haiti update - april 25, 2010

“Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”
Psalm 117

Hi! It’s been a busy week getting repairs done to the house. For the last couple of weeks the cement boss and Pastor Pierre have been chiseling out and recementing the earthquake cracks inside the house. There are a lot but they are not serious. Saturday they started repairs to the outside walls of the house. It was a good week to stay at home and supervise the repairs because the gas shortage continued. A tanker arrived in the Port-au-Prince bay but you couldn’t notice the difference at the gas pumps. Many were closed or had long line-ups. People say the gas was saved for the use of government vehicles and to requisition the large NGO’s. Another tanker is on its way so hopefully the gas lines will be eliminated soon. Pray for fuel for Haiti.
We have been timing our house repairs to coincide with the arrival of our next work team, which arrives on Tuesday. The focus for the week will be on completing the dormitory. Jantje Scheele and Andrew Harsevoort will be leading the team. Pray for traveling mercies and for good health!
The school program here at Coram Deo is going well. The children are happy to be back in school and we accepted a few new students into the program. Darlene and Blandine Tarrene are 2 sisters who came with their mother asking for a place in the school program. Their school was destroyed in the earthquake and the school director is not able to reopen at another location or set up a temporary site. Fedna Julien came with her grandfather. She doesn’t know how old she is or her birthdate and neither does the grandfather. The father died in the Dominican Republic a few years ago and the mother abandoned her at her grandfathers’ home. Now we get to make up our own birthdate. It was fun to watch the parents of a couple other children trying to best estimate her age. They told Fedna to open her mouth to get a look at her teeth.
Dieula is a 14-year-old girl whose parents were both killed in the earthquake. She is one of the new students in the program too. Now she has the opportunity to attend school for the first time. She also is now residing here at Coram Deo as of this week. A Haitian family in the community took her in as a foster family but she had troubles with the lady who is looking after her. She came to the house crying this week to say that she had been beaten. I let her stay here at least temporarily until we can find a better placement for her. She sure is acting like a teenager though. Her nickname is “Princess” because she tries to get out of doing chores. She is learning though. The guys at the house won’t let her act this way. Manu is usually the one who comes up to me as the complainer spokesperson for the guys about her behavior. Pray for Dieula as she deals with losing her parents and that she is encouraged in her school learning and that she loses the “Princess” nickname from the guys.
Not all the schools in Port-au-Prince re-opened. Some can’t find an alternate location and some are making repairs or building alternate shelters. The most common temporary sites use tarps, large tents or wood frame with a tin roof. Paulna, Fedner, Johnny and Herold are all attending their schools again as well. Pray for all the schools that are doing whatever they can to save the school year for their students.
For the last few months Manu has reminded me at least once a week that his 12th birthday is April 24th. I think he was worried that I would forget. Saturday afternoon we had a birthday party at Epi Dor and then celebrated with a cake at the house. He was happy to see the big day arrive!
2 of the large refuge camps in our area are located on private grounds. Henfrasa is a fitness center that has a large soccer field area that is now housing refuge tents. The owners have asked the people to move out and a few have but most don’t know where else to go. The same situation exists at the St. Louis de Gonzague school grounds. To accommodate their students large tents provided by Unicef are now housing their students. The government has halted forced removals temporarily while plans are being made of where to put the refugees. Pray that plans can be established to transfer people from private and dangerous locations to a safer locale.
One of the students in our school program died on Saturday. Frandy Jean was a mentally handicapped boy. After the earthquake the family brought him out to the countryside. On Saturday his father brought him back in to Port-au-Prince to seek medical care. He waited too long and Frandy died. Living in the countryside seems to be an easy solution for people but here in Haiti it is difficult. People are forced with the choice of living in difficult conditions here in Port-au-Prince or living in difficult conditions in the countryside where food and healthcare is not readily available. In Frandy’s case it wasn’t the earthquake that killed him but the poor living conditions after that did. Pray for Frandy’s family as they mourn his loss.
A hydrocephalus child that we have been helping for the last while also died last Saturday in hospital. Jonel Colo was not doing well and his mother brought him to General Hospital. His mother did her best to look after him. Many other people would have abandoned him. The people around her were always telling her to throw him away somewhere and were jealous of the help that we gave her. We had given the family a tent as a shelter and one of the people in the refuge camp where they are put cuts in it with a razor blade. She was worried that he would get dumped in a mass grave and we told her to go to Nos Petits Freres et Soeurs Hospital to make contact with Father Rick. Father Rick goes to General Hospital once a week as part of his ministry and buries the bodies in the morgue that families can’t do burials for. She was told to be at General Hospital early Thursday morning so that she could see Jonel for the last time but when she got there his body wasn’t there. We don’t know what happened to his body and what the situation is at the morgue but all I could think of telling her was that maybe Father Rick made a couple of trips and took the body before she got there. Pray for Jonel’s mother. The other people in the refuge camp were teasing her and saying that now that Jonel is dead the “blanc” won’t help her any more. I told her this wasn’t true.
A woman who came to the last clinic that Dr. Karen McCarthy’s team held had untreated diabetes. She was not in good shape and needed support to walk. She was very emaciated. Dr. Karen gave her some pills to help her temporarily and we went to FHADIMAC, which is a diabetes association here in Haiti, a couple of weeks ago. They saw her condition and accepted her into their program. She is 36 years and only weighed 71 pounds. Due to the earthquake the association has received donations of insulin from other countries and the members of the association are now provided with free insulin. 2 weeks later she has already gained 5 pounds and she is working hard by attending the seminars that the association has on living with diabetes. It is good to see people improving! Pray for the efforts of FHADIMAC as they provide care for people with diabetes and high blood pressure.
I was wondering how long it would take before the Delmas 31 bridge would fall into the ravine and most of it now has. There is only ½ of it remaining and the government has now blocked off the road so that vehicles can’t use the bridge anymore. Hopefully they will be able to repair it one day. Now we have to go by way of Delmas 33 to reach main Delmas.
Canada has helped to install some seismic stations here in Haiti. The fault line where the earthquake occurred is still active. Between April 13th and 16th there were 23 aftershocks recorded along the fault located in the Gressier, Jacmel, Leogane, Petit Goaves regions. These aftershocks ranged from 1.7 to 3.8 in intensity. The epicenter of the January 12th earthquake was Leogane. Pray for the ground to settle down.
The International Crisis Group has just released a report entitled “Haiti: Stabilisation and Reconstruction After the Quake”. If you are interested in reading the report follow the link to www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/latin-america-caribbean/haiti.aspx
That is all the news for today. Have a good week!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo