We trudge through the dirt road up to the school about a quarter of a mile. A man from America is here with a big tractor to smooth out the road after the rains have made it a squishy mess. Gravel and baseball-sized stones are scattered over the mud to give it some semblance of solidity, but it only takes a few days for the thick mud to engulf the stones and suck them down so far you cant reach them.

The mud is always there, and a few hours of overnight rain can make a road practically impassable. All you can do is throw what you can on the mud to try to delay the inevitable. This is the way of life in Haiti. The mud is as inevitable as hunger and death and disease and the war waged against them often feels as futile as tossing rocks on a muddy road. Forty five patients have had some sort of procedure thus far but it’s a drop in a bucket in the grand scheme of things, a few rocks on the road.

I know I can’t think this way. We were talking earlier and we’ve decided to see it like forty-five people won the lottery. Some people’s lives have changed and they’ve been given a leg up, able to function normally again and go on surviving, and hopefully go on living.

As we shop around and barter for little knick knacks and move along to the dirt road past the school we walk through a gate in a cement wall and see a village. It is an odd assortment of straw huts and adobe homes, a scattering in no particular order of shelters with varying levels of luxury. Some are actually very pretty, and I imagine that once this place used to be perhaps 3 or 4 nice homes, and poverty drove people to cluster together and nestle themselves in between the nicer homes hoping for a sense of protection and togetherness.

Our group is about 25 people, and before we even enter the village there are two or three children for each American hand, tugging and pulling in opposite directions. “You! You! What your name? You are friend?” they say, and they demonstrate with fingers pointing to their chests what their names are and point to you and demand you repeat their names. They laugh and clap their hands as we try to pronounce their names with embarassingly horrible faux french accents. Their names are not quite french and not quite as african as we make them sound but they are wildly entertained by this game as they wait a few seconds and ask us again what their names are and we forget them or try to say something we made up hoping to come close.

I am trying to take good pictures of this village, because I am absolutely fascinated at the living conditions. I think that the men of the village have somehow (quite ingeniously) stolen electricity from the powerlines and a TV that doesnt seem all put together is working and a soccer game is on. Through one doorway and a thin hanging sheet I see a few men watching the game and a baby goat runs out bleating, and the men stare at me blankly as I look into their home or saloon or whatever it is.

We tiptoe around trash piles, cow manure, and piles of smelly things I can’t identify. A tumbleweed of barbed wire outside a hut is covered with damp laundry washed in the river, drying in the cool air. Our walk through the village is a challenging task as our juvenile tour guides are poking at our clothes and asking for our shoes, tugging and pulling. They dont quite beg, and their blunt and direct requests are funny. “You! You! Give me your shoes?” they shout, and you cant help but laugh. The phrasing sounds like they are holding us at gunpoint but they smile as they say it, in a playful sentence bordering on sing-song.

Some of the girls are wearing t-shirts with no pants and few have dresses, and they dance and jump and run. It seems at first like they are clamoring for attention, to see who can be the cutest and who can get the most american cameras pointed at them, but the ‘wild rumpus’ is infectious and the children are having fun, they are laughing and jumping and chasing each other and playing.

They see my tattoos peeking out of my scrub top and they touch and rub my arms in amazement, pointing at them and showing each other, quiz me on their names, ask me if I am their friend, quiz me on their names again. It is almost overwhelming and a little claustrophobic as we wind through alleys and through tight corners and my poor sense of direction is quickly confused. I have my camera and the children are so cute I try to take their pictures but they have this habit of throwing up gang signs so I try to encourage them to smile and give thumbs up and benign things like that. I show them the pictures of themselves and they clap and run in circles and sometimes stare blankly, and some of the younger ones don’t understand that what they are seeing is their own face.

I learn the word for friend is ami. The older ones have a clearer goal of asking me for money but the younger ones are cute and are having fun seeing this strange tattooed and slightly brown person, and it becomes a game to see who can show me the neatest thing to take a picture of. They grab chickens by the neck and baby goats by the legs and bring them to me yelling “Photo, photo, You!” I feel sorry for the poor beasts and dont take any pictures. I have twenty dollars left, and it burns a hole in my scrubs. I want to give it to someone so badly but I know then everyone will chase me and beg and I’m liable to end up naked. I finally get some breathing room and give it discretely and quietly to a boy wearing a Spider-Man shirt, and I put my finger to my lips and tell him to not tell anyone. I point to his shirt and make reference to Spider-Man and he looks at me confused. Of course, I think, this shirt is something to keep him warm and dry. They dont pick clothes based on liking the pictures on them. I ask him to buy food and candy for himself and friends. He points to me and says “You ami, eat here.” He wants me to come with him and eat it with him. I say I can’t.

But I could, I suppose, but I dont want to be separated from the group or walk back by myself at night. I’m scared a voodoo warlock will stab me with chicken bones and feed me to a goat or something crazy like that. It sounds stupid but that literally crossed my mind. My Jamaican friend growing up told me his dad saw a witch doctor tell a pig to eat a man he didnt like. He might have lied but I just saw a huge pig that could probably finish me off.

