11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

Sometimes, the more that a story is told, the more it can seem to get bigger than life. I guess this is how urban legends take on crazy proportions. But I was there the day it happened. I remember it. And although it has become one of the favorite Hero Holiday stories that are retold and wondered about, I am a witness to the truth.

2005 was a year of many beginnings for Absolute. We moved from another city to settle our head office from the suburbs to buy a building that was formerly a strip club (!), we hired on new staff that helped to set the direction for the course ahead, and we also decided to take the plunge and start a program called Hero Holiday. Within a short amount of time, Hero Holiday turned our world upside down, opened our eyes, and changed the life course of hundreds, even thousands, of people affected by it. In July of 2005 we started our first official trips with this program, and that summer is forever etched in many of our memories as the summer where life started over.

We had just completed our second trip that July. It was the last day before we were going to leave Dominican Republic. It had been impacting, emotional, energizing, frustrating, and had ignited vision in us like nothing before had ever touched. There were about 75 of us there that day. We had a full day lined up for them all, so we gave very specific instructions for what they needed to bring and how to be prepared. We had given the participants some time off to go for a few hours on a catamaran cruise. When they were loading the bus, we reminded them each that they were going to be going to the garbage dump that afternoon, and it was very important that they wear proper footwear. We warned them that without it, they wouldn’t be allowed to join us, as the garbage dump was no place to wear flip flops. I picked up the groceries for 100+ Haitian families we would be bringing them to that afternoon at the garbage dump, and went there ahead of our team to talk with them and see how we could be of more help in the future.

They were burning the garbage that day, and it felt like the set for an apocalyptic movie: the stench of burning refuse, the sight of people digging through garbage and desperately pulling out anything that could possibly provide food, shelter, or clothing, and the constant sound of large trucks coming through and dumping more excess from the resorts around the area. I have been around it now for five years, and still I hurt whenever I am around it. I can conjure up the smell simply by thinking of the memories there, and each time it seems just as real as that first time I encountered it.

Finally, our bus pulled up with all of our Hero Holiday participants. They were told to come out and help the people as they worked, and some of them started to help me with the groceries, as we prepared to hand them out to the families. We were there for about two hours, and during that brief moment in time we had laughed, cried, played with children, worked alongside those we were humbled to help, and focused on dignity and making the most of the moment. We were beginning to round up everyone, as we had to get the bus back to our other scheduled events before we left for Canada later that night. I was about to turn around and make the last announcement for the bus, and then I saw her.

She was one of our participants, she was about 16 years old, she had streams of tears running down her face, and on her feet she only had her socks. I was shocked, and quite honestly, I was more than slightly irritated. How hard is it for people to follow simple insructions? Do they not understand how dangerous it is to walk around like this? I began to march over to her, and then I realized the scope of what was really happening. Behind her, on the other side of the bus, walking slowly as they loaded back on, were over 40 people walking in their socks. With my eyes I saw it, and slowly with my mind I began to comprehend it: this was compassion in action. This was what I had hoped they would be able to grasp as a result of this experience, and when they did, I almost missed it. They had given their shoes away. But not only had they given them away, some of them got down on their knees and fitted them on the tired, dirty, abused feet of their new owners. That day, our students taught us what we had missed.

Each of our staff members began to follow their example and all of us left that garbage dump in our sock feet. As we drove away that day, there was one picture I wish I could show the world: as we looked over our shoulder, a large Haitian man with wild hair smiled a toothy grin, waving from the top of a huge pile of garbage. And on his feet? Hot pink Nikes from one of our girls!

Since that time, we have learned a few lessons about compassion in action, and because of that story, hundreds and hundreds of people have been inspired to experience it for themselves.  However, we now allow our participants the opportunity to leave their shoes behind - at the Hero Holiday base at the end of the week! This summer, Hero Holiday will return to Dominican Republic in July, and we will be working with some of the people that were there that day. Today, they have become our friends, and together we work with them to build a future for us all.

If you would like to make a difference in the life of someone less fortunate than you but will not be participating in a Hero Holiday this year, contact us to find out how you can contribute to ongoing projects. You can contact us at info@absolute.org.

