a home for Ian
friday was a day of goodbye's. at about 4:15am friday morning, our alarms began to sound. our first goodbye was only 45 minutes away. we were leaving for haiti at 5am, but Jim wasn't going with us. his flight back to Austin left that afternoon, so we had to leave him behind. after 3 weeks with us, it was a bit strange to think he wouldn't go to the border with us.
but we weren't lacking in people that day. when 5:00 came, 6 of us piled into the car - camille, jennie, miguel (jennie's fiance), ana (miguel's sister), me, and ian. that makes 1 haitian, 2 dominicans, and 3 americans. it was a tight squeeze, but we were definitely thankful to not being going alone.
it's about a 3ish hour drive to the border, and through half of it we slept (except our driver, of course!). when we arrived in dajabon, we immediately began to draw attention to ourselves, without doing anything at all. people kept saying, "you have a haitian baby." i have not been here long enough to be able to tell the difference between dark dominicans and light haitians, but they certainly could tell the difference.
this worked to our disadvantage as we passed by the police station which, of course, was surrounded by police officers. we decided to go on a market day (every monday and friday) because you can avoid the border fees on those days. but as a result, the guards are out in force to prevent haitians from going too far into the country and trying to stay illegally. when we passed by the police, they stopped us. they wanted to know for how much we had bought the baby, or from where we had stolen him! even after showing the guardianship papers, they didn't believe us. we finally explained that we are missionaries taking care of him and were here to look for his family. they were giving us a hard time because they wanted a bribe, but they finally let us go and were gracious enough to direct us to the closest place to get some breakfast.
once we had filled out stomachs we prepared to head to the border. after we prayed, jennie instructed us that, no matter what happened, we should keep walking forward, without looking anyone in the eye, as if this is something you do everyday. with that in mind, we set out into the sea of black skin in which we (even miguel and ana) stood out like very few light skinned americans have ever stood out in their lives. we grabbed hands in pairs to avoid being completely torn apart form each other. being separated was virtually unavoidable, but we wanted to stay as close together as possible in the huge crowd of people, bags of rice, clothing and other wares, wheelbarrows and motorcycles.
somehow, camille and i got a little ahead of the group, and a guard for the haitian border started yelling, "pasaporte" at us. doing as i was told, i kept walking forward without looking at him. after i arrived here, a missionary couple that had previously been in haiti had told us that it was a bit unsafe right now because of american kidnappings for ransom. because of this, and the knowledge that an american passport is like gold to many of these people, i hesistated to let them know that i had mine with me. but as much as i tried to avoid complying with this man, he grabbed camille's and my arm and pulled us back. not too long after we were back with the rest of the group and were able to keep walking forward.
as soon as we crossed the border we heard a haitian woman yelling, "jennie! jennie!" we didn't expect to find the couple that quickly and easily, so we hesistated at first. but then she started pulling out some papers that explained who she was. we had, indeed, found the couple we had being hearing about for several days. we were still in the middle of the huge mass of people, and since it looked very suspicious for even miguel to be carrying ian (that looked less suspicious than one of us americans), he passed him off to the woman.
i'm not sure what exactly happened over the next 10 minutes or so except that we all kept walking as straight ahead as possible, trying to get out of the insane crowd. camille and i remained together, but we had no idea where the others were. we were a bit out of the crowd and they were nowhere to be seen. we drew enough attention just being american that we didn't think it was a good idea to be stationary, so we began walking back very slowly. we finally saw miguel running and looking for us. the rest of the group had been pushed off to the side and had all managed to end up at the car that the couple had rented to get there.
we had imagined that we would find a nice shady place to sit and talk for a while so we could get to know this couple a little better, but it didn't quite go that way. for one, haiti is pretty devoid of trees, so shade is hard to come by. we would have had to either walk a very long way in the heat to find the combination of both shade AND a place to sit, or try crossing back over the the DR, once again fighting the crowds and the guards. so we ended up standing in the shade between two vendors. we were unable to fully escape the heat, crowds and noise. in addition, the couple did not have much time, as they, just like us, had a very long drive back to the town where they live. so we stood, as a crowd gathered around us, and talked with them briefly about ian and a little about themselves.
once they began asking about ian's things, we had to make a quick decision about whether ian was to stay. there was so much more that we wanted to about this couple before we made our decision, but the situation did not provide us with that luxury. it even seemed a bit insane that we were making such a huge decision about the life of a child in the matter of a few minutes. however, none of us at all had a bad feeling about this couple, so it came down to trusting that this is what the Lord had prepared for ian. we then decided that we all would cross back over to get ian's things, with the exclusion of the woman and ian. we began walking away and that was the last time any of us saw him. i was barely able to even rub his back and say "i love you," before we were wisked off into the crowd once again.
when we got back to the other side, the guards stopped us again because there were three haitian men with us (the father, and two students from the university where the couple works). they were so intent on stopping us that we were literally in the middle of the street in the middle of an intersection while we argued with the guards. we explained to the guards what we were doing, and that the haitian men would be going back across the border in just minutes. they still would only let two of them go with us.
since crossing into haiti isn't the safest thing to do, we allowed the haitian men to load ian's things on their back and into their arms and sent them off, as we stayed and watched them walk away. as sad as that was, it was comforting to see how gentle the father was, even just as we helped him to get ian's things. we knew that ian was going to a loving home.
we took the long way home, which gave us a chance to stop and see a great view of the ocean, as well as time to process what had just happened. we arrived in dajabon at around 9am DR time/8am Haitian time (the DR is on eastern time, and Haiti on central). we were leaving at around noonish. and we arrived back at the house at around 5:30.
when camille, jennie and i woke up on saturday morning, the house was eerily quiet. jim and ian were both gone. two loving boys who had provided us with much laughter over the past 3 weeks and 2 months would not be with us again, at least for a very long time.
we received an email this morning from the missionary couple who connected us with ian's new family. she sent pictures of ian with his new family, and new friends in haiti who had come to meet him. it was such a comfort to know that he will be growing up in such a loving Christian environment where he will be able to grow, not just physically, but also mentally and spiritually.
friday was one of the fastest, longest, hottest, craziest, and most emotional (excitement and sadness) days of my life. but one thing i know for sure is that ian now has a loving family. this is for what we had hoped and prayed, and this is what the Lord has given to us.
thank you for praying.
posted by Alexia & Jeffrey @ 2:44 PM
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