'Just teach my babies to read'
03/17/05
Deacon Balliew
"Deacon, that place is exactly as described, and you need to go. With your knowledge of how people lived on the farm many years ago, it’s exactly how they live in that area of Haiti. And that little struggling pre school that missionaries Michael and Brenda Cooper told us about is precisely as they describe,” explained my friend Bill Childers.
The things he said were similar to what other friends who had been there suggested. “You needed to go there and see for yourself. Your life will be changed forever.”
I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to walk the miles I’d heard they had to walk to get places. I didn’t want the aching muscles I knew I would have. I knew I didn’t want to worry about the sunburn I’d probably get in Haiti’s scorching sun; I didn’t want to sweat in the high humidity.
I didn’t want to ride cramped in the back of that beat up old pick up truck that could break down, or get stuck in one those deep mud holes on the road to our school, and with my luck I thought it probably would. I didn’t want to see hopeless people; I for sure I didn’t want to see sick and starving kids.
So I decided I would not go. I would try again to get someone else to go in my place. Then the struggle began.
I have never forgotten what my Grandmother Balliew, the lady who raised a family of very religious aunts and uncles, three preachers and a host of deacons, who as a matter of fact said to me once, “If you have any doubt and don’t think the Lord wants you to do something, then don’t. Don’t pay attention to what people at church say or the neighbors think; because they don’t have anything to do with you and the Lord, and the decisions you have to make. But you remember this Son, if you can’t get it off your mind no matter what, and worry about the decision, you better pay attention to your feelings. It may be the Lord telling you, you may have been listening to the Devil too along.”
My Granny loved me; I knew it and believed everything she told me. She must have been thinking of all those decisions I was going to have to make most of my life, because as the old saying goes, she told me how to hit the nail on the head every time.
As you probably would have guessed, I am now on the Lord’s mission in Haiti that He has placed me on and will be until He is finished with me, and I have no doubt about it being His plan because of the successes I have seen while on His mission.
Our pre school is doing great, our plans are coming together, our teachers will be certified soon, and our school is in the process of being declared a pre school of reference by the Haitian government. Our bank account is working better than we expected.
We really appreciate our first graduating class being accepted by Christian Flights International School in neighboring Ranquitte, Haiti. We have been told they were far above average when compared to other kindergarten students.
Our new little 3-year-olds have finally settled in and are beginning to have a wonderful year. I will have to say I absolutely love them, knowing their histories and to see them running around so full of energy is a God given blessing. Knowing all of the above didn’t happen by chance, happenstance, or luck.
I know I had better keep on with His mission. If I don’t as Granny Balliew said, “You could get one of His big unwanted surprises.”
“Wonder what would a big unwanted surprise be like Granny?” I asked.
“I don’t know because I have never seen in my lifetime anybody that was foolish enough not to do what they knew the Lord wanted them to do. And hope I never do,” she told me back then.
This was going to be a short article explaining, thanking our community for changing little people’s lives, and for the success of our Calhoun Pre School in Haiti.
Instead I have decided to share with our supporters and our Calhoun community several thoughts that are on my mind, when I think of my involvement and our little guys’ future. I can assure you their futures are not clear at all, and it’s depressing to say the least.
I’m sure I will have to explain several times after this article what I meant by certain statements, simply because of my inability to really relate when writing about the hopeless plight of our Haitian friends. Very few of us have ever been able to see first hand such misery as my friends in Haiti are suffering.
I’m sure this article will seem too many of you as rambling and you will be absolutely right. As I said I am going to share what is on my mind, and what I have seen.
When Mrs. Ivey Salmon, the lady who is to hundreds of missionaries their mentor, looked at me over her glasses and said, “Patience, Mr. Deacon, patience, and remember Haitian time.”
At the time I didn’t know she was giving me such important advice. I had no concept of Haitian patience or Haitian time. Boy, have I ever had to remember and call on that advice big time.
If I mail a letter to our school director with questions, I can expect an answer in about three weeks, if he can find time and a way to get to Cape Haitian to retrieve it, which is 50 miles away. And then if it don’t get lost in route or stolen. If someone who handles the mails assumes that there could be valuables or money in our mail, there is a good chance it will be stolen.
After several mission trips there by all us Calhoun supporters and sponsors ferrying supplies, seeking advice, planning for our school’s future and seeing the successes, I hope I have finally started getting it together. I know I now have a tremendous respect in the way the Haitian people go about their daily lives. Slowly, methodically, deliberately, and with patience they live each day trying to exist so they can do the same thing tomorrow.
