photos - hurricane gustav

Normally the river basin is almost empty. Here it is full and raging. In certain areas this river caused flooding. This section of river is near the Tabarre bridge crossing.

Here is another shot of the river.

This is the Croix des Misisons bridge. The bridge was closed to both pedestrian and vehicle traffic but people still wanted to stand on the bridge to look at the river.

In the distance is the Croix des Missions market area. People are standing in the flooding river water not looking too concerned.

Here is what the river looks on the opposite side of the Croix des Missions bridge.

photos - various events

Monday was the first day back to school for Benson, Jacob and Manu. They enjoy going to school!

Dieunette came back from the United States on Thursday. She looks great and her head is now normal. She now has the opportunity for a normal life span.

The host family came with Dieunette . Dieunette's mother is standing next to the host family. It was a difficult time for them to say goodbye.

Lovinsky is an 11 month old boy whose mother can no longer look after him. We are going to help her to place him in an orphanage.

Outside the Food for the Poor mission this man was shot dead by the security guard after a disturbance by people waiting for cooked food handouts. 16-20 other people were injured by the shotgun pellets. I think that this man was just standing in the wrong place.

haiti update - august 30, 2008

“The Lord reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.” Psalm 9:7-10

Hi! This week was a week of stormy weather. Hurricane Gustav hit Haiti on Tuesday and caused some damage over the next couple of days. 59 people died during the storms. The radios were announcing for people to evacuate low-lying areas and to be wary of landslides. The south coast got most of the wind. There was some flooding in the Port-au-Prince area. The people here at Coram Deo contacted their families. John Charles’ grandmother had the roof of her house blown away and she had to seek refuge at a police station. The village where Paulna’s family lives had damage as well. Most of the houses are “kay pays” (mud and stick huts with thatched roofs). Paulna’s family’s house is not damaged. The bridge in Bonnett is damaged and the road from the Dominican Republic into Haiti was cut in two by the floodwaters. Pastor Pierre lives in the Kenscoff area and the area where his church is located suffered a lot of damage. The church is a 5-hour walk over mountains. This area had wind damage that also damaged crops as well. The bridge crossing on route 9 into Cite Soleil is damaged and the mayor says it is unstable. The Croix des Missions bridge was closed due to the flooding river and the Tabarre bridge was being watched as well. Lukner’s brother who lives in the Croix des Missions area had to evacuate his house due to the rising river waters. The government had trouble getting people to evacuate from high flood risk areas. People waited until the last minute. The reason why there was this hesitation is that the last time when people left their houses thieves came in and stole from the homes. The people figured that if they left at the last minute then the thieves wouldn’t have time to steal. Also at the shelters that were set up last October in the Port-au-Prince area people suffered from lack of food and also had trouble with thieves entering the shelters. When we were at the Croix des Missions bridge I took one photo showing people still standing in the waters from the rising river by the market. They didn’t seem to be too concerned. The airport was closed for a couple of days and it was very hectic at the airport on Thursday as people who lost their flights on Tuesday and Wednesday were all trying to travel on Thursday. American Airlines booked extra flights. A bonus of the storm was that we were able to fill up our water cistern. We usually have to buy water to fill up the cistern and with Tropical Storm Fay a couple of weeks ago and now Gustav we haven’t had to buy any water.
The stormy weather also stopped protests from occurring here in Port-au-Prince. On Monday in Cayes there were protests over the high food prices. Things didn’t get out of control this time and the police dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Rumors were that on Tuesday Port-au-Prince would have protests but then the rains started and nothing happened. On Friday though there was a small protest that we passed near the Tabarre Road. A crowd of about 300 people that were ex-president Aristide supporters walked by us. They were not a happy group of people. They were calling President Preval a “rice thief” and saying some bad words that I can’t print. They were protesting against the high food prices and the hunger these prices are causing. The new prime minister Michele Pierre-Louis is going to have a difficult time. Pray for the government as they direct the country. Today was a difficult day in our neighborhood. Every day people line up outside the Food for the Poor mission (which is near the Cite Aux Cayes/Cite Jeremie area) for cooked food. A disruption occurred and the security guard fired his shotgun on the crowd and one person died after getting shot in the neck and 16-20 other people injured by the shotgun pellets. The injured went for medical treatment to a local hospital. The people were upset and asked me to take a photo to let people know what is going on in the country. They were saying that life is getting more difficult because of the food prices and that the people who were shot were unarmed. The dead man had a bag of cooked food by his side. I think he just was standing in the wrong place. I went back for my camera and did take the photos. The security guard who shot the people stayed inside the Food for The Poor compound and the people outside waited. The UN showed up an hour later and we left the same time they arrived.
Pray for the poor living in Haiti. Life is getting more difficult for them.
Tomorrow we are taking a mother and her 11-month-old son to an orphanage to find a place for him. Lovinsky’s mother is living with friends, as she doesn’t have enough money to afford housing or look after him properly. Pray for Lovinsky and his mother. Grace Hope (the baby abandoned in the Delmas 31 area last week) is still in hospital. She is being treated for a heart infection. She is receiving good care. Chris brought a judge to the hospital on Friday to have the baby officially declared abandoned. With this abandonment paper Grace can be placed in the orphanage. Continue to pray for healing for Grace and the paperwork process. Dieunette (the baby who had a bulge at the back of her head) came back from the United States on Thursday afternoon with her host family and is now back with her mother. Dieunette looks great. The neurosurgeon had said that if she never received surgery she would have died before reaching 1 year of age. Now Dieunette has the opportunity for a full life. The surgery itself was also fairly risky. There was a 55% chance of dying on the operating table. The part of the brain that bulged out was cut and removed and the opening in the skull was sealed with a bone putty material. The surgeon said that normally they cut a portion of the skull from another site but the company that manufactures this costly compound donated the material. Because part of the brain was removed there was also a risk that she might have breathing and other problems but nothing happened. We give the Lord thanks for His healing mercies.
This week was also the first week of school for Manu, Jacob and Benson. Benson is now attending the same mission school as the other children. They are attending the Christian Light School in the Delmas 31 area that is run by Sheri Fausey. The school program here at Coram Deo will start on September 8th. Please continue to pray for funding for our programs here at Coram Deo.
That’s all the news for today. Have a good weekend!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo

