This post originally ran on April 30, 2008. It was written on my first trip to the Dominican Republic to make three short films about Compassion’s work in this country.
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With our stomachs full of breakfast, we climbed aboard the bus and headed out for the sugar plantation. Chris, our guide from Compassion‘s Dominican Republic office, prepared us for what we were about to see.
The sugar plantation is run by a large U.S. corporation, he explained - himself having grown up in Brooklyn and still maintaining dual citizenship. The workers are paid $2 a day when they’re harvesting, he said, which isn’t all year. They once worked all year, before all but one mill was moved to China. Now the Haitian migrant workers employed by the sugar company only harvest.
Just a few miles from the plantation, the sugar company owns a large 2,000 home barbed-wire lined luxurious neighborhood. From these million dollar homes, and nearby resorts and hotels, trash is trucked to the dump several times a day.
That’s where we were headed, Chris explained.
As I stepped out of the bus and onto mud, the first thing that struck me about the dump was the sound. Buzzing. A billion flies all humming together.
Then there was the smoke. A dozen small fires smoldered across the acres of leftovers.
And a little girl, about seven years old, carried buckets of debris for mom and poked garbage with a stick, looking for something for her family to eat or wear or sell.
A trash truck backed into the dump as Tim Neeves (film maker) and I climbed the nearest mound of trash and began collecting our thoughts and figuring out how to explain what we were experiencing to a camera. About a dozen Haitians swarmed around the fresh load of bottles, cans, half-eaten dinners and other scraps from the good life down the street.
We began filming while Noelia struck up a conversation with the little girl with the stick.
Noelia has a face made for magazine covers but a history that keeps her here at the dump. She’s in her mid twenties, the daughter of a plantation supervisor. She was born into poverty - raised on the plantation. And cared for by Compassion International, and her sponsor. As a young woman she left this place to study. Then Noelia returned to to the plantation, the smoke and flies and the trash. Today, she’s the director of the Compassion project that served her when she was a little girl with a stick.
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Go here to sponsor a chid.
In Uganda, I bought a few $1 bracelets for my daughters and a wooden car for my son. I handed the man in the market my money and he handed me a small plastic bag and some coins. “Thank you,” I said and turned to walk away.
“Vote Obama for change!” he shouted after me.
I was stunned. What does this man know about the election in America, still many months away?
I doubled back. “Why do you like Obama?”
“He will help Africa.”
This morning on the bus ride to a Compassion project, one of our translators for the week flopped a newspaper in my lap. “Would you like to read about your new president?” he asked.
A conversation began, a conversation I’ve had in three third world countries over the last year. It’s not a political conversation at its core. It’s not an exchange truly about the superiority of this party or that, this man or that one, though it seemed that way the first time I had it. No, it’s a conversation about hope.
The people of Ethiopia, Uganda and now the Dominican Republic feel forgotten by those blessed by God with more resources and power than they have. So, many citizens in the third world hope. They hope the next man to sit in the oval office will remember them. They hope the new ruling party will take up their cause. They hope for change as they’ve been hoping for decades.
If you come to my site often, you probably know where this post is going already. But here I go again anyway.
I am grateful beyond words for the benevolence of my nation’s leaders, on both sides of the aisle, regardless of what form that benevolence takes. I’m thankful for senators and presidents who want to fix some of what is broken in the world. I admire their intellect and compassion. But they are not enough. The mess is too big. It is not enough for any of us then to vote every four years, to place our hopes in the power of presidents and congressmen no matter how brilliant and hard working they are.
After reading the local paper this morning (or having it read to me) I stepped off the bus and walked into a Compassion project where children sang: Put your hands in the hand of the Man who walked on water.
I walked with a university student studying marketing. She grew up singing in that project. She said her Compassion project was “God’s hidden gift for her.” Her mother said Compassion and her daughter’s sponsor gave her hope at a time when her little girl was too poor to even own a dress.
I heard a student tell a crowd of younger children that where God is, “every chain can be broken.” I believe her.
This is the greatest shift Compassion International has made to my way of thinking about the world. I’ve seen Compassion’s ministry in five countries over the last few years and every time I’ve returned home reminded of the power of Christ and His people when they spring into action. We, the Church planted around the globe, can participate in a revolution of mercy that brings hope to the hopeless. And that reminds me of a speech I heard late last night.
Today, thirty thousand children, most under the age of five, died from poverty. Thirty thousand don’t have to die tomorrow. Yes we can.
Over a million children in twenty-five countries won’t go to bed hungry tonight. Yes we can.
The prayers of their parents haven’t gone unanswered. Yes we can.
These children have books to read, teachers who care for them. Yes we can.
They dream of becoming doctors, pastors, electricians, mechanics, and nurses, of working hard and escaping the bonds of destitution. Yes we can.
Their decrepit homes are being transformed into places where sleep is sound and play is safe. Yes we can.
Many of them once felt worthless and invisible, but now the letters come and the words inside convince them of their value. Yes we can.
Yes you can. They’re hoping someone will.
She wriggled through the small mob of children around me and wedged herself between my knees and the pew in front of me. I pushed my back against the wood, making room for her to slip by. But she didn’t want to slip by. Instead, she stretched her arms wide and proceeded to dangle from the back of the pew. She wanted her picture taken. So I raised my camera.
I turned the camera around and she grinned at what she saw in its small screen. I snapped another. And another. And another. And then those eyes - pupils swallowed up in dark brown - did something very familiar.
I laughed out loud, the way you do when someone starts a joke you know ends well. You’ve heard it a hundred times but it never gets old.
I know a girl like this one. Three years-old. No pupils. A poser and expert eye crosser.
The girl I know is back home tonight. She probably wooed her way to a plate of macaroni and cheese sometime today. She probably spent the day playing dolls with my wife and riding her scooter down the driveway with her big brother. She’s saying her bedtime prayers about now.
I thought of her as this little girl hung from the pew and then, finally, let go and climbed confidently into my lap to run her palms over my whiskers. She smooshed my skin and marveled at how it turned white under her thumb and then slowly returned to it’s normal pinkish color when she let up. So expressive. So much awe generated by the visit of a pale stranger with a camera and a long lap.
Why don’t I pay better attention when the Dora the Explorer DVDs are playing in my house? If only I knew more Spanish than what I need to find a toilet. I knew she wouldn’t understand a word, but I talked anyway. I told her the things I tell my kids. You’re such a smart girl. You are so beautiful. I love you, you know it?
Today’s project director told us most of the sponsored children there don’t receive letters from their sponsors. That means hundreds of children - part of that ”the world” God loves so much - aren’t being told they are smart and beautiful and loved as often as they could be.
If only those sponsors could have sat in my pew today. If they could feel those tiny fingers dancing across their skin. If they could hear the giggles and tickle the ribs. If the children every child would be sponsored and every sponsor would write to them the words they shower their own children with every day. You are such a smart girl. You are so beautiful. I love you, you know it?
