bazile eziye

last august i took what i believe to be one of the best pictures i've ever taken.

here it is:

this little boy is named eziye which in english is pronounced isaiah.

he is gorgeous.

eziye was staying at pastor josue's house in august while i was there. he had recently had surgery to correct a herniated testicle and pastor josue and his wife were watching him as he recovered. having been released from the hospital, he was supposed to refrain from any strenuous activity, so josue thought it best not to have him return immediately to the orphanage and all the other children.

wise move, i say.

anyhow, as soon as i got to the orphanage last week, i wanted to see his face again. he was hiding under a red hood, but not difficult to locate even in a sea of faces.

what a doll. eziye has four brothers . . . or is it three? i don't know about his parents, but i do know he is one of the sponsored children of "new life to the children."

he was busy playing with friends this time and we were passing out plates of food to nearly 80 neighborhood children, so we didn't talk much. i saw a few of his brothers though.

turns out, they're gorgeous too.

jidlene

last august i visited cité soleil (in creole: site solèy. in english: sun city) for the first time.

i was only there a few hours. we went to pastor marciel's church on a sunday morning. when we exited the church (while the service was still ongoing), a woman handed me a naked child.

her name was jidlene.

jidlene's mom, the woman said, was gone. she indicated that the mother may have been a bit crazy. her dad? well, let's just say he doesn't seem to feel much responsibility toward his daughter.

see? her dad is the one in the von dutch hat. coulda strangled him with my bare hands, but the Lord restrained me. her bloated tummy and blood-shot eyes told me she wasn't eating.

it would seem that his hat and cd player were far more important to jidlene's dad than feeding his daughter.

the woman who handed jidlene to me asked me to take the child home with me. clearly i could do no such thing. never mind that it would be completely illegal, i don't have the means to feed another mouth.

i spent a good part of that afternoon crying for this little girl. i couldn't imagine what her fate would be. how would she survive?

the last two weeks i had an opportunity to return to that very church. we spent our 10 days in haiti working on rebuilding pastor marciel's church since the walls had collapsed in the earthquake. you might imagine that i set out looking for jidlene right away.

i found her.

isn't God good?