Summer Has Come...

It's one of those nights...one where you just kind of are in this mood where you want to be alone and kind of think thoughts that are a little melancholy...you just want to reflect and be quiet.

I'm gonna write it all down...

My heart is racing...for no reason...its just what I'm thinking about and might share :) haha...I've grown a lot this year, so much. At times I thought it was because something was going to happen...and things did happen, but not the things I thought would happen...

The pastor at my parent's church just came back from Haiti. He saw sixty orphans living in chicken coops and we're going to build an orphanage for them. he started his sermon by asking who would trade their present circumstances for the biggest tent in Port-au-Prince. No one raised their hand (of course) but my mom whispered to me, "You would."

She knows me better than I let on...

She might even know me better than I know myself.

Oh I wonder...that boy...

And I let myself dream lately...of a man who has kind eyes and a steadiness that will keep me when all the rest is falling apart. I'm energetic and people loving enough for two people...I need someone with strength and endurance for the days I fall apart.

But its hard, you know? I'm twenty-two...most people have boyfriends about now, or the inklings of one (insert sad, sweet smile). Why am I different?

I had someone say, about a month before school ended, "You know, I was thinking, 'why doesn't Robin have a boyfriend? She's funny and smart and...and then I realized, there's no one cool enough for you."

That was heartening, in its own way. It's good to think back on. And I kind of know why I haven't had a boyfriend, etc. There's always been a set apartness about me...something that people can kind of sense, something that intimidates a lot of guys...and I'm glad for it. I've been protected by a Loving Father (you all know who I'm talking about).

I have to trust Him in this time. I have to let Him be in control and move my steps and help me wait...not easy...but good, so good I can almost taste it and it should make me sing for joy and exult in all you are, My Lord.

Not easy...but worth it.

And all those years I spent reading Elisabeth Elliot's book and praying that I wouldn't have it easy...well, living it out is something different altogether. I never knew my weaknesses before. But He can be strength...I just have to let Him.

I let Him be strength last night. I was driving home from a friends house and it was pouring rain. I'm a new driver and it was a 45 minute drive home and the storm did not relent. I was worried at times that I'd do something stupid and end up dead...but I held onto the wheel and kept praying.

"Jesus, help me get home safe. Jesus, be my strength. Jesus, let me stay on the road. Jesus, be my eyes, help me see..."

And shouldn't that always be how we pray? Shouldn't I always realize that I don't have what it takes, I need help and direction from a God is more than able to supply my needs and knows the path before me? Shouldn't I?

I was glad to go to that friends house. She and I have only known each other through this year--she was totally put into my life by God--and we have helped each other walk through very similar situations this year. Even last night, as we talked, I was amazed at how she had grown. We both had these massive crushes on guys we thought were cute--the kind of crush that leaves your head feeling funny all day and makes you want to stay away from the guy and yet always be near him at the same time--at least, that's how it was for me. I did my best to avoid my crush and treated him different form every other person I knew--but it was all because I couldn't handle being near him!!! (So lame! Question: Is putting the facebook status, "If I'm careful with you does that mean I love you?" seem an appropriate status to put up? I didn't post it, but that's what I wanted to write today...thinking of him).

Anyway, I'm getting away from it all :)

The guys we had crushes on did not reciprocate completely. The guy I liked I think had feelings for me, but in the end I saw clearly how much our lives were going to diverge. I love the country of Haiti with all my heart (there's really nothing I can do about it!) and he loves another country and will end up there someday. He is a sweetheart, with a lot going for him...but I'm not an add-on, God has very specific things for me...I have to let go. I had to see--I'm not even sure what yet--but he asked another girl to the dance and I stayed home and scrapbooked about the year with friends (it made a wonderful mess in my lobby) and life goes on...I hope we stay friends, but my heart is not out there for the taking. This hurt too much and as much as it is in my power I am handing my love life over to my Creator and allowing Him to have His way. That's the only way that's going to work for me.

My friends had talked with the guy she liked all year and hung out with him too. They were friends...but she wondered if there was more. Yesterday was kind of a deciding day...she talked with him about a comment he'd amde on facebook (and this was an ackward conversation!!) and ascertained that if he really cared for her, he'd been given the chance to express it--with no dice! Life goes on...she was actually telling me last night that she felt content being single, which is huge for her! At the beginning of the year, I can remember sharing with her that I woudln't mind being single my whole life--and she told me that she really wanted a boyfriend, she just wanted to be a wife and mother. How the tables turned!!! We both went through these situations with bys and I popped out the other side really wanting a boyfriend, while she is learning to be content being single...what do you do with that? God is funny that way.

I have a page ripped from the beginning of the year which expresses perfectly what I had started to learn at the beginning of the school year (in the fall) and must now learn again. It's about contentment and having Christ as your only source, all you need (there's real strength in that):

"Getting used to loneliness.

Help me to accept this.

Change me, teach me how to cope, to use
my time wisely and glorify you in
the midst of this.

To learn to wait on God
to really wait for His leading
to trust

Go deep

it won't make sense to you, but it doesn't
have to"

Nothing deep, but Jesus, I need you now like I never have before. Help me not to be embarassed by m weakness, but reach out to you all the more and you will be all I need in these coming days and months. Like Liz, my good friend kept telling me, "You have been filled to overflowing with all the strength you need to endure."

I trust You, God, even when it doesn't make sense to me. Even when it hurts. Help me turn to You. I want to blossom again, a flower under your care. May better days be ahead...bright ones, filled with sunshine. It is summer after all! Help me leave behind my old habits of the heart, constantly searching in the shadows and living in secret hopes which did me no good. I want to be filled, bright, let the world with all its cobwebs fall away from me. Living in you, healed, clean...this is my desire.

No Ordinary Love

Tonight is a blogging night!!! It's past eleven, no one will interrupt me and I don't want to go to bed ;) Perfect circumstances...

I've had a good month/bad month...I was unpacking, moving furniture around, FINALLY took my driving test, have my first day of training at work tomorrow...everything timed out perfectly...isn't it funny how it does? There were a few points when I was not trusting and just felt so worried and overwhelmed...here I was, with a college degree and I couldn't find a job! Life is not easy, have you heard?

But then things worked out and I'll be a hostess soon!!! Working five days a week eight hours a day...and getting paid for it! Every day walking out that door with a smile on my face. It's going to be great...hard, but great.

I'm lucky I look sixteen...I'll be doing a sixteen year olds job! haha

I just want to reflect on the goodness of God...I don't do that enough. I keep reading this one excerpt from a C.S. Lewis book on this topic. He talks about how He used to think that God was selfish, always asking us to praise Him. Then he realized how beneficial it is to priase anything, period, let alone praise God. If something is worthy of adoration, please adore it, don't be shy! (just a second, I'll find the book...) We delight in praising, all the happiest people do it! C. S. Lewis speaks of praise as the something which not only expresses but completes your enjoyment of something, it is the "appointed consummation".

A quote from the passage: "...if one could really and fully praise even such things to perfection--utterly 'get out' in poetry, or music, or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost burst you? Then indeed the object would be fully appreciated and our delight would have attained perfect development. The worthier the object, the more intense this delight would be. If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to 'appreciate,' that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. It is along these lines that I find it easiest to understand the Christian doctrine that 'Heaven' is a state in which angels now, and men hereafter, are perpetually employed in praising God....To see what the doctrine means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God--drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever'. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him."

Really good stuff....Hmmm....

There's a beauty in me put there by God. I get to share it with everyone I meet. Sometimes I'm too stingy with it. Oh Lord, let your beauty be a part of me as I work. Let me not be afraid of what it might cost me. Yours cost You everything. I walk in Your footsteps.

I'm not enough. Do you every have those moments of realization? Especially in this job search, I realized that I really had nothing to offer...people could pick and chose me as it suited their fancy. That's a strange, hard thing to know. My parents are going through it right now. Both of them are out of work (mom: nurse, dad: contractor). We're not really sure what we're going to do right now. Cry and praise. Pray. My parents are praising God together in the mornings. May they be blessed in that, and hear from Him. He comforts those who seek Him out.

Sometimes I feel to needy to seek Him out. That's usually when I need to go to Him the most. My heart...still feels a little shredded. I had no idea you could like someone like that (the way I liked him...) I can't imagine love--it must be so strong...when kept pure. I prayed that God would just block me off in that area...I can't be so in like with someone anymore--not if its not returned. I have to have God guard my heart completely in that area and ask Him everyday to watch my mind and where it goes...because this is precious, and though I have no idea whether I'll get married or not, I'm not going to mess around with anything or anyone in that arena of my life until its the right time. I can't handle casual dating, my heart cannot handle it, and so until...whatever!!! haha, i'm clueless...I will be on guard...

