Rainy Nights

Saturday night, May 22
I am sitting in my bunk at Pastor Pierre’s house at 8:42pm listening to the thunder and steady rain. The rainy season has come to Haiti. Normally, I love the sound of thunder and rain. But I don’t feel that here in Haiti. Just today, I was in a camp with 300 people living in tents. Some were nice tents like we might camp in. Others were made of tarps cobbled together and held up by rough cut sticks and left over boards. Others were only tattered bed sheets. I can only try to imagine how they feel when the rains come every night.
Some people dug trenches—moats—around their tents to keep the water at bay. I saw some tents that used rocks as a wall around their tents. Others had piled up rubble as high as they could make it and set up their tent on top of the pile of rocks. Every tent had some sign that the homemakers were trying to stave off the coming rains and floods.
Clothing that they had carefully washed and hung to dry on fences and trees today would now be wet again. A foam mattress one young girl kept placing in the sun today would sop up water again.
One good thing—buckets, pans, and containers left out in the rain would gather drinking water for the next day.
I am dry…and it is a little overwhelming. Everyone of us who is safe from the rain at night needs to help those who are not safe from the rain.