11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

Hey Everyone

Just wanted to let you know that our Absolute people who are on the ground in Port au Prince, Haiti have confirmed that our friends at the orphanages we work with are in fact, all alive and accounted for. However, they have all suffered much loss as they have lost friends and family in the rubble around them, not to mention lack of proper shelter, etc.

Today, our Absolute members helped people who were still trying desperately to reach their family members who had been buried deep beneath the rubble. There is little hope of any survival at this point, but one can always hope for a miracle.  We have two nurses from our Hero Holiday arm that have taken it upon themselves to get there and are now on the ground, helping out where they can.

Our hearts are grieving with all of our friends who have lost those closest to them. Frantzo, one of our Hero Holiday Dominican Republic translators has lost 5 members alone and yet he is beside our team, helping to dig through the rubble. This is what it is to be the hands and feet of compassion and we are honored to work alongside of so many Haitian people such as him.

There is great need for tarps, mosquito nets and basic needs of survival for thousands upon thousands of people. If you want to help us, you can go to our homepage and donate at www.absolute.org/donate.

We are also encouraging people to give to the Red Cross, World Vision and St. Joseph’s Home for Boys.

We will continue to keep you updated as we much as we are able to. Thanks for your support, encouragement and prayers.

The following is a blog from one of our participants, Danielle Clouse, who has been on our Hero Holiday Thailand trip with us:

Christmas came early this year. The gift of giving has left me humbled and at ease. These past two weeks I’ve spent my time meeting amazing new people from all over the map and working together to achieve a common goal. We started out thinking we would be building a medical center for a group of well deserving kids but instead we learnt that the best gift we could give was simply love.
In Northern Thailand I have been faced with the surreal reality of how prominent child prostitution is in this world. We shield ourselves if it happens to come up in the media and we would turn a blind eye if we ever encountered it throughout our day. I believe it is human nature to keep the peace in these situations rather than getting involved, but at what point do we stop and realize what part we must play?
Today I was privileged to meet a wonderful woman named Kru Nam. She has started something amazing just simply by taking an interest in something bigger than herself and following through; rather than forgetting. We can’t all be the hero running into brothels and rescuing the innocent but we can all be the hero of finding our role in bettering the life of others and discovering the personal reward of happiness when helping someone in need.
On my flight to Thailand I read a terrific book by David Batstone titled Not for Sale. Krunam is one of the many stories illustrated in this book. To meet her in real life was a blessing. I left feeling like I met a latter day Martin Luther King or Harriet Tubman. She is an amazing individual and will not be forgotten.
Her accomplishment has blossomed from something that started just as an afternoon activity. She is an artist who walked across the bordering bridge in Burma (to Thailand) and noticed a bunch of “cute kids”. She thought it would be nice to paint with them, only to discover the terror in many of their drawings. This now is a method of therapy for the children. With the support of others Krunams simple act of kindness has turned into a safe house for kids wanting to escape their harsh reality. Children from bordering countries and tribes around Thailand are welcome to the home as a solution. Our role initiated by Krunam has been to help fund development and to love the children and show them how special they truly are. These kids all come from different situations but they now share a common dream of safety, happiness, and good health.
The knowledge I have acquired over this trip has helped me to see a clearer path of what lies ahead in my future; a fantastic experience to say the least. Some events that we have participated in on this Hero Holiday are the best memories of my life and you probably wouldn’t believe me if I shared (powder party anyone!?).
Thank you Christal for being my leader, inspiration and teacher, you are a hero who has found her place and now helps teach us the purpose of life. It`s refreshing to be around a group of amazing people who realize their power to change the world and I am graced to have had the pleasure of working with you all.

Danielle Clouse <3

The following entry is from Heather Bourque, one of our adult participants here with us in Northern Thailand. Heather is a flight attendant with Air Canada (which is how she first heard of Absolute: she was on one of Vaden’s flights!) and she is also a professional photographer. Much of her work can be seen in our book, ONE: A Face Behind the Numbers. Heather has been with us in Thailand three times, and she says that every time is a new adventure and full of amazing memories! Heather is from Montreal.