...but still let me love and be sweet and not harbor bitterness and rejoice in my friends relationships when they are going well. They deserve the best and my support--teach me how to be there for them.

It's funny, the hurt. I kind of dealt with it right at the outset, when I just let it all go...all that I'd been feeling and hoping and wishing...but there's still parts of me wounded from it. I feel so petty, because hardly anything happened, so I should just move on quickly...but it lingers...makes me cry...so silly.

It's funny that Jesus deals with each of us so individually. This hurt would be nothing in some people's lives--they've gone through so much--but He's not comparing my circumstances with anyone else's. He sees what hurt me--and part of it was me allowing it to--and He deals with me. He wants to know how I'm doing and speak words of peace and comfort and love--like any daddy. I look at it and say, it's such a petty thing! Let's leave it alone and keep going, it'll drift away. But He says, You need to face this, look it square in the eye before we move forward. Don't be ashamed, just be in it with me and see what its done and deal with it. This is not to be brushed aside. It's important to you and to your life, so its important to me.

Why would He care so much?

I kept listening to a song called "No Ordinary Love" by the Civil Wars tonight. Now I know why. Here are the lyrics...I gave you all the love I got
Gave you more than I could give
Gave you love

I gave you all that I had inside and you took my love
Took my love

Keep crying
(Keep crying)
Keep trying for you
I keep trying
(I keep trying)
I keep crying for you

This is no ordinary love
No ordinary love

This is no ordinary love
No ordinary love

Oh
When you came around you'd brighten
Oh
You'd brighten every day with your sweet smile

Oh
And didn't I tell you all I've got to give baby
Oh

I keep crying
Keep trying for you
I keep crying
Keep trying for you

'Cause this is no ordinary love
No ordinary love
Oh

This is no ordinary love
No ordinary love
Oh

This is no ordinary love
No ordinary love
Whoa
Oh

This is no ordinary love
No ordinary love
Oh

I gave you all the love I got
Gave you more than I could give
Gave you love

Both Jesus and I have sang this song this year...I'm so glad His love can endure and shine bright where mine has tarnished and failed. He is at work restoring me...a precious work that began at the cross. And He won't give up, no matter how I may push away. That's the beauty of knowing Jesus. I am so thankful to Him.

This is no ordinary love...no ordinary love...ooh-ooohh...

didn't think about it...and then it was here

It's funny when life stops...

You're never prepared for it. And it really shouldn't happen, because life does go on...babies being born, people laughing, going to work, loving...

It shouldn't happen...

...but sometimes it does.

Life stops.

I guess that's what happened to me two Saturdays ago--and I wasn't prepared. I wasn't even thinking of it, trying to concieve of it...my life had been going so fast that I couldn't think of it ending.

And then it did.

I graduated.

...and that life that I had known...stopped.

I remember looking around during my graduation and really taking it in and realizing, "I never thought about this. I never tried to imagine what it would be like. Never dreamed of this moment." It caught me by surprise.

I mean, I knew I would leave school--never eat in the caf again, never go to chapel--but...my life was so full and lovely (the kind of good place you get into that makes you look around and wonder, "Is this really my life?" That's how I felt, every day...) and then it was over.

I have dreams, plans, ambitions...only, now that I think about it, none of them are mine. I have absolutely no clue what to do in the coming days and months. I'm flying solo (with God...so not so solo :) and I have no next steps...

No next steps...

The last few days have been a dismal affair. Ever tried to get a real job? Or even the real job that most kids have in high school? It's not easy. It leaves you with a sad, tired sort of feeling...because you are at the mercy of these people and they can take you or leave you--YAY!!!

I hope I'm not left...

Money, oh money! is necessary for these next few years. And I currently have $500. (Myuncle gave me $500 as a graduation present, oh and I also received two quilts, one from each Grandma...I still need to write thank you cards). Money...

But God keeps reminding me, even now as I type this (and even if He is just some strange voice in my head, He's the most calm and rational one that is always right that I've ever heard), that if He has put something in front of me, He will provide me with the means....

GAH!!!! But what if I mess up, what if I'm not enough, what if....?

THIS is not about ME.

Loving God, in charge of the world, will be taking care of me.

I hope I marry someone who reminds me of that EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

Or God could keep telling me. Ha.

