After passing by a hazy eastern tip of Cuba, our American Airlines flight banked steeply to the right and within minutes we were passing over the northern peninsula of Haiti, so recognizable due to the heavily rutted landscape.

The French had not been kind when they ravaged the once-lush western half of Hispaniola of all the mahogany trees and shipped the lumber back to Paris to make fine furniture.

More than 200 years later, the nation is still 90 percent barren, and what little good topsoil remains is eroding into the Caribbean.

We circled over the Canal du Sud strait approaching Port-au-Prince, a teeming city I had not been to in 19 years. As we touched down on the single runway “international” airport, memories began to take focus.

Child Survival – What Does Ti Chape Means?

I’ll never forget that trip. A wiry American with a unique accent was my guide. He had been living in Haiti for six years, assisting with various ministries, and eventually signing on full time with Compassion. His name was Wess Stafford.

It was on that trip that I snapped one of my all-time favorite photos: a little child of about 3 with a distended belly, wearing a ragged striped T-shirt and nothing else, proudly hoisting his torn little handmade kite on a 10-foot string made of scraps of twine and wire he had found.

The breeze was only keeping the kite about 5 feet aloft, but the boy was as gleeful as any child I had ever seen.

Wess was seated next to me in our van, and noticed my fascination with the tiny urchin.

“Ah, yes … another little Ti Chape.”

“What is a Ti Chape?”

“It’s a Creole phrase that many parents in these poorest areas of Haiti use with their youngest kids. I’m sure you’ll hear it often over the next several days as we visit homes. It’s a term of endearment … but also a harsh reality that reminds everyone of how devastating each day can be for people living on the brink. Ti Chape means little survivor or one who has escaped death.”

As a very tenderhearted man, Wess could not conceal his passion, and tears began to well in his eyes. With a catch in his throat he continued:

“Sadly, for the majority of the poor here in Haiti, the infant mortality rate is as high as 50 percent for children under the age of 5.

“Often parents won’t refer to their littlest ones by their birth name until they celebrate their fifth birthday because they know all too well that many of them won’t make it that far.

“While they are still in this most vulnerable toddler stage, the children are affectionately called Ti Chape.

“I guess it is often too painful to consistently call them by their real names for fear of assigning too much hope to their prospects.

“This same phenomena happens, by different names of course, in other desperately poor cultures around the globe.”

I watched intently for a few more minutes as that toddler joyfully tried to keep his tattered toy buoyant on the air. Then we lurched forward in the traffic flow.

For the rest of our stay I pondered what that child’s chances of survival really were.

Even now, whenever I look at that tyke’s photo in my collection, it gives me great pause, and those feelings all came back to me as we drove through the packed streets of Port-au-Prince again.

On the trip’s final day, we drove out the N2 highway along the southern Massif de la Hotte peninsula, weaving past colorfully painted tap-taps (old pickups converted into buses often over-loaded down with upward of 20 people), soot-spewing diesel trucks, and U.N. troop patrol vehicles that help keep the peace in the politically unstable environment.

We were headed out to see one of our child development centers — one that had been in existence for 23 years, but had added a new program just a few years before, a program that is helping revolutionize our work: our Child Survival Program. (more…)

Hey all, Aaron from Compassion Canada here.

We recently asked Pastor Tim Bailey of Hillside Church in London, ON, the question “What is compassion?” We liked his answer so much that we wanted to share it with all of you. Enjoy!

Her bottom lip quivered as her fingers nervously played with her hair band. Her eyes glanced quickly from side to side, as if expecting to run at any moment. Her knee bounced to the beat of her heart as she listened passively to my questions.

She was a Restavek child from the depths of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and without the knowledge of her owners, she was meeting with us to tell her story.

It was the story of a concrete mattress, early morning chores and constant abuse. It was a story of an uncle who was using her as his own personal slave. (more…)

The first thing you notice when you wake up in Port-au-Prince is the smoke. Your eyes sting, and it feels as though you’ve had a smoky cloth held over your mouth all night from the Haitians’ cooking fires. I half expect to wake up next to a campfire in my tent, not in a major city.

The streets of Port-au-Prince are a zigzagging labyrinth that all look the same to me, and I can’t understand how everyone isn’t permanently lost. The streets are steep like San Francisco, and so potholed that you practically have to have a truck or SUV to buck up and down and over the broken cobblestones.

Women in tank tops carry baskets of fruit on their heads, while others squat roadside frying plantains for passers-by.

Tap taps, the main transportation through the city, spill over with thin men in suits on their way to work. The tap taps are a chaos of color, pickup trucks painted in fuchsia and purple and green with pictures of famous singers and Jesus on them.

As our truck sits in traffic, a woman with blank eyes taps on the window with her hand held out.      

We arrive in front of the white-barred gate of a Compassion-assisted child development center, that opens up to a wide courtyard filled with children playing basketball and running about.

The children spot my camera right away and timidly tap me on the shoulder, hoping to have their picture taken so they can see their faces on the screen. They smile and giggle until I raise the camera, when they suddenly stand up straight and compose themselves seriously for their photo shoot.

The courtyard is ringed by classes, and we smell cookies baking in the cooking class filled with teenage girls. They give us a plate to take home with us.

We poke our heads in various classes where some are learning sewing, some painting, and some are studying the Bible.

In the class of 3- to 5-year-olds, we greet the class, “Como ca va?” And 30 little voices shout back in unison: “Ca va bien, merci! Et vous?!”

I speak to the teacher of the painting class, who learned to paint in that very project. Now he makes occasional money selling his paintings on the street. He is meek and quiet and asks that I’ll pray he can afford Bible school so he can become a pastor.

I talk to the project accountant, a tall, well-spoken man who asks for the prayer of the sponsors as he and the other project workers serve the children.

After disrupting several classes and giving an impromptu geography lesson, we leave with our plate of cookies. We bump back up and down the Port-au-Prince streets, and I’m frankly relieved to pull safely up to our clean hotel away from the noise and smells of the streets. 

We have dinner at the hotel, looking down over the pool and tennis courts, surrounded by lush green overgrowth. I ask my Haitian friend if he likes it here, in Port-au-Prince, where he has grown up. He shakes his head no. Although it is home, he would rather be elsewhere, like the millions of the Haitian diaspora.  

And yet, he stays. I’ve grown to admire these people who believe in and love their country, even when it would seem so tempting to desert in a situation so hard. Yet each day, they get up and choose to try to be a part of changing their country by serving the children and giving them hope for a different future.