Loving the Terrorists by David Diggs

Favoring Girls
by David Diggs

My wife, Teddi, is good with kids, especially girls, and teenaged girls above all. She developed a little following of Haitian girls in the crowded Port-au-Prince neighborhood where we lived during the first years of our marriage. I often came home to find the front room of our apartment filled with girls working on homework with Teddi, or involved in a discussion or some art project.

The first meeting I remember of Teddi’s informal girls club took place on Christmas Eve. A half-dozen giggling girls were gathered around a little cardboard Christmas tree Teddi had made. We had moved into our apartment only three weeks earlier. Making the little cardboard Christmas tree was Teddi’s attempt to create a bit of Christmas cheer despite feeling miserable.

We hadn’t gotten screens made for our windows before we moved in, and Teddi almost immediately contracted dengue fever, a mosquito-borne virus that takes weeks and sometimes months to get over. The strain of dengue fever found in Haiti is rarely fatal for adults, but it can cause terrible muscle and joint pain, a high fever, sensitive hands and feet, and a bad itchy rash. Teddi spent the first week suffering in bed under our mosquito net. As the days passed, the pain grew less excruciating, but her sense of isolation grew more intense. She eventually had enough strength to sit out on our stoop and talk with people passing by.

Our apartment was situated at the intersection of several footpaths and winding alleyways that ran through the warren of cinderblock and tin-roofed houses that made up our crowded mountainside neighborhood. A group of older boys were always hanging out near this intersection. Teddi was friendly with them, but she made a special effort to befriend the girls who passed by, often carrying buckets of water or market baskets on their heads. The boys had leisure time, while their sisters were often busy cooking, cleaning, or doing chores. The boys were also more likely to be sent to school. Girls might be sent to school, too, but they were the first to be yanked from school when money got tight.

A few days before Christmas, Teddi asked me to bring home a sheet of green posterboard. She took this and cut out two identical Christmas trees about a foot and a half tall. She then cut a vertical slit down from the top to the midpoint of one and up from the bottom to the middle of the other. She slid the pieces together through the slits at a ninety-degree angle so they formed a three-dimensional Christmas tree. Teddi stood the tree on a table, then took her collection of costume jewelry, polished it up and repaired a few pieces, and decorated the tree with them. A couple of necklaces served as garland; earrings and bracelets served as ornaments.

On Christmas Eve a gaggle of girls huddled around that little tree. Their eyes glistened as Teddi told them stories, and they talked about what Christmas meant. Vivian and her younger sister, Rosa, were there. Monique, our very polite next-door neighbor was there. And, of course, Anna and Nadia were there.*

These two were also sisters, but you’d never know it by observing them. Anna was the younger of the two by a couple of years. She was maybe twelve or thirteen then. She was warm and engaging, with a ready smile that radiated across her face and from her eyes and brightened everything around her. Nadia, on the other hand, was thinner and no taller than her younger sister. Although she was lighter complected, she seemed to draw light out of the room. She usually wore a pair of wrap-around sunglasses and almost never smiled. She was cool and tough and aloof in a way that only a teenager can be.

As she talked with these girls, Teddi was as happy as I had seen her in weeks. And they were happy, too, bathing in her attention and favor, and glad, I’m sure, to have a break from their work. Even Nadia forgot herself and warmed up and smiled.

While they talked about Christmas, I remember thinking about another third-world teenaged girl. Scholars tell us that Mary was probably only in her early teens when she conceived Jesus. She would have been well-acquainted with hard work, an oppressive social status, and was almost certainly illiterate. Despite her low standing in society, Luke tells us that God picked her out for special favor. When the time was right for God to put on our flesh and redeem the world, God picked a humble, hardworking, illiterate girl from the backwater of a despised nation to deliver the most precious gift humanity has received.

As the girls finished their lemonade and were about to leave, Teddi invited each to select a piece of jewelry from the Christmas tree as a gift. From the light on their faces, you might have thought they were selecting fine jewelry from some Parisian boutique.

In the months and years that followed, these girls were always around and were often wearing the jewelry they found on our tree that first Christmas. As Teddi got to know them better, she not only learned about tremendous challenges these and other neighborhood girls faced, she also learned how important it was for these girls to find favor in someone’s eyes, especially the eyes of their fathers.

Nadia and Anna were actually half-sisters. They lived alone with their mother, Alina, in a tiny, unfurnished room just a few doors up the mountain from us. Anna’s father never lived with the family, but he would spend each Sunday with Anna and often gave her little gifts. But Nadia’s father had completely disappeared from the scene when Alina had become pregnant with her. Nadia’s tough exterior protected a fragile, wounded girl’s heart. Not long after we left the neighborhood, Nadia ended up pregnant herself. Lacking her father’s favor, she was easy prey for an approving young man—who immediately disappeared.

There were other girls in our neighborhood who were harder to get to know because they were given absolutely no time to play or socialize. These were the restavèk girls that a few of our neighbors had working for them. These girls lived in virtual slavery, and were treated badly by nearly everyone. We always made a special effort to speak kindly to them and show our neighbors by example the respect these children deserved. This was in the days before Beyond Borders’ Campaign to End Child Servitude, and we knew of no systematic way to make a difference for these girls who lived such a tortured existence.

Many international development experts say that there is no better way to improve the quality of life in a poor country than to invest more in the welfare and the education of its girls. By favoring girls, a society does itself a favor. Perhaps God was making use of this principle. By showing favor to a humble Galilean girl, God was showing all of creation great favor.

Mary seems to know something about this principle, too. After an angel tells her that she will bear the King who will inherit the throne of David, she sings about how God favors the humble and brings a revolution to the world. “Rejoice, rejoice, my spirit, in God my savior; so tenderly has he looked upon his servant, humble as she is…God has brought down monarchs from their thrones, but the humble have been lifted high.” (Luke 1:47-48, 52)

We are grateful this Christmas for all those who share in our work in Haiti. Through their sharing they show favor to humble girls through whom God will change Haiti and change our world.

Together this Christmas, let us rejoice with Mary that God looked tenderly on a humble Galilean girl, and through her gave us our greatest favor, the Christ child.

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