I Have A Neighbor

This morning I was inspired to share with you about one of our neighbors. It's not his story since we don't know the depth of it, but it's more about what we see. I wanted to use the word "know" but again I don't know.

Let me introduce you to "S" He is somewhere between the age of 22-30, he'll give you a different number every time you ask him. He lives down our quiet little street in a house compound but his house is a wooden structure that was build by an organization. The house he use to live in was crumbled in the earthquake. He was the caretaker of the yard and he just hasn't left since then even though the owners no longer reside there. He speaks terrible English and refuses to speak Creole to us.

I remember when we first moved to Haiti, he would come over and try to make conversation with us in which we couldn't understand but he tried and that was all that matter. Then one day he yelled at one of my boys for not listening to their dad and I remember clear as day thinking how much I dislike this man for thinking he could speak to my child in that way.

As time went on we had our ups and our downs with him. One day we could be the best of friends, the next day he was being kicked out of our yard. Here in Haiti it's hard. Privacy doesn't exist. So here we are, a Canadian family wanting to just have family time and then there is S just wanting to have interaction with someone. There were days he would show up at 6am and be banging on our gate, for what reason? To make sure we were alive. These days we get till 8am before he comes over. You see S has no family around and for him to visit them he has to take a taptap but S doesn't have a job so he can't pay for the ride.

This leads me into our next struggle with S. S has no job. With no job he has no money to buy food. After time he would start asking us food and sometimes we would help him and sometimes we wouldn't. For us it is very frustrating because everyday we leave the gate we see him just sit outside his house and do nothing but just sit. For us we saw laziness. Why would we want to help someone if they don't want to help themselves? But here's the thing, is it laziness or is it that he has lost all hope of having a future where he doesn't have to live like he does now?

We hired him a few times to do odd things for us, one of them being our yard cleaner. We don't have a big yard but we have a yard that gets dirty fast and it drives me crazy. The first time he did it, you could him shine. He was so proud of his work and he made sure to show you around the whole outside to make sure it was okay. He even went as far as to yell as he was cleaning for me to keep looking outside just to make sure he was doing a good job.

This leaves me in confusion. We have a neighbor who is clearly hard-working and will do just about anything to help our family, even go buy me bananas in another town over. But why then isn't he out there showing others just hard working he can be?

Maybe one day I'll know his story and understand why, what I do know though is that I Have A Neighbor... I have a protector... and I have a friend and maybe right now that's all I need to know about him.