I can’t remember her name but I will never forget what she did that day. Although I had met her earlier and saw her bright smile, it was not until later that I truly saw her. She sat on the Thai-Myanmar border amongst the street kids and opened up her very basic first aid kit (a small plastic box with a few medications). She pulled out a pair of protective gloves and put them on. I watched, closely anticipating that she would pull out some medications or ointment for the children, as the were in need of various medical treatments. However, instead, a small pair of nail clippers came out. Starting with the smallest child, barely 1 year old, she clipped his tiny little fingernails with great precision and love. With a beautiful smile on her face, she than went on to his toe nails with equal meticulousness. As she came close to being done, another street child would be waiting in line, in most cases anxiously, to get their nails done.

She went from one tiny dirty fingernail to the next with great care and love. Giving 60 seconds of love to each and every child. The hugs and kisses came her way endlessly as she did this humble job with such finesse. Without hesitation, she reciprocated every hug and smile that came her way. These tiny, filthy, beautiful human beings craving love, even for just 60 seconds of it, would come soak in what they could. And still, she continuously gave. With a few more hugs and many more smiles thrown to each one, she went on.

Soon the children would return to the bridge to beg in their torn up clothing on their dirt-laced little bodies. But now, they would returnwith a memory of love. Even if only for a brief moment that day, they were loved like every child should be. And in a simple chile worldview, they trust that she will come back. They know she will return, as she always does.

This morning, as I sit on my bed and reach for my nail clippers, a smile comes to my face.

Although at times I question humanity with the countless struggles we have in this world, today I wake with hope. Hope for these few children because they are loved.

My apologies, but we are currently unable to upload our photos to this blog site from where we are at. We will do our best to get them up asap!

When you are on a Hero Holiday, there is no telling what kind of adventure is waiting for you around the corner, across the street, or really from the moment that you wake up and realize you have been blessed with another day to do something so life-giving. Yesterday was one of those days.
We thought we were going to be helping out at the drop in centre, in the border city in northern Thailand where we are here to work for two weeks. We arrived and thought that this would be a day of cleaning, meeting stateless families that are affected by the presence of this centre (they are able to get food, community support, medical help, and even stay overnight if they need to stay warm and safe) but we didn’t count on the adventure that would ensue!
We met up with the staff that work day after day with the stateless street kids that surround this bridge between two vastly different countries struggling to co-exist. The workers are full of love, grace, and compassion for each individual they meet and it shows in everything they do. We crossed the bridge, went through customs, and were now standing in the border city in Burma (Myanmar). The street was alive with chaos, conversation, and underneath it all, the struggle to survive. The workers put us in tuk-tuks (3 wheeled taxis) and we were off to the edge of the city to meet up with families and street children that they work with to educate, feed, and try to keep safe from exploitation. As we were going through the streets of this small Burmese city, I burst out laughing, as I looked over my shoulder to the other tuk-tuks with the Hero Holiday participants as they smiled and waved at me like this was a part of their everyday life! I think they somehow failed to see the irony in the scene that I saw as I watched them smiling and waving at the curious bystanders on the streets, laughing and joking as if they were the best of friends from years back. They have only known each other for a few days, but somehow, experiences like this, bond you together like no other.
Our world is so vast, yet experiences like Hero Holiday remind you of how humanity is still the same: each one of us needs to know that we belong, that someone cares, and that there is a place in the world for us. Today, watching these students with us, I saw them embody that hope and be changed in the process. I watched as they played tag with street children, brought them treats, held young mothers’ babies, hugged and were hugged back, laughed at childish antics, and cried at the pain of reality for the hands that they held. Today was a day full of the human experience and full of new understandings of the part we play to make the world a better and safer place.
On the tuk-tuk, I was chatting with one of the workers from the home. She is an inspiration to me and she is one of my heroes. She was laughing at the participants with us as we watched them buy birds in baskets from the children at the Buddhist temple in Burma and try to release them and ease their guilty consciences for buying the birds in the first place! She showed us how to love people where they are at, no matter how much you approve or disapprove of their choices, and she encouraged our participants to be that kind of humanitarian worker too. Today was a day of inspiration and realization, and today marked a change in how each one of our students’ saw themselves: as individuals who have a voice and a life that can bring change and love the world around them.
Tonight, during our debriefing, we talked about what this experience can mean when each one of them goes home. There was much laughter, inspiration, and tears. But underneath it all, there is hope.

