Imagine...

Life in Haiti (from For His Glory newsletter)
Imagine, if you will, that you have six children and you are raising 6 of them in a single parent home. Imagine that your home is one-third the size of a one-car garage fashioned out of corrugated steel. There's no carpet or cement for your floor; rather, it's simply dirt that you try to keep as clean as possible. You have one double bed that you sleep on with most of your children, while the rest sleep on grass mats at your feet. That's if there is no gunfire. When there is, you all feel more safety sleeping under the bed.

Imagine, too, that there are days that pass that you cannot purchase a small sack of beans and rice to feed your children. You go out to the street market and purchase as many dirt biscuits as you can to feed you and your children. It's not enough for each person to have their own, but if the little ones get to half each, it'll at least stop them from crying. The only water is the river the pigs rifle through - it's where you have dumped your own chamber pots from time to time. You close off your mind and drink from the water because there is no choice.

This is the story of one of the birth mothers that had placed 3 of her children in the orphanage. Those 3 children are in the US now, leaving 3 still in Haiti. The situation for her is more difficult that we could imagine. We asked her, as we were visiting her home, if she was comfortable living in Cite Soliel. She responded saying that no one chooses to live there - it's when you are left with no choice at all that you end up in a tin house like hers.

One of the staff members of the orphanage knows a woman that has 6 sons. When the rains came, 5 of them drown. Her house is destroyed and her hope was buried with her children.