Monday morning wake-up call

My Monday morning started innocently enough. In the name of efficiency (but with a spirit of procrastination) I had tied off the kitchen garbage bag the night before and left it by the door to wait for a convenient moment to walk it over to the neighborhood garbage heap - the gated pit a respectable distance from our comfortable town homes where garbage piles up until a truck is hired to come and haul it all away.

As I was pulling together my lunch, I saw the bag and knew that there was no way justify leaving it there for the entire work day So I picked it up, slipped on my sandals and walked over to the heap. Usually I just absentmindedly pitch the bag from a good 10 yards away. This morning I walked closer to the edge.

Mid-way through swinging back my arm to pitch the bag, I saw him - a little boy, about 8 years old, standing down in the pit and looking up with expectant brown eyes. We made eye contact, I released the bag, and after a moment of hesitation in which i tried to think of what I should be thinking, I turned around and walked down the path back to the house.

I don't know what happened next down in the pit. I imagined him climbing up the pile to where the bag landed - hoping to find something inside that would help quiet his hunger or was clean enough to sell. I tried to remember what I had thrown away the day before - an empty tuna can, some scraps of mango peel, coffee grounds. I was disappointed that I hadn't managed to discard something of greater value.

There are days here in Haiti where I can forget that this is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. There are days when I look around and all I see are the beautiful smiling babies, the vibrant colors of the mini-buses and the pink flowers cascading over compound walls. Yesterday was not one of those days.