Even after 25 trips to Haiti I still encounter things that I think of as “Haiti Firsts,” things that I haven’t seen or experienced before on any previous trip. The standout moment from Trip 25 came on Sunday morning, when Travis and I were worshiping in Lalomas.
By the time we’re ready to do communion at the Lalomas church there are probably close to 100 people packed into the small cinderblock building. The servers pass around a single plate of unleavened bread, which had been baked that morning by Madanm Rolin, and brought with us from St. Michel.
For the fruit of the vine there is again just one tray, and when the servers remove the lid I notice that it’s only about one-third full – there’s maybe a dozen or so communion cups, and then just a bunch of empty holes where additional communion cups should go. At this point I’m a bit curious, wondering how exactly this is going to work.
The servers come to me and Travis first; we each take a cup, drink it, and put it back in the tray. The tray is then passed along to several more people until all the cups are empty. I’m watching to see what’s going to happen at this point, and then I realize what the process is going to be: One of the servers takes the tray of empty cups back up to the front, pulls out a small bottle of grape juice from behind the podium, refills the cups, and restarts the process where they had left off in the crowd of people. This process is repeated numerous times, until everyone has been served communion.
That moment, for me, was a bit of an odd juxtaposition – on one hand almost mildly amusing (and I’ll confess that Travis and I laughed about it later, and I told him I was just glad we got to go first), and at the same time incredibly poignant – one of those moments of jolting perspective. I don’t think any of us – myself included – can even begin to comprehend what it’s like to exist in an environment of such overwhelming scarcity that something like “communion cups” are either inaccessible or unaffordable or both. To rant for a moment, I bet most of us – again, myself included – waste more in an average week than many people in Haiti have to live on for an entire year.
I feel like I should be going somewhere with this story, like I should be leading up to some brilliant point I’m about to make. I don’t really have one.
But maybe the story is the point. And I’m not sure that any of us really get it yet. But I am sure that all of us have got to keep trying to get it.
