My good friend Karen commented on my last post about perspective and Haiti is more than willing to deliver it.

As I write this, the rain is falling outside, a sound I love so much. Rain always seems to make things new and fresh, and it brings a sense of hope.

Rain also reminds me that tonight people will sleep in the “mud” that runs through their tent on a lonely hillside somewhere.

(Mud is sugarcoating it. It is mainly garbage and excrement from ditches.)

My hope was that Haiti would not harden me. That I would not come back jaded and frustrated about the inability for things to work here. It would be so easy to do so.

It takes 2-3 hours to get lumber at the Eko Depot and that is with light traffic.

I watched a goat being transported on a TapTap (taxi) on Saturday.  On Sunday I saw the same goat, but at the meat market.

Trash is burnt, people sweep dust mindlessly, dogs lie dead in the road for days and I have yet to figure out where the couple billion dollars in aid actually went.

I watched a mom bring her severely malnourished 18 month son to our clinic. Wide eyed, he clung to her pristine dress, his only garment a filthy shirt.

The next day, my favorite Canadian, Lise, had him in her lap, watching Sesame Street online, willing him to smile. Later that day he finally did and actually let out a little giggle. 2 hours later I watched mom leave with him because the food we gave her was not good enough and she did not feel taken care of.

It would be too easy to harden up.

I saw a body today.

I was on my way to visit the SOS Children’s Orphanage, just like Angelina Jolie last month, and on the road was a man with his bicycle next to him.

A piece of rusted tin was draped over him and a tree branch served as a parking cone to redirect traffic.

I could only stare as we drove past, my heart breaking for him and a family that will be crushed when they learn of his death.

It would have been so easy to harden up, to turn around and see about booking an earlier flight home to the comfort of the suburbs.

Had I done so, an impromptu game of soccer may have never taken place with the kids at the orphanage, kids with no families and no homes. Beautiful Haitian kids speaking Spanish to me as we kicked around a soccer ball barefoot.

The reality of death was overcome by the hope of life.

I started writing a blog last night that discussed my growing cynicism, but I had to stop because the despair became too oppressive.

I realized the world can never change if we dismiss things as, “that’s Haiti for you.”

To harden our hearts in order to protect them would be the greatest injustice we could ever commit against the hurting.

It would give us the right to look away, but we cannot.

More than ever we need to become the voice for the voiceless and the champions for the downtrodden.

Haiti can give you either perspective. Hopeless or hopeful.

What we choose can change the world.

-I still love the rain and the hope it brings, I just listen to it differently now, from a new perspective.-