I had the opportunity to go to Haiti and work for disaster relief for a short while during Winter Break, and I came back on the anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. The experience has made me see life in a new light.

When you go into a developing country ravaged by disease, natural disasters, political turmoil, etc., you go there to watch. You don’t live it. Yes, you might live with the people there but not with those who are starving, those who cook on burning garbage, hunched next to the child with diarrhea. There’s the smell of rotting flesh, roofs covered in rusted aluminum, the occasional bullet shot. You watch.

I would go to work in the office where people are better off. They gave me hugs and expressed true love. But what they have seen, you could not imagine — or maybe you have, in which case I send my condolences. When you know death caused by an earthquake — whether you are rich or poor — when half your family dies of some unfortunate event or another, there are holes that are unbearable to speak of. Like a constant poke on an open sore that never truly heals.

On my drive to work, the roads were surrounded with tent people. It bothered me but became commonplace until I came back to an established, well-developed country where I live in an ivory tower, metaphorically speaking.

Here is where many people hold degrees, have a job, a home. Some might be poor, but they are surviving. This is where it lies: survival, the rub. In Haiti and throughout the world, there are those who cannot survive without depending on a neighbor — a necessity when you can’t make enough money for food or shelter.

This feeling of community and connection bonds them because life depends on it — fellowship based on survival. I saw people connect because any day could be their last, and the only thing that keeps them going is love — carefree, no material attachments because they have none. This love is magnificent but unimaginable unless you are living in this reality, where the memory of death lives in the shadows.

With luxury and comfort, the developed world, collectively speaking, has lost this bare essence: love naked in all its glory.

I met a man named the Rev. Joseph Livenson Lauvaus. He embodies Haitians’ courage to endure suffering with compassion and love. In the ‘80s, when Livenson was a child, his father denounced the state party. As retaliation, the ruling party blamed the suffering of the poor on his family.

An angry mob burned his house down, and his father was exiled from the country. Years went by, and his mother, sister and brother all passed away. He grew up with the help of his godmother in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. Yet he graduated valedictorian in college and seminary school, completing an eight-year program in four years.

He could have preached anywhere, but he chose to go back to Haiti and help the most impoverished people in his community. The Haiti earthquake happened on Jan. 12, 2010. Cholera affected about 500,000 Haitians by 2011. In between there were riots and looting on the streets. Ruins were all around, yet amid all this darkness, Livenson brings hope.

His church, Eglise Lutherienne d’Haiti, provides shelter to hundreds of Haitians and feeds thousands. The cholera response team goes door to door, helping the sick who cannot move because they are too young or too old. In this world, every day is a fight for survival. Progress is slow.

There are a lot of people like this in Haiti. And with people like Livenson, this unfaltering love can be seen. Love beyond all struggles. By no means are they idealistic, yet they never lose that spark of humanity the developed world seems to have forgotten.

If you would like more information on Haiti and its recovery, visit www.lutheranchurchofhaiti.org, or look into any of the number of other reliable organizations that provide aid to this devastated country. 

Louis Tien Huang

Senior in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science 

Published on January 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm