I spent the week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The tent cities were all over the city. I was told not much progress has been made. Some wood structures were put up in new developments on the city outskirts but people preferred to live in tents with people they know in familiar neighborhoods than in better housing with strangers. Also, many who had fled to rural areas to get out of the city for fear of the aftershocks have returned, finding life no better in e country and even less opportunities. So most of the people came back home. I don't want to minimize their plight. We walked through a tent city. The tents are side by side so there is no privacy; the squalor and nakedness were disheartening. We saw one lady standing in a basing pouring water over herself. We looked away because she had no other place to go.
The tents are better than nothing of course. I was told Habitat for Humanity is putting up wood structures that should last up to 10 years. Then what? The STEP seminary decided it was better to "build to last." So they bought a cement-block moulding machine and found some unemployed laborers to start a micro-enterprise. So make the blocks; others sell them; and still others help people rebuild. The hardest thing is hauling the blocks and other building materials through the narrow alleys and tent cities to where the homes were to be built. So far, with the help of the seminary staff and students, they have put up two homes at a cost of $6,000 US each. They weren't impressive, but they were built to last.
In contrast, my friend Pastor Moise and family moved out of their nice cement block home and
slept outdoors in a tent for a full year even though their home was standing. They are afraid to sleep under a cement structure because their boys’ school collapsed killing one son and burying the other for days. Now they all sleep together every night in an addition with a tin roof. Moise says, "What can I do? They could sleep at night. During the day we enjoy our home and at night we feel secure together here." But they are a happy family. We laughed and played together. And God is using them in amazing ways. Nine years ago they started with a handful of Christians and now the church assembles several hundred in a beautiful new building that is going up in the middle of the devastation. They started a school that goes from Grade one to high school and have the foundation and walls up for an orphanage. They too are building to last. But they are putting first things first: healing, security, and God's kingdom.
