haiti update - may 15, 2010

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress. I will never be shaken.” Psalm 62:1,2

Hi! This week was a week of incidents! On Friday afternoon we were driving down the Delmas 31 hill near our street corner and noticed a few Coram Deo guys with angry looks on their faces arguing with some other guys. We parked at the side of the road to find out what was going on. Jefftay (Amos’s younger brother), Bertrand and Reginald were angry because they saw a guy hit a 17-year-old girl for no reason. The guys approached him and told him to leave the girl alone. This is when we happened to drive by. Jefftay is normally a quiet guy and he was upset. As we were trying to calm down the dispute the guy who punched the girl pulled out a knife. Amos grabbed his wrist and I yelled and pushed the guys to back up. Good teamwork! The situation calmed down and nobody got hurt. We told the girl that she doesn’t have to put up with getting hit and that if that guy tried it again to come and see us and we would help her make a police report. Men do not respect women in Haiti and it is common for men to beat women. I was proud of the guys for coming to the defense of this girl that they didn’t even know.
Today we were driving on the back road from the airport to the top of Delmas 31. There was a very loud bang sound and we thought for sure that the truck had a blowout. We stopped and the tires were fine. There were no other vehicles on the road and we were trying to figure out where the noise came from. It was very loud and very close. There were a few pedestrians near us and they stopped and were not walking. They were looking into the yard of a site, which was used as a garage for trucks. We walked over the broken wall into the compound and saw what caused the noise. A mechanic had a dump truck up on jacks and was working on it when the jack slipped out and the dump truck fell down. That’s what made the noise. Fortunately for the mechanic he had a tire underneath to absorb some of the impact. The mechanic was injured. He had a head and arm injury and was pretty banged up. The people were talking about how to get him to hospital and we offered to bring him. It only took about 10 minutes and this man was getting good care at the University of Miami/Project Medishare tent hospital. Pray that he recovers from his injuries. If that tire hadn’t have been lying on the ground the man would have been crushed.
It is rainy season now and we have had some heavy rains at night. The rains make it tough for people in the refuge camps. There is another danger though for people who live in these camps and that is fire. In one of the tents on the Delmas 31 soccer field an unattended candle fell over and started the tent on fire. The tents are jammed close to each other and the fire started going from tent to tent. 15 tents were burned before the people in the camp put out the fire. I felt sorry for them. They lose their home in the earthquake and now they have to deal with fire. Several people had burns but nobody was killed. The people smashed one tent to create a space for accessing the fire. When the Red Cross provided more tents only the burned tents were replaced. The people who had the broken tent were not given a replacement tent. That was not very fair. An elderly lady was injured as her family tried to hurry her away from the fire. She is 95 years old and the incident really shook her up. She has a swollen knee and can’t walk right now. Pray for those who were burned and for this elderly woman. Pray that the refuge camps one day are no more and that people can return home or establish homes once again. The UN now estimates that there are 1.7 million people living in tents. Some of these people have homes that they can go to but are scared of the possibility of another damaging earthquake. The rumor on the streets is that there will be another serious earthquake before the end of the year, which means that people will endure hurricane season outside rather than live in buildings.
Another problem for people living in the camps is violence. Joanna, the mother of a hydrocephalus child who now lives in the United States came to the house this week to tell me that her tent was broken when a couple of people who were fighting fell onto her tent.
Lucson Jean is a 5-year-old boy with Potts Disease (tuberculosis of the spine). His mother came to the house this week looking for help. Lucson’s father was killed during the earthquake and their home destroyed. They are living in a refuge camp in the Petionville area (Girardot). Thieves with guns entered the camp and robbed people of cell phones, money and valuables. She wanted help with finding an orphanage for Lucson. She was worried that he would get injured because of the problems with his back by other children in the camp and that she could also not provide for him. She had reached the point where she decided that it was better to give him up than to see him suffer. We sent a note to Sherri Fausey of Christian Light Ministries and she is taking him in temporarily until the mother can get back on her feet. Pray for Lucson and his family and for the other children at Sherris’ orphanage.
There are structural changes in the Haitian government that is upsetting some people. The term of parliament and 1/3 of the senators is now finished. An emergency Interim Committee for the Reconstruction of Haiti has been established. This committee is co-led by Special Envoy to the UN Bill Clinton and the Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Foreign members will fill 13 of the 25 seats on this interim committee. This year is an election year. The term of the president Rene Preval expires in February. There is concern that elections will not be organized in a timely manner and the president has asked for a 3-month extension in his term to May 2011. People are protesting that they feel the foreigners are taking over the country and that Preval doesn’t want to leave power. They are angry with him. A few of the cities have had protests recently and on Monday around 1,000 people protested in front of the National Palace. It was broken up by tear gas by the police. This was difficult for people who lived in the refuge camps in the public parks near the palace. They were caught in the middle of a difficult situation. Some of the protestors didn’t want to just protest. They robbed people of their cell phones and wallets! Pray for the political situation in Haiti. Word is out that there will be protests next week in Port-au-Prince again. May 18th is a national holiday – “flag day” and this day may be used as a day of protest.
That’s all the news for today. Have a good week!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo