The hardest part...

There are lots of things about Haiti that I find difficult but what I find to be the most difficult is the constant requests for help. When I am on the street or in a parking lot random people shout "Blan, give me one dollar." When I park my car, someone will "watch" it for me, or "wash" it for me and expect me to pay them for the service regardless if I asked them to or not. All day long people stop by the school with requests. They ask if we have a spot in our school for their child, if we could pay for their child to go to another school, or pay their rent, or buy them shoes or help them start a business. When there is a medical or dental clinic, there are always people with legitimate needs being turned away. One day a father of one our students came to speak to me, when we were done speaking he asked for money to take public transport home. On the days there isn't medical clinics people ask me to diognose them and give them some medicine. We've even asked more than once if we would take soemone's child and adopt them. I'm not a doctor, we have limited space at our school, and we dont' have unlimited resources. Everyone has a story, most of them are hard, many of them tug at my heart and often I feel my eyes filling with tears as they share their stories with me. Some stories are not true, and many are exagerated for dramatic effect; you can't trust every sob story that you hear. However, it is undeniable that life in Haiti is hard. I know that giving out money to everyone who stops by the school is not a solution, it's not sustainable and it's putting a band aid on a huge wound. I also know that by providing free and quality education we are helping many families in a way that will last a long time into the future. But it doesn't stop my heart from breaking when I hear the stories and I often wish we could do more.