Dominican Dreams Installment #3: In the Haitian Village

Called Out of Darkness

I found this article among my notes from the Perspectives course I took a couple of years ago. These were things I saw and experienced during my first visit to the Dominican Republic, and images that I haven’t been able to shake since.

Down by the docile, dwindling river’s coursing bed, a small Haitian village has sprouted up. Haitians find little favor in the Dominican. Their culture is frowned upon. They’re known as wily, deceptive, shrewd—even predatory salesmen.

They migrate to the Dominican because of opportunity. Circumstances of poverty are a stronghold here, but much less so. Here in the DR, the Haitians have choices. They are not loved by the Dominicans; prejudice rules the social strata. But rather than stay in their home nation, they so often they choose to live… here.

You might never know to duck down the alley and around the narrow corner. In the shadows the road becomes dirt, and then, amidst wind- and water-washed discarded clothes and other debris, the first door appears.

I feel I’m intruding. I feel we’re uninvited gawking spectators, observers who are here to make an appearance, after which we’ll all go bathe our pity in perhaps some ice cream, take a shower, and crawl into a soft bed to dream about air conditioning.

I don’t know their circumstances. But they don’t know the same normal I do.

Strongholds—limitations that keep us from forward motion. We have been brought out of the kingdom of darkness, but somehow we still harbor the perpetual tendency to the dark.

They choose here. It reigns over them. Like the rain that falls and overflows their riverbanks, that rises up. They can’t escape life here, any more than they can escape the rising tides that evacuate the village and sometimes drown their precious loved ones.

That first door is perhaps eight feet from the second, which is just like it—hinged into the wall of a brightly colored aluminum shanty. Narrow. There’s a woman lingering in the doorway, watching us.

Smells assault, mingle, clash. I smell wood smoke. I smell dinner—Cajun spices, beans perhaps. I smell home—when in my pride perhaps I had expected sewage and unwashed bodies. In the DR, even the very poor do not seem to go hungry. Even dirt floors are swept and “clean.”

Brown faces peer at us, old and young.

I hear French. “Bon jour.” I hear Spanish. “Buenas tardes.” I hear quiet Americans. I can almost hear their wide eyes, echoed, mirrored in my own. Everything we see reverberates within, a colorful vibration of poverty, striking a chord of compassion.

A child scurries across the path.

And before too long, the crowd of Americans calls attention, draws a crowd. We start to preach, start to share. Offer to pray. And one woman says please, please pray for her.

So we gather around.

Touch. There’s power in touch. I like things and people to be clean. The people I share myself and my possessions with are the ones who are clean. The ones I will drink after from the same cup.

But I touch her. My hand reaches for her shoulder. Under uncertain fingertips I feel smooth, soft, supple skin. Warmth as my skin meets hers. In the marketplace, these are the untouchables- sometimes Haitians are known to drug, then mug unsuspecting victims using a skin-permeating drug on their hands and an innocuous handshake.

But here in her home, we touch. Jesus, how do you want to touch her? How will you touch her through me? Where is this woman’s power encounter?

More than ever I wish I spoke her language. Creole, French, Spanish. But I don’t. So I pray in my own—may the Spirit give me voice! May I have faith sufficient. Healing is a strange, confusing doctrine for me. I’ve prayed for it so many times and never seen or received it. The “everyone should be healed!” preachers leave me with an offended and betrayed feeling because I can’t believe their passion.

Is my new friend healed when the pastor and I pray? When he counts to three and gives her “a moment to look back on”? She indicates yes in a vague kind of way. But as I cannot feel her pain, neither can I feel her healing. Faith, Lyndi. Trust. Firm.

Lord, I long to see you do this!

Maybe I have.

We pray. Standing in the midst of the crowd we’ve attracted, someone takes advantage of the moment. Perhaps the pastor from Puerto Rico who brought us here. He tells them the Truth. He explains the Light. And he asks for a song. We begin to sing about how our “Cristo” is able to move mountains. As the words float heavenward I pray these people hear them. He can move their mountains. Even the mountain of this poor, hidden community. The disease and death and difficulties they face every day.

I wonder if they could ever trust me.

Our brief church service is over, and we turn to go. Over ruts, skirting puddles, climbing across doubtful natural bridges, offering a hand or clinging to the faces of the walls nearby. Shadows have fallen. Somehow we’re far from the city that’s driving itself crazy behind the curtain we’d drawn behind us when we stepped into this tiny underworld.

And we leave, we’re gone, our presence a vapor… may the Spirit linger.

Brief encounters plant seeds we trust God to water. But I still feel impressed: We are not to forget. The temptation is to leave places like this village and carry the memory, the fuzzy-feel-good of having done something for someone. But what if we also carried the burden? The burden to pray, even though we don't return? Or even... the burden to return? How might God use our prayers and our faithfulness to his people we carry in our hearts?