On February 9th I had the honor of addressing our meeting of the North Star Santas. My topic was ethics and professional responsibility. I delivered a very serious address about our need, as a group, to guard against pedophiles and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement right away. We have group guidelines, straight from the insurance people, about how we must behave around children. Never be alone with a child, always wear white gloves so your hands are easily spotted in photographs, how to avoid accidental intimate contact, etc.

And then, three days later, I’m up to the top of my head in naked children. Lots of naked children. My headline was not meant in jest – they were slaves (many of them) sent to fetch water from the tanker we’d driven into Cite Soliel.

I was in Haiti on an 8 day mission trip with Healing Haiti.(Click on the link to donate. Please.)

The simple fact is that when you have nothing the issue of clothes in a tropical climate is largely irrelevant for children. And thus you have a lot of naked kids under 10 years of age storming around.

Here’s the gist of that day’s mission – to deliver water to the worst parts of the poorest slum in the western hemisphere. There is no infrastructure in most of Haiti. There is no sewer, water, telephone, or electrical up to the house. Or, for that matter, up to the neighborhood. And in Cite Soleiel everything has to be carried into the area, including water. Some commercial vendors run trucks into the area and charge for the water. Healing Haiti has two trucks and they deliver the water for free. 3500 gallons at a time they drive into the most impoverished areas and provide the most basic human need 6 days a week. They try to hit 10 stops a day (between the two trucks) and make sure that the biggest/thirstiest areas get covered a few times a week. Without them the death rate would be much higher. Because if you have to pay for water, you’re not able to pay for food. It’s that simple. It’s really that kind of a choice.

But there we were. As I got off the truck the looks of the children said it all – “He’s here!” Yes, Papa Noel (Father Christmas in Creole) had arrived in Cite Soliel. And the ethics that apply in Minnesota flew out the window faster than I could move the 6 inch water hose from bucket to bucket.

After working the hose (controlled chaos at it’s best) to fill up containers of all sorts for the children and women who’d lined up, we took a tour of the area. And the instant I broke from the hose I was surrounded by children. Lots of children. And they all wanted to know my name. I stuck with Papa Noel – Father Christmas. If anyone persisted a third time (old Navajo custom) I would tell them my name was Joseph. But for the thousands of children I spent time with in Haiti I was simply Papa Noel. I am so honored by that that I will have to look for adequate words to express my feelings.

These children are without any of the basics that we consider mandatory in the United States. They live in shacks built out of building refuse and trash we would simply throw away. Tin sheets and plastic tarps from hurricane rescue gear comprise the majority of the walls/roofs. The sewage flows through the streets and they walk right through it with no concern. No shoes, no clothes, no food, but they do have water on the days we haul it in to them. I used to have really tough feet as a kid but I know that I could never have walked where they do – broken glass, nails, jagged concrete, razor sharp sea shells, and human waste. But they’re tough little characters. And the one thing they lack more than anything is love.

Simple human compassion is way up there on Maslow’s Hierarchy. In Haiti these kids are on the bottom tier. And when we show up they at least get that tier covered. One of the things that Healing Haiti wants is for us to be the “hands and feet of Christ.” So when we get out of the Tap Tap

we start hauling water. It gives the seven year old girl that is enslaved a chance to take a small break. Yes, child slavery is real. They are called Restavek in Haiti. The total number of child slaves is possibly as high as 1/4 million children. That’s out of a population of under 10,000,000. Yes, the entire population of Saint Paul, Minnesota is a close number. If you compared it to the United States, it would mean 7,500,000 children would be enslaved. That’s the entire population of Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and New Orleans if we scaled it up.

They are enslaved because their parents cannot take care of them and feed them. They are sold to others so that the new family (read: slave owners) will provide for the child. Sounds ok on the surface, but it means a childhood lost to this fate. The kids are expected to work as hard as the adults and they live on as little as the owners can get away with giving them. There are no pudgy children in this part of Haiti. But there are, at moments, happy children. I’d like to share that love with you.

