Hope Keeps Alive

Avan Tiraj, tout lotri bel. Before the drawing, the lottery is always nice.

Here he stands, the final link in a long chain of good intentions.

East of the fundraisers and website donations, south of the Washington meetings and black tie events and beyond the calls of tap-taps and the tire tracks of UN troop transport vehicles, stands a boy, leaning against a wall.

Because of the mud we had to abandon our dirtbike a few hours outside of town. After the second day of walking through the countryside visiting families with Mystal, a Case Manager for Chemen Lavi Miyo (CLM, Fonkoze's program for the ultra-poor), I began to wonder what we were even doing. We weren't waving any magic wand and changing lives. We weren't building houses, bringing food or delivering new clothing. We were just sitting, talking, and moving on.

The final day in the province outside Boukan Kare, I was taking photos of the boy above when Mystal yelled my name. I turned to see him sitting with a woman and her children. She was speaking in a slur of creole. He translated for me, "She say she lost all her business to disease. Fonkoze gave her 2 goats, and now she has none. She also lost her crops in the storm. She has 6 kids. But she says that Fonkoze brings her hope. She says, 'Hope keeps alive.'"

The woman wasn't crying, she didn't even look sad. Sitting against a tree, a lifetime away from a hospital, a phone, a police station or a paved road, she looked directly at me with an unshaken stare of dignified sincerity.