Time to a Haitian family doesn’t seem to matter much, but it does seem important to us people on our missions there, and it goes by very quickly.
Another lesson I had to learn, and didn’t learn quickly enough was the fact that every person I met there had some sort of a pressing personal need. I also have learned if you can’t stay focused on your mission God placed you on, you are going to be very confused.
Haiti is the home of hopeless and desperate people, with suffering every place you turn. If you are not prepared you will all of a sudden feel so overwhelmed with the hopeless and suffering there, you will feel overwhelmed. We are accustomed and have been trained here in our country, if there is a problem we find a way to get it fixed, be it physical, mental or emotional.
You have to learn in Haiti there is very little help for any problem, and the fact that most of their help comes from themselves, a small amount from missionaries, and with the most of their help coming from the Lord.
The first time I saw him he was hiding behind the school building. At first it was only a glance, something caused me to look back, and then I saw his cleft palate. I asked Roger our school director if he was one of our students and was told he was, but he was very shy and didn’t really want to be in school because the other students made fun of him. I told Roger to ask him to come to where we were because he was my kind of kid; I really liked kids who were shy and handsome. He after a few minutes of coaxing was a friend, who would create a memory I will live a lifetime with.
To make a long story short, with the help of many, his cleft palate has been almost repaired. One more surgical procedure and another of God’s troubled children will not have to hide anymore in shame. His tears have been replaced by an infectious smile. When I see that smile I feel like I have been blessed more than he.
I see another of God’s troubled children happily smiling, and I thank God for allowing us to see another of His created miracles.
Here in the United States whatever our problem may be, there is help somewhere. None of us has to worry about our children starving, having funds to educate them, getting them to medical help, clothing them, and the many other things we as parents take for granted.
My friends in Haiti have very little help; they are overwhelmed with just looking for ways to exist. Another important lesson that took Mrs. Ivey a few minutes to drill into my brain was the most important reason for our pre school other than getting little fellows ready to learn when they entered school. She had to calm me down twice when I excitingly was trying to explain what we were planning to do with the school’s future.
When I was finally listening she quietly said, “Deacon all I want you to do is teach my babies to read. Once you accomplish that, then they can open their Bibles and read about hope and a future where here in our area they have very little of either.”
That statement coming from one of the most religious people I have ever met hit me like a brick and got this fellow back on track of listening to the lady that many people consider The Mother Theresa of Haiti.
After hearing her friends explain to me about the hundreds of lives she has nursed back to health with her medical skills and the many college students she has seen graduate after paying for their education, who are repaying her with their skills, helping the poor around the country of Haiti, I could understand why they think of her as a saint.
Important lessons come very quickly down there when you least expect them - especially if you are like I am, hard headed and don’t take enough time to think through what you’ve been told.
I have been told on several occasions by Mrs. Ivey and other people that we were educating and feeding the poorest of the poor children in our school and since I knew every child in our area was malnourished and poor, I never gave it a second thought. Man did I ever feel small when they finally made me understand that the poorest of the poor are the children, who without some sort of intervention are the ones who will become brain damaged or could possibly die from the lack of protein.
That finally struck home, those little guys could be starving, from lack of protein. In a weakened condition they are susceptible to typhoid fever, malaria, and acute diarrheal disease, any of which can be fatal and are most times because the lack of medical attention. Thank God for the people who donate financially and to those who sponsor our children; you are saving little kids’ health and possibly their lives.
While on the way to our school you will pass the well our Calhoun First Baptist and Calhoun First United Methodist churches had drilled. I stop for a second and think of being told of how the men and women walking bare footed for hours in searing heat across a rugged landscape to get water from a creek that would be foul-smelling, polluted with garbage, parasites, and feces from farm animals, that could cause our little ones to become sick if not boiled. Not anymore thanks to the clean water from the well that our community provided.
Another lesson was when I was reading a grim array of statistics compiled by the United Nations on Haiti, the second poorest country in the world. This report said 42 percent of the children under 5 years old are malnourished, causing malnutrition and diarrhea to kill 28 percent of them, with 20 percent of those being small babies. One thing I feel for sure is that the only salvation for these desperate people will be divine intervention. I know the Haitian people should be in all our prayers; they are in mine.
There are hundreds of missionary groups in Haiti; all together these groups are one of the main reasons some of those people are barely holding on. Christian missionary organizations are the public works of Haiti – they build roads, provide water sources, develop agriculture, provide the majority of the educational opportunities, and build peace and goodwill in the communities. The most important thing they do is the teaching of hope that’s in the Bible.
