11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

I can’t quite put my finger on it: is it the sound of the waves slapping against the shoreline that mesmerizes us? Is it the sheer vastness of more water than we can humanly imagine? Is it the mystery of the deep, dark depths and what it contains? What is it about the ocean that has captured man’s imagination and fueled our industry and creativity since time began? It is the one thing we seem unable to tame as a human race, and it is the one thing that we all hold a healthy fear of.

If you have never seen the ocean, I can understand that it may not mean a lot to you. Perhaps you have never had the chance to dip your toes in the water and be awed by the vastness of a globally connected body of water, or haven’t ever thought about the perplexity of so much water and power. The incredible amount of life that teems within those waters, the number of lives that are dependent on them, and the staggering power of the roll of waves may not seem like a big deal to you. But once you see it, you view life in a different way; the secrets of the world only seem to grow when you stand at it’s edge.

For that little boy that day on a hot, January day in Haiti, the ocean was an overwhelming mystery that begged him to stop and stare, purely for the sheer joy of drinking it all in.

He had been at the children’s home for a long time. No one could give us an exact date. Like many of the other children there he was a statistic of poverty: abandoned, alone, and without any means of survival. No one will ever know what evils he had experienced or what future crisis he was now going to avoid because he was there. But he wasn’t just an average, poor, abandoned child: he suffered with severe epilepsy, was given to grand mal seizures regularly, and somehow, before he came to that home, he had broken his arm during a seizure and it was never able to be set. He cradled the atrophied appendage against his side, always walking slowly and carefully, always quiet and looking down.

When the guys had decided to offer the kids from the home a day to party, they pulled out the usual “Absolute style” party routine: fried chicken, swimming, and ice cream. Fifty kids and workers loaded on to a dilapidated and tired school bus and made the long trek to the “good beach” well outside of Port-Au-Prince. Stopping along the way to buy bathing suits and get supplies, they continued on until they reached the quiet stretch of beach, where it was safe for the kids to play in the water. Despite living only a couple of kilometers from the shoreline, very few of the children had ever swam, much less experienced seeing the ocean up close like this. This was going to be a day like no other for them and they were ready to live it up to the fullest!

When they arrived, all the kids began to tumble out of the bus, eager to get suited up and jump in to the warm ocean water. All except him. He just stayed back, timidly waiting for everyone else to go running in, and then he followed slowly behind. A few meters away from where everyone was playing he found an old cement step on the edge of the water. He sat there for what seemed like an eternity, quietly looking out over the water,  watching as the other kids waved at him to come in, cradling his arm and trying to process what was in front of him. I wonder what he was thinking? Was he dreaming of what lay beyond the horizon? Was he imagining what he would do if he could run and jump and play like the other children that day? Was he missing his mother or family that no one knew of? Was he taking a moment to allow the dream to sink in that he was finally touching the ocean? In that place, on that day, for the first time in his life, he was allowed to sit there and be free to think about what he wanted, to drink in the experience, and to know that today it was going to be okay.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds for children such as him. There are millions of disabled children around the world who like him, need to have proper medical attention before it is too late, need to be given proper medication to ensure a quality of life, and who just need to know that they are worth celebrating and that they are not forgotten. Their voice may be weak, but their spirits can be strong - if only we will help them to believe it. This year, Absolute will be returning to Haiti to work with the children’s home that is mentioned in this story. We will be helping to better their living conditions and increase their resources for success. We need your help to make it happen and we are looking for people to join us in the experience. To find out more check out the Hero Holiday Haiti section on www.absolute.org

She has an infectious laugh, and when she smiles, it spreads across her face, lighting up her eyes and giving them a mischievous glow. She loves to knit and crochet. She makes scarves, purses and other small items and sells them to tourists at the Friday night market in the town. With the money she makes, she gives some to her two younger sisters at the children’s home and sends some to her parents back in Burma, just over the border. She is a mother at heart and loves to take care of the other kids there and make them feel at home. She is 15 and two weekends before I met her, her parents had sold her to a tourist for yet another weekend of sex and abuse.

The children’s home had given the family the option to leave their children there - they are never taken from a family home unless they are in known danger. The family had consented to allowing the younger two sisters to stay there, but they said the older sister was a help to them as she worked in the home and they promised that she would go to school. Even more than that, they promised that she would be safe. But in the end, whether it was through desperation, lies, manipulation, or a lethal combination of all three factors, she was sold for a small, insignificant amount of money. Had it not been for the workers in the home that we partner with, she would have been labeled as another statistic in the endless abyss of trafficking and sexual exploitation; she would have been dragged deeper into the trap.

