Haiti, pt. 2: Chita!

I stood with a bowl of cookies on my head surrounded by hungry Haitian children pulling at my shorts, tugging on my shirt and slapping my stomach. The torn paper plates had been abandoned for withered hands, palms up. They begged and shoved, all vying for one more cookie. They promised to be my best friend. Zanmi mwen they said, while grunting and huffing out other words in Creole.

The thing is, I had the cookies. After giving them all the allotted two, we had nearly half a bowl left. And this was a big bowl. A quick guesstimate ensured that I had enough for at least one more per child. But in the mele there was no way to know who had gotten the extra one and who had not. Flashes of white eyes, crooked teeth and clawing hands dissolved into a sea of ebony. Some smiled and asked sweetly, some pounded my body with tiny fists to get their story told. Sometimes they all seemed to form one huge organism with one hundred hands reaching out for a Tempo coconut flavored cookie.

In the madness, Kyle came up to me with a handful of cookies, followed by a mob trying to pry them from his hands. "This is crazy, we gotta get out," he said.* Partly brokenhearted and partly relived that he too thought it had gotten out of control, I nodded. He dropped the loot in the bowl upon my head and we made our way out of the church, children following behind. The older boys called out to me as I left. Either laughing at my failure to deliver a simple snack or possibly pleading for another cookie themselves.

It had started innocently enough, after snack time the 5 or 6 kids nearest to me asked for more. Their little paper plates were creased and crumpled and I knew they probably hadn't eaten since VBS the day before. I could not look at them and then look at all the cookies and say no. Asking another inexperienced friend, we agreed that this was a good plan to quietly, systematically give out some more.

I erred on many accounts:

1) That I could explain they get one more each, and that would be it (but I dont speak Creole)

2) That I could reason with them if they still wanted more (but they were ages 4-10 mostly)

3) That they would assemble and politely take one more each (but...yea. nope.)

So after handing out a few precious cakes of flour and sugar, eyes began to dart to the corner of the room where I was standing. Things grew exponentially more chaotic, like when the critical Jenga piece is pulled from the tower. It was soon clear there would be no rules, no instructions and no rationale. It killed me that I could not continue to give. It was hard to know how much to endure before withdrawing mercy.

My heart longed to give them what they needed, to give out all the cookies in the world to them. The children made it impossible to love them fully. I wanted to make sure everyone got more, but I had no way to do so without multiple people stepping on others and squeezing out the less capable. At some point, we had to shut down the operation.

I wonder if God views us in this way sometimes...wanting to give out mercy and grace in abundance but in some spiritual fashion, similar or not, we make it so difficult for that to happen.

*In order to not taint Kyle's good name, I wanted to clarify that he is a broguy with much more toughness and steadfastness than I. He would be the last one in the world to retreat in a situaion like that. Those that know Kyle can appreciate just how out-of-control it must have been for him to think it was crazy. This is why I was somewhat relieved when he admitted the level of insanity...just so I knew I wasnt overreacting to the chaos. Kyle, love you bud.