Club Indigo

My trip to Haiti was one of the most beautiful, amazing, heart breaking, painful, loving, contradictory experiences I’m sure I will ever have. The people we met are full of love. I guess this is the best part of a missionary trip. You get to meet people who are on the same level as you. You meet other people who want to do good things and help others. Club Indigo is paradise smack dab in the middle of the unforgiving harshness and poverty that is Haiti.

Club Indigo’s hotel rooms are functional especially compared to what I was expecting. I assumed our hotel would not be much more than what we would consider a ‘roach coach motel’. I was surprised. The beds were comfortable and clean. The bathrooms however were not my favorite. We had no hot water the entire time we were there. Some days, we had no water at all. This really didn’t seem that harsh when one thinks about the reality outside of the hotel. We also had the beautiful sea water to swim in and the enormous pool on the property.   The hotel is definitely a different world.

Instead of feeling relieved to return to the hotel each evening, there seemed to be a sense of guilt that here we were in the laps of luxury and just outside the gates of the hotel, people are searching for food, hunger pains in their bellies, some with nowhere to sleep.  My fellow missionaries, David, Bernie, Madiha and I would just sit around and talk all evening.  We shared tears and laughter.  We all tried to process the emotions, some of which are still too complicated to explain clearly.  We talked about the children in the orphanage.  We talked about how we could do more to help. As David said, ‘the worst thing we can do is to go back home and do nothing’.  We all agreed that we could not just give up on these kids, take what we want from the experience and go home.  That is just not an option.

And so, we renewed our spirits each night through love and laughter and regained our strength through our kinship.  We hugged and bonded, made future plans and set out to do whatever we could to help the next day.  I have always maintained that laughter is the best medicine and as long as you can still laugh, all hope is not lost.  Bernie, who often laughs to the point of tears, sent me this quote: “Laughter is a symptom of spirituality.  Laughter is the flow of love coursing through your body.  Laughter is the nectar of present moment awareness.  Invite more laughter into your life and relish the magic in every moment.”~David Simon

Originally Posted on March 7th 2012 at http://rachaelburrows.wordpress.com/

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