Yesterday, waste management personnel found the bodies of three ‘unborn babies’ in the waste tank of a portable latrine in Place de la Paix, the Salvation Army managed camp in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) that is home to over 20,000 earthquake survivors.How do you process the raw emotions - the fear, the desperation, the hopelessness - that would force a woman to make a decision that resulted in her baby being dumped in the sewerage? This isn’t the first time we have made a discovery like this, and once again we have no idea why this had to happen; we have no idea who the mother or the parents are, so this is pure speculation.
Were the babies aborted in a ‘back-yard’ procedure and then unceremoniously and surreptitiously dumped because they were the result of rape and the cause of shame? Were their lives terminated because a mother has spent the last six months fighting to survive in an IDP camp; hungry, scared, hopeless and she doesn’t want to bring a baby into an existence like that? Were their lives ended because the mother is sick and she felt she had no choice, no access to medical support or no money to pay for it?
Or were the babies miscarried or still-born? Is there a woman, somewhere in that camp, grieving a terrible loss and fighting the guilt and the sorrow of losing the greatest and perhaps only hope she imagines she had in the world? Is there a woman hiding in the dark shadows of that timber, tin and tarpaulin jungle wondering why it matters that she fight anymore? Is there a wife, hiding in shame from a husband who doesn’t know? Or is it a frightened teen, orphaned by the earthquake that has no idea how to deal with what just happened and no support to help her?
And as selfish as this sounds what do we, the Camp Managers do about it? And how do we help our team deal with the terrible cost of hopelessness and fear? How do we help them understand that this is not their fault; that there is no amount of vigilance, no amount of care and concern that could have avoided this? How do we assist them to overcome the shame and anger they feel? How do they process their feelings of inadequacy?
Don’t tell us it’ll be okay because God is good; don’t pronounce us faithless because when we hurt, we doubt God exists. Don’t condemn me as unchristian because I want to hit people that take advantage of powerless and hopeless people. Don’t tell us to love because God is love! And don’t tell us you love us, (in the Lord), despite our apparent uncertainty, and what you call disbelief!
All it does is convince me that some have never looked into eyes of utter despair and complete hopelessness – and seen God! All it does is remind me that faith can be so shallow that it doesn’t allow for doubt, for hurt, for suffering and complete despair – and simultaneously, God! I have been preached to in religious clichés about a theoretical faith – but ‘they’ show me, by their determination to survive, a deep faith in a God they trust to love them - even if they can’t love back.How do we help women like those described above? Truthfully, I don’t know; but maybe we’ll start by sitting, saying nothing, just being present. Somehow honouring the lives of these, and other discarded babies and restoring the dignity of life. We’ll remind them, and ourselves, that God doesn’t make junk. And maybe, by showing we care, by being present, by loving them even when they reject us, shove us away and yell at us – just maybe they will begin to like themselves again.