But the miracle happened when I was there. The miracle of her smile. It wrapped itself around my heart, and made me feel blessed by just being able to witness it. It was a gift to the world because it was a sign that things were somehow going to get better. Although no one knew how, there was a confidence residing in it that gave us all something to hold on to. As my fingers type out these words, I feel that same confidence: somehow it will get better. Though life is shaky, plans can fail or change, injustice is somehow inevitable, yet there is still hope. Her smile was an olive branch that she held out to the world, and especially to the kids around her, wrestling with their own demons and hurt. Though it may have been small, it was a loud shout in the face of everything that had happened. She was choosing who she would become.

I have never forgotten her. I sat beside her, as she giggled and tried to teach me how to crochet (I am still a crochet dud!) and I hugged her as she leaned into my shoulder, hungry to be reassured that she was valuable. Wiggling her finger and laughing at their antics, she would mother her two younger sisters who ran around with the other children. They were oblivious to what she had been subjected to in the years that they had been apart, and I think she liked it better that way. It made it easier to stay a child just a little bit longer.

What do you do for a hurt so deep that words or comfort can’t touch - when the action has been done and the memory lives on? If you are her, you choose to smile. Bravely and boldly, you look into others’ eyes and you smile. It was that smile that broke my heart and yet made me feel courage and determination all at the same time. With the help of our financial partners, Absolute was able to help build one of the safe homes there and many of us were able to play a part in making that home a safe and better place. Perhaps it was a home that she is now living in. This is what love, hope and faith can build: the ability to smile again.

The loud smack of the small white tiles hitting the rotted piece of discarded plywood had become a familiar sound. The air had become punctuated with the music of loud, raucous laughter joined with finger pointing, good-hearted teasing, and muttering under the breath. As the children ran around the group, teasing each other and giggling at each other’s antics, the chickens clucked at our feet and the cows munched on the grass fifteen feet from our gathering. Clothes pins hung off of ears and loose arm skin, signifying who was losing the battle. This was an all-in event and it was a part of the late afternoon ritual here in this memorable Dominican village. Yep, it was dominoes - Haitian style.

In so many ways time seems to stand still when you are there. Life is at a different pace: food is cooked over an open fire, families sit around and chat, most transportation is by foot, and even water is carried by hand from a distant pump. Neighbours are only a conversation away and the walls of each house are shared, often only with a tin sheet or a cardboard chunk between the two families. Any electricity used is tapped into, and cell phones are the only mode of communication, as all incoming calls are free. There are no luxuries such as newspapers, books, or even pencils lying around waiting to be used, there is only survival on so many levels. Most of the people who live in this village in Dominican Republic are Haitian, and of those, most are stateless. They are without citizenship, without protection, without basic rights such as education and health care. Most of them work in the garbage dump 4 kilometers away, working long hard days in the Caribbean sun, providing for their families on less than a dollar a day.

If you think about it for a moment, you realize how incredible it is that these people let us into their world. Our Hero Holiday teams work alongside of them, helping to improve their community, helping to build schools for their kids, even helping them to increase their income. It only seemed natural that sooner or later, we would get to be a part of the really important things in life, like dominoes tournaments! Dominoes have been around for almost one thousand years. It is rumoured that they were created by the Chinese, and quickly spread around the world. Dominoes is a fun, challenging game of strategy, and easily accessible to most. It is a great party game, and it is wildly popular among Caribbean and Latin cultures. Our little village was no exception, only the rules here were slightly different: when you lost a round, you were forced to hang a clothespin on your skin somewhere: lips, ears, eyebrows, lower arms, even the skin on your calf was fair game and in order to get rid of the clothespins you had to win a designated number of times in a row.

As we sat around on three-legged resin lawn chairs, huddled around old pieces of plywood resting on stumps, leaning into the small amount of shade provided by overhead branches, it was hard to suppress the laughter and giggles amongst ourselves. The game began, and within moments, many of us were covered in clothespins, smiling as we smacked down our domino for the next move against the fierce competition, teasing our opponents and reveling in the incredible gift of camaraderie. Despite all the immense barriers: language, wealth and education, we really were in this together. Sure it looks different in my world than it does in theirs, and of course we need to level the playing field of life on a global scale; but sometimes the best things in life are not only free - they are freely shared. And for those few sweet moments at the end of each work day, we got to sit across from each other and just be simple opponents in a humble little game called dominoes.

