haiti update - april 20, 2012

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5,6)

Hi! It has been a busy time here at Coram Deo. The yard here is full with students during the week. We are now in our 3rd semester. The focus of the mission teams who came here has been on building school shelter/classrooms along the walls of the property. We now have 4 separate shelters and we also cemented one side of the yard to create play space for the children. Now that it is rainy season and the rains are frequent, there is no more mud on that side of the yard. We still need one more shelter built along the front wall, and then all the classes will have a shelter to themselves. We currently have 95 students in our program here at Coram Deo. We also had 35 sponsor students who were either in professional/university or secondary school. As is the problem with a difficult world economy, a lot of missions are faced with a reduction in donations, and this has been the case for us as well. Right now we are sort of in emergency mode. I have had to cancel supporting quite a few of the secondary students, because we don’t have the funds to pay for their programs. When the funding increased after the earthquake, I thought it would continue but it didn’t. Pray for funding for the programs here at Coram Deo. We are trying to get through the end of the school year. If funding stays at the same level we will have to make some further changes for the next school year. I told the older students to try and find mission schools where tuition is free or to try to get in to one of the state funded lycees.

While it has been a difficult time here, some of the workers and their families have a much larger burden. Pastor Pierre’s wife recently gave birth to their 8th child. They have named him Jeff, after my cousin. The baby was born at home and Pastor Pierre was the midwife. For the next couple of weeks when I asked Pastor Pierre how his wife and son were doing he would say that she wasn’t feeling well. Dr. Ed and a medical mission team hosted a clinic that Pastor Pierre hosted in the mountains of Kenscoff. Dr. Ed examined her and he told Pastor Pierre to bring her to the hospital right away, as he suspected that she had an infection that had gone septic, and also eclampsia. When I spoke with Dr. Ed on the phone he thought that she might not survive. She was hospitalized at the Baptist Mission Hospital in Fermathe, and after 2 weeks of hospitalization, medications, and a blood transfusion of 2 pouches of blood, she survived and is back at home. We give the Lord thanks for his healing mercies.

Christmanie Pierre-Paul, who is a sister of Marie and also helps with the cooking for the school meals that are served, is pregnant. She lives in Cite Soleil and her family is very poor. We are helping her out with her pre-natal care. The first abdominal sonogram showed that she had a dangerous complication of pregnancy called “placenta previa”; where the placenta is in the lower part of the womb. Quite often a caesarean section is done. When we got the results of the sonogram we brought her over to the Medecins Sans Frontieres Maternity Hospital on Delmas 33, that is especially for problem pregnancies. They told us they only do deliveries and suggested that so goes to Hopital La Paix for pre-natal care. The doctor at Hopital La Paix ordered another sonogram to be done, but wanted it done at another sonogram place. Christmanie returned to Hopital La Paix with the new sonogram, and yesterday the doctor told her he wanted her to get another sonogram and referred her to yet another sonogram place. He told her that she didn’t have placenta previa. He asked her if she could feel the baby moving in the womb (it is a girl) and she said yes. He told her that he couldn’t detect a heartbeat. She came back to the house and told me that she didn’t like that doctor. I wanted her to get checked out at a different place today but she didn’t want to go. She says the baby can’t be dead if she can feel movement. Pray for Christmanie’s pregnancy.

Yonel Glezile, who is our gatekeeper during the day is faced with some housing difficulties at the present time. After the earthquake, we had helped him to rebuild his home. The neighbourhood where he lives was heavily damaged during the earthquake, causing a lot of fatalities and many destroyed homes. He lives beside a canal whose walls collapsed during the earthquake. The British Red Cross has a major project in that neighbourhood, and they told us that they would rebuild 750 homes and reconstruct the canal. We built the home and then the Red Cross told Yonel that they would have to knock his house down to make the canal. When we rebuilt his home we had built it to the original canal width and raised the foundation to meet the height of the wall for the canal. When it came to the engineering of the canal I tried to get the engineer to maintain what was in place but they replied no. The Mayor of Delmas talked with Yonel and told him he had no choice, but that the Red Cross would provide funds for him to rent a home. The funding was given to the mayor and then a cheque was issued to Yonel. The Red Cross wanted to give Yonel $10,000H ($1,200US), but the cheque from the Mayor’s office was issued for $6,000H ($732US). The mayor’s office kept $4,000H. Yonel’s house was knocked down in September 2011. In October work on the canal was halted, and the Red Cross told Yonel they would start work on the canal in January 2012. It is now April, and last week Yonel was told that the Red Cross had determined that the canal was too wide, and would need to be narrowed. That’s right, Yonel’s home was destroyed for nothing! This is an example of the problems of the NGO’s in Haiti. Yonel was promised by the Red Cross that his house would be rebuilt in January and as a result he only rented a place for 6 months. His wife is trying to earn money by working as a street vendor, “marchand”. Last week, an armed gunman came to where she was selling, and the other people around her managed to flee. She was too slow. At gunpoint the thief told her that she would have to pay for the others who fled. She only had $25H ($3US) on her. He took that and then told her to run. I am thankful that he didn’t fire at her.

Pray for the people who work here at Coram Deo, for the students and for protection on the streets.

That’s all the news for today. Have a good week-end!
Karen Bultje
Coram Deo