ourhaitianheroes.org

Utahns work to keep Haiti on America’s mind

// April 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Media

By Lois M. Collins
Published: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 9:39 p.m. MDT
Deseret News

This is Haiti 100 days after the earthquake: The bodies that could be reached have been buried, but rubble is everywhere. The water trucks and rice distributions now routinely reach many, staving off starvation, if not all hunger.

But the interest of donors, notorious for short attention spans, is waning. At least one hospital that ran out of resources gently placed patients out on the street before closing its doors recently — including a child in a body cast.

“I don’t blame the hospital. Everyone was working hard trying their level best, but they

You can tell part of Haiti’s story with numbers. Haiti has — or had — 9 million people, the vast majority impoverished. The average annual income was $1,300. The life expectancy before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12 was 61 years. As many as 300,000 died, and about 3 million need aid in its aftermath, including 84,000 elderly. The injured are near impossible to count accurately, but estimates start at a quarter million. The United Nations said 245,000 “ruined or hopelessly damaged” buildings have created 30 million to 78 million cubic yards of rubble.

It’s not easy to return to normal in such a landscape, and attempts don’t gain much traction, says Daniel Cameau of Provo, who left his Haiti homeland 20 years ago. His cousin’s daughter died and her mom was seriously injured. Nine cousins are now homeless.

The other day, he asked one, “How is life?”

“It’s not much changed since the earthquake,” he was told. “There is still rubble. The government is still not organized.” They are trying to function “in a dysfunctional situation and that makes life more miserable.”

A distant loss

Utahns frantic to reach friends and family in Haiti right after the earthquake have now counted the dead from a distance. Hernandez and Alba Honore each lost beloved cousins. Alba’s uncle died and her aunt’s arm and leg were amputated. Their friend Farnell Pierre-Louis’ mother and siblings are doing comparatively well. His brother-in-law returned to work quickly and they gathered enough money to send some of the family to Miami for a few weeks. Now the tent school is opening for the children and Pierre-Louis, of Salt Lake, is in Haiti helping them return. Most will live in a parking lot a while longer.

And yet another wave of sorrow is right on the horizon. Haiti’s rainy season, just starting to sputter, will go on for weeks, pouring buckets of water on the broken-hearted and battered island. Then the hurricane season will begin.

Millions live in makeshift tent cities and the government is just beginning to move some to higher ground. “There’s no permanent housing. The lucky ones are in a tent, otherwise they have a sheet draped over a string. And when the rains come in May and June …” Randle’s voice trails off, then he says the rain will wash through areas that have been used as makeshift latrines, carrying sewage throughout the camps. It will stink as it brings cholera and infectious diseases, as it severely compromises conditions for people healing from injuries and surgeries or just trying to survive, homeless. When the rains reach bodies still under rubble in some locations, it will likely spread even more disease.

In his blog, Randle writes, Haiti “is not just broken but is crushed.” He took a team of volunteers to Port-au-Prince in March. “Half had been to Haiti before and were shocked at the devastation, half were new to Haiti and were shocked at Haiti.”

He loves Haiti, where he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 27 years ago. But after nine days, he says, he was pining “to go where they’re not suffering, not mourning a loss. Everyone has lost someone dear to them.”

No giving up

Still, there’s hope. It comes in an architect’s draft of a 130-bed hospital a Utah team hopes to build, funded in part by small donations from moms nationwide. Hope rides in on a team of rehab experts operating a makeshift clinic under a blue tarp. It crosses religious and school-loyalty and international borders.

At BYU, 150 students and professors are planning to go down for several months, in rotating teams, to teach square foot gardening and other skills. University of Utah students have joined Our Haitian Heroes’ relief efforts, said Steve Eror, one of that Utah-based group’s organizers.

Utahns are also helping Haitians Gina and Lucien Duncan with their orphanage and projects well beyond it. Gina Lucien is working with the Haitian government on a group home and school where she plans to take in 100 women who had amputations, along with their children, to learn about using microcredit. They will live there a year and Utah-based Healing Hands will make them prosthetics, said Jan Groves, an Intermountain Healthcare employee who will make her own 12th humanitarian trip for Healing Hands in June, leading nurses, physical and occupational therapists, prosthetists, translators and others from eight states and Canada.

Their plans include clinic work, providing rehab services in a tent-based hospital, and visiting little hospitals in outlying areas where spinal-cord patients need care. She also hopes to revisit orphanages in the capital where for 10 years the group has cared for disabled children.

Starting over again

Healing Hands, said Randle, just signed a contract to start demolition of the many pancaked buildings in its compound. They will rebuild but are considering options, perhaps working with other international organizations. MediShare wants Healing Hands to provide rehab services to patients. Randle would like that, but he also wants an outpatient clinic and a vocational component to train those with disabilities to earn a living. He hopes to build a little snack shop there and teach disabled people to make handicrafts that can be sold, so they can gain some money and get families back to work, he said. It all hinges on who’s staying to help and who’s leaving.

Since the earthquake, Healing Hands has helped where needed. They recently found 19 patients who’d been injured in the earthquake who’d had surgeries and been discharged by an international team. A Briton who’d been there a few years and built a clinic to treat children and keep pregnant women healthy took them in and his team has done its best.

But spinal cord injuries are hard, said Randle, who found severe, perhaps lethal pressure wounds. It was not the Briton’s team’s fault; at least it was willing to help. Randle spent two days training it as best he could. Healing Hands is now assembling six spinal cord injury teams that will each rotate into Haiti for a week.