In any case, I wrote this because I was reading about this guy Patrick Moynihan, who runs an awesome school in Port-au-Prince. He's Catholic and the article I just read was written after the earthquake. He's trying to change Haiti--good luck! Haha...it would take a miracle.

But Jesus does those...

Trusting in Him.

(here's the article:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,673845,00.html) and I'm just going to paste it in...in a few years, the link might not exist anymore, you know?

The American said he thought the masks were silly -- they would only spread fear among the people and intimidate the children. Now, though, as he looks at the twisted body of a white-haired woman in a checkered dress lying side of the road, the stench is so overpowering that he can hardly breathe. He chokes and coughs.

But the smell remains. It is the smell of Haiti today, difficult to describe, and it permeates everything. Patrick, the American, hates it. By evening he is convinced that his own hands have started to take on the sickly sweet smell, the smell of the new Port-au-Prince, which has already saturated his clothes.

"The dead are already here," says Patrick Moynihan whenever he steps out of the car. Then he sees them, the row of bodies laid out on the ground next to a hospital, the children naked and thin, the twisted bodies, the broken limbs. Who undressed the children, one wonders?

"We were at the summit, but then we flew too close to the sun," says Moynihan. By "we" he means both himself and Haiti, a society that was finally making progress, until that Tuesday afternoon at 4:53 p.m.

The Two Haitis

It is now midnight, eight days after that Tuesday, and Moynihan looks exhausted. The 45-year-old, unshaven and wearing shorts and a T-shirt, is uncharacteristically silent. He rubs his eyes. "I've seen a lot of dead people here before, when the shooting was going on. I even saw someone crucified once. But children 10 meters from a hospital?" Then he leaves the room, hoping to get a few hours of sleep.

Two Haitis emerged after the earthquake. One is the Haiti of the living, of the people trying to find food and a place to sleep, who drag themselves to the Red Cross field hospitals and sit in the gutter scooping up brown water. This is no longer the Haiti of progress for which Moynihan has been fighting. Instead, it is a country of the needy and dependent, a Haiti occupied by foreign aid workers, people with good intentions who are unlikely to leave anytime soon.

And then there is the Haiti of the dead. Some are buried, sometimes wrapped in plastic sheets but usually not, the countless, unnamed, unidentified bodies that disappeared into mass graves on the city's outskirts, in numbers that must reach into the thousands by now. They were buried without dignity, but at least they were buried.

The sheer force of this quake, and the notion that there was no escaping it, becomes clear to anyone who looks at the buildings, now pushed together into clumps of concrete panels and steel beams, house after flattened house, interspersed with the occasional building that survived the quake. Trapped underneath it all are the dead, probably tens of thousands more, and no one can reach them.

The living are left with only one option: to keep living only meters away from the dead. The dead are everywhere, maybe up to 200,000. "But there's nothing you can do about that. The dead are dead, and it's time to focus on the living," says Moynihan.

Moynihan was once a North American capitalist, a "trader" who worked for Louis Dreyfus and traded in everything that could be bought and sold, from cotton to elevators. His older brother is Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. One day, during a business trip to Memphis, Patrick Moynihan said to his boss: "I just don't care about winning and losing anymore." We do, his boss said.

Moynihan quit his job, became a teacher and a deacon in the Catholic Church, he married, had four children and became a missionary. He has been working in Haiti for 13 years, initially only for weeks at a time, but now, as he says, he's become a "lifer." He runs an organization known as "The Haitian Project," bringing a North American pace and discipline to the country. He insists that he doesn't want to make Haitians reliant on foreign aid, but to teach them to think independently instead. He also insists that he is the one who learns the most.

The graduates of his school can speak English, French, Spanish and Creole and often find jobs with the United Nations or in government ministries. "We are educating the future elite of Haiti," says Moynihan. There is no question that he is right.

At least he was right.

But is he still?

'We're Starting Over'

There were 316 students enrolled in his school on the morning before the quake. Now there are 160.

"We're starting over," says Moynihan. "I suppose you have to treat what happened here as a test. And, by all means, as an opportunity."

He wears dirty glasses, a short-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt, beige trousers and dusty brown shoes. His gray hair is combed back and he has a sharp chin. As a child he was often sick, and the first time he saw dead people was in a hospital in Marietta, Ohio. He was later allowed to play rugby and even football. His parents spoiled him, he says. He was the youngest of eight children, and the only one to attend a private school. He went riding in the afternoons.