Feet come in all shapes and sizes. They can be delicate and attractive, and they can be large and well worn. Feet rarely get the attention they deserve, as they are used by almost every human, every day, taken for granted and abused. Feet have been the inspiration for many poems, images, and for the multi-billion dollar shoe industry throughout the years. Feet are the reason that entire professions exist, why Dr. Scholls will always remain so popular, and why “Crocs” have taken the world by storm. Feet can be ticklish, calloused, or arthritic, and they are the first to get dirty, and the last to get cleaned. Feet are very humble little body parts, and I never thought they would affect my perspective so much.

Like many people in the Western World, I am a fan of shoes. Well, maybe a fanatic would be a better description! Shoes in our minds often represent protection, a sports requirement, and ultimately,a necessity.  They are often the coveted fashion accessory, and many a cow, lamb, and alligator have been martyred for the cause. For those of us who can afford the luxury of purchasing shoes, we can see them as a well-deserved treat, a social must-have, or even a status symbol. Rarely are we ever asked to consider the significance of what we wear on our feet, as it honestly never really crosses our minds. (Image shown on right is not Christal’s Closet)

It really did not cross mine either, until the day we pulled into one of my favourite villages in Dominican Republic, with a truckload of shoes that we had promised to bring. A simple promise, made possible by the donations of many thoughtful Hero Holiday participants, their friends, and their families, altered our perspective and challenged our limited concepts of equality.

We had about 250 pairs of shoes with us. Most of them used, all of them cast offs, deemed unworthy of our closets anymore, as they had fallen out of fashion, or out of favour with their previous owners. Some were donations from stores in Canada that were unable to sell them. As we turned off the truck, I prepared the Hero Holiday participants for what the were about to experience. I warned them that it would get wild, and I reminded them of why we were doing this: because dignity starts with us and in how we choose to treat people where they are at.  And then…the fun began!

We quickly organized the shoes into some kind of commonality of size and gender. As we began to allow people on the truck, four at a time, we helped them to size up their feet and see what they could get to fit.There were many different feet that stepped on the flat deck of that truck that day: some were small and already hardened and calloused from packed dirt, hot concrete, and thorny grass. Some were broken and twisted from arthritis. All of them were dirty.and all of them were bare when they came on the truck. This may be the only pair of shoes that they owned, and these shoes were a true gift. These were the feet of people who were stateless and despised, who  worked every day in a garbage dump, who scratched out an existence by going without and fighting for survival. These people had become our friends, and they were the reason we were here.  It was hot, humid, frantic and loud! As I looked across the sea of faces surrounding the flat deck of our truck, I saw familiar faces that I loved and cared about. There were smiles returned, but mostly there was just a lot of frantic calling out of our names, in hopes of getting noticed and not being forgotten for the shoes. Mothers began to hand their babies over the crowd, asking us to take them, and a realization began to dawn on us regarding the importance of what we were doing. Not the self-importance that comes with feeling like you are doing something significant, but the importance of realizing that the simple sharing of these shoes, for some of these faces, represented a simple hope that they were not forgotten - that someone had seen their need and realized they held the means to help alleviate it.

One little elderly lady came up to me as we were preparing to leave. She was carrying a new, but well worn pair of leather shoes, and she grabbed my arm and kissed my cheek. As she stepped back, she had tears in her eyes, and she pointed up to the sky and smiled a toothless smile at me. “Thank God that He provides” she said to me in Creole. I smiled and nodded my head. I looked around at the group of Canadian teenagers with me, and took in their smiles; they were smiles of feeling like you were a part of something, no matter how small according the the world’s standards, that somehow had made someone else’s life just a little more bearable. One girl with me came over to where I was standing, and with tears streaming down her face said, “I never dreamed I could be a part of something like this that we did today. This has been one of the most memorable days of my life. I will never see my shoes the same again.”
I have to agree. When your life experience alters your perspective,you are never the same. And besides, there is nothing like making a memory in the tropical jungle with 250 of your friends…

This year, our Hero Holiday participants will be returning to Dominican Republic to work with this community. We will be helping them to build a school for their children, and will continue to help them in areas such as clothing items, food supplies, and medical assistance. If you would like to be a part of what we are doing, please consider joining us on a Hero Holiday.

