MEADOR: Haitian relief efforts reward, fulfill

Today, roughly 300,000 people woke up in wet clothing in a flooded city, unsure when they would eat again.

They are the people of Gonaives, a major city in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. About two weeks ago, Hurricane Gustav began to flood their city. Shortly after that came Hurricane Hanna. With Hanna came monumental flooding, the destruction of homes and the loss of food supplies and drinking water.

Hurricane Ike came on Sunday, destroying the one bridge that had survived Gustav and Hanna. The one bridge that allowed aid to be delivered by road.

Now the only way for aid to be delivered in Gonaives is by air. The situation continues to be grim, as Gonaives was already an impoverished city before the hurricanes swept through.

One hundred years of corrupt rulers, sporadic foreign occupation, damaging outside interference with the economy, and damaging superstitions have left Haiti a deeply impoverished country - the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, in fact.

Though the situation is grim, it is not entirely devoid of hope. Thankfully, Haiti has leaders like Dony St. Germain.

I'd like to think of Pastor Dony as a friend, though we hardly know each other. He was the guest-preacher on the Sunday I was baptized about five months ago, and I was able to meet with him briefly the following Monday.

Dony, his brother Louis and their wives run an organization called El Shaddai Ministries, which they started in Haiti in 1995. Louis focuses primarily on Haiti while Dony spends much of his time working with the sizable Haitian population in Miami.

When I met with Dony, he and his wife were anxious to fly down to Haiti from their Miami home to pick up their recently-adopted Haitian daughters. When I met Dony, I met a man who could teach me - and I assume most of us self-centered, materialistic Americans - quite a lot.

In Dony I saw a man who possessed great humility dedicated to serving others. Further, his humility was such that it was unimaginable to show him anything but the greatest possible respect.

He and his brother have been working in Haiti for most of their lives, first as they grew up in the home of a Baptist minister. Now, through El Shaddai, they're running an orphanage and a school as well as training young pastors and politicians - all with the goal of helping develop the beautiful but broken Caribbean isle.

Their hope is that these children, who wear oversized T-shirts donated by their stateside supporters, will one day become the political and spiritual leaders of this nation. They hope that their work with the orphans can help to develop the economy, eventually clean up the political realm and meet the more personal, specific needs of individual Haitians.

But their work obviously is hindered by tragedies like Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Those 300,000 people in Gonaives are not just a number to them. To Dony and Louis, they are individuals that they may have spoken with only a few weeks ago. They are friends and loved ones. They are orphaned children who have been taken in and fed, clothed and educated.

Ever since Hanna hit Gonaives, Dony and his friend DouDou have been making every effort to get as much aid to Gonaives as is possible, but they are limited in what they can do. The government refused to give them permission to fly into Gonaives before Ike hit, and now they also are facing a lack of funding to meet the monumental needs of the people.

This is a column asking you to do something to meet a need in the Third World. And yes, I know these appeals are frequent, especially in our culture and with our generation.

I know it sometimes feels as if there is little point in helping, because for every child we help in Gonaives, there are others equally in need of our help in Nairobi, Calcutta or here in the U.S. The needs in other countries are equally real and equally pressing.

But I think many of us aren't involved at all. And if that describes you, please keep reading.

You need these orphans as much as they need you. I heard a pastor say once that helping the poor isn't just about their humanity. It's also about ours. Every time we witness human suffering, something inside us changes.

We either become more tender and more aware of the fractured world we live in (and therefore more involved in fighting back against that brokenness) or we become harder to it. Eventually, our heart becomes so hard it is scarcely capable of any feeling at all.

C.S. Lewis described such a heart as "unbreakable, impenetrable and irredeemable."

It's an unlikely lesson, but it's one we all must grasp if we truly wish to keep our humanity. If we fail to train our hearts to be tender, then the people who suffer the most are not the orphans. Yes, they'll lose a few meals and sleep in a cold, wet bed, but many of the refugees I've met have developed a simple joy in life that is indicative of an emotional health far superior to that of many Americans. You, on the other hand, will eventually become so lost in your temporal trinkets and insignificant hobbies that you'll be changed.

You'll likely have a bit more money than people like Dony or Louis, but what you'll be missing is something that no amount of money can replace.

If you're interested in donating money to provide food or water to the people of Gonaives, visit http://hsumike.blogspot.com or http://www.gracepca.com for more information.

Jake Meador is a junior English and history major. Reach him at jakemeador@dailynebraskan.com