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Ex-Gang Members and Priest Join To Rescue Haiti Quake Suvivors

Another Account from Haiti on the Ground by a Catholic Priest

Maybe you all are feeling this Haiti reporting is getting old, but I want to say what is in my heart---Now is the really difficult time. Now when the rainy season is coming and tents are needed. Food and shelter is not getting to displaced people. And the poorest of the poor in Cite Soliel have no where to go. The account of the priest below will give you an idea of what is happening in Cite Soliel. My Thimbleberry Press partner Laura just told me that $1,500 was raised in Calumet, MI for their local Red Cross Haiti relief fund. This is an area where the average annual family income is less than $19,000! See below:

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This past week has been terrifying

"I have lived through all the violence in Cite Soleil over the past years being shot at and having guns held to my head, seeing people close to me shot, but nothing can compare to this horror.

Doug Campbell, who has been with me for over 20 yrs, had just arrived. We were to meet with the archbishop the next morning about the situation in Cite Soleil. Doug and I were sitting down talking when the quake began. I tried to get under a table which was only a few feet away but the floor was moving in the opposite direction. I felt totally disoriented and fortunately one of the young Haitians ran back into the house and grabbed me and Doug. It was unusually dark and I could hear screaming but also singing which seemed weird to me but I was told that the people were praying.

Gang Members Assist

I looked up at the rubble that was our house for volunteers, seminarians and street kids. I was bleeding from the head and there was a terrific pain in my back. Doug ran back into the rubble to try and pull people out but then we heard cries that the gas was leaking and that there would be an explosion. One of the street kids, Makenson, who was shot and is now blind and whom I found two years ago literally in the street, was crying out to me beneath all the rocks and debris but we could not get to him. It was then that two ex gang members from Cite Soleil ran up to me and carried me to Mother Theresa's nuns. When I entered their compound they were already treating the wounded and they bandaged me up and I hobbled back to my place.

Throughout the night we held vigil and slowly we were able to get everyone out except two of the 21 seminarians that were living with me in the house. I remember vividly that night seeing people who were burned badly by the electric wires that had fallen everywhere.

Sisters caring for sick moments after the quake

The next night we were all huddled outside when we would experience a very large after shock and was very frightening and then on the same night at about midnight we began to hear screaming and people shouted  that a tidal wave was coming. We all started running for our lives, and for the next hour I along with thousands of people moved to higher ground. We did not know what to believe.

Schools & Clinics Destroyed

I am ashamed to say that I am still frightened but now I am also feeling overwhelmed. When I go through Cite Soleil now I see the eight schools that we built (schools that were totally free and the only free schools like that in the country with more than 9,000 kids) I walk pass what was once our clinic that took care of 20,000 -- again the only totally free clinic in the area. I see the houses that we built for the people (150) and the elderly projects for over 800 elderly. I look at the large kitchen area where people prepared hot meals each day for over 10,000 and all of it is gone. There is now the problem of the collapsed prison and the over 4500 men that are roaming the streets. They all escaped and there is a side of me that is happy that they did. Many of them should never have been there. I would visit the prison every week and there were as many as 6oo in one holding cell and many of them had never even been in front of a judge.

I just came from offering four Masses. Each time I would finish, a crowd would come up and ask for Mass. This is a real comfort to me and more than ever I realize that, I, we, can't survive if we do not simply put everything into God's hands. I got to work hard to practice this.

I am proud of and love our church. The people here lost a very holy man and a very good bishop especially one who was supportive of me in Cite Solei. He would become a good friend and I will miss him greatly. But, the Church will survive. It is a time like this that I find myself very proud of my Church. Everywhere you go, you will see the Church reaching out now and helping the people. The Missionaries of Charity ( Mother Theresa's nuns are just amazing). The people here have a great faith.

