Et cetera : Local Resident Makes Trip and Answers,

Area Resident Bill Keller makes trip to Haiti with Wings of Hope (4th fromthe left)

“So how are things in Haiti?” It’s I question I get asked frequently from friends familiar with my trips there. The questions are heart felt and filled with genuine concern for my friends there. It’s also a complicated question. Valerie has asked me to write this story a number of times since the January earthquake. Many things seem to have taken up my time but I find the delay was a good thing. The initial global news cycle has quieted, the hourly updates on the number of flights headed to Haiti filled with supplies and volunteers no longer fill the airwaves and front pages and the heart wrenching footage of the over 220,000 dead has fallen silent. In a way, this is good news and bad news as well. “So how is Haiti?”

I go to Haiti as part of a parish twining program between a group of 24 parishes in a region (think county) called Belle Fountaine in Haiti and the Iowa parishes of St. Mary’s of Vinton and All Saints of Cedar Rapids. 2010 is the fifth year of this relationship for us. This region, and the primary villages we visit, is about 15 miles inland from Port Au Prince (PAP). We were scheduled to travel there mid-February with a full medical team – two doctors, a PA, a dentist, two nurses - and a number of others to round out the group. Our goals were the treatment of folks around a village named Basin Meado and the installation of a solar powered water lift station. Try as we might, we simply could not find transportation to Haiti and on to our villages so we postponed our trip until the end of June. Unfortunately, summer schedules of the original team has again put off our trip until our normal travel time of January when we can, once again, assemble our medical team.

However, we did send a two-man team in April to do a site survey of PAP, our friends there, and our villages. During our trips there we overnight in PAP at one of two orphanages – Wings of Hope (a refuge for profoundly disabled children that are usually abandoned on the streets of the city) or St. Joseph’s Home for Boys (focused on rescuing street boys). St. Joseph’s was completely destroyed. It was the place where the student from Wartburg, Ben Larson, was staying when he was killed. His wife recounted his final hours and death is this story for the ELCA’s news service linked here. The home was fortunate enough to own an attached building that was used as an art gallery that is still habitable. The boys have moved into that facility as plans are made for the removal of the old building, the acquisition of more land and the rebuilding of St. Joseph’s Home for Boys. They have a facebook page, in conjunction with Wings of Hope, that has a host of photos (before and after the quake) and a running commentary of their activities linked here.

Wings of Hope is located on the western outskirts of PAP. While they were very fortunate their five story building didn’t totally collapse, it was damaged to the point that it is not habitable. For weeks the staff and children lived, ate and slept is a single room not much larger that my living room. They have secured a one year lease on a building about a ten minute walk farther west of their original building. They also have plans underway for the removal and reconstruction of Wings of Hope. Photos of Wings are also available at the link listed above.

For both homes, things have settled down. With the exception of the death of Ben Larson, no children or staff were killed, truly a miracle.

We had a number of friends from the villages that go to school in PAP and live there part time. All survived though they have suffered the total loss of homes and all possessions. Their existence has become much more difficult. Schools are slowly opening so that part of their life is returning to normal. Some are volunteering with various organizations that are providing assistance as well.

Our team noticed that the streets were back to “Haiti normal” – clear but full of pot holes, no traffic signs or signals and fairly congested. Fuel is scarce and expensive - $5 to $8 per gallon, if it’s available. The normal mode of transportation (other than feet) is called a “Tap-Tap”, a pickup converted with benches to hold people and painted in bright colors. These have made a solid comeback.

Our parish priest there is Fr. Jecrois. He arranged for a truck to take Steve Schmitz and Mick Eardman to our two primary villages – Basin Meado and Ducrabon. Steve has a photo album posted on his facebook page showing our villages and the shape they are in at this link. They were there for a week and began putting together our plan for our January visit. Since the villages were farther away from the epicenter, and their construction consists primarily of small, single room, single story homes, they did not suffer near the damages or the deaths that PAP did.

So, in answer to the question “how is Haiti”, for our friends, villages and our priest, life is returning to normal. They are returning to their traditional status of being forgotten.

The theme of being forgotten ran throughout my first visit there in February 2005. For those interested, I have posted my entire trip journal here. And, all of my trip photos are here, they will give you a better visual of what it looks like in the countryside, away from the cramped quarters of PAP. While the faces change a bit overtime, the road conditions and the village have changed little.

What truly struck me during this first visit was that the folks in the parish in PAP knew they were forgotten. We attended Mass every afternoon while in the village. Throughout the mass, as various prayers were offered, a prayer was asked that we not forget them over and over. They were not asking for things or money or help even, they simply wanted someone to remember that they existed. Each of us was asked to speak during Mass about why we were there, what did it mean to the village, to the parish. Honestly all of us were overwhelmed by the request. I’m not even sure why, but I found myself weeping while talking to them. There was this heartfelt need to be able to do something, to help them move from profound poverty and hunger to something better. But, in under that all, I wanted them to know that I simply could not forget them, that they had so touched my heart, they would always have a place there, that we would continue to return to give them a hand toward a better life, that we would share their story with our friends and neighbors back home.

We have done our best to live up to our promise. In addition to our annual trips, we have provided financial support for medical and educational concerns. This has allowed the to nearly double the size of their school, to add simple things like desks, items to teach sewing, farming, cooking and building trades. They have added a three room clinic in Basin Meado. Our medical visits have provided hundreds of pairs of reading glasses, treated hundreds of basic medical problems and periodically de-wormed the children of the village. Our efforts to assist the village with various projects – the installation of a small FM radio station so the priest can broadcast his homilies and teachers can broadcast lessons, the engineering of a solar-powered water lift station for irrigation, the engineering of a water treatment capability for clean drinking water, a solar power capability for the clinic continue. It is a long term commitment, one that will continue to be a part of our parish life far into the future.

When I returned from that first trip, I was asked to speak at the end of Mass about my experience. So, as I stood before my friends and did my best to share, again I found it was through a wall of tears. I shared about Fr. Antonio’s unending commitment to his people and God walking as long as 18 hours to reach a single village, I shared about the joy and happiness that these folks had in spite of the life they have been born into, I shared about the excitement of the school kids, I shared about the tremendous poverty and hunger and, I shared that, in under all of this, the primary concern of the people of Basin Meado, was that they not be forgotten.

Our parishes have lived up to our promise to remember them. We have traveled there each year with the exception of their election year when riots stopped all flights to Haiti. We have continued our financial assistance and watched the schools grow and village projects completed one by one. We have watch a parish of doubtful folks who were sure the “blancs” would forget them as soon as we got back into our vehicles become close friends. We have found villages in the mountains west of PAP that now feel like home with close friends each time we visit.

We invite all who are interested to lend us a hand. If you would like to contribute financially, we will gladly take donations. Simply send them to St. Mary’s in Vinton with a note saying they are for the Haiti mission. If you would like to donate glasses, please simply pick up some reading glasses that are widely available for $4 to $6 in many of the stores. These are much easier to fit to the folks than old donated glasses. If your parish feels a call to become associated with a parish in Haiti, please contact me and I will put you in touch with the Twinning program.

“So, how is Haiti?” While it is no longer in the headlines, and though they have years of an even tougher existence than they had in years past, parts of Haiti are remembered and continue to be remembered at a very deep and loving level.