Last Saturday in my humble studio apartment in Santiago, I couldn’t think about much except Haiti. After spending the day in thought, I concluded Haiti has traumatized me personally as it probably has many of you. We cannot begin to comprehend the images of bodies being buried and never identified nor the susceptibility to disease survivors face. And we cannot get past the question, “Why?” We are hurting because no matter how much we’ve volunteered, worked in development, or read the news, it doesn’t make it easier.
I think out of immeasurable tragedy can come opportunity for many of us to achieve personal healing – healing we can share with Haiti. And it’s not necessarily financial.
A Fondo Esperanza communal bank in Santiago, Chile
As a Kiva Fellow on my third placement here in South America, I’ve had the chance to meet hundreds of microfinance borrowers. But I am no expert. In fact, one of my biggest realizations occurred just this week while visiting a communal bank (a group loan, of about 10-15 members) in Santiago. I will never forget watching a girl my age, about 25 years old and a mother of two, talk about a time where she had to sell her first child’s clothing from a blanket on the street so that she could afford water for herself – all while she was pregnant with her second child. She told the group proudly, and called herself a “luchadora” (fighter) and the entire room clapped. Microfinance, as a field, is currently very preoccupied with social performance monitoring. That is to say, “Is microfinance helping people actually get out of poverty?”
Hearing this beautiful mother, however, who is still very poor but is now in a place of relative economic stability, there is a different kind of poverty she has broken out of. She went from feeling ashamed to feeling proud. Perhaps we can’t measure that, perhaps we shouldn’t try to.
But what this brings me to is a plea I have to not look at Haiti entirely by numbers, but instead allow your heart to express itself. Whether you write, paint, sing, listen to music, pray, or weep, let your creative expression help you to bring love to Haiti in ways that aren’t quantifiable. In this way, we can tie ourselves to Haiti, not as those handing aid from above, but as those weeping with the survivors, arm in arm in an incomprehensible battle, together.
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