In American idiom that phrase, carrying the water, indicates you are taking the load for someone, doing the real work – often “on the sly” with no acknowledgement.

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In Haiti carrying the water is the difference between life and death for some, and a needed respite for others. Our crew from KTIS and Healing Haiti carried the water on two different days during our trip in February. While you don’t see the immediate results of that kind of service you come to realize what it meant with the passage of time.

For me it was the chance to really work hard and help small children. And to help me as well. In my entire life I’ve never been simultaneously loved, adored, and cheered by so many children. Papa Noel (Father Christmas) had arrived in Cite Soleil

Several times each day a truck containing 3500 gallons of fresh water pulls into a neighborhood in Cite Soleil to deliver life. The trucks (there are two of them, one 2500 gallons, one 3500 gallons) belong to Healing Haiti. There is no charge for the water. Everyone else charges for water in the city. There is no infrastructure – it comes by truck or you go dry.

When the truck arrives the word is already in the neighborhood. Spotters have run ahead or called ahead. The local children, many of them slaves called restavec charge up with their containers to get the water they need to survive. You might think that only wealthy families could afford a slave, but in Cite Soleil that’s not the case. It’s just another poor family with just enough to afford to support a child slave. How do you spot them? They have just one set of clothes. That’s it. They likely will not let you carry the water into their home as they’d be punsished for not doing their own work. It’s a dreadful existence for the children sold into slavery.

But slave or non-slave the kids are the majority of the people queued up for water. There are some women, usually just barely women – more like kids – and no men. Not once did I see a man lined up for water. The line quickly forms with buckets, pails, wash tubs, trash cans, 5 gallon pails that held paint until just an hour before and have never been washed (lots of paint flakes in the water), and anything else the kids can round up.

They crush into the line and respect their place. Some do not, and woe unto them if the Haitian staff see this. Line cutters are ejected once, maybe twice, and the third time the bucket is hurled in the air. When it lands it usually breaks and that gets their attention. There will be no shoving children aside to fill your bucket. But for the most part the line is semi-orderly. The insanity is at the point of filling the buckets: they cannot drag the filled ones away quickly enough.

I spent about 1/2 of my time carrying water and playing with the children who came to see Papa Noel and about 1/2 of my time helping to clear buckets away once they’d been filled or manning the hose. It’s hard work. A bucket weighs about 35 to 40 pounds once it’s full of water. I found it easier to just get down on my knees and pull them out once the hose had filled them up.

Perhaps the last water stop of our trip was the best example of the desparation and teamwork that combine to help these people. Our team of missionaries consisted of my wife Kip making sure the line of buckets moved forward in the queue. She stooped over the whole time lining up the buckets and pushing them up. No small task, it helped reinforce the organization of the line and expedited the movement along a steady path. She started to make order out of the chaos.

Next up was Mike. Mike is one of those tireless servants of Christ who spent the whole time on his knees moving buckets of water out of the line and getting the next bucket under the hose. Wet, splashed, trampled, aching muscles from shifting thousands of gallons of water, and never a peep. Just one bucket after another.

At my right hand was Greg. He struggled mightily to make sure that line cheaters didn’t cut in and fill up their pails while I was running the hose. He was beleagured by hundreds of hands darting in and out to grab buckets. While Mike moved buckets out to my left, Greg moved them out to the right and made sure they were lined up neatly near the hose.

I was on the hose. In one of the pictures you can see it looped over my shoulder – it was the easiest way to handle the weight. The thing is heavy with dozens of feet of hose and the water inside. So I chose to loop it over my shoulder and support it that way. I had to keep it in constant motion, trying to hit the moving buckets at my feet. I kept getting pushed back into the truck as the kids grabbed at the pails and Mike and Greg moved them in so I could fill them.

As a team we were awesome. Our Haitian staff and Jeff Gacek (founder of Healing Haiti) helped with the line and organizing the general chaos. And somehow it all worked. My only tense moment was at the very end. We still had a dozen people in the line and the water ran out. I honestly didn’t know what the reaction would be but I thought there might be a problem. But God bailed us out, and when I announced “Le Eau c’est fini!” in my fractured French. People just shrugged and moved off. (My apologies to people who actually speak French and Creole – I’m an Arabic linguist.)

Back to carrying water – can you imagine having to carry every drop you need? And carrying it for several city blocks? On your 7 year old head in a 5 gallon pail that weighs 35 pounds? Every day or two? I can’t. That’s not how we picture childhood, yet it’s the reality for these children. Remember – they’re slaves. They have no option.

The good side of the water delivery was hanging out with the children. I had about 6- 12 with me at all times. Showing me where to carry the bucket, holding my hand, touching my beard and belly to see if it was real. I’m quite the curiousity with my size and coloration in that part of the world. The outpouring of love and friendship, and thanks, from the children was unexpected. I didn’t want to leave.

The downside was the incredible poverty we saw. When you look at the pictures below you will see lots of things that you just can’t place – they’re porta-potty doors. After the earthquake 3 years ago somebody shipped thousands of porta-potties down to Haiti. But there were no trucks to empty them, and no place to put the waste. So the Haitians dismantled them and used the panels for walls and doors. You see lots of them in Cite Soleil.

You’ll also see pictures that look like they were taken in a dump – that’s just a standard vacant lot in Haiti. There is no centralized trash removal like we have in the United States for most Haitians. So the waste (everything from pop bottles to dirty diapers to dead cats) gets chucked into a vacant lot.

And one picture you will see is not uncommon – it’s all of us straddling a trench between the shanties. That trench is an open sewer. You just squat over it to relieve yourself and it eventually flows down to the beach. The same beach where the young man is swimming and cavorting in the surf. The bay he’s in is so polluted that nobody should be crossing it in a boat much less swimmming in it. The bacteria count has to be so high as to horrify any public health official.

I could go on, but the pictures tell the story. Take a good long look and then say a prayer of thanks for the world you live in today. I don’t take it for granted. And I pray for the people of Haiti.

I have a better handle now on that whole “Hands and feet of Christ” concept after having carried water to those with none. My wife and I are talking about what we will do when retirement time comes around. And Haiti is on the list.

I won’t deliver water from a tanker truck every day, but you can still “carry the water” in other ways if you really want to do so. I think that’s where God’s directing us to look in our lives. And for a change I’m being an obedient follower and listening to what He’s saying.

Are you carrying the water for anyone? Can you help those who are in slavery? Will you become the hands and feet of Christ? If you need more information, or would like to support this ministry, please visit www.healinghaiti.org and read more about what they do for the people of this city just 90 minutes from Miami.

I hope you enjoy the picture gallery below. The photos are from Michael Stoebner and say a lot about the work we did on those two days. It wasn’t all hard work – lots of holding babies, playing with children, and being loved. Thanks for dropping by today.

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