{"id":3622,"date":"2012-08-17T03:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3622"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","slug":"meet-joab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3622","title":{"rendered":"Meet Joab"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I first met Joab in October of 2010 when I joined a small mission team from my home church for a week in Haiti.\u00a0 Joab came along on one of our evangelistic, radio-sharing expeditions as a translator.\u00a0 He’s a sharp guy and that’s how he picks up a few bucks now and then – he translates Creole to English and English to Creole.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Joab, flanked by Todd and Steve, in October 2010.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

I’ve kept in long distance contact with him – sporadically –\u00a0with the help of Facebook.\u00a0 When I see him next, I will have to ask him exactly how he accesses the internet.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure we can rule out any mental image of Joab grabbing a\u00a0mug of coffee before shuffling into the den in his house slippers and robe, sliding into a leather office chair\u00a0and rolling up to a mahogany computer desk.\u00a0It’s a pretty safe bet that’s not how it works.The other day I initiated a chat with him on Facebook.\u00a0 I hadn’t seen him there for a while.\u00a0 I asked him if he was back home and he replied that he had returned to Haiti in May.\u00a0 About a year ago, Joab left for job training in Nicaragua.\u00a0 A South Korean company was planning to build a clothing factory in Cap Haitien with the aid of finances from the U.S. government and other humanitarian sources.\u00a0 Joab joined about 20 other Haitians who were promised lucrative jobs upon completion of the factory if they would first train at a similar facility in Nicaragua.In Nicaragua, Joab was paid $100 a month, but he toughed it out in hopes of a good payoff back in Haiti.\u00a0 Eight months!\u00a0 Eight months of “training”…So, of course, I asked, “Are you working now?””No.””What happened?”It’s heartbreaking.\u00a0 If you knew Joab – and what a sweet and joyful and intelligent man of God he is – the “rest of the story” would anger you … stir you up.\u00a0 That’s what it did\u00a0to me.That lucrative factory\u00a0job back in Haiti\u00a0offered all of $300 a month.\u00a0 Please understand that $300 in Haiti will buy you much less\u00a0there than it does in the U.S.\u00a0 It seems counter intuitive, but Haiti is a very expensive place to live.\u00a0 Very little food and virtually none of the manufactured goods are locally produced – most things are shipped in from the outside.\u00a0 And that adds to the cost of most goods.\u00a0 And\u00a0$300 was to be the pay for a MONTH of work.And that month?\u00a0 It was made up of six day work weeks.\u00a0 7 to 4 each day with an hour for lunch.\u00a0 That’s $1.50 per hour.Transportation to and from the factory was going to cost Joab $2 a day.\u00a0 I did the math – that would remove a full sixth of every paycheck.Most of what was left\u00a0of the paycheck would\u00a0disappear to cover\u00a0“taxes”.\u00a0 So Joab’s back to freelancing as a translator.\u00a0 He translates documents between English and Creole, types up the translation, prints it off and sells the pages for $5 apiece.\u00a0 I’m not sure how steady the work is.\u00a0 He’s 33 and has been dating a young lady for eight years now.\u00a0 The marriage has been put on perpetual hold because of their lack of employment, but Joab told me they plan to finally tie the knot this October.\u00a0 Their financial situation is still not secure, but I imagine they have gotten tired of waiting.\u00a0 At the end of our conversation, I told him I would be visiting Haiti again in just a couple of weeks (I’ll tell you more about that soon) and I would be glad to bring anything he could use.\u00a0 (He would have never asked for anything without my prompting.)\u00a0 Here’s his wish list … and I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing it with you.\u00a0 I share it because I would love to have some help in making as much of it as possible a reality:A new or used laptop.\u00a0 (He mainly needs a word processing program for his translating work.)Some shoes.New shirts for church.A suit to get married in. (!!)I don’t have his sizes yet, but I will advertise them when I do and see what I can round up before I leave Indiana on the 28th of August.Oh… one last thing.\u00a0 The clothing that this South Korean factory produces?\u00a0 I asked Joab where it gets sold.\u00a0 Any guesses?Walmart. Target. Kohls.All I can picture is all the clothing hanging in my closet – all the great deals – and I wonder how many were produced by folks like Joab…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first met Joab in October of 2010 when I joined a small mission team from my home church for a week in Haiti.\u00a0 Joab came along on one of our evangelistic, radio-sharing expeditions as a translator.\u00a0 He’s a sharp guy and that’s how he picks up a few bucks now and then – he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3625,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}