the very basics which might keep him healthy and alive. Not the one who could have a helicopter land on the roof of the earthquake-proof building and be ferried off to Miami in a moment’s notice to meet whatever needs I may have. That is not courageous.”


I thank my friend for her kind words, her palanca. Her palanca to me, the culmination of six or seven lines, prompted me to evaluate what it is that I am doing here. Through her palanca, I am able to say that I am in love with life for the first time in a very long time – and so her words have done far more than encourage my efforts. They have justified my being.






Thank you, SJ. And thanks for reading,

Jonathan

Process and Content

New energy is always welcome here at Be Like Brit, so when Len, Cherylann and our U.S. Director Kristin flew in for a Monday-Saturday visit, those of us in-country were excited to get to work ironing out some of the last details before we began the process of bringing children into Be Like Brit.  Our 5 day marathon of meetings produced great results, set the tone of expectations, and has us all eagerly anticipating the day when we welcome our first children in to Brit’s Orphanage.

Someone once told Len, and he reminds us of this often, that the days are long in Haiti, and there is never enough time to get things done.  I had anticipated a bit of this before moving down to Haiti, as I had experienced it in Rwanda, and cultures outside the “developed world” often operate in such strikingly opposite ways, I knew “getting things done” would likely cause me to want to pull what little hair I have left out.  With all of this in mind, Team Be Like Brit sat down to undertake the task of putting all systems into place so that soon, children can call this place home.

Our packed agenda for the week-long series of meetings covered the gamut of issues:  Specifics and minute details like databases and calendars, rotations for our medical clinic, personnel schedules and job descriptions, Britsionary visits, meal plans, rules and regulations, etc., while all important, are not necessarily exciting ways to pass 10 or so hours.  While we ironed out the specifics of these requisite realms of operating a massive building that will be filled with children, I was patiently waiting for the whole reason we are all here:  Children!  Secretly, I think we all were.

Len, Cherylann, Gama, Jonathan, Susan, Kristin, and Gilbert - Round 1!

As a master’s level social worker with previous experience abroad, along with university teaching experience for the past year of my life, I am someone who tends to pay a lot of attention to process.  I very much feel the need to plan out in a methodical way the steps and stages to all of these tasks we have ahead of us at Be Like Brit.  Gannt charts and timelines are my nerdiest friends.  Until we are in a place like Haiti, we don’t realize how rigidly our Western taught minds tend to focus on the production of something tangible, on something that can be evaluated in a very formal and official way, only to later be revised and tweaked to serve a more relevant and effective purpose.  In preparing to recruit caregivers and staff, I had stayed true to this model of objective and methodical process.  I would very soon be switching gears.

If you hadn’t noticed, Len Gengel is not so much about the process, but about content.  What this means is that Len gets things done.  In light of the fact that nearly everyone told Len he would never build a 19,000 square foot building in the shape of the letter ‘B’ on a nearly inaccessible mountain in a country which lacks the very basic infrastructures that make such a gargantuan task nearly impossible, here I sit.  Surrounded by the walls of steel and mortar, looking down over a community that he and Cherylann helped to enrich and empower through opportunities of employment and their so very generous ways, I am here.  Be Like Brit is here.  Process helps, but content got it done.  Doing it got it done.  My newest task then became: How do I get things done when everything in my education, training, experience, and mind wants to plan for the how, rather than the what?

Done. Against all odds.

One of my more stressful experiences during the past week was interviewing potential caregivers for Be Like Brit.  Our program committee and the upper echelon of the Be Like Brit Organization had gone back and forth for some time on how these caregiver schedules would be arranged.  We had gone from a three and a half day on/three and a half day off schedule, to full-time live in staff, to primary staff with what translates to caregiver aide positions.  The hypothetical arrangements were endless, and as the program director, I made the decision to recruit only women who were able to commit to a full-time live in position with part-time aides coming in.  These women would be single and have no children.  If they did have children, the youngest would be 18, or maybe even 16.  My rationale behind this was simple:  Be Like Brit does not want to break up families.  By implementing these criteria, we would be able to maintain the integrity of the families that are already in tact rather than pull them apart so that mom could go to work taking care of someone else’s children.

Brilliant, right!?  We all agreed - this structure was ideal.  It would be in the best interest of the children who will live here at Be Like Brit in terms of consistency and fostering trust and attachment.  From a practical standpoint, it’s easier in terms of human resources, payroll, scheduling; all of those things.  It was exciting to think that we would be bringing women in to our home to live here and care for our children just as they would in their own home – as this would be their home. 

Children from the community preparing to welcome our visitors at opening weekend.

