Day three: a long bus ride

I sat in the back today on the way back to the compound.
I faced the rear window of the old school bus that takes us to and from the village where we’re building two homes here on the outskirts if Port Au Prince, Haiti. During that ride, we also drop off the Haitian men who are our bosses — most volunteers — close to where they live. It was during that time that I was struck by the realization that most of these guys laboring in the hot sun (think Mississippi in July) don’t have homes themselves. I watched a man get off the bus to be greeted by his two small children who had just been rummaging through the trash on the side of the road. The small girls, probably 7 and 5 years old, wore broad smiles as they hugged their dad, who was covered in sweat and dried mortar.
I remembered him telling me as we mixed concrete how he lived in a tent. No electricity for a fan, much less an air conditioning. This slight man was dressed in women’s Jordache jeans with zippers at the bottom. Two inches too short, they exposed his sock less feet in two different brand tennis shoes. As he exited the bus today, he carried the wire faceplate of an old General Eletric fan — his own personal tool he uses to sift out the rocks for the sand of the mortar at the job site — and a rusty trowel.
This man who has nothing wakes up at 6 a.m. every day and labors in the sun for 8 hours to build a homes, something he himself does not have. His pay: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and clean water for the day. And maybe, if he’s lucky, some hand-me-downs from the missionaries who work alongside him. He does it because he loves God, he loves people because of that love for God and he wants to do everything he can to help them in any way he can.
I don’t tell you that to make you feel sorry for him. I tell you that to illustrate how profoundly repentant I felt at that very moment for how I live. I felt repentant for the things I deem important in my life and the opportunities I miss every day because of it.
I tell you that because it’s a scene I hope sticks with me for life as a constant reminder of how little I’m actually doing for people in my community compared to that man.