30434: Henderson--recollections of Ayiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: SFclinics1@aol.com

Dear friends--
     My adopted Haitian son is grown and in college now and away most of the
time and I am a bit melancholy tonight so decided to share a memory with my
friends on the list:
     On my second or third trip to Haiti I was setting out behind the school
one evening about dark.  After having endured an exhausting and draining day
at the clinic I simply wanted to hide for a little while from those who so
desperately needed me seemingly all the time.  A dirty white plastic bucket 
came
sailing over the wall landing almost at my feet and a equally dirty little guy,
I believe he was probably 7 or 8, came tumbling after.  The little boy looked
at me as if daring me to stop him and went to our well and filled his bucket.
 I sat quietly watching and trying to grin like a monkey to let him know I
would not interfere.  Having nothing else at the time to offer, or at least 
that
I was aware of having, I offered him a piece of gum.  He carried his bucket
to me and sat it on the ground, climbed uninvited onto my lap and, with my arm
around his shoulder and his head on mine, he closed his eyes and seemed almost
on the verge of sleeping.  This went on for about 5 minutes when he suddenly
sat up abruptly, patted me on the side of my face, climbed down, hoisted the
heavy 5 gallon bucket of water onto his head and took off for the a different
part of the wall some distance away.  Here he apparently had hidden a short
piece of rope or vine as I saw him lift the bucket to the top of the wall and
then he was gone. The gum lay unwrapped on the ground at my feet. The 
experience
moved me deeply and I questioned several of the Pastors about the child and
always got the same rather vague responses.  I sought him through the knowledge
of the two young men who were working for me in the clinic and learned that
the boy evidently had no name.  His mother had died giving birth to him and his
father was from the Dominican Republic and had gone back home, simply
abandoning both the mother and child.  He lived by working for anyone in the 
village
who would feed him and nobody really knew where he slept.  This was early in my
relationship with Haiti's Pastors and I was known (and still am) as a bit of
a trouble maker.  When I continued to seek out this child I got no place and
learned nothing.  About a year later I learned that he had been taken to a
village in the mountains and abandoned there by a person serving the local
witchdoctor and that this was due to my involvement and interest in him.  I 
can't
tell you how often I think of that child and wish I could go back to that time
when the greatest gift I had to offer was a five minute break from the drudgery
of living.  I am told, now that I am a little more trusted, that all villages
have such nameless child slaves.  They are called Restaveks.


I greet you with love in His name
Tommy Henderson
563-323-5068 <SFclinics1@aol.com>
2034 West 5th Street
Davenport, Iowa 52802-1006

VOCATVS  ATQUE NON ----VOCATVS  DEUS ADERIT
Bidden or not bidden, God is present

  Carl Jung



**************************************
 See what's free at http://www.aol.com.