From what I have seen, I have no doubt the Lord is their only hope. They have had 200 years since they became a free people to make things work; it’s only continued to get worse.
A devastating flood in September killed up to 3,000 in the northwestern city of Gonaives and other northern areas. There is no estimate of the number of children that were lost in that flood.
One terrible fact of life came to the front in Goniaves, where the years of deforestation and denuding of the mountains kill people slowly and quickly. Slowly due to the yearly decrease in productivity of the soil, and quickly when the monsoon rains come. Our little fellows and their families will be even more troubled in a few years.
Along Haiti’s rough rural roadways, it’s rare to see an old tree that remains among the shrubs and grass, tall and majestic against the bright sky, a testimony to a paradise lost. The only large trees are fruit trees and without them our people would be closer to starvation.
Not so many years ago, Haiti’s half of the island of Hispaniola was lush and heavily forested and considered a paradise. Today less than 2 percent of Haiti’s forests cover remains - down from 20 percent in 1956 and 60 percent in 1923.
The disappearance of Haiti’s trees is more than an aesthetic problem. It has left the country vulnerable to droughts and floods like the one that devastated the city of Gonaives I mentioned above, worsening the lot of what is already one of the world’s poorest nations. Even modest rainfall carries precious topsoil to the sea, leaving the hillsides even more barren and infertile. In a country where most households depend on small-scale agriculture to survive that is a sure disaster in the making.
Why have Haitians cut down their forests so recklessly? The answer lies in the country’s energy usage patterns. They are not blessed with an abundant source of energy resources. More than 70 percent of families in Haiti use charcoal to cook and the charcoal come from trees.
In the rural areas the farmers produce charcoal as a source of income. They cut the trees and in most cases don’t replace them.
Not just households, but small businesses too consume huge amounts of charcoal. If something doesn’t happen soon the thousands of people in our area are doomed.
I ask your apologies for such a rambling article. I have been sitting here typing my thoughts about what I have found while I’ve been involved with the people in our area. It gets depressing because of the starving babies and the hopelessness of the people.
I guess I will always get down when I think about babies dying. What I have seen makes it hard not to question the Lord, asking why. I saw babies that I knew would probably be dead in the not too distant future and have been proven right on a few occasions.
God knows I wish I could help every one of those precious little guys. I wish I could tell every one of them I care, especially all the babies that are born with physical or mental challenges, born with very little chance of survival. I believe every life has value because it was created in God’s image.
One of my most asked questions of the Lord is, what has the human race done to cause babies like these to suffer so. And then I ask, “Lord, please give us the wisdom and ability to make things better for our group of little people.”
When I stand with our group of little fellows at our school, I am thankful because I know what we in Calhoun are doing is saving little lives.
By the grace of God we were born in a country that is so blessed. I still sit and marvel each Sunday at the dozens of children who participate in our children time at Trinity Baptist Church’s Sunday service; they are so precious and dependent on us parents and our society of caregivers.
Our children in Haiti have parents who love their children, hurt when their children suffer, and when they die. I have seen the fear and concern of those parents when asking for help.
When I see Ivey Salomon with tears in her eyes, it overwhelms me. With that lady’s knowledge and skills showing such emotions, it really humbles me. That lady is to me the example of humility; she just goes about her God- given mission with humbleness because it is her mission. I feel that is exactly what God expects from each of us, with the mission He placed us on at conception.
If that saint makes it to heaven before I do, I have absolutely no doubt Mrs. Ivey will meet the Balliew girls I love, Mrs. Inez, my mother Ida Belle and my granny when she enters Heaven’s gates. And I know my pal Bill Childers will get involved.
And another one of Granny Balliew’s proverbs will probably come true; your ears will burn, if you are being talked about.
What we are doing in Haiti only involves a pin speck in the total problems that are facing those people and their children. I know we are helping that pin speck. If we stay focused on it, not the total problem then we will be successful. I feel the Lord has placed us on His mission and if we stay focused there will be continued successes.
If you will help us, we will see that some of those parents will not have to lose their child. If any church would like to help us with our mission, we would appreciate the help.
Call Deacon Balliew to make a tax exempt donation at 629-6156 or write or send a check to 980 Sugar Valley Road, N.W., Calhoun, Ga. 30701. You can also make a contribution through our Web site, (thegroupof.org). You can also see our Haiti project pictures by following the prompts.
Copyright: 2005 Deacon Balliew