2010-04-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

The harvest is great but the workers are few. Luke 10:2

The devastation is endless.
Crumbling buildings and garbage
Smelly burning heaps
of dreams lost
Piled as high as sand dunes.

The needs are overwhelming.
I guess the only way is
buy a field and just start building.

How marvelous that
worlds apart
two human souls can touch
- R.R. Siwoff

I say I have no reasons
why I stay
but I do
It’s dark
down here
but I catch scraps
All my friends
throw something in
all but you
I don’t know
what is up there
Why should I care?
Do you know
what it would take
to make me climb?
You’d have to stand
at the edge
hold out your hand
and every time I braced
a tremored foot
in raining dirt
you’d have to purr
hurray
And if I fell
you’d have to make
me start again
And what would be your prize
if I arrived
at the top?
A separate
small
scared
person
with a little
bit of
pride

What a trip
to lay on you.

-R.R. Siwoff

Sitting at a table
in Miami-Dade
where wine and food abound
I cannot block the sounds
of roosters pecking life
off the bones of babies
The faces, the faces, the faces
fill my night and days
desperate for love
in a world that
left them behind.
-R. Siwoff

Forgive me I
knew once but

now I’m struck
dumb I
know nothing I
turn and return,

Now you who

rebounded off one
who knew all when

you knew you

knew nothing would

have me stand

straight stop

forgive me I

knew once but

now I just turn and return.

-R.R. Siwoff.

After most recent tour
home is home no more
Walls are insecure
windows but no door
Sunbeams no longer burn
and hunger there is none
yet I am parched with thirst
after most recent tour
home is home no more.

- R. Siwoff

There is no way to prepare for the ubiquitous destruction of Haiti following the January earthquake.

We drove 2 hours from the Port-au-Prince airport to Leogane. No building was untouched. Streets were covered with rubble, fissures and cracks. Paving was a thing of the past.

Throngs of people collected everywhere, containers of produce on their heads, trying to barter for things they needed. We never saw a customer.

Garbage lined the roads for miles, in smelly burning piles s high as sand dunes, often with goats roaming atop the heaps, foraging for refuse.

Our stifling hot bus, over 100 F, weaved and rumbled around people, horn-blowing vehicles, and rubble. Buses with the name ‘Jesus’ or Voodoo skulls, painted in psychedelic colors, were packed with people jousting for space amidst the sounds of blaring horns.

The Haitian heat is sweltering. At the airport, we had to wait two hours in the sun before our bus came. Pale and faint, I tried to buy a bottle of water from a man outside the steel gates. Thank God for our colleague, Dan, who quickly negotiated in Creole the sale of water and soda for each member of our group.

Yankee Caucasian visitors like Paul, Rachel and I do not adapt well to searing heat. As the sweat soaks our clothes, our skin color becomes translucent making us look like wet ghosts.

The wait at the airport was caused by poor transportation and Haitian customs officials, who could not believe that Dr. Paul Berman was not opening a Haiti Vision Center, but would be giving away thousands of glasses for free. The other area of interest was the boxes of medications we brought. Anything they could charge duty for was of interest to them. Despite letters we carried from the Haitian Consul General, to assist our humanitarian intent, Customs agents’ hopes of making large sums of money were irresistible. Once again, Dr. Dan came to the rescue and convinced Customs to let us go.

Our trip to Haiti had actually begun long before we arrived. Packing and traveling had prevented our sleep for the prior 36 hours. It had taken several days before that to spray with Promethrine, and to spread out and dry all of our clothes, tents, bedding and equipment. Promethrine repels Malarial- infected mosquitoes. Before that, there had been three months of planning and gathering donations of eye medications and eyeglasses.

Needless to say, we were exhausted.

When we finally boarded the bus we were greeted by lovely young nurses who gave us flowers and sang, “Bienvenu a’ l’Haiti.”

Two hours later we arrived at a make shift hospital which was constructed from a U shaped plywood shed, tarps and tents. A large pile of rubble stood next to the make shift hospital, a grim reminder of the 10 staff members who lost their lives in that very
spot.

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JRF Eye Care 4 Haiti
75 Bloomfield Avenue, Suite 206

Denville, NJ 07834

Jewish Renaissance Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit organization.