This past summer I went to Haiti and I witnessed first hand what paralyzing poverty looks like, what it smells like, and what it even tastes like. In Haiti, my heart was changed and my memory was etched forever with the experience. I met people who were former slaves, who were destitute and who were literally starving. In Haiti, everything took on a new perspective and my trip there helped me to better understand the needs and issues that we deal with in Dominican Republic on Hero Holiday. In Dominican Republic I have many Haitian friends, and they have moved from Haiti in hopes of a better life and in the hope of survival for their children. My Haitian friends have given me a new level to reach for in  faith, hope, and love, and they have shown me that the greatest of these truly is love.  My friend Bernard is one of those people.

Bernard has worked with Absolute as a translator in the Dominican since 2006. He is a Haitian living in DR, and he is one of my truest friends. He has impacted my life in ways he is not even aware of, as he has challenged me to love with compassion and to give unconditionally no matter the cost. Bernard grew up in Haiti, and was very poor. From the time he was 8 until he was 14, Bernard was a “restavek” in a home of a family living in Port-au-Prince. This term is really a Creole euphemism for a child slave. He told me that the people he had to serve were kind to him, but for those 6 years, they allowed him an education in school as long as he washed the car, cleaned the house, took care of the kids and did everything they demanded of him; if he did not, there were severe beatings as a consequence.  His own family couldn’t afford to care for him, so he was ‘loaned’ to this family in exchange for food, school, and many long and relentless days of child labor.

If you met Bernard today, you would never know of those times. Bernard is a man of joy, integrity, honesty, and true compassion. He is a trusted member in his community in DR, and he has become a refuge for many other kids who have experienced what he has walked through. This past summer, Absolute decided to make Bernard the recipient of one of our Hero Holiday projects. Bernard was living in a one room house and was continually taking in young men who had run away from slavery, violence, and who had been orphaned. He has spent the past 4 years volunteering in orphanages and supplementing his own income with translating, as well as sending almost all of his money back to Haiti to support his other brothers and sisters in hopes of keeping them out of slavery and exploitation. Bernard has given many of us a character value to aspire to and we are grateful for his time, his many talents, and most of all, his passion to serve and make a difference.

At the end of August, Vaden and I hosted some people from League Assets on a Hero Holiday in DR. The members of League have become a major sponsor of what we do, and because of them, much of what we do is even possible. As we showed them Bernard’s new house location, we shared with them the plan of what it is to become: Bernard wants to use this space to eventually have a safe house for young men needing some help getting on their feet, perhaps getting an education, and wants it to most of all be a place where they feel dignity, respect and hope for what they can grow into.  However, League Assets saw even more than that: they saw what could become a template for change in communities as they began to create a plan for home ownership for the desperately poor. Because of this inspiration, Bernard’s house has set off a chain of events that is leading to opening the way for more families to get homes through sweat equity, micro-finance, and many other creative and viable economic opportunities.

This home is a tribute to the lives of many people. It is a tribute to Bernard and people like him who have the courage to move past the limitations of poverty and exploitation.  It is a tribute to the many hundreds of Hero Holiday participants who have joined with us and others to become instruments of change and help to write a new history for the people we work with. And most of all, this home is a tribute to hope, because when we have hope, we have the ability to dream, and when we have the ability to dream, we have the ability to see lives changed. Thank you, Bernard. I believe in you, in what you do, and I am proud to be counted among your friends.

Fours years ago, Vaden and I were driving down a road that seemed to go nowhere: it was washed out in places, had almost no traffic except for the odd motorbike or donkey, and it had houses lined along the side of it, full of people who shyly waved at us as we rumbled along. Somewhere along that place we found a man with a  dream, and his name was Garcia…

Garcia is a musician, a husband and father, a pastor, and a man with a vision bigger than what was in front of him. He had a community back on that road that we  found ourselves on that day, and he traveled  every day of the week from his own village, Maranatha, to serve that community and help it move forward in whatever way he could.  He came to help out because he loved them and believed in them. They had a local area where they had a church, held community meetings, and one day hoped to have a school. It was  a small area, about 20 feet by 30 feet, and it was covered by four posts and a tarpaulin. All around the area, many feet out, was a trench that had been dug at one time, but was now covered in by weeds, grass and life. Five years earlier, Garcia had inspired some men in the community to dream of what a school could like in that place, and so together, they dug the trench, in hopes that someday they might see a school for their children.

