And Then There Were Seven

On January 21, 2013 we welcomed our first child in to the Be Like Brit Orphanage here in Grand Goâve, Haiti.  This date was significant in that it just so happens to be Brit’s birthday.  Believe me when I say that the timing was serendipitous.  We had considered trying to bring a child in on that day for obvious reasons, but decided that we would wait for it to happen naturally – to not confine ourselves to a boxed window of time for the sake of symbolism.  So, when it just so happened that Kervins came to us on January 21, 2013, it’s clear that fate played a hand.

Kervins on his first day of school!

As the program director, one of my duties is to search for children who might be eligible for our program here at Be Like Brit.  In a place like Haiti, when word gets out that the new orphanage on the hill is ready to bring children inside its protective walls, the response is overwhelming.  For the first week or so, women brought children in by the dozens, some with heart-wrenching stories of abandonment, desertion, unemployment, starvation, and of course, death.    Others, though, seemed eerily happy at the prospect of bringing their child to our doorstep; they may not have as dire a need as some of the other women, but rather regarded the opportunity to come to Be Like Brit as what we might recognize in the West as the equivalent of admission into a prestigious boarding school or elite club.

Overwhelmed by the response, and quite frankly a bit taken aback by how freely women would offer up their children to us, seemingly without emotion or consideration, I decided to shift my approach.  Instead of asking women to come to us, I made up my mind to reach out to the community myself.  Alongside my Haitian sidekick Rosenie, we took to the roads and mountains in our area in search of children we had heard needed to be helped.

I’m no stranger to community outreach work.  I’ve conducted research in some of the poorest areas of New Orleans with chronically homeless, mentally ill, HIV-positive, and substance dependent individuals.  I’ve witnessed what I thought were tough conditions. 

A decade ago or so I worked in international business in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.  I’ve certainly seen some of the world’s worst slums; some of the most vulnerable and exploited people in factories and on assembly lines working 15 hours a day for pennies and housed en masse in tenuous dormitory housing.

Most recently I spent three months in Rwanda working with an orphanage there, and was exposed to the harsh realities of life in East Africa in a post-Genocidal society still reeling from civil war and the unraveling of the social fabric of the country.

I figured I’d be prepared for whatever I might find in the hills and mountains of Haiti.  I was wrong.

While I don’t mean to bring my readers “down” – the reality, the truth – is that the conditions in which the Haitian people live in are among the worst in the world.  Time and again, as we would round a corner and come upon the next “house” where we knew orphaned children were living, my level of tolerance would be breached, like the levees in New Orleans, and the flood of emotion and visceral reaction to what I found before me was exceeded time and again.

So, one by one, I interviewed these families.  I interviewed the children through the use of an interpreter.  I tried to get some insights into their life, though in all honesty, one doesn’t really need an interview guide and assessment tool to figure out if this particular family or group needs help.  It’s obvious in the smell that invades all five of your senses.  It’s in the sights that make your stomach turn and your eyes wince.  It’s in the tears that well up in your eyes when you bid a one room house of 10 a “Bonswa” and a “Mesi” while you climb back into your ATV and record notes on people who can’t even sign their own name in order to give away their children.

The decision on whether to bring them to Be Like Brit or not is never one taken lightly.  It’s never easy.  I never feel great about taking a child or children from the only home and family they know.  Moreover, it’s never easy on the children.  The first night with each of our new children is almost invariably a long one.  Tears, confusion, lost little eyes looking for something, anything familiar. 

But then there’s the second day, and the third day.  And watching these children transform from naked, hungry, and neglected to clothed, fed, loved, smiling, playful, happy children – even in as little amount of time as a week or two is why I am here in Haiti doing what I am doing. 

And then there’s this morning:  After an emotional week for all of us, especially the children who find themselves here, waking up early, dressing well for church, eating breakfast, laughing and smiling all along the way – this is when I feel good about my decision.

After a few takes, almost everyone is smiling for the camera!

Don’t get me wrong.  I recognize that there is an adjustment period for everyone involved.  For those who arrive new, they must get used to their new environment.  From the taken for granted things in our everyday lives like turning on a sink to brush your teeth, or sitting on a toilet and flushing it away, to flipping on a light switch when it’s dark – all of this is new and amazing to them.  For those who are already here, the status quo gets shifted, and our obligations as caregivers and providers grow exponentially in negotiating that delicate balance of making everyone feel safe, loved, worthy.

I loved my work in Rwanda.  I got to spend three months with 100 children.  They were an established, existing organization.  I didn’t have to hear their stories, meet their families or be witness to their squalor.  Starting from scratch, every detail on every child makes its way through me.  In that way, I feel very blessed and very fortunate.  I will know each of their names, each of their families, each of their histories.  I will know them.  Because of this, I have been able to forge the greatest of relationships with each of the children that Be Like Brit now cares for.

Being a part of this process is unlike anything I had imagined.  Even when it’s hard – and we all knew it would be hard – it is the most precious and wonderful way to spend a day, a week, and now – a month!

First there was one, and now we are seven.  Our work is important, our work is good.  And our work depends on the continued support of readers like you.  Thank you for helping realize Brit’s dream, and through that, letting me live mine.

All smiles! 

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