I also, when I’m honest with myself, don’t want to eat with him. I dont want to get sick, and I want a shower, and I’m tired.

That’s the thing that wakes me up from my TV commercial moment as I feel like someone in a movie, holding little black children’s hands and gracing the village with my American presence. I can give these kids my shoes, I can give them money, I can give them clothes, I could even run to my room absolutely stark naked and give them everything on my person and just dig through my suitcase and be fully clothed in seconds. I am torn by this, not sure what to do or feel. I can see how people come home from experiences like this and have a hard time not slapping people back home whenever they complain. In fact, I can foresee having a hard time restraining myself after hearing people complain about the US government. At least we weren’t robbed blind by a corrupt catholic priest in charge of the country, at least there is some semblance of infrastructure, at least both parties are generally still obliged and accountable to some extent to promote the well being of the citizens. I have a hard time recalling a president of the US ever being exiled to Africa for the damage done to the country during his term; but I digress.

I spent most of the evening laying awake thinking about what I felt. I had the urge to come home and live the life of a monk, sell everything I had and sort of inflict poverty on myself in protest to the consumerist and materialist lifestyle I felt so guilty of leading. I felt an equal urge to return to America and have a glass of scotch and eat a nice dinner and enjoy it in a way I never had before, thankful I can worry about food I don’t like and not worry about whether or not I will starve to death. And then I had the urge to just go home and carry on as normal, tucking this experience away and carry on with business as usual. Red flags and sirens went off as something in me felt first that this was wrong but more thought has led me to a place that is quite similar to ‘carrying on as normal’.

I think that the people of the world, figuratively speaking of course, are all in line, facing a certain I-don’t-know-what. The front of the line is quite successful, wealthy, and they are the ‘haves,’ whereas the people in the back of the line are the ‘have-nots’ and are as you might imagine the polar opposite of those fortunate enough to be in front. I imagine myself sort of in the middle of the line, far enough from the front to spend quite a bit of time trying to move forward and far enough from the rear to not really ever think about it. Who, in their right mind, in line at the theater or the grocery store, ever thinks of the people far behind them? It is the ones in the front who are almost done, who got waited on much nicer and quicker than I will certainly ever be, who have purchased a lot more than I will be able to, who are wearing very sharp clothes. I spent most of my life worrying about them, and almost none of it even contemplating what it must be like for those so far back in line they don’t know what the line is even for, let alone what is at its’ end. This is what I believe is the problem, and if we can use my weak analogy a bit more imagine how asinine it would be to ask someone if they could hold your place in line, and you went to visit the very last spot. You were so moved by the condition of said person that you surrendered your place in line altogether and joined him. It would be a bit like feeling sorry for an amputee and cutting of your own leg just for the hell of it, because you felt sorry and brashly wanted to resolve your feelings with some outward display.*

Well, I am sure much debate could be had breaking down this analogy and much arguing would ensure, for after all that is what most analogies do. But stick with me and imagine that we were all standing in line and now we’ve got tickets in our hand, like the ones at the deli, and they signify not just our place in line but have a sort of value in them like a paper currency. Some mischievous soul who is not part of the line comes up and sets off a bomb somewhere in the line and everyone is scattered about. There is no front, middle, or rear, the ones in the front are mingled with middles and rears and combinations of each and there is much chaos and confusion. For a second, everyone forgets about the line and we are just people, some with nothing, some with everything, and some with a moderate amount of stuff.

Imagine the power of everyone forgetting about looking ahead, the power of everyone stepping out of line so nobody was limited to seeing who was in front but seeing people first and position and rank second. There is nothing wrong with the ticket in their hand, or that they have a lot or a little, so long as they open their eyes, look around, and help. If everyone surrendered their tickets then their really wouldn’t be much use in that and nobody would be able to help anyone. But for a second we would stop pressing forward and would begin to react outward, laterally, and help.

So what do I do when I go home? Sell my stuff? Maybe, but I think what I need to do is incorporate an ever-present awareness of poverty and disease and filthy living conditions into my everyday life. I need to remember that there are fronts and middles and rears everywhere and that I am where I for whatever reason, and should not take it for granted but also not waste a lifetime in a line pushing forward trying to gain the position of the people ahead of me. I should, rather, exploit to the best of my ability my position in line (or the value of my deli ticket) to widen the radius of my impact as greatly as I can. I do not need to inflict poverty on myself, nor do I need to dive into the rat race to get rich quick. I need to be self-aware, others-aware, humanity-aware, and broaden my vision beyond just marching forward in line but breaking up the line and doing some mingling.

This is what I’ve learned from this trip, and what I hope I do not forget. I will still have that glass of scotch and I will still smile when I lay in a comfortable bed, but I will remember that somewhere, someone is sleeping on the ground and drinking dirty water.