In that area, we, like Garcia, saw what could be, but not yet was: a school that could change the future of the hundred plus children in that community. This is what faith and dreams are made of  and what Absolute wanted to be a part of, so the following summer, our Hero Holiday teams began to work with Garcia and the people in Arroyo Seco to accomplish this dream. It is a labor of love that has filled our lives with laughter, warm memories, huge community parties, and tearful good-byes. And in some way, it has changed us all.

This past summer, we put the finishing touches on the school. As we drove away, I looked over my shoulder and saw a bunch of children waving good bye, with Garcia and his family in the middle of the crowd, smiling and shouting out blessings…It felt good to be a part of something so incredible. Over the time that we worked in their community, over 700 Canadian teenagers and adults who joined us on Hero Holiday had witnessed the fulfillment of a dream, and it inspired us all.

Yesterday, however, I got an email with an update of what has happened in Maranatha, the community where Garcia lives. This past Friday, while many of us got together with friends and had Halloween parties, Garcia, his family, and the thousands of people that live in Maranatha, his own village, fought for their lives and homes as they faced a flash flood. Many of their homes were covered under two to five feet of water and sewage, and many of them lost every last earthly possession that they had. Garcia and his family lost most of their possessions, but managed to salvage some valuable items such as beds and food. However, the local grocery store, where many of them were only able to buy their supplies on credit, was swept away and food is scarce.  Like so many of the world’s poor, they are now forced to rebuild their lives and start over…at the beginning.

Why is life so blatantly unjust? Why do the poor always keep losing, and the rich get drunk on the excess of the world? How is it that our governments can find trillions of dollars to bail out multi-national companies in a financial crunch and still manage to employ hundreds of thousands of people at salaries that keep growing, and yet many of the world silently slips away and struggles moment by moment to exist? What is my part in all of this? How do I live my life in light of what I know to be true both here and there?

I don’t have all the answers, I just have a conviction that I can’t give up: I can’t stop doing what I know I am called to do, and I MUST NOT quit just because things seem difficult where I am at.

So, Garcia, when I see you again, I will tell you this in person, but until then, I will put it in black and white: you are a great inspiration and friend, and your struggle is my struggle, and we are linked by a common faith and purpose that is deeper than culture, skin color and economics. I will continue to pray for you and will do what I can to help ease the burden. You and your family have done so much for a community, their children, and their future, and now it is time for a community of people to do something for you.

If you would like to help us get some money to Garcia and his family, please email me and I will let you know what you can do.

Hey Everyone!

We love what we do: we get to travel, see the country, create change and bring hope. We also love to be able to pass on cool info that we think students might benefit from…this is one of those moments:

Ashoka’s Youth Venture, recently launched in Canada, is proud to announce their first global competition to recognize and support young changemakers worldwide.

If you know young people with IDEAS or existing PROJECTS for change, please encourage them to enter the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition by October 15, 2008.

The various prizes include seed funding to implement their ideas, a free trip to attend the next Youth Venture Summit in the U.S., and special opportunities involving MTV and Nike for environment and sports-related projects.

For more info, check out changemakers.net

It was the last day of the final trip of the summer in Dominican Republic. I woke up with great expectations of finishing this trip with excellence and enjoying the community party to the max. However, the sky did not look promising, and I was trying hard not to stress about the what if’s: What if I forgot something? What if it rains? What if no one shows up at our party? Worse yet - what if no one can get to  our party and we just blew all that money on the two roasted pigs and all the rice and beans? But, there was absolutely nothing we could do about it, so we just watched and waited.