You know the feeling: the alarm goes off, you fumble through a few snooze button moments, and then you finally haul your carcass out of the bed and across the room. On the way, perhaps you step on the cat by accident - or clothes that you panicked were the cat - and brace yourself as you do that which 10 minutes ago was unthinkable: you turn on the bathroom light. It sears your little eyeballs and for a moment you feel like a gremlin when you see the light. Then, the moment you have been praying for happens: you turn the knobs in the shower and the angels sing as the beautiful, hot, clean water comes gushing out, promising you that today you can take on the world.

In Baja, California, Mexico, our Hero Holiday staff lives and works among the poor. The population is often internal migrant workers who come up from Oaxaca state to work as day laborers in the strawberry and tomato fields with their families. They soon become statistics of lack of proper nutrition and sanitation, as they work for offensively small amounts of money. Some of them eventually make enough money to return home, but the majority of them are soon stranded between starvation and exposure to the elements, and desperately praying for another day of work. Life in the Baja is quite harsh: the desert is relentless, as the days can seem to burn up with sun and wind, and the nights are often cold enough to require a jacket. Water is scarce here, but not for the most obvious reason you would think. Due to low water tables, the Mexican government will only allow so many wells to be dug, and because the large plantations need so much irrigation, they are given priority, and the other few wells are left to those who can afford to pay the high cost of getting the permit. Needless to say, the migrant workers are not of those who can do so. For them, water isn’t even within walking distance - you have to pay for almost every drop you get. When life is this harsh, you have to stay focused on what is important to you.

As we drove out that day with the Hero Holiday staff, this truth became a glaring reality.One of the families we were preparing to build a house for is a single mom with 6 kids. We pulled up to their current home, which consists of boxes from the strawberry fields and rolled out tin cans, and were chatting with her about the plans for the house. As I stood under the roof that she probably constructed with her own calloused, tired hands, I looked around and tried to memorize what I saw: beds that sagged in the middle and were filthy beyond recognition, covered with threadbare blankets that you wouldn’t even allow your dog to sleep on at home. I looked up and could see the sky through the roof and feel the wind move my hair through the wall- the cold, biting wind of a Baja winter. I looked down where I was standing and realized that my feet had sunk into mud: the mud that was actually the floor where the rest of their family walked on barefoot…and I thought that a hot shower was my ‘right’? How could I even explain the concept of a hot shower to these people? They don’t even have access to any clean water except that which they buy from a truck when they can spare the money.

I have to be honest here: I didn’t even want to look her in the eye. I felt like my cheeks were hot as I remembered my own hot shower earlier that day. A shower that she might never, in her life, have ever considered was possible. After hearing her story of what her life is like, after seeing it with my own eyes, and smelling it with my own senses, I wanted to somehow honor her and communicate to her my deep respect and admiration. On impulse, I reached out and kissed her cheek. It was weathered, but beautiful. There was a quiet dignity that rested there. This was a woman who I was humbled to be under her roof, and this was a woman who I wanted to see have a much better roof over her head, with clean and warm beds for her family, and the ability to grow and prosper amidst such disappointment and heartache.

As you read this, two thirds of the world is without access to clean water. Two out of three. 66.67%. Why is there so much disparity in our world? We can spend our whole lives just trying to be safe and avoiding any discomfort, and in the end, perhaps all we have really succeeded in doing is alienating ourselves from what we could truly accomplish if we were willing to try. My experience with working with the poor has given me a lifetime of education, and ever since I have first encountered poverty, I have always been struck by the smell. It is hard to describe the smell of a busy, dirty alley in a slum, or a home that has no access to clean water, or the smell of damp, rotten earth for a living room floor.  It is a smell that exists because there are no resources to wash it away. It is at once repulsive and compelling, and it begs to be noticed. Without simple, clean water, it would seem that it cannot change, but yet, we must do something to bring about that change. How much could be possible if we all decided that we could do our part?