Moynihan, like his students, speaks English, French, Spanish and Creole. He is one of those men you can imagine working in any position or job in the world, because they are so agile and so passionate, even manic.

The yellow school buildings are still standing, flanked by palm trees swaying in the Caribbean wind against a deep-blue sky. A few walls have crumbled and there are cracks here and there, but the damage is negligible compared with what has happened elsewhere in the country. The Haitian Project, which has an annual budget of $750,000, is located in Santo 5, a district in the eastern section of Port-au-Prince.

Moynihan has 12 student teachers from the United States, young and recent college graduates like Jonathan, who was peeling potatoes when the earthquake struck, or Betsey, a young blonde woman who was sitting on a couch, chatting with the other girls. The women tried to take cover under the couch, but there wasn't enough room. Instead, the student teachers assembled the students outside, where they sang songs, and then took them to a nearby soccer field, where they watched films like "Happy Feet." More than 100 shivering students spent the night lying on the sand in front of a television set, trying to laugh.

Moynihan missed the earthquake. He had flown to the United States the day before for routine meetings with donors.

"Of course, I'm not comparing myself with such grandiosity," he says. "Moses didn't grow up in captivity with the Israelites either, but he did lead them to freedom. Maybe there's a reason I wasn't there. Maybe it's because my energy is needed."

On the Friday after the Tuesday quake, Moynihan was standing in the airport in Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic, where hundreds of people were jostling and talking, because everyone there somehow wanted to get to Port-au-Prince.

He said loudly: "I have 360 children to take care of, and they're in mortal danger. I have to get on a flight. I'll pay more. I'll pay right now." He put cash on the counter, followed by credit cards, he went for walks with helicopter owners and then with pilots, and before long everyone at the airport was listening to Patrick Moynihan. He eventually prevailed. The Chinese Embassy made sure a flight was approved, even though the airport in Haiti was closed, and Moynihan got his ticket.

"Over all those years, it became my country," he said as the plane was on its final approach, and as he saw the devastation below. His dead country.

The American Way

There are many North Americans in Haiti again, and they're doing a lot of talking. On Wednesday the White House press office reported that "152,000 liters bulk water and more than 165,000 water bottles were delivered" on Tuesday.

They have also turned their words into action, as 11,500 US troops, wearing mirrored sunglasses and carrying machine guns, patrol the coast, provide security at the airport and walk the streets. Former President Bill Clinton was there, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there and current President Barack Obama is expected to visit Haiti as well. When it's all over, perhaps they will have saved Haiti, or perhaps the country will have been intimidated or smothered. Washington has sent 20 ships and 51 helicopters. The officers claim that this isn't another invasion, but it certainly looks that way.

The American Way for Haiti? Would that be such a bad thing?

The Europeans who arrive there complain about US dominance, and yet the comparison between the Europeans and the Americans is striking. Especially when one spends several days with Moynihan, who never stops moving between dawn and 10 p.m., and occasionally runs into European aid workers about to leave for the downtown area at 8 a.m., only to find that they have forgotten to call their driver. Then they realize they have forgotten to pay a bill, or misplaced an address, and 10 a.m. their vehicle is stuck in traffic.

Some of the Europeans in Port-au-Prince apparently need a little more time before they will be in a position to help save the country.

Then there is the contrast between the Haitians and the North Americans, which is as bizarre as it is disheartening. The North Americans are determined, resolute and see everything with a positive spin. The Haitians are apathetic.

Haitians still cannot comprehend what happened. Why this earthquake, and why here?

There is no explanation. Justice and mercy are not part of nature. They are human standards, and for those who don't believe in a god imposing such standards, it makes no sense at all. For them, it's just a case of bad luck, of tectonic plates coming together in a place where the people are particularly poor and vulnerable.

Part 2: 'The Dead Are Awake'

It is Monday in Haiti, and Moynihan has set himself five goals for this day. He needs a battery for a car he wants to lend to a group of nuns; he needs phones for his workers; he needs pipes for repairs to be done at the school; he needs an engineer to evaluate the buildings at his school; and he needs food for the students, the orphans and everyone else who lives in the school. His day starts at six in the morning, at the latest. All the volunteers at the school sleep in bunk beds and under mosquito nets. Sometimes their sleep is interrupted when Moynihan wakes them up at 2 a.m. to discuss something, or at 4 a.m. because he thinks it must be much later. He walks into their rooms without knocking, because he doesn't have time to waste.