As we lined up our interviews and began to screen candidates, it became almost immediately obvious that this plan was not going to work.  The first blunder was thinking we could find women without children!  The second was the gross assumption that anyone would be willing to move in here at Be Like Brit.  Sure, the structure is amazing, sound, solid, and safe.  But it’s not home to them.  Home to these women may be something we consider condemnable squalor.  Home for these women might be a USAID tent or any of the hundreds of donated temporary shelters which litter the landscape like confetti thrown in a parade.  My presumptuous and even ethnocentric attitude that “this is a better option” turned out to be an egregious oversight.

The caregiver interview guide I had developed, while comprehensive, thorough, and impressive (if I do say so myself) was completely irrelevant in Haiti.  Questions like “why do you want to work for Be Like Brit” earned such seemingly thoughtless responses as “because I need a job.”  As I sat, unimpressed with the answers I was receiving to my journal-worthy, researched and validated questionnaire, I pushed it aside and instead began to have conversations with these women.  I realized that in a country where unemployment hovers around (at least) 40%, their responses to why they wanted to work for us were quite sufficient; they were literal; they were real.  Instead of being sensitive to their subjective realities, I held them to a standard to which they could never live up to.  Seeking a passionate response to my matter of fact question was nothing short of ignorant.

So, lessons learned.  We change gears and we revisit our efforts.  We talk to local stakeholders:  Pastors, Priests, teachers, people.  We won’t staff this orphanage or run programming at Be Like Brit if we focus on the process.  Process is, of course, important, and plays a very important role in how we assess and develop our individual life plans for each of the children we will bring in to Be Like Brit, but it’s not how we find those children or those staff.  It’s how we work behind the scenes to plan appropriately, but it’s not how we present ourselves and how we interact with real, living human beings. 

The process can be handled in those ten- hour long meetings.  The content, that is, what we do and how it affects the children at Be Like Brit is all in real human relationships; in affection and in warmth; in encouragement and in faith; around the table at meal time; in stories at bed time; in tucking children in and making them feel loved and safe and worthy.  And while these objective tools of world-renowned academia are essential in how we plan, it’s what we actually do that matters.

Tomorrow brings a new day in Haiti:  Another long day where there is never enough time to tackle everything we would like to get done.  But onward we go; we have built a building, and our task now is to make it a home.  With continued prayers, support, well-wishes, and the efforts of so many wonderful volunteers and friends, we persevere.  In that formidable and unparalleled Gengel way, we will get things done.

Thanks for reading,

Jonathan

Civil Unrest

Civil Unrest

Pop! Pop! Pop!  The sound rang out in the dark of Haiti’s night sky and jolted me as if I were a passenger in the back of a tap-tap traveling along the road to Port-au-Prince.  I turned to Gama, my co-director, and asked, “Is that gunfire?”  He nodded his head and said, “You’re not in the United States anymore.”  Fair enough, I thought, and settled in for the night on the 2^nd floor terrace to get some work done, editing our program manual over a cup of chamomile.  Tea and front row seats to a demonstration against local government officials made for an interesting Thursday night.

                After some time, the sound of shots began to blend in with the chirping of crickets, the crowing of roosters, and was later drowned out by the sounds of men yelling into a bullhorn.  Atop this mountain, it’s hard to tell which direction the sounds are coming from, though one can assume almost certainly they are associated with what’s happening down on National Route 2:  Manifestations. As my anxiety began to waver and fade, I finally turned out the light and retired for the evening. 

As most of you know, we recently celebrated the dedication and official opening of the Be Like Brit Orphanage last weekend as Gengel friends and family gathered here in Grand Goâve to celebrate the life for which this building is named. While the weekend went off without a hitch, the days following the event would be marked with demonstrations in the streets, complete with burning tires, rock and bottle throwing, and setting cars ablaze in an effort to disrupt traffic and attract the attention of the central government in Haiti.  While these demonstrations disrupt life a bit, behind the orphanage walls, we are safe and sound. Our location atop a mountain gives us great security, and our presence in the community and reputation as a force for good gives us an immunity from all the chaos that happens just below us on Route 2.  We have a prime viewing spot for all the action; we can hear it, see it, and smell it.  Yet the chaos is just far away enough to feel somewhat benign, and is largely easy to ignore.

