Angels of a Lower Flight: One Woman's Mission to Save a Country . . . One Child at a Time - Hardcover

Chapter 1

Coffin Notes

IN THE WINTER OF 1995, I toured the pediatric and maternity wards of the government hospital in Port-au-Prince for the first time. Nearing the hospital, I could see dozens of women in the entryway, some clearly in advanced stages of pregnancy, others already holding tiny babies or toddlers against their breasts. A few were lying on straw mats or leaning against the concrete building, sweltering in the tropical heat. It seemed that each woman I passed either mumbled incoherently or wept, hands pressed to her face, her tears running between crooked callused knuckles. I had brought a few Haitian gourdes and American dollars to purchase water and medicine for the patients. I didn't yet know what else I could do.

An elderly gentleman dozed in the entryway with a shotgun balanced on his thighs. I gently tapped on the metal door frame beside him, and he started from his nap. Grasping his shotgun with one hand and the waistband of his britches with the other, he fumbled to keep his pants from falling down over his protruding hip bones.

"State your beezness," he said irritably, his English thickly accented with Creole.*

*Haiti has two official languages -- French and Creole (sometimes spelled Kreyòl). The majority of Haitians (about 90 percent) speak only Creole, a hybrid of French that includes some Spanish, African, and Taino dialects. English and Spanish are also spoken on a limited basis, particularly in the business community.

"She eez missionary." My companion, Viximar, a Haitian national, family man, and trusted friend, answered for me, although I disliked that description of myself and considered it inaccurate. I had come to Haiti without a Christian agenda or connection to an organization, only the desire to make good on a promise I made to God when I was little.

The elderly security guard waved us through. Once inside, I thumped Viximar on the arm.

"Don't lie!" I said.

He grinned. The word missionary always seemed to facilitate entry when needed.

If nothing else, I had come to Haiti hoping to leave my demons behind me, but soon after I arrived I realized that I had, in fact, fled to their native land. I had first come to this small country -- a mere five hundred miles south of Florida -- more than a year earlier, and in the twelve months that followed, I had witnessed more pain, suffering, and death than I could have possibly previously imagined. Though I had no earlier training or experience as a relief worker -- my last job was owner of an antique shop in Aspen, Colorado -- I somehow was able to start a small school and feeding program in Cité Soleil, a ravished district in the Haitian capital, arguably the worst slum in the Western Hemisphere. Viximar lived there with his family and was guardian of my school.

The hospital I was visiting with Viximar was the government hospital, and while it's not the only one in Haiti, it is the cheapest, and meant for the poorest of the poor. When Viximar and I went inside we found three large wards, each measuring around twenty by twenty feet. About a hundred children and infants lay in the three rooms. Most of them were covered with flies and ants, and though they must have ranged in age from a few months to several years, it was difficult to tell, given the distortions of illness and malnutrition. Some of the children appeared to be there alone; others had an adult holding vigil nearby; many of them were crying. But the ones who immediately caught and held my attention were the children who simply stared. They seemed oblivious to the swarms of flies and ants feasting on their excrement. They were alone with no adult to watch over them, their tiny faces sculpted only by bones, hunger, and fear.

Words penned by Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize-winning journalist and Nazi-concentration-camp survivor, have haunted me since I first read them. Wiesel spoke of an old man who could no longer fight and would soon be a victim of the "selection." In the concentration camps during the Holocaust it was a frequently used term for those weakened and no longer able to perform labor. They were selected for extermination. It was only now, as I looked into the eyes of these children, that the meaning truly penetrated my soul: "Suddenly his eyes would become blank, nothing but two open wounds, two pits of horror."

These children in the Haitian hospital had also been selected. For them it would only be a matter of time.

As I stood in the pediatric ward of the government hospital, I wanted to cry. No, I wanted to scream. But during the past year that I had worked in Haiti I had learned to do the opposite of what I would normally do back home in Aspen. So I stood there and thought through the situation: If I had been one of these children or mothers lying here, wondering if I was going to die, and I had seen a white woman, maybe for the first time, I would have been terrified. And if any woman would have looked at me and started crying, let alone screaming, I would have thought something horrible was happening to me.