At 6 a.m., the dirt road that leads eastward into the Dominican Republic and westward to the capital is still relatively empty. "But the dead are awake," says Moynihan, who still refuses to wear a mask.

Anyone who spent time in Port-au-Prince in the days following the big quake would have experienced many truths. Haiti's truths exist side-by-side, just as one house may have collapsed while another may be in good shape next door. Does it have something to do with faulty construction and poorly mixed concrete, as many here say, or is it fate? Coincidence? Fifty people are believed to have died in one house, and their bodies still haven't been recovered. Meanwhile, children are playing dominoes in front of the next house, while their mother, holding a towel in front of her mouth and nose, sells prepaid mobile phone cards.

It has become a city of invalids. Some say that 200,000 amputations will have to be performed in the coming weeks, but it is the sort of number that no one can really predict. Everyone is compensating for something, reacting, processing fears, revulsion or shock. Moynihan doesn't stop running, hardly sleeping at all, running and running, a man fighting a lonely battle against the violence and stench of nature. The people from HELP, a plucky German aid organization, smoke to overpower the smell, 60 to 80 cigarettes a day. Some people fall silent while others become louder, standards begin to crumble, and so does language.

Two Options

On this morning, Moynihan picks up a car battery from his friend Patrick Brun, and then he brings the Sisters of Mercy a Nissan to transport patients. There are 70 men loitering in front of the fence, pushing and pulling and shouting. Moynihan stands in front of the crowd and says: "You have two options: You can eat me or you can leave. But I can tell you that they don't have any food in there." The crowd disperses.

There have been times in Haiti when rage resulted in bloodbaths. One of those times was when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from office. The situation in Port-au-Prince today is different, but people shaking their fists make for good television. And it makes for even better television when reporters set up their hotels like fortresses, sitting around the pool drinking beer, and using the scene at the fence and the reports of other fortress dwellers as their only source of information about life on the city's streets -- journalism as a chain reaction.

The people of Haiti seem lifeless, sitting rigidly and staring vacantly into space. They are pleased to find anyone willing to listen to their story. One of those stories is that of Bernard James, a Haitian painter who was sitting in his house when the walls collapsed. Now he is lying in the brown dust in front of the Hôpital du Canapé Vert, the ruins of his house within sight, a resilient man, muscular and tattooed, with a fracture lower leg. Will he be operated on? "At some point, maybe," he says, "but not now, the doctors tell me. Others are more important, all the people who are dying."

Inside, the hospital is crowded, with 10 or even as many 20 people to a room, lying on cots, mattresses or the floor, writhing and moaning in pain, their wounds covered with dirty bandages. They timidly beg for water. The Haitians have become a lethargic people in the decades of dictatorships, occupation and poverty. Moynihan once made it his mission to send out creative, educated young people into all branches of society, so that this society would become one of solidarity and ideas. He believed that this was precisely what the United States owed Haiti, after decades of looking down on and ignoring this deeply impoverished country.

"This is where America begins; we are one America," says Moynihan.

There are signs on the roadside that read: "USA help! Dead bodies inside."

The Trouble With Aid

The claim that help is not arriving quickly enough is one of those truisms in disaster zones that remain true until proven wrong. Surprise and chaos are an inherent part of natural disasters. The earthquake in Haiti, with a magnitude of 7.0, was so devastating because it struck an already suffering country and its biggest city. It flattened the presidential palace and the government ministries, churches and the UN office, wiping out everything that could have coordinated the rescue effort.

The United States sent its Marines storming into this vacuum of helplessness, troops that are accustomed to securing foreign terrain.

Aid efforts normally unfold in four waves. In the first few minutes after a disaster, help comes from local residents. Then the government institutions get to work, followed by aid workers from neighboring countries and, finally, from the rest of the world.

As horrible as it was to observe, it was inevitable that nothing worked in Haiti during the first four or five days after the disaster. Many local residents couldn't help because they were dead, the government institutions were already in bad shape before the quake, and there was no organization at hand like the German Red Cross, which has a mobile hospital at the ready in Berlin at all times and only has to wait for fresh medications before responding to a local disaster. The first two waves of aid were eliminated or unavailable in Haiti and, for the rest of the world, Haiti is a faraway place. The reason it took so long was that it had to take so long.