The Sight of a Sunset

When I go to Cite Soleil now as I do every day I see few tears. They have an amazing resiliency. Maybe it is because they have few material possessions and apparently their happiness does not depend upon possessions. The sight of a sunset means more to them that their possessions. What makes me most proud of my Church is that the message we give the people is that they have enormous worth in the eyes of God and that they are infinitely loved and that this terrible

Disaster is in no way a punishment from God. I recently said this once in a sermon and the people all stood up and began clapping and cheering. I had to ask the altar server why they were clapping (I thought that I said something wrong in Creole because my Creole is not good) and he said. Father, no one ever tells them that they have worth.

But I realize too that the longer I am here the less I know. I really could not speak with much authority about what will happen with the government or even what would be the best way to help the people in the face of this disaster. I also struggle a great deal even being here. I feel strongly that we can do a great deal of harm with the best intentions when we begin to be the benefactor.

Even with all this aid coming in, we must go slowly and every step of the way we must include the Haitians in the decision making.

A Remarkable Strength

During these very difficult days I find myself really loving these people. These are the same people who endured the slave ships, a horrible system of slavery and would be the ones who would eventually defeat Napoleon. They would continue to suffer greatly but they have a strength that is remarkable. I am humbled by them and privileged to be with them.

To all of you out there who I know and love, pleas pray for me. Take care!"

Tom Hagan,osfs

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Earthquake Links

Columbus Dispatch article on HT and earthquake (J. Hallett)

NCR Article - Fr. Tom Reflection on Earthquake

Earth Quake Photo Gallery

Tents for Haiti: The Rainy Season is Coming

I am a member of a social networking site called Haiti without Borders and the following post tells of the dire need for temporary shelter for earthquake victims given the coming rainy season in Haiti. The telephone number at the end of the post is one you can call for a donation of a tent(s) or money for tents. We all have so much...be generous.

"Earlier on Thursday, that is two days following the devastating earthquake, Mr. Houver said in a press release: "What we need is tents, tents and more tents. We need large or individual tents, whatever is available, and financial support quickly."

Ms. Pineiro explains this isn't a call to fish out a musty old tent from your attic -- the logistics of coordinating individual deliveries of tents from individuals would be daunting. But she says her group will need a major cash infusion to buy tents in the coming days. She says the IOM has about 10,000 tents in Haiti left over from a previous hurricane relief operation and is trying to get them out into the field. But she says the current IOM plan is to provide shelter to 1 millions Haitians, an effort the group estimates will require about 200,000 tents.

Everyone wishing to donate a tent to help shelter a family is encouraged to do so. If you don't have one, share this information with your friends. With the rainy season fast approaching it is an urgency to shelter upwards to 1 million that are without a home in Haiti. If you have a tent you wish to donate, please call us at: 407-844-9765."

A View of Pre-Earthquake Haiti

I published a slightly different version of this article in the Montclair Times Jan. 28th, 2010 edition.

New Year's Eve, 2009, the eve of my 65th birthday. The moon is full and golden, filling the sky and low hanging over swaying palm trees. Birds call in the scented air. A sure recipe for romance; I, however, am in love with the sweet cheeked village children of Limonade, Haiti who greet me with little moist kisses. These children hold my hands guiding me through the cow pasture and beside the pig pens to reach the goat compounds. And there I am even more enamored with the fuzzy goat babies, the kids who butt their mamas’ milk filled bags.

 

This goat herd is only one of many family herds funded by

Sonjeayiti.com’s micro loan project. Sonjeayiti or
Remember Haiti, is a local community development organization, headquartered in Haiti’s northern city of Cap Haitian. It was founded in 2005 and since that time has developed children’s and adult literacy programs, a women’s coop producing fair trade Haitian hot coca (the best I have ever tasted!) and chevre cheese, the goat project, and a micro credit program.

 

Sonjeayiti.com, its founder Gabrielle Vincent and many of its participants are only a few of the many people I interviewed in pre-earthquake Haiti this past school break,

for a www.thimbleberrypress.com middle school reader, My Country: Haiti (where past and present meet) and Draw on Culture: Haiti, an art activity book. And their energy, creativity and warm-heartedness was typical of people I met all over the country.