So there was my answer. I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't turn away. I would do the opposite. Or something close to it, anyway: I would sing. And so I began to hum very lightly and smile at each person I passed, reaching out to touch tiny hands and feet.

I was afraid I would hurt the patients as I touched them; they had so many sores and bandages. I had never witnessed such agony. I wondered how many foreigners heard about this place and came, saw, cried, and left, never to forget it, yet leaving everything just as it was, as if they were never here at all. For several hours I walked through the maze of iron cribs and stained cots, in and out of the rooms, observing every kind of deformity, handicap, and disease that could be imagined.

I had spent the twenty years before I came to Haiti focused inward, on myself. My ambition had been to transform myself into someone who would be loved. Not satisfied with my natural state, I spent days at the hair salon and gym, manicuring, pedicuring, soaking, dyeing, running, tanning, waxing, and dieting. I read dozens of self-help books: Dianetics. Psycho-Cybernetics. The Road Less Traveled. Think and Grow Rich. Transcendental Meditation. The Celestine Prophecy. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. From the moment I left my parents' home, at age fifteen, my sole purpose in life had been "self" improvement. I walked out the door with no money and only a tenth-grade education. But I knew a few things. I knew that the only way I would ever make it through my remaining seventy years -- what I figured I had left -- would be on my own. Not that I hadn't heard of God; I knew all about God. First, that He was slow. And second, that He seemed to have a mean streak, at least when it came to me.

Over the years, as part of my "self improvement," I had carefully buried my childhood memories, putting them safely in the ground, one by one, where I could keep track of them and keep them from contaminating my improved self. In the hospital in Haiti, as I walked on through each of the rooms, still singing quietly, I knew that for these children, growing up in this lonely place would result in the same sort of personal graveyard. If they ever got to grow up.

For years, I had scarcely touched a Bible, although I had gone to church every Sunday during my childhood in Alabama. I had spent most of each sermon watching the clock and hoping the preacher really meant it when he said "...and in conclusion..." for the seventh or eighth time. But the thousands of hours spent in a church pew had burned a complete set of hymns and Bible verses into my brain. Sometimes, when in trouble or depressed, I would hear the Psalms or other verses -- not as if they came from memory, but from an invisible presence between my shoulders. That presence returned to me while I was in the hospital ward, and I began to put words to my humming, quietly singing the comforting parts of hymns I remembered: "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder / consider all the works Thy hands have made..."

Through the rooms I sang, I hummed, I smiled, and I touched. So many sick people. So much despair.

INSIDE A RUSTED CRIB lay a bundle of rags with a skeletal face nestled inside. A woman, the mother, I assumed, leaned over the rail. She wept, seemingly inconsolable, and clutched a small square piece of paper. I avoided going near her when I first walked by because I didn't want to disturb her privacy and obvious grief. I later learned to recognize that reaction as a peculiarly American one.

With my tour nearly over, I was ready to leave the bundle of diapers we had brought for whoever needed them and go back to the hotel. I was finished with watching people suffer. But something inside me made me turn and walk back to the woman by the rusted crib. For a minute or so, I simply stood near her. I watched her as, through her tears, she followed the tiny spiral of her baby's rib cage, heaving up and down. The baby stared at the mother, sluggish but awake. As with so many of the other babies, ants scuttled around and within her badly dirtied diaper.

Gently, I laid my hand on the woman's shoulder. She lifted her head for a second and then collapsed under my touch. Viximar, who was at my side, rushed to catch her before she hit the floor. She was frail and gaunt, not more than eighty pounds. I asked Viximar to take some of my gourdes, buy water from one of the vendors on the street, and quickly get her something to eat, if he could find it. He helped me settle the woman near a wall beside the crib.

"Ti-Judith," the woman whispered, gazing weakly up to where her tiny daughter lay. That was the child's name: Ti-Judith.

I removed my fanny pack from around my waist and placed it under the mother's head so that her cheek did not rest on the filthy concrete floor. I returned to the baby, Ti-Judith, and peeled away the diaper that stuck between her teeny legs. It w...