From behind the secure walls at Be Like Brit, a rooftop view of downtown Grand Goâve

It’s when that chaos or any kind of chaos comes to your own home, past your own gates and affects your own friends that it becomes real. Though the sound of gunfire in the night and the vision of burning trucks and angry citizens may make one feel uneasy, the walls that surround us help to mitigate that. At Be Like Brit, we are not just a building anymore; we are a home. Home is the place where one is supposed to feel the most at ease and the most secure. We have given ourselves the task of creating this type of environment for some 66 children in the months and years to come. Thus, when something happens that takes away from our ability to foster a sense of security and home, we feel betrayed and are shaken to the core, as if we were part of the chaos we watch unfold daily from the safety of our 2^nd floor terrace.

As our 70+ guests piled into trucks which would ferry them down the mountain and to the bus waiting for them, something was amiss here at Be Like Brit. One of our guests returned after a visit to the Hotel Montana and found that her luggage was missing from her room. As I feel a sense of responsibility to ensure that all of our guests feel as safe as they would in their own home, I immediately felt a sense of betrayal and anger. Our very sense of security and safety had been violated – behind our walls; within our very own home.

As we narrowed down the list of people who had access to the room from where the items went missing, I began to consider the implications of this type of event. Without a doubt, someone on our staff had gone into a guest room and rummaged through someone’s personal belongings. They had quite carefully chosen a handful of items to take, and hastily attempted to cover up their wrongdoings by moving the bags to a cabinet, under a sink in a bathroom.  It was clear to me then that someone on our staff had to be let go. If we are to effectively build a sense of security in a chaotic world, we certainly had to have a stern response to such an egregious violation in what should be our most reliable place of refuge.

A brief investigation was conducted, and regrettably, we had to let a group of employees go. The part that I struggle with the most is the knowledge that whomever it was that took these items did so most likely because of a desperate situation in their own life.  Just as some residents of Grand Goâve demonstrate in the streets against high food prices and ineffective post-earthquake development and reconstruction, others make ends meet by taking that which does not belong to them, selling it for a menial amount of money and perhaps buying the only meal they will eat that day with the profits.

Knowing that we at Be Like Brit had to revoke the only source of income this handful of employees had was a tough decision. In some ways it was easy:  You steal, you lose your job. In other ways, the reality of the situation torments me. These are people I have worked with side by side for two weeks now. They are people I have grown to know; they have been the people in my daily life. What angers me the most is the fact that their lot in life is so dismal they felt the need to take from us. In taking a handful of material things, they took so much more from us. Our sense of security and our sense of home left with those items.

It’s interesting, being here at Be Like Brit. Groups of people come by and knock at the gate in amazement at the marvelous architectural feat they spot on the hillside while driving down Route 2. The building’s physical presence invites passersby to stop and ask for a tour. The interest is genuine and understandable. The fact that many people think that we at Be Like Brit are somehow this privileged, wealthy, rich and prestigious organization is not surprising; indeed, our building is an impressive and amazing sight nestled amongst the USAID tents and squalid huts and shelters which litter the otherwise pristine Haiti landscape.

While we may have the benefits of an amazing structure, thanks to the generosity of so many wonderful friends and supporters, along with the gift of a brilliant architect in Paul Fallon, one simple fact remains:  We are not perfect.  What was to have been a perfect weekend was marred by an incident where one of our own betrayed us.  No amount of square footage, no security walls and not even the beautiful dedication and opening weekend we had can change the fact that we are not perfect.  We learned that the hard way last weekend when we learned of theft within our walls. 

So, from this incident, we learn.  Just as in Brit’s death, we take away something from this and go forward with even more determination to make Be Like Brit closer to perfect. As we embark on this new journey, this transition from construction of a building to the creation of a home, we will be tested in many more ways. Whether the riots on Route 2 or an employee breaching our trust, we will react, we will respond, and we will grow from that which tests us.

We will forever hold to the mission we have focused on:  To help the children of Haiti.  No demonstration in the streets, no tires burning, no rocks, no bottles, no inconvenience, and no thief among us will interfere in that mission.

My father used to always say there was nothing worse than a thief, and I think I agree with him.  Not because the material things are irreplaceable.  Not because they even really matter that much in our own lives; but because of what it does to one’s ability to trust.  He also used to say that there was no reason to ever steal from him, as if one was in need of something, all they had to do was ask for it.  I believe very much that Be Like Brit and Len and Cherylann Gengel might feel similarly.  We’ve seen what they have already done for the people of Haiti.  And they’ve only just begun.

So for now, we continue to work.  At night, a few of us gather on the 2^nd floor terrace to observe the happenings in town.  Some nights are quieter than others.  We feel safe in our home, we feel safe in our city, and we feel safe in Haiti.  And we know that the love, support, and prayers of countless friends and strangers alike are keeping us from harm.

Western courtyard from the roof, at home.

Thanks for reading   ~ Jonathan