Absolute works in Dominican Republic throughout the year and we will be taking teams this Christmas. You can join us! If you would like to find out how to be a part of a Hero Holiday in Dominican Republic or any of the other countries that we work in, please check out www.absolute.org. Who knows? Maybe you can find your fame in a dominoes tournament after a hard days’ work?

Sometimes life sucks. Things happen to us: we make bad decisions, we trust the wrong people, we hurt each other, we can be victimized by injustice, we can be taken advantage of, and we can wrestle with things that are far beyond our control. In the end, we are the only people who have the power to decide who we become: what we will do with the hurt, the pain, the experience. Our lives are powerful and every decision we make has the potential to have resounding effects. But sometimes it can be hard to see that.

Although they may look like simple structures to the outside world, within many schools there is a world that is a law unto itself. In the hallways, locker rooms, playgrounds and classrooms of our schools, many important people find themselves being victimized. They are insulted, pushed around, and brutalized and the saddest part is that many of the people who see it happen never say a word. Yet, according to recent reports, when bystanders actually step in, bullying is often stopped. Where is their voice? What is it like to be locked inside of something you cannot escape from? Every day you wake up and leave your home, knowing that all that is waiting for you when you arrive at school is brutality, humiliation and rejection. It’s easy to see why fear, insecurity and depression are familiar friends to many teenagers.

School violence is the dark blot on this generation and those of us who have gone ahead of them need to help lead the way out.

Gem has been touring with Absolute since 2008. Born and raised in New Zealand, Gem is a creative, attractive and vibrant member of our road teams. Like everyone in Absolute, Gem has a story to tell. When you hear it for the first time, you cannot believe it. She seems so far removed from it for it to be true. But it is real, and it needs to be told.

“From age 5 until I was 16, I was probably the number one bullied kid in my school. It wasn’t just about physical abuse like bruises, black eyes, pushes and shoves. I was told I was stupid, I was ugly, I was fat, no one liked me and that I would never amount to anything. For years of constant torment, I couldn’t even go a week without a new bruise. I would even lock myself in the art room at lunch because I was scared to walk down the corridors by myself.

And then there was the day like no other. I walked into my classroom and sat down. A group of girls came and sat down behind me, giggling and whispering. I just put my head down and tried to ignore it, but then it happened. Before I could stop them, they took my ponytail and simply cut it off - completely. All I remember is feeling numb, like nothing they could do - no names they could call me and no amount of bruises - could have hurt me more than this. I was so scared I didn’t breathe, I didn’t cry. I just sat there, feeling this unfamiliar wind on the back of my neck. I was almost scared to move, afraid I might fall to pieces.

It has been ten years since that day, and if I tried to tell you that those words and actions don’t hurt anymore, I would be lying to you. They are still very painful memories. I wish that I would have reached out to someone, that someone would have told me it would get better and that I was worth more than what my experience had led me to believe. It wasn’t until I was out of school that I realized that there is more to life, and there is more for me. I am irreplaceable and I am valuable. Every morning I wake up and choose to believe that I am worth more - even when I may not feel like it. I have come to realize something: it wasn’t my fault that I was bullied. It’s not anyone’s fault that they are bullied. People bully others to try to make themselves feel bigger for a moment, and that’s not the victim’s fault. But together we can change that. Whether we realize it or even care about it, our words have power. They have the power to tear down, to destroy and to steal hope. But they also have the power to bring others up, to make them feel significant, and to give them hope. There is hope for you; you are not alone.

It’s up to us to decide who we will be. It’s up to us to change it.”

Most days of the tour, Gem stands up on a stage and shares this story. Each time she shares it, she is offering a little bit of her heart to people, and with that offering comes a tangible portion of hope. Inside each of us is the need to know that we are valuable, that we count, and that we belong. Why is it so easy to step back and watch people be brutalized, tormented, and rejected and yet so difficult to find the voices of those who are able to rise above that? We believe that we can hold out hope to a generation who needs it. Through our stories, our presentation and through sheer willingness to reach them where they are at, our road teams are some of the unsung heroes of our organization. Absolute’s High School Assembly program, Think Day, is able to stay on the road because people like you help to support them, help to get them booked into schools, have hosted them in your homes, and have sat in a high school gym and experienced the message and the very essence of what we are. Through our presentations, workshops, online email response, and one on one contact with thousands of students, we are helping to turn the tide on hopelessness.

There are many Gems in the world, and together, we can reach them and offer a way out of hurt and loneliness, because they are worth it. Please help us to help them.

“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
~ Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.