By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — We gripe too much. Me. You. All of us.
Listening to the radio in my truck Tuesday night, I heard Gov. Mitch Daniels assessing life in Indiana today. It was his annual “state of the state” address. Essentially, he acknowledged we have problems, but urged us to be happy we don’t live in nearby Michigan or Illinois. Yes, 9.6 percent of the Hoosier work force is jobless. But Daniels insisted businesses are choosing Indiana because property taxes are capped, and state government is fiscally sound. The governor also worries that too many third-graders get promoted to fourth grade for social reasons, even though they can’t yet read. Statewide, 8 percent of Indiana adults are illiterate.
Finding and keeping jobs. Pay cuts. Schoolkids falling through the system’s cracks. Unethical lobbying of lawmakers. Local government services getting cut.
Troubled times, indeed.
Then I wake up Wednesday to hear that Haiti — the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere — just got jolted, again. People there ran into the streets at 6 o’clock in the morning, frightened by a magnitude-6.1 aftershock. Eight days earlier, a violent magnitude-7 earthquake near the capital city of Port-au-Prince flattened buildings on top of terrified residents. An estimated 200,000 people — 200,000 — died. Another 250,000 were injured. About 1.5 million are now homeless.
And life wasn’t easy in Haiti before the Jan. 12 disaster. Most residents live on less than $1 a day. Forty-four percent are illiterate. About 70 percent are unemployed.
Haiti is just 700 miles off the U.S. coast. That’s about as far as Durham, N.C., is from Terre Haute.
Even with all of our worries and frustrations, lots of Haitians would appreciate living the life of a Hautean.
Jamalyn Peigh Williamson knows both extremes. The Terre Haute native was in the Haitian mountain village of Fondwa when the massive quake struck. Now a pastor at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Williamson was in Fondwa, leading a team of nine missionaries from the Family Health Ministries. They were walking along a footpath toward the village orphanage when the rumbling earth knocked them to the ground.
Structures that had taken the close-knit community years to build turned to rubble in seconds. The school, a guest house, and two churches — one Protestant, one Catholic — were destroyed. A Catholic nun and a 2-year-old child, both Haitians, died. The orphanage survived, but an exterior wall collapsed.
Williamson made it back to Indiana on Sunday, unhurt. (Though she would’ve like to have stayed longer, with limited food available, Williamson didn’t want to “be a burden to our friends and be one more mouth to feed.”)
The contrast between Indiana and Haiti is stark.
“A lot of things are much easier here,” Williamson said Wednesday by phone from Indianapolis, referring to routine life in Haiti before the quake.
Take washing clothes, for example. Here, we use washers and dryers, either at home or a laundromat. “There, it’s all hand-washing,” Williamson explained. “Washing clothes is an all-day project.”
Here, water — hot and cold — runs from faucets in homes and businesses. Haitians usually walk to get water, and many take cold baths.
We have access to electricity everywhere, even in our state parks. There, it’s a luxury. Many people cook with fire, Williamson said.
Communications devices fill Americans’ lives. Children have cell phones. In Haiti, they’re far less common. So are good roads, over-the-counter medicines and health care. “The list goes on and on,” Williamson said.
Here, “If you need something from the store, you just go get it,” she added. A recent trip to buy a file cabinet — something easily found in an office supply shop here — turned into a long adventure for Williamson. “Getting goods like that is really hard in Haiti.”
We take for granted that, in America, in a time of crisis, local or regional or national relief crews will come to the rescue. “There’s nothing like that in place in Haiti,” Williamson said. “When that [earthquake] happened, everybody just kind of had to take care of each other.”
She’s come to know that spirit since she first visited Haiti as a Duke University Divinity School student. Later, she and her husband, David, also a St. Luke’s pastor, lived in Fondwa from 2003 to 2005. Since then, they’ve returned to that Haitian town two or three times a year. She is fond of the country and its people.
That includes her friends, Jesula and Edner, and their five children. The family lived in a one-room, concrete home in Fondwa. (Edner is a mason.) Each day, around 5 a.m., two family members go out to find firewood so breakfast can be cooked. Two others fetch water. The kids bathe, dress in school uniforms, and then walk 15 minutes to school. Jesula washes those uniforms daily, by hand, and presses them with a charcoal-heated iron. She sells crackers, spaghetti and assorted items for extra money. At 4 p.m., she starts boiling water for a dinner of rice and beans. Edner comes home from work, and the kids from school. They eat. Sundown is around 5:30. “They sleep, and then start over the next morning,” Williamson said.
Last week’s quake destroyed the family’s home.
Anyone cynical about the plight of the earthquake-stricken country should see it firsthand, Williamson said. “I was there, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Haiti will recover, she said confidently.
“Haitians are a very resilient people,” Williamson said, “and they will find a way to get themselves back on track. But it will take a very, very long time.”
Life here isn’t so hard.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