Then came the North Americans, taking control of the situation, as if the war against nature was their next conflict. And why not, when the purpose of the effort is to save lives? According to White House reports, US personnel pulled 43 people from the wreckage, while 122 survivors were saved by US personnel working in multilateral teams.

And now the remaining rescuers are showing up. Some are confused and disoriented, generally small organizations overwhelmed by the absurdity of the task. Their people are drinking the water that could be going to the injured and clogging the roads with the cars they rented at Avis in Santo Domingo.

Part 3: The North American Plan

Some became part of the disaster relief effort unexpectedly, like Eran Velija, a photographer from Prizren in Kosovo. An avid traveler who has spent time in Sofia and New York, her plane landed at 3 p.m. on the day of the quake. She had come to Haiti to visit a friend and perhaps to change the country, filled with dreams of opening a bar in old Haiti.

But 113 minutes later, old Haiti ceased to exist. Velija wondered whether she had brought the earthquake to the country. She too smokes to ward off the smell. She and her friend are now in the process of establishing a small aid organization. They have a house and are raising funds through Facebook so that they can provide shelter for the homeless.

Most of the relief workers are passionate people, as is often the case in disaster areas, people with past experience in other natural disasters. Organizations like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have smart people working for them, people who give up their vacations and often their private lives for efforts like this.

Still, Moynihan doesn't like the relief workers. He prefers the military, because it comes, does its work, and leaves. "The aid workers will keep us dependent because they live from our dependency. Here," he says, "this the biggest mistake."

He drives past a large, open area that has been converted into a refugee camp. It is covered with garbage and makeshift housing made of plastic tarps. "These people won't be leaving this camp for years, and even our businesspeople will be dependent on the aid organizations, because they'll be their best customers."

What would be a better approach? $1,000 for each survivor, he says, -- and back to normal life. He laughs, but he's serious.

The stench of death has returned. "Wherever we go," says Moynihan, "the dead are there first."

A Hopeful Mother

He tells his driver to take us to the Montana, once the most upscale hotel in Port-au-Prince. The Moynihan family used to go swimming there. His four children, Robert, Mikhaila, Timothy and Marianna, loved the pool on a hill above the city, and they loved the gelato. Now Chilean UN peacekeepers are there to guard the premises. The "Gelato" sign is still up. The roofs have slid into the pool, where thick slabs of concrete are now jammed on top of each other. The earthquake happened six days ago, but Joëlle Benoît is still sitting there on a folding chair, keeping watch. She has been there for the last six days, without interruption.

Is she a mother mourning her child? A hopeful mother, she replies. "I know that my daughter is alive. I can sense it. The former elevator shaft moved yesterday. Back there, you see it? There's a gap there now, so the air can get in." Sarah, her daughter, worked at the hotel as a banquet manager. Suddenly Benoît asks suspiciously: "Are you a journalist?" Then she begins flailing at us with her bare hands, until the peacekeepers push her back into her folding chair.

Moynihan says: "This hotel was a symbol once, like my school. It was a symbol of the possibilities in this country. After all, we had an elected president, and the street gangs had disappeared. In the past, you could expect to see people throwing rocks at you when you drove to the airport, but that was over. The Montana was fully booked, Haiti was slowly attracting visitors, and I was on the verge of opening a second school. Was it hubris?" He walks around the pool, with sections of the hotel roof in it, holding his nose and breathing through his mouth.

Networks have always been the key to power in this country. It was once ruled by the Duvalier clan, first by Papa Doc and later by Baby Doc. Then came Aristide and his cronies, followed by René Préval. Then Aristide was back in power, only to be ousted by Préval again. Haiti was controlled by mafia-like organizations, nepotism and corruption were rampant, connections were everything and the power struggles were invariably bloody. The United States intervened, supporting one ruler and bringing down another, deployed troops and pulled them out again, approved funding and then withdrew it again. It was a foreign policy of the moment, and in retrospect it seems pointless and arbitrary.

Now the Americans are back, determined to help Haiti once again -- and to save lives. At the moment their efforts seem earnest and well thought-out. Whether it will last once the media are gone, and whether they will be able to take the Haitians seriously will soon become clear.

