"Please, take my children."

Last week, a contact of ours approached me explaining that there was a group of orphaned children living in a town about an hour west from Be Like Brit; some were living with extended family, some with friends – some alone on the street.  We were told this group consisted exclusively of true orphans – children having no living parent.  It was decided we would make the drive and conduct interviews on site to determine if these children might benefit from our program here at Be Like Brit.

Gama and I, along with Rosenie (my sidekick) and Gilbert, another one of our employees, set out early Valentine’s Day morning to meet this group who had arranged to gather at the home of a local pastor.  As we worked our way west along the coast to our right and the mountains to our left, my anxiety level began to grow.  While I enjoy more than anything going out into the community and meeting people and speaking with families, it’s almost always an emotionally tough day – game face is definitely on while we are conducting the work, but the process itself has yet to leave me unscathed or unaffected.  As we crept down the final dirt road to the house, we came upon a sight I will never forget.  Gathered under the trees in the shade, sitting and standing, was a group of about 40 people.  All of them were waiting patiently for one thing: to give us their children.

Part of the group waiting for our arrival.

People are always asking us – how do you choose your children?  How do you decide who gets in and who doesn’t?  I can tell you that the process varies, but we do have guidelines in place – criterion of sorts to help us narrow the overwhelming need in Haiti.  We first look for true orphan status, a given age range (3 to 8 at the time of intake) and require certain paperwork in order to conduct our business in full compliance with Haitian laws.  This is no easy task; Haitian law can sometimes be vague, inconsistent and/or always changing.  Things like birth certificates and death certificates, while a requisite in the U.S., are a rarity in Haiti.  As we began to interview these women and the young children they brought to meet us that day, we were met with people begging and pleading for us to help – mothers who can’t afford to educate or feed their children; grandmothers who are just too old to do it any longer; aunts who are already overwhelmed with their own children to assume the care of their extended family.  It’s easy to think of these children as unloved, but I’m learning that’s not usually the case.  While at times it seems as if the women who bring us their children show no emotional attachment or grief in their desires to give them to us, often these women beseech our help through tears, through heartache and through shame.

A woman with her grandchildren.

Woman after woman, child after child; this group came to us with every situation imaginable.  After several hours of work, we determined that 5 of these children are “eligible” for our program at Be Like Brit; every person we met is in need of it.

So this is our predicament:  Do we take the children who might be outside of our age bracket because their mother is sick with AIDS?  Do we break up siblings because the mother wants to keep the strongest boy at home so he might go to work and earn them some money to feed her and whomever else lives in the household a meager meal maybe once per day – and send us her younger children instead?  Do we take the child who is a true orphan, who has all of his paperwork, but who begs his grandmother not to give him away?  This is what we work through daily – these are the decisions we make.  None of them are easy, and none of them ever makes me feel “good” inside. 

I can’t begin to explain to you how complex navigating this system in a place like Haiti is.  People have emailed me asking why we don’t allow our children to be adopted – the short answer is that the Haitian government makes that all but impossible.  The longer answer, well, is far too long.  People have asked if we encourage women to sign over rights to their child.  The short answer to that is also yes – we have to have legal rights to the child in order to assume care of them.  The longer answer, again, is far too long to go in to here. 

Know that in all of our decisions, Be Like Brit is always committed to preserving families – maintaining the integrity of family units and has the best interests of the child in mind.  None of our decisions are final.  We have comprehensive family involvement programming, family reunification as a goal where expressed by the child, and a community involvement program which seeks to build the capacity of these families we work with so that they might one day be able to care for their own children once again.   So, when people ask us “why” this, or “why” that – there is no short answer.  It’s a complicated web of government and policy and bureaucracy with human lives thrown in the mix.  Our work is always conducted with utmost care and concern.  

So while we make these decisions, on we go with the children we already have.  Holding steady at 11, we plan to bring in about 5 more this week.  As we evaluate their adjustment and assimilation, give time for each child to adapt to this new addition to their environment, I will continue going out and meeting these families and children.  We have a lot of work to do to get to 66.  It would be easy to fill our rooms with children whose parents don’t want them or can’t provide for them.  The fact that we haven’t done that should suggest that we are taking the utmost care in this most difficult process.

This week, we welcomed our first group of Britsionarys to come to Be Like Brit while we have children living here with us!  A group of 10 students from St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, MA along with two of their faculty members made their way to Grand Goâve on Saturday, February 16, 2013.  They were greeted with our children singing a traditional Creole welcome song – and despite their almost certain exhaustion, we played just a bit later than the children’s bedtime!

Kristin greets our group!

Hauling in our goods!

Welcome to Be Like Brit! 

Ross and Kervins

Attack!

Who doesn't like to play army?