Kevin

I am now in Haiti at the orphanage enjoying a lunch break. Even though I have been sitting at my computer a decent half hour at this point in time, I have not been able to muster up the courage to write a new blog post simply because SO MUCH has happened since I last wrote and I really am at quite a loss as to what stories to tell! In light of the plethora of stories, I shall endeavor to tackle only one for the time being.

Yesterday, I went on an outing with another orphanage down the street from GLA. This orphanage goes on "Rice Runs" every few weeks. These rice runs are when they stack up on food from US AID, and distribute it to various orphanages and hospitals in the town of Léogâne - where the epicenter of the earthquake was. The older kids from the orphanage come along, and they facilitate a sort of a Sunday school for the kids at the orphanage before distributing the food.

I arrived at this other orphanage (called OBEC I believe) at 9 yesterday morning. I was informed that we had a two hour drive ahead of us. It ended up being a 5+ hour drive in a Haitian tap tap, but that's another story for another time...

The story that I want to tell you now takes place at the first orphanage we visited. This orphanage was in a tent. There were about 40 kids living in this orphanage. They used to have two tents, but one of their tents got destroyed in the hurricane this past weekend. A measly little barbed wire fence with sticks for fence posts surrounded the premises. The children were very dirty, many clearly malnourished.

OPEC had brought a few replacement tents, and while they were setting those up, I hung out with the girls from OPEC. We talked as much as we could with my very broken Creole and in their broken English. Soon, we got on the topic of hair. They liked touching my hair, and they wanted to know my history of haircuts. Soon they were asking me to take out my pony tail so that they could do my hair. So I did, and my hair was the messiest of messes you will ever see in your entire life. It was full of sweat from the ridiculously long tap tap ride, it was coarse, coated in layers of dust from the tap tap, it was full of tangles, and just generally speaking downright gross. So they pulled at it for a while – and surprisingly, it didn't hurt at all! – and eventually came up with what was actually a really impressive creation all factors considered. (Those factors being the state of my hair, the fact that they probably never do white people's hair, and the fact that there was not a brush on the premises...) Then they took it out and re-did it a number of times. Here's where I pulled out my strategic move with the camera. I hadn't been able to bring myself to take any pictures. I just couldn't do it. It felt very not okay to be taking pictures of these kids in this place. But I genuinely wanted to see what my hair looked like, so I asked them to take a picture for me. And then they proceeded to take pictures of a lot of things.

Doing Kathryn's hair...

 With several of the girls from OBEC who did my hair

 Another style:

 This one was interesting....Can't say it was my favorite:

 The final creation:

After they had done and redone my hair several times, my attentions were suddenly captured by a little girl, standing forlorn, staring sadly into space. She was wearing a tattered pink dress, and the dirtiest little pink dress shoes full of holes and coated in dirt. Her hair was gathered in a few skimpy little braids, and it was tinted orange – a sign of malnutrition. In one hand, she held the gift that the OBEC people had brought for the kids. It was a MacDonald's happy meal toy – a big, plastic action figure of the mouse (at least I think it was supposed to be a mouse) from the movie Flushed Away. 

There she stood, clutching the toy in one hand, and staring with a face as sad as any face I have ever seen on a child. She was probably about three years old, but the face she had was a face only an adult should ever have. I walked over to her, crouched down and held her hand. Every single other child who I've done that to in Haiti so far has instantly latched on and grabbed my hand. This one didn't. Her little hand was limp in mine. She didn't even turn to look at me and see who had touched her. She just continued to stare into space. I picked her up, she smelled awful. I picked her up and held her close and kissed her sunken cheeks. I held her for a long time. We just stood there, I talked to her, and she continued to stare. I wondered what her name was; I thought I heard the kids call her something that sounded like, “Kevin”. 

Then I brought her to a bench and sat down with her in my lap. Her little pink dress got caught and pulled up in the process. She was wearing nothing under her dress, and Kevin was decidedly not a girl. I could not but laugh at the bitter irony of the scene from Pixar's Up that flashed through my head... “Kevin's a girl?”... In this case, Kevin was not a girl. 

I continued to hold little Kevin, and he continued to be unresponsive. I tried opening his MacDonald's happy meal toy for him, and I tried showing it to him, but it was as if he didn't even see it. After opening it, I placed it in his hand, and within seconds, his little hand had dropped it on the ground. Any other kid I know would clearly indicate to me that they wanted it back. He made no noise, no gestures, no facial expressions. His interest was finally a little bit perked by the plastic wrapper. He seemed to actually see it at least. 

Some of the kids had found a little puppy dog, and when I say little, I mean this puppy was tiny. They brought it up to Kevin, laughing, and tried to get him to hold it. Even when a squeaking, squirmy puppy dog was shoved in his face, Kevin was totally unresponsive. He didn't react at all. I can only imagine what must have happened in the course of Kevin's short life to make him act in such a way. 

Shortly after the kids with the puppy left, I looked down to see little Kevin's head had fallen onto my chest, and he was fast asleep. Fleas began to gather on his face and his body. His hair was filthy. Suddenly a little girl started screeching, “pee pee! Pee pee!” I looked down and sure enough, a steady stream of it was squirting out of Kevin and onto my lap. I didn't mind it, though. I moved my leg slightly, and the rest of it landed on the bench. I held Kevin until it was time to go. We were due to visit four orphanages, we had just finished up at the first one, and it was already 5:30. That morning, I had been told that we'd be getting back home between 5 and 6, and we had only just finished at the first orphanage.

I gently woke the little boy up, and set him down on the ground. His eyes opened, and he returned to standing in the same position, gazing sadly into space. In my mind's eye were imagines of clean and glittering American bathrooms; I wanted to take him into one and bathe him and give him handsome boy clothing, and bring him to the doctor's office, and feed him, and teach him what it means to play and laugh and what it feels like to be loved and what it means to sleep in a bed instead of a US AID tent. US AID tents and tarps were everywhere. Branded on them was the slogan, “From the American People.” I turned and looked at Kevin one last time, standing in a patch of dirt in his pink clothing, staring into space. 

Pictures with Kevin.