Friday, April 23, 2010

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?

4 comments:

Elisabeth said...

amazing.

Carsen said...

how? (and not how did you find her) i guess i mean, what changed her situation?

The Haiti Lady said...

She is beatiful! Did someone take her in or is she still with her 'father' and I use the term loosely!
LeAnne

angela said...

she is still with her father and apparently her aunt? and carsen, i don't know. by the grace of God.