When the time came for the party to start, it was pouring rain. So, because of this, we decided to go ahead with the party anyways! As we were trekking up with steep mountain roads towards the village we were hosting the party in, I was reminded of how this location ever came to be for us. Last summer, at the beginning of August, in the last days of her short life, we met a little girl named Danica. Danica’s life was lost to a totally preventable disease. She was 18 months old and was stateless, too poor to be helped in time, and basically abandoned. Her death rocked us to our core, and it actually was what provided the inspiration for the clinic that our friends, Phil and Donna Williams, have built in her name. It is called Danica’s Clinic and it is a clinic of hope in a poor community where health care is often a pipe dream and rarely attainable. Danica’s Clinic now provides this community and the surrounding area with a compassionate doctor and quality health teaching, and a stocked pharmacy, and all this is made possible because of people like the ones that joined us on this particular Hero Holiday. Because of all of this, this community seemed like the perfect community to celebrate friendship and solidarity…and really,  what says “I love you” better than a couple of roasted pigs?

As we pulled up and fishtailed up the mud hill beside the clinic in the pouring rain, I smiled as we saw a group of young boys out in the rain playing percussion on the five gallon pails and with a stick…it was festive, if not soggy! After spending the first two minutes trying to not get wet, we all gave up and stood in the rain and laughed. This is what memories are made of! Our roasted pigs were skillfully chopped up with a machete by Garcia, one of the our Dominican friends, and some rice, beans, and casava finished off the menu. Within moments, word had spread far and wide that we were serving the meal, and people came hurrying up the hill through the mud and sludge to get their meals. We set up a sound system and just began to celebrate life and love and friendship, and it was a beautiful thing to behold! Children laughed and danced and sang with the music, and many of our team laughed and danced right alongside of them.

In my mind, I had fully believed that by some stroke of divine intervention the rain would eventually stop and we would have a little time to just stand outside, but it never did. In fact, it only seemed to rain harder and harder the longer we stayed there. However, that meant little in a moment like this where for just a short time you can indulge in the gift of great food, great company, and great entertainment!

To all the Danica’s Dream Team, I would like to say, “Thank you”. You made that party a success, and your gifts made that clinic possible. The world needs people like you to do things like this. Thank you for giving of your time, your talents, your passion, and your love.  I think a little girl would be very proud of you right now…

This trip with our Hero Holiday nursing and medical students has been non-stop learning, understanding, and memories. Each day I joke with the teams that it is just another day at the office as we march through mud, walk on trails through the jungle to get to the garbage dump, we hand out food to people and watch kids eat pizza for the first time, we paint and mix cement by hand, and we see countless patients through our clinics…quite the office environment if you ask me Today we were out at the garbage dump, working among the people, and something happened that caused me to stop and think…

There were about 20 of us at the garbage dump today working with the people there who collect bottles for income and scrounge for food and provision. We are honored to be able to work alongside them, even if it is for such a short time. Today, while working, Smith, my translator and friend, walked toward me, laughing, and said, “I have to tell you what the people there are talking about. They have a theory on Creation, and I thought you might be interested to hear it: they say that when God made people, He had two piles, one with paper and the other with sand. The paper was white people like you, and the sand was people like the Haitians. The paper gets to learn and grow and become something else, but the sand has to work hard and nothing ever seems to change.” I stopped walking and looked at him. “Is that really how they see it? Do they really think that it is because of my skin color that I can move ahead?” Smith, who is Haitian, said, “People have no answers for their hurt and hard times, and it just seems like it would be easier to be you.”

This afternoon, some of the participants joined me as we brought out rice, beans, and oil to our friends in the village that work at the dump. As we pulled up, it started to rain really hard, so we jumped out of the car and followed them to where it was out of the rain to get organized for delivering the food. We ran under a tiny tin roof on a porch that was held up by sugar cane stalks, and everyone followed us. So here we were:  4 Canadians  and  about  55 Haitians jammed together listening to the rain pound on the tin roof. I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden the hilarity of the situation struck me and I couldn’t stop laughing as chickens were dodging our feet (I guess they didn’t like the rain either) a dog was leaning up against me, a little boy was holding my hand, and I watched our translator wrestle with a Winnie the Pooh umbrella (that someone handed him) that wouldn’t open and probably was a ‘treasure’ from the dump. Just another Saturday at the office, I guess! To the people that lived there, this was life as normal, with the exception of a few extra Canadian faces in the mix. As I kept looking at my watch and wishing the stupid rain would finish because I had other places that I needed to get to before the day was out, they patiently waited in the rain for the food that they desperately needed to feed their families. We really do live worlds apart in so many ways, and I could really learn a few things from these amazing individuals who have lived through more than I can even comprehend.

