“Timoun ki kriye nan kay ak sa ki kriye nan pot se menm.”
Translation: The child who cries in the house and the one who cries at the door are the same. Meaning, treat other people’s children as you treat your own.
Last Friday, all of our kids were invited to the Kenscoff Clinic, which is at another orphanage, for a regular check up. A group of Americans and Canadians were on a trip to work alongside the Haitian staff for the week, seeing other large groups of children from the community. It took us a couple trips but once we got all the kids there, we were greeted with “Good mornings!” and smiles by the nurses and doctors. Throughout the afternoon, I could her nurses calling our kids “cheri”, a term of affection. If they had to give blood for a test or get a shot, the adults did their best to soothe and calm whoever was on the receiving end of the needle (and most of them were pretty good at making it clear how unhappy they were with the whole situation). When kids were finished with their checkup, they went upstairs to an open room for juice and snacks and a small VBS lesson by some of the visiting Americans.
Needless to say, all of the people we encountered that day, Haitian, American, and Canadian, were living out this proverb. I have had experience in other hospital situations with some of our kids and the majority of the staff I have dealt with never even so much as cracked a smile when working with their child patients. Many of them just went through the motions, not even recognizing the fear and pain the child right in front of them was experiencing. Definitely not so at Kenscoff Clinic. I feel truly blessed that our children now have a place to go if they’re not feeling well where they will be treated with love and respect. Thank you to all the nurses and doctors for being so kind to our kids and being such a blessing to the community.
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