“So, we are going on a chicken run? A chicken run? That’s a movie my kids used to watch, but what does it have to do with feeding a hungry family in Haiti?” I wondered.

“We’ve got to buy live chickens because there is no refrigeration,” the missionary informed me.

And it’s not like going to the supermarket in America to get chicken. I’ve been schooled.

We pulled up the the Haitian market, and they warned us more than once, “It’s not  good idea to take pictures here. They can get offended. It can be dangerous.” I was hesitant to bring my big camera, but was definite I wanted to capture the images. I want to tell the stories of those who live across the ocean, in the poorest nation in the world, one that seems like another world entirely.

I captured a few snapshots of one Haitian moment in their everyday and hope they transport you here in a way my words never could. What I could not share with you are the smells. As we were trudging through the markets aisle and ducking under the dark canopies above, yards before we stepped near it, I felt it in my throat. I tasted it. The noxious odor and when I came upon it, I thought my eyes failed me.

It’s like a dump, mounds of rotting trash right behind where they are hoping to sell produce. “It’s not a prime location to sell,” one of the young missionaries told us after. It’s not any location at all, I thought, not for selling anything that a human is supposed to ingest.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. I didn’t capture much while we are treading through the meat market as I was trying to be covert in taking pictures. And I was focused on breathing. I could not breathe — literally. I could. Not. Breathe. The smell was unlike anything I’ve ever smelled — rotting flesh. This meat was being sold for consumption, body parts of butchered animals, parts we might not ever feed our dogs. And this is what the Haitian’s have for selling — for eating?

What injustice it is for me to meander through the air-conditioned supermarket days later picking which porterhouse steak has the best marbling making it tender, tossing it into my already overflowing shopping cart? I wonder, what little could I give from what much we have to give to someone who has so little and it be much? What could we do without? How could we live different? What if all this blessing and abundance isn’t just to make us fat, happy or comfortable? What if we lived what we say, “We are blessed to be a blessing?” <–Tweet?  Does my life truly reflect that? Or is it a mantra we say to ease our conscience? Who am I kidding?

We must of made a giant circle as we toured through the market, passing shoes, jeans, and hair-bows for sale. Passing the produce, the seafood, and the malodorous meat market, we then exited into open air and met our bus.

And the chickens were already purchased and laying under the bench seats. They were ready for us to bring to the hungry family, along with the rice, oil and coal for cooking. And this was just an experience I will never forget, but for them, for Haitians, it’s their life.

When I wake up I check my emails or Facebook notifications, make coffee and eat 2 scrambled eggs. Many Haitians who wake in the morning think,

“How am I going to survive today?” <– Tweet that?

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