Haiti Crisis Update #17 from Jimmy Dodd

March 23, 2010 - 01:59:28 PM by Eric Rochester

Life, Death and KU Basketball

Does it make me a bad person that I’m not devastated by KU’s loss to Northern Iowa?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m bummed. I’m frustrated. I’m discouraged and I’m still in a state of shock.

KU’s loss to Northern Iowa was without question the most disheartening loss in the history of KU basketball, surpassing even the 1997 Arizona debacle in Birmingham for which I was present.

Unquestionably, as everyone who knows me would tell you, I am a big KU fan. My schedule from November thru the first weekend in April (or so I thought) includes watching most every KU game. I am privileged to attend a number of games each year in Allen Fieldhouse. I was present when KU lost to Syracuse in 2003 and I was present for Mario’s Miracle in San Antonio in 2008. I bleed crimson and blue.

Following Saturday’s loss to Northern Iowa I experienced emotions ranging from anger to disbelief. How could a team stocked with multiple stars and future NBA millionaires led by the best coach in college collapse when playing before a friendly crowd?

But on Saturday, I wouldn’t say that I was devastated. After all, Kansas basketball is not life and death.

Don’t misunderstand my sentiments. I am not playing the sour grapes card. It’s just that on Saturday I was afforded a little perspective by which to judge the KU loss.

Perspective is a funny thing. We think we are having a bad day when we spill our first cup of coffee on our pants, until we learn that a co-worker was released with little to no severance. We are convinced our day could not go worse when we are stopped for speeding until we catch wind that Jill in accounting was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

Perspective allows us to measure what is truly important in life.

I have been regularly traveling to Haiti for the past ten years making three to four trips a year. I have worked with orphans, the elderly, pastors, business leaders – Haitians from every walk of life. I have had the privilege of supporting projects to build schools, orphanages, affordable housing and medical clinics.

I received a dose of perspective on January 30th as KU prepared to play K-State. I was eagerly anticipating the start of the game when I received an e-mail from Louis St. Germain, a Haitian pastor who leads a network of churches throughout the south of Haiti. He informed me that four hundred pastors who were distributing food throughout Haiti we literally starving. They were so concerned with feeding the masses that they were neglecting to feed themselves. The e-mail, which arrived just moments before the tip, literally begged me for assistance. Suddenly, KU beating K-State wasn’t my #1 priority.

Perspective.

As committed as I am to watching every KU game, I missed the loss to Northern Iowa. Again, does that make me a bad person?

I am also a pastor which means that there are times when people call and you go no matter what is presently holding your attention. I have a number of friends who love to call me during KU games to ask for help with a flat tire, marriage counseling or any number of a thousand things which they make up simply to ‘pull my chain’.

“Pastor, I know the Missouri game just started, but can you pick me up at the airport?” “Pastor, my car broke down and I’m stranded on the side of the road. I’m scared and I can’t find anyone to give me a ride home. Can you pick me up?” My pastoral response, “Sure, I’ll see you in about three hours.”

Saturday, while KU was losing, I was leading a funeral service. As a pastor, I have presided over countless funerals. But last Saturday was the first time in my nearly thirty years of pastoral ministry to lead a funeral for more than one person. In one sense I have dreaded doing a mass funeral. A mass funeral brings tragedies to mind like an entire family losing their lives in a car accident or a husband and wife perishing in a plane crash. I never dreamed that my first mass funeral would be for eleven people.

Saturday, (as KU played slugged through the first 32 minutes playing like unmotivated prema-donnas), standing atop rubble which was once the walls of a church building beneath blue tarps blowing in the breeze, I was leading a funeral service in Haiti for eleven people who lost their lives in the January 12th earthquake. Nine of the eleven bodies have yet to be recovered. But, it was time to bring this incredibly painful chapter to a close. My dear friend, Pastor Moise Vaval (who was featured on Sixty Minutes on Sunday) asked me to conduct the funeral service.

The emotions of Saturday are indescribable. Saturday was a poignant, grief filled experience which will be forever etched on my heart and mind. It helps to write because I am yet unable to talk about the day. There is just too much emotion. The loss of life was overwhelmingly devastating to families, loved ones of the eleven and to me.

Perspective. Life and death in Haiti.

Renise is a thirteen year old Haitian child whose life was literally saved by the earthquake. She too was featured on Sixty Minutes this past Sunday. Two years ago, at the tender age of eleven, Renise was sold into slavery, a legal and common practice in Haiti. As a child slave, known as a Restivick, Renise served her family from sun up to sundown. She was, in her words, “treated like a donkey”. She slept on the floor while the family slept on beds. She was dehumanized as an insignificant child slave.

Just more than eight months ago, when Renise was twelve years old, she went to gather water, one of her daily rituals. There is no running water in the vast majority of Haitian homes. Most Haitians walk to the closest well (sometimes miles), fill a five gallon bucket and return home with water for cooking, cleaning and bathing. Many Haitians have no access to clean water which leads them to nearby streams to fill their buckets with contaminated water.

On this particular day, while Renise was walking to gather water, she was raped. She became pregnant, a fact she was able to hide from her “owners” until she was five months pregnant. When her family learned that she was expecting a child, they threw her out into the street telling her that they could not live with the shame of a pregnant slave.

Now newly thirteen years old, pregnant and on the streets of Port-au-Prince Haiti. The date was January 9, 2010. For three days she lived with nothing, preparing for the inevitable – to die alone. Then, on January 12th, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Amazingly, because of the large number of aid workers that poured into the country, Renise was found walking the streets, pregnant and starving. She was taken to a local shelter where she was fed. Ultimately, she found her way to an orphan village run by the Kansas City based Global Orphan Project.

On Saturday, as KU was losing to Northern Iowa, Renise underwent a C section and delivered a healthy 5.8 lb baby girl. On the same day, at the same moment as the mass funeral, a new life entered the world. The child will likely be adopted by a local Haitian family allowing Renise to return to being a child. And through the kindness of the Global Orphan Project, she will never return to the Restivick life of slavery.

March 20th, 2010. Eleven people who tragically died remembered; a new life of a 5.8 lb baby and a new life for a thirteen year old former slave – oh, and a KU loss to Northern Iowa.

Earthquakes are devastating. KU losses are hard.

Perspective.

So, while I am really bummed about KU, preaching a funeral for eleven Haitians and seeing a thirteen year old girl who would have been dead but for the grace of God deliver a new life helps to put it all in perspective.

When KU fans tell me they are devastated by the loss – I remind them Saturday was a game. Saturday in Haiti was literally life and death.

Jimmy Dodd

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