October 2002

Haiti Prayer

The rain will come, they all say. The rain will come. Sometimes we hear it spoken by a peasant farmer who has taken a break from weeding his corn and beans and a grain called pitimi long enough to chat with us as we walk the paths between the patchy fields around Mombin Crochu. As he leans on the wooden handle of his hoe, he squints into the late afternoon sun, and looks toward the mountains, hoping to see a gathering of clouds. "Lapli ap tonbe," he says hopefully, quietly. A statement, a wish, a prayer of the heart. No crop-support programs here in Haiti. If his corn and beans and manioc don’t make it he’s in for a year even rougher than usual. With too many hungry mouths at home already, he’s also got a couple of kids the family is trying to send to secondary school in Hinche several hours away, he tells us—no possibility they’ll go this next fall if the crops don’t come in. Even some extra beans that his wife might sell for a few more Gourdes at market-day would help. Then maybe they would be able to buy a couple of the U.S. hand-me-down NFL T-shirts and a pair of khaki pants as fall school outfits, too. But it’s still looking dry, and he leans back into the hoe and the work and the sweat, to stay bent over for another few hours before padding home barefoot at dusk to his only meal of the day.

Pe Jean, the Catholic priest in Mombin Crochu, says it like a benediction, with a kind of biblical overtone in the pleasant baritone voice known well to his more than four hundred parishioners. "Lapli ap tonbe!" Well, of course. The way Pe Jean says it, there can’t be any real doubt. It’s like he just stepped down off Mt. Sinai with the tablets. Born and educated in Belgium, Pe Jean leads the largest worshiping congregation in Mombin Crochu. He’s served in various parts of Haiti for twenty years, speaks several languages fluently, and is highly regarded in town as a man of reserve and wisdom. When we have attended Mass, we’ve heard him preach sermons that are well-structured, clear, and empowering through the gospel to people who need this word of Christian hope. Pe Jean has been a friend to us and several times a counselor to Covenant Hospital in the months since we arrived.

Through conversations in his spare but comfortable living room and in ours as well we’ve come to admire him as a man of God enjoined in the work of Christ’s Church. And when he speaks, those in earshot listen. Surely Pe Jean, in his wisdom, knows. The rain will come, surely.

The rest all say it, too. Loiterers in front of the police station; the carpenter who is kept so constantly at his trade by the demand for coffins; the grizzled purveyor of lottery tickets at the corner of the town square; women in faded bandanas seated on squatty chairs in the brilliant heat of market day, hoping to sell a pile of mangoes or avocados or potatoes; card-players and lookers-on who gather on the tavern porch for a game each mid-week afternoon. It’s coming, they say. The rain will come. For them it’s a greeting, an inquiry into the other’s well-being, a friendly affirmation of the unpredictable cycles and realities of hard life in a country that doesn’t have many rewards to give to those who endure.

But it’s coming, right? The rain will come. The water will flow, rivers and springs will run clear and full, the land will be green and trees and crops will flourish again. God will gift us if we believe completely enough in Him and in His control of all Creation. And there will be peace and blessing. If we just believe enough, it will come.