Tiburon Bay

The music is loud but sweet to my ears. Sweating in the sultry heat of Tiburon I am comforted by worship songs ringing out over the rusting rooftops and shacks as the faithful gather. Maybe it’s because we pray to the same spirit that is with us and beyond us. When we are poor, vulnerable and isolated our appetite for a God is greater. And hey, this is music you can dance to and shake off any blues. A style called Kompa is the beat of the nation these days with its urgency and frenetic synth solos. The previous president Michael “Sweet Mickey” Martelly was and remains a legend of the genre and even in his leading role following the 2010 earthquake would perform at concerts, the people’s ‘Tete Kale’, the cue ball-headed star of the show. Haitians love prayers and dancing. It’s freeing, fun and may save your soul.

I am out of my comfort zone but alive in ways that are more intense, urgent and so far out of my control that I can only trust that things will be alright. And mostly they are. People tend to be decent wherever I have travelled from my early surf trips to Indonesia right up to my aid work in the Highlands of Afghanistan sitting to tea with warlords. The worst usually doesn’t come to pass and there is resilience that defies what life throws our way. But, comfort in the West has removed the apparent need for a higher power. We can do it ourselves. Materially this is certainly true. Tiburon (meaning shark in Spanish and connected to the town’s history) was battered by Hurricane Matthew. How we name these things I do not know, although each year an alphabetical list is prepared in advance – tropical storms are guaranteed. Matthew the Monster – a category 5 hurricane that tore off roofs as massive storms surges flooded low-lying areas and townsfolk in this part of the Sud Department clung for dear life to each other and anything solid so as not to be blown away. Stories of people having their house disappeared or collapsing around them are common as are tales of survival by lying flat on the ground, arms wrapped around a tree trunk while holding hands with a family member. The human drive to survive is immense. What might we take from a reading of the gospel of Matthew today? He tore through the town tossing, turning and trashing the place as Jesus wept, or slept quietly in the chapel. The strongest and safest places in a storm are the Haitian churches. Or perhaps my Lord wandered the beach as the storm approached and walked on the waters as the townsfolk trembled.

Maybe the place was actually spared through prayer. They sing, the brass section plays bum notes and the synthesiser does improvisation over the choir harmonising and swaying to the rhythm. ‘My bonny lies over the ocean… bring back my bonny to me.’ Is that what they are singing? Who is this bonny and did he flee to America, still the Promised Land for Haitians despite so often being the harbinger of ruin. God will have to take credit for Matthew. I’m not suggesting a punishing Almighty, just simply noting that he set things up this way. This is a challenge of faith because I believe this world was designed, not a random act of nature. It seems unfair because we dislike pain but perhaps this life was supposed to be hard. It says as much in The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck, “Life is difficult.” People here accept this fact more readily than me. However, the problem of suffering is one we all encounter sooner or later.

The sun is setting as the day cools a little and the waves continue to pulse upon the shore. An offshore breeze wafts towards the sea and people are gathering on street corners to chat. It is always a privilege to visit places like Haiti, observe another way of living and embrace the reality that life for most of humanity is different from where I just came from. Haiti is more the majority world than the UK and these perspectives from where I sit today are worth pondering.

Postscript:

Medair is leaving Tiburon a year after offering emergency assistance which helped many. However, for the past 9 months the mayors have resisted our project to build back safer shelters for households and have ultimately blocked the aid coming to people in their community who continue to suffer the hardships of poverty, unemployment and regular natural disasters. Why? They wanted something different.

Politics and selfishness we certainly a part of the answer but so too were donor pressure to do work on the cheap, no NGO pushback for a better design and a lack of collaboration with local communities whereby they would lead in the recovery. As we pack up and leave having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project that never got close to realising its objectives, or even getting off the ground with basic agreements with the local authorities, you ask yourself, what was the point? When we leave, Tiburon will return to the way it has been for generations; poor, beautiful and mostly peaceful. Various reports will explain why no project was done but will be plagued by the same problem as our attempts to help. In truth we missed the point. I’m not saying I have the answer. And, that seems like a good start. Even when disaster strikes we need to stop acting like we know best and what other people need. Show me an NGO that genuinely enters a context and asks: how can we help you in your hour of need? What would you like to do in order to respond to suffering in your community and how can we partner with you in that process? That is what I want, to treat others as I would like to be treated. The emergency aid sector evidently has a long way to go before it realises this deeper truth about integrity in human relationships and embracing our common humanity with genuine equality and love at its centre.

In short, I believe Jesus was right when he said: ‘Love one another as I have loved you`. Surely Christian NGOs should really take this to heart even if faith in action means saying no to big money that would hamstring their behaviour or make them agents of imperialism. For me the question is not whether we are part of empires and systems, we are all implicated in ways we can never escape. The question is rather whom we serve, how we act and our posture as we live our daily lives.

‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’

Luke 6: 31