Love in Any Language - by Leslie Smith

Last week, I was speaking with a friend about traveling to other countries (Haiti and Mexico) when I was a teenager, and having the opportunity to meet with children in orphanages. It was said that we went there to ‘work' in the orphanages, but that is not what it was for me. It was never work. I was 15 years old when I went to Haiti for 2 weeks during the summer. This trip would be my most memorable. We were to go there and ‘work' with the children. Actually, I remember mostly speaking with children, and adults alike. I remember walking through the markets, and learning about their land, listening to their stories, and I remember loving these people from a distant land.

When our plane first landed in Port-Au-Prince, I got my taste of what a third world country was. All of these people were crowding the landing area, to see who was getting off of the plane. I think I probably should have been afraid, but I wasn't. As we boarded the small van for the 3 hour drive to our destination, I realized the drive would be longer than I thought. Driving on a small dirt road, very bumpy, we came across many groups of police that would stop people as they went by and go through their things. Luckily, this did not happen to us on the way there. As we drove, there would be small dirt and grass huts along the way and children running around naked with distended bellies from malnutrition. I remember seeing one woman lying on her porch. They said that she had AIDS. I was so sad to see all of this, and what a wake-up call it was for a 15 year old girl from America.

In Haiti, they speak French and Creole. I had a little book of words to say and learn. I only learned one. It was ‘Bonswa'. It was what you would say to say "hello", and also to say "good-bye". Turned out, that would be the only word that I would ever need to know while I was there. We had a Haitian translator that went with us everywhere, and we all became quite close to him. His name was Firmin. He was in his early 20's, and he had dreams of becoming a doctor and moving to America when he was able to. He told us many stories, and seemed to keep us out of harm's way. I never knew what happened to him when we left Haiti.

While we were there, I realized that all of the children we met were very smiley, very sweet, very happy precious children. The adults were the same way. They were helpful, always wanted to talk to us, teach us songs, and befriended us. I could not help but to have my heart strings pulled this way and that. Again, I only knew the word ‘Bonswa', and they didn't know English either. But, there was no language barrier. We didn't need to know each other's language. I saw these people from Haiti as my brothers and my sisters. When we wanted to convey things to each other, we would convey it with our eyes, we would convey it by using our hands to draw symbols in the air, or with our fingers, drawing something in the dirt. We would convey things by giving hugs. We would convey through our hearts.

The most important thing I took from that trip was that we are all brothers and sisters. It doesn't matter where we live, what color our skin is, what kind of financial situation we are in, what language we speak. With love, and through our hearts, we are all connected. The gifts that we give to each other are seeing past all of those things that try to separate us from each other, and realizing that there is no separation.

In the Light,

Leslie

Copyright 2008 Leslie Smith. All Rights Reserved.
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