I’ll write about the actual distribution of water a little later in this series. It rates two days. But for a moment, just to ease you into what we did, I want to talk about being loved like I’ve never been loved before. It is probably hard for anyone who hasn’t been Santa Claus to understand the trust and love that children accord you based solely on your appearance. It still amazes me every year. I am trusted with their deepest secrets, their wishes, their hurts, and their needs. They know I will not violate their trust. One of the keys to my talk on that Saturday was that we need to be Nicholas of Myra in our every action. And when I got off the tap tap I vowed to live up to his name and reputation.

Many of these children had never seen a white man with a beard like mine. It was a constant source of fascination. And pain. Seems that a chin whisker from Papa Noel held some special place in their life. Maybe proof that I’d visited their home, perhaps as a curiosity, and possibly as a token of a few minutes of peace in their life. Whatever the reason, I have a new shape to my beard this week. All the really long hairs are gone – along with many of the shorter ones. They also couldn’t believe how incredibly fat I am. Yes, when you are 7 times as big as another person you are really huge. One proof that my “bowl full of jelly” was real was to punch it as hard as a six-year-old fist could manage. From below. Fortunately no low blows. But the old bowl shook a lot last week. Thousands of fingers and hands, not all of them belonging to chronological children, had to touch my face, my stomach, my arms, my bald head, and my calves to prove that they were real.

Once upon a time I was a weight lifter. And I still have the bulk there if not the toning (I’ve cleverly concealed it with fat.) But that someone so huge, with a white beard, could be anyone but Papa Noel was impossible. And thus at each and every place we went the children would gather around me to hold my hand, be picked up and held, or just acknowledged. I tried to pray over each one. I quickly gave up my phobia about holding naked kids. Too big a percentage to ignore. So there I stood with naked kids draped all over me, playing with my beard, punching my calves, as I lugged water to their shanty. Rule #8 down the tube – never be alone with a child. Especially not naked children in a room smaller than your bathroom that is well out of sight of any other person. But they trusted us and it was comfortable. I didn’t go too deeply into any of the homes – I didn’t fit. I was too darned big and it was a bull in the china shop deal if I went beyond the first room. And the slave children didn’t want me to come all the way – they would be punished if Papa Noel delivered the water and they didn’t. So I’d stop short of the home and set down the bucket or put it on their head. And I was rewarded over and over again with the most amazing smiles and thanks in both English and Creole.

Love is something we, as Americans, box into a little place reserved for friends and family. I tried really hard to remember how Jesus dealt with children. He never turned his back on them. And if I was His hands and feet for a week I had no choice but to accept that role of loving others as myself. So I sang with them (they have a different set of songs and my Creole/French are a bit lacking) and held their hands, and let them remove over 10% of my hair (arms, stomach, beard, etc.) Here’s a video of the song they sang most often. I will learn all the words before I go back.

One final thing and then I’ll go back to my cage – I never got a cross look from anyone in Haiti. Even the gangsters in the ghetto’s like Papa Noel. I’m on countless cell phones posing with some very tough looking dudes. And one of those dudes is Michael Stoebner who took the picture below. Hundreds of times I would just stand still, often carrying a child in one hand and a bucket in the other, while someone (or several people) just touched my beard to see if it was real. I may not be smiling here but that’s how candid photos work. My heart, however, was aglow.

I have a lot more to say about Haiti and our trip. I want to thank my friends at KTIS radio for inviting us (my beloved spouse Kip was right next to me) on the trip. God opened my heart in ways I hadn’t imagined on this trip. I want to share that with you over the coming weeks. And, I promise not to tell you what happened in a chronological fashion – I’m too disorganized for that.

Until tomorrow I’d like you to ponder this question: What if you had to carry every drop of water you use in a bucket on your head. How would that change your life? And are you ready to help someone else escape slavery to that water?