I have to admit, I guess I can see how my friends’ theories on Creation could seem to be more real than either of us care to acknowledge. Here I am, sitting at my laptop, trying to get my work done, but knowing that in a few minutes I am going to have food, that tonight I will get sleep and be safe, and that for me, the garbage dump is a place to visit, not the place where my existence currently depends on. Nothing but mere location of birth truly separates me and them, and today, after sharing our rainstorm moment, I am even more keenly aware of it.

As we drove back from the village, the car smelled like a wet dog, but we all had a great laugh at the seemingly random moment that we just experienced with total strangers. One of the students with me in the vehicle said, “That’s it - this is definitely what I want to do with my life.”  I assumed she was referring to working with those less fortunate and experiencing change, not standing in the rain with humans, dogs and chickens all vying for dry space, and so my response to her was, “Then if this is what you want to do, I think you should definitely make it happen. This experience can not only be a memory, but it can be a major moment in your life that you will look back on as the moment that changed your way of thinking.”

So, on behalf of changed lives everywhere, I need to thank the dogs, chickens, and humans that shared today’s experience with us. You people are what make it worth it all! Thanks for making this Saturday at the office another great moment in my life where I can learn and make a memory with you. You give so much meaning and perspective to who we are and you inspire us to want to grow to be able to help you grow and move ahead as well…Thanks!

I have to be honest: it was a little hard to look her in the eye when she was pouring out her heart to me. I felt weak, helpless, and I felt the sting of injustice in a whole new level; it was as if I was seeing my life for the first time from someone else’s perspective…and I was entirely uncomfortable.

Hero Holiday DR was over, and Vaden, myself, and three others had taken the long trek to the southern border with Haiti and now found ourselves in the middle of the poorest neighbourhood in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The area was called Cite-Soleil, and my life was changed by what happened that day. As we crossed over the foot bridge that spanned over a river of deep black sludge, human waste, and rotting garbage, I held Vaden’s hand, and tried to imagine what a place like this could look like if it didn’t look like this. In truthfulness, it was a very difficult image to conjure up in that moment. As we walked up to the group of people staring at us, she caught my eye almost immediately.

Her name was Analiecia, and she looked so tired. Her eyes were sad, her hands weathered, and her clothes looked like they were doomed to be eternally filthy. She was a single mother of 7 kids, and but it was what she said when she looked me in the eye that struck me: “We have nothing and no one cares. We watch as our children starve to death in front of us, with no hope of feeding them enough to survive. Yesterday, 15 of us put our money together to buy one pound of rice between us for our families. Why does no one care?”

I had no answer for Analiecia, only the silent tears in my eyes as I bowed my head in recognition of her intense need. I didn’t even have money on myself, as we were too scared to come into this dangerous neighbourhood with anything of value, and I wondered what it would be like if, in that moment, her eyes were mine and mine were hers. What would I see differently? What would I view as important and worth giving my life for? What would I be willing to do for what I loved?

This past month I have spent many hours and days with incredible people in a very bizarre set of circumstances. With Hero Holiday, we have the privilege of leading Canadians on a journey of self-discovery and global awareness. Through the course of time that our trips take, I am always in awe of one thing more than anything else…Everytime I hand out food, or shoes, or reach out to a hand that needs to be pulled up, I am struck by one simple truth: there is nothing except birth that has separated my hands from theirs-my eyes see life from this view purely because of where I am born, and not because of anything I could have ever done to deserve it.

Analiecia’s eyes held mine that afternoon because they were eyes that reminded me to keep going, to keep believing that something can change, to keep joining hands with those who love the poor and reach out to the exploited.

Analiecia, your eyes have told me of deep truths that I needed to be reminded of and they have stirred a compassion that is not letting me sleep at night. I can’t not become a voice for you; I can’t not see your pain as my own. I can’t not want to be changed by what I now know.

Thank you, Analiecia for having the courage to look me in the eye. It was what I needed to realize that I need to look back into yours and recognize that which I can do to begin to change things for all of us.

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
C.S. Lewis