The Utah Hospital Task Force, which took 130 volunteers including medics, construction experts and Creole speakers for two weeks right after the quake, plans to build a 130-bed hospital, said an organizer, Stephen Studdert. Wednesday they welcomed a group of women volunteers who will be part of a “million mothers for Haiti” to help build the American Hospital of Haiti. They envision a million women each donating $12.

Eror, a returned missionary who served in Haiti, has been bowled over by the response

his group, Our Haitian Heroes, has had to its efforts. The group includes doctors, construction workers, teachers and others. They have secured a piece of land and plan to build a center in Petit-Goave, 42 miles southwest of Haiti’s ravaged capital.

Haitians, he said, typically memorize to learn. The group wants to build a center where critical thinking skills and various trades are taught. They hope to eventually pair Haitians with outside mentors in their chosen fields. The country’s economy needs help.

They also hope to keep Haiti on America’s minds, he said, because the situation is still dire.

e-mail: lois@desnews.com

Little Haiti

// April 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Story

The day I received my mission call our family was loading a U-Haul. We were moving. My native Southern Californian parents decided that the economy was too weak, the smog was too thick and the freeways were too crowded. They set their sites on the land of Bountiful, Utah. Opening up a mission call in front of 20 people was almost too much as I do not like to be in the spotlight. When I opened my call I had to act happy, but honestly, I was disappointed reading that I would be serving stateside in the Florida Ft. Lauderdale mission. After 2 years of high school Spanish and having to speak basic Spanish at my water park job for 3 years, I assumed that South America was the place for me. I was wrong. I was relieved, however, when I saw the words Haitian Creole, even though I pronounced it as Ha Tee In. Only one person out of 20 at our house that day had any idea of what Haitian was-gutter French. That was the best he could do to explain the language.  I was excited to learn a new language and eventually got over the disappointment of going stateside.

I remember my first real encounter with a Haitian. It was in Ft. Lauderdale on a typical hot and humid day in February 1992. I remember street contacting this older man. He was carrying a rose and I had no clue what he was saying. I wondered if I would ever understand. In the MTC we learned French for 5 weeks and then the final 3 weeks we learned Haitian. When I later taught in the MTC in 1996, I got permission from the MTC gods to reverse the time spent on each language. That seemed to make the most sense. Within 5 months of my mission I felt confident in the language. It still is odd to think that I learned Haitian in Florida and not Haiti.

One of the greatest things that has ever happened to the Creole missionaries in Ft. Laud was when the Haiti ‘blan” missionaries and the mission were relocated to Ft.Lauderdale around December 1991. Having 2 missions (Haiti and Ft. Lauderdale) in the same area was unique. The Haiti mission shortly merged into the Ft. Lauderdale mission. Most of the Haiti missionaries I encountered spoke better Creole, knew more Krik Krak jokes, and had a special bond with the Haitians. I was envious of this and wished I had also served in Haiti. I learned a lot from the my Haiti companions and tried to learn as much as I could from them about the culture and different areas of Haiti (ex. Leogane-peyi lougawou). The legacy of these Haiti missionaries, who survived the Aristide coup and months of curfew and house confinement, lived on when their mission finished because they taught us how to better interact with Florida Haitians.

LITTLE HAITI-you could not be a Creole missionary without biking Sekankat (NE 54th street). This street was “owned” by Haitians. It was as close to Haiti as you could get. There were Haitian murals on the walls of small shops. My favorite is the picture of a Haitian guy holding up papers to the Statue of Liberty and being rejected. Shop keepers would put out speakers on the sidewalk and blast Kompas music-Zin, Sweet Mickey, Phantoms, Tabou Combo. Any type of protest would happen on this street. The smell of rice and beans made you want to stop and eat but knew you had a great chance of getting your bike stolen.

In Florida I associated Haitians with old beat-up Toyotas. If a car was an 80s Toyota I would bet my bike a Haitian would be behind the wheel. Red curtains hanging in the living room window were a dead giveaway when tracking for Haitians. I never would get used to teaching discussions on furniture covered in plastic and leaving behind a puddle of sweat. Most Haitian homes didn’t have or use air-conditioning. It cost too much. Being called CIA or Immigration officers was a constant. George H. Bush fans they were not. Bush was blamed for everything. I appreciated their bluntness and honesty when it came to their political views and ideas on how to make Haiti better.

I never will forget the Haitian man, driving a Toyota hatchback, coming to our rescue and racing down a Miami street because he noticed 2 white guys running about a bike being stolen. He nearly hit the kid with the car but managed to quickly stop the car, run to his trunk, grab a golf club and go after the boy with the club ready to swing. The boy wisely ditched the bike and the bike was quickly returned to us.

Every Florida Haitian has a story to tell whether it be coming over on a boat and being granted political asylum or living with extended family to avoid a voodoo curse. I met many Haitian men who came over from Haiti to work in the Florida sugar cane fields or whatever work they could find while leaving their entire family behind in Haiti so they could provide for their wife and children. It was a very difficult situation with months even years of separation.

Doing service hours at English language schools was enjoyable. Many times the Haitian students preferred us as teachers because we spoke Creole. We were often treated as rock stars. Ironically it was us, the Elders, who would go to these people’s homes and take pictures of them because they didn’t own a camera. Haitians love to dress up and take serious looking pictures. It was a simple treasure that could send to family in Haiti.

Haitians taught me faith, to include God in all that you do and to share anything you have with those around you. Haitians are generous with the little that most have. If they could they would give you everything they owned. They are extremely friendly, accept you for who you are, and above all know how to enjoy life in its simplest form.  For me, serving among the Florida Haitians was where I was supposed to be.

Brett Freeman (neglib)