Moynihan, former capitalist and current missionary, spends his entire day helping people. He takes journalists to the airport, invites the stranded to his school, lends money and touches people. He embraces the survivors and strokes the orphans. He is constantly talking to his employees, talking about courage and strength and the joy of being alive. Sometimes he's impatient. For example, when he asks his student teachers about their experiences in the earthquake and during the hours afterwards, they remain silent for a few seconds and he starts talking again. Then he asks his student teachers what they need and runs off to get it.

Moynihan founded the Economic Growth Initiative for Haiti, which lends money to new companies, usually small businesses "that produce biofuel or spaghetti or chairs or solar panels, something of intrinsic value, real products," he says. He is sitting in the back of his small truck as it is being driven through this city, a city that would have blossomed in five or six years, he says, if his plan had come to fruition.

'This Could Become a Different Country'

The scene is completely different in the mountains of Belot, 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the epicenter of the quake, where there was little damage. In the vast and green mountainous region, even wooden huts are still standing.

It is already noon. Moynihan's driver takes us to a villa in the center of the town, where Brad Horwitz is staying. The CEO of Trilogy, the parent company of the Haitian firm Voilà, has made millions in the telephone business. He bears a slight resemblance to Richard Branson, the head of Virgin, with his long, gray hair and goatee. They sit together on the veranda, just as they used to do before the quake, chatting and giving each other compliments, and within 15 minutes Moynihan has convinced Horwitz to give him two tents for his students and 30 phones for his workers, and to send over an engineer to take a look at the school buildings.

"This catastrophe," says Horwitz, "presents Haiti with the biggest opportunity it has ever had. And if they don't just cover up the holes in the ground, if they install cables for a modern world instead, if someone has a plan, this could become a different country."

Is a North American plan what Haiti needs? "Of course," says Horwitz, who had 600 employees in Haiti, of which five are confirmed dead and 70 are missing. He has decided to spend $2 million on "Voilà Village," a new development that will consist of 30 houses for his workers.

We drive on to the next stop. Patrick Brun, Moynihan's friend, also a Catholic, who calls himself a social entrepreneur, sometimes doing business and sometimes simply helping out, has a warehouse and the pipes Moynihan needs -- something easy, for once.

Moynihan tells his driver to take us to supermarkets. All are closed, but voices can be heard coming from one of them. Moynihan knocks on the fence and talks his way into the building. The word "battlefield" can hardly describe the scene at the supermarket. The shelves have fallen down and the food products have turned into a stinking, sticky mush, while the injured are starving in the city's streets. Moynihan picks up baskets and gathers eggs and peanut butter, enough to last a few days.

It gets dark outside. He has achieved four of his five goals for the day, "four for five," as they say in American sports and business jargon. It would have taken him an hour to achieve his goals in the past, but that past now seems like a long time ago. It was a good day.

The one goal Moynihan hasn't achieved is to find the engineer. Horwitz's engineers were too busy, and the embassy wasn't able to send anyone, either. "Bodies are more important than buildings," the embassy official said on the telephone.

'Fear is Healthy'

It is Tuesday night in Haiti, and Moynihan is running through his house again. The mother of one of his student teachers received a call from the embassy to let her know that her daughter could be evacuated. "Can you guarantee my daughter's safety?" the mother asked. Moynihan replies: "These are adults. They're all 22 to 25 years old. And who can guarantee someone else's safety, anyway? Is that possible in New York? In Hamburg? Let's hope that this isn't the beginning of the end for us. We can't give up. Without us, none of this here will work."

It's 6:02 on a Wednesday morning, just after dawn. Haitians normally get up early and go to bed early, but no one is getting much sleep these days. Patrick Moynihan, the Moses of Haiti, is standing on a table on the edge of a basketball court, talking to his students.

He says: "Fear is a natural instinct. Fear is healthy. But after that intelligence has to take over. We have to use our heads and think about what to do next. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There's a reason why that's such a famous quote."

6:03 a.m. The earth shakes. "Shit," says Betsy, the teacher. "What's wrong?" Moynihan asks. "Can't you feel it? An aftershock."

Now the damaged walls of Port-au-Prince are coming down. Urgent reports quickly circle the globe, reaching the American embassy, the mothers of the student teachers, the school's financial backers.

The Haitian cooks and Haitian employees start running, not sure where to go, just away. The children squat in the sand and cry.

Moynihan remains standing on his table, unshaven, wearing a stained T-shirt. His lips are trembling, his eyes look enormous, and he stands on his table with his arms spread out. He doesn't fall, and he doesn't step down, either.