OK...not quite so somber

We've been home for a month...oops, only 3.5 days...now (seems like an eternity) and already my good memories come back. I am never the less deeply saddened over the fact that so many very ill children do not have what is rightfully, and so easily, theirs. Can't shake that...but we'll see yet whether I can change it yet!
Then I look at Sander's photos, only a few from the last days, and I remember the other past of Haiti. The smiles that break out every time you say "bonju", "bonswa" or "kom en vwa ye?" (how are you?) - with the response "pa pi mal !" - not too bad.
The children who stare at you then break out in smiles and wave until you are too far down the road to see them. The pride when people invite you to their 'spic and span' little one or two-room houses, decorated with 3rd-hand doilies and plastic flowers. The metal, heavy doors that are pulled shut each night to protect themselves from serious crime. The joy of community: washing laundry at the well together, children frolicking in the river, throngs of children walking with full gallon jugs on their heads. Clusters of school children, donned in crispy-clean uniforms and heads covered in ribbons all giggling and oblivious of the rest of the world. Women taking their roosters to market and coming back with chickens...just like bringing your money to Saks and coming back with bags. An old woman on her donkey, going to the market..speaking on her cellphone. We're all the same: just little ants going back and forth on different paths. Men in smart suits, white shirts, ties and gleaming shoes on the dusty tap-tap on their way to work at the bank, or teach at a school. Or a man walking up a steep, dusty mountain path out in nowhere, carefully carrying his freshly dry-cleaned suit, wrapped in plastic. Or Carlo, who has turned an infertile valley (one day walking from edge to edge) into a valley filled with new trees, orchards and experimentl plants. None of it makes much sense. But I find all of it beautiful. I guess I feel that there is so much to be learned there and so much to be reminded of. Neither of our countires can buy security, safety or stability. But we can, each at our own level (through luck?) do what we can to stay healthy, keep our minds safe, our families together and our children educated. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We're all the same ants...just a different ant hill.
So, people: please keep doing wehat you are doing. Some of you raise better quality food or inform themselves on a better life for others. Some are dedicated to education, whether in community care, health care or independent living in general. Others donate time or money to those in need both here and abroad. But when you think about it: we all do something that makes a difference and therewith we make a difference to ourself. Be proud of it: you deserve it!