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”~Margaret Mead

Hero Holiday, a humanitarian program of Absolute, runs trips to Mexico throughout the year. We work and partner with a community in Baja, California, because we believe that together, we are stronger, and together we can change the future.  We have built over 55 houses in that area, and most of those were built by Canadian teenagers and adult groups who saw a need and realized they could become part of the answer. We build these houses because we believe in the fundamental right of every person to have safety and security, and we also have realized that by providing adequate housing, we are helping to alleviate some of the pressure on those families for their survival. In 2009, we are hoping to build even more homes, as well as to continue to work with the women’s cooperatives and pre-schools that we are helping to get off the ground. Please consider partnering with us to make a difference in the lives of more families in Baja, Mexico.

When you work with the poor, you are offered the privilege to meet many incredible people. Words often seem insufficient to capture the character values or the depth of passion and commitment that we have seen in people whom we now count among our friends around the world. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not naïve - I am well aware that not all poor people are virtuous, and not all virtuous are poor. But, there is something that is different about so many of the people that we work with through Hero Holiday; there is a certain quality that somehow always seems to set them apart. Although they are just as prone to character flaws as myself, I so often feel humbled by what they choose to focus on, their amazing dignity and resilience, and their willingness to do whatever it takes to see something happen. Mr. Guillaume is one of those individuals.

We don’t even know his first name, as he has only ever been introduced as David’s Dad, Mr. Guillaume. David is our Haitian friend in Port-Au-Prince and he and his wife, Danny, oversee a group of children’s homes that are barely living above the survival line. When we came to them last summer, we were shocked to realize that they were without food and support for their efforts. Their efforts involved over 65 children that have been saved off the streets, out of slavery, and from abandonment. David and Danny have nothing: no vehicle, no home of their own, barely more than the clothes on their back. They have a small “boutique” (translation: a stall that sells a few cans of soda, a few meager food items, and small bags of water), and every possible resource goes in to making sure that these children that they have been entrusted with survive.They do this because they don’t see any other option. When asked why they started it, they simply said, “How can we not do something?” So, together with a few other adults, they have given their lives to do whatever it takes to see these kids through, to provide a home for them, to try to feed them, and to provide them with an education. Mr. Guillaume is one of the people who tirelessly gives of his time, energy, and unconditional love for children who would otherwise be forgotten.

Together, the extended family rents three different homes to house all the children, and Mr. Guillaume oversees one of these homes. There are 20 boys in a 2 bedroom, unfinished cinder block house. There are no doors, no washroom, no kitchen, and Mr. Guillaume and the boys sleep on wooden mats on the dirt and cement floor. During the day, in order to survive, Mr. Guillaume also works stocking shelves, to help bring in money to care for the boys. Mr. Guillaume is 70 years old. Due to the lack of a kitchen, as long as there is money for food, all the meals are cooked at the one home across the city and brought by public transport to his home each day. There are no extras. There are no mid-morning or late evening snacks; no early morning coffee to kick-start his day or pain relief medication for aching joints fighting with a tired body at nighttime. Yet there is a constant cognizance of the gift and fragility of life: that all we really have to give is our love and willingness.

Every day is a struggle to survive, not just for him, but for the health and survival of the boys in that home. Why would he do this? After an entire lifetime of hard labor, constant hunger and struggle, with a tired body that probably daily cries out for a retirement that is not possible, what would compel him to continue to push on day after day? I think he would say that it is because of his faith. A faith that believes there can be a better future for these children, and the greatest legacy of a life is to invest in that possibility. His understanding that these children need him is what gives him the ability to rise each day, work until past sundown, and to continue to believe that tomorrow it will always be worth it. Because it is always worth it to love.

Mr. Guillaume is a face on our wall of heroes. He is a life that we are humbled to know of, a man of deep character, and he is one more compelling reason to recognize that it is never too late to give, it is never too late to believe that you are a part of the answer to the question.

This year, Absolute has committed to renovate Mr. Guillaume’s facility to bring it up to a livable standard for the children. They are in need of proper sanitation, a workable kitchen, and bunk beds for the children. We cannot do this alone, and ask you to please consider partnering with us to help ensure their survival and success.