 

The Haiti of Hollywood stereotypes and rumor; the Haiti presented in news reports as a country-wide slum rife with violent mobs; the Haiti of stereotyped suspicion and superstition, was not the Haiti I saw or experienced. Rather the Haiti I saw driving all over the country and talking with people as diverse as a market woman selling peanut candy at a night time bus stop, 1980’s international soccer star, Frantzie Mathieu or Mrs. Michelle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, former Prime Minister, were open and forthright about their country’s pluses and burning issues. Clean water, universal education, economic development rooted in communities and local people, reforestation of the mountains, and better sanitation were common concerns. There is no question that building codes were non-existent in most urban construction. Houses were built higgledy-piggledy of concrete blocks with little rebar, and faced with stucco. That practice was a function of house-building one room at a time over many years as the family accumulated funds and of no code. The earthquake showed the tragedy of that lack of policy. Yet despite economic hardships due in large part to global forces, by and large the feeling I got from random conversations on the street to formal interviews was of a warm-hearted and resilient people.

 

Pre-earthquake Haiti was full of energy. One day, I went to an out door Port au Prince market with Frantzie and his girlfriend, Patricia, shopping for lunch. We wound our way along jammed dirt paths, ducking under multi-colored beach umbrellas to choose the best fresh shelled beans, fat plantains, picking just the right variety of rice, mangos, and cassava bread flavored with coconut. Streets and roads all over the island were lined with small stalls selling food, cell phones, sandals, baskets. Motorcycle “taxis” zipped around carrying a few passengers on their rear saddles, tap taps (painted vans), retired American yellow school buses and large air conditioned buses were jammed with holiday makers preparing for Independence Day, Jan. 1.  

 

Haiti’s hard won independence in 1804 as the first free black nation in the
Western hemisphere was a common topic that I heard about again and again from people all over the country. Independence and tremendous pride are the poto mitan (backbone) of Haitians. Pre-civil war American southerners including President Thomas Jefferson were threatened by Haiti’s successful slave revolts.  But President Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Haiti’s slave free nation and appointed Frederick Douglass as US Ambassador after the American Civil War. Douglass himself accorded Haiti as inspiration for many slave revolts in America.

 

Leogane, a bustling town of about 20,000 east of Port au Prince and the unfortunate epicenter of the earthquake is the location of Father Gabriele Blot’s parish. Pere Gabie, holder of a double doctorate and a master’s degree, showed me a newly opened computer lab for his plantain and vetiver growing community.  Alternately giving me Haitian revolution history lessons and discussing the spiritual social structure of his parish, Pere Gabie spoke often of that national pride to the gaggle of adoring children tagging after us as he pointed out where the school would expand and new housing would go.   

 

One of my favorite visits was with Rosemond Joliessaint, 18 and winner at 16 of Haiti’s first “Idol”, Digicel’s “Rising Star” music competitions. Rosemond took me and research colleague Stevenson Mathieu to his 10x10 studio, jammed with guitars, a keyboard, drums and his Cds. If pride, creativity, energy, and compassion are characteristics of Haitian society, Rosemond embodies them. Love glows in his eyes and suffuses his compositions and singing and brought tears to my eyes.

 

I want to end this piece with some observations by my friend Stevenson sent from Haiti via Facebook. Amazingly, lessStevenson as well as everyone mentioned in this piece survived the earthquake. Steve stayed on afterward to help rather than airlift out with other American citizens.

 

“Every day I walk around town to see the actual damage.  You could never capture enough, the expression on the faces of the survivors.  I did not see or hear any violence.  Haitians are proud of the hospitality concept.  They will open their doors to total strangers and at this time this catastrophic moment, I was filled with wonder.  Never before in my entire life, have I heard of a store owner giving the green light to those less fortunate to take what they need to survive.  There are so many stories of loss and death… and at the same time there is such unity among the Haitians to give a helping hand.”

While the reports of death and destruction from the earthquake are devastating, I think it is important to honor the resilient spirit of Haiti. The true test in the months and years ahead will be less for Haiti and more for us—safe in our homes. Will we forget? Will we dismiss Haiti, as has been the pattern in the past? Will the world, will we have the same kind of unity to give the helping hand that will be needed?