photos - grace hope, smith jean

Monique found this abandoned baby in the Delmas 31 area close to Coram Deo. Her heart went out to this child and she picked it up from the ground and searched for help.

This baby girl is only 2 weeks old and had not been looked after well since birth. She was probably abandoned because she was born with crooked feet. Because she hadn't been washed properly she developed skin problems as well.

When getting blood tests done at the hospital everyone came up with the name of Grace Hope to put on her dossier. It is the grace of God that has kept her alive so far and into the hands of people who could help her and she now has hope for a better life. Here she is resting comfortably in her hospital bed.

Smith Jean had severe anemia and this caused heart problems for him. We rushed him to the hospital and he was put on oxygen and given a blood transfusion. The next day he was sitting up in bed, not on oxygen anymore and breathing normally.

haiti update - august 23, 2008

“But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on Him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him” Luke 10: 33,34

Hi! This was a busy week dealing with a couple of emergencies. On Monday morning a father came to the house carrying his son, Smith Jean. Smith is a 4-year-old boy and he was having breathing troubles due to being in heart failure. He had been this way since Friday. He was also having pain because of the heart problems. The father didn’t know where to get help for him, as he didn’t have any money. We brought him to Hopital Nos Petits Freres et Soeurs which is located in the Tabarre area of Port-au-Prince. This is a children’s mission hospital that treats children free of charge. They admitted him and put him on oxygen and did some tests and determined that he needed to have a blood transfusion to treat his severe anemia. The father went to the Haitian Red Cross and later in the afternoon Smith received his blood transfusion. The next day he was off of oxygen and breathing normally once again. Hopefully it was just the anemia that caused the heart problems and not a congenital heart problem that needs a surgical correction. Heart surgeries are not done here in Haiti and it is difficult to find hospitals to donate medical care for heart surgeries in the United States. Pray for continued strength and healing for Smith and for his father who raises his son by himself. Smith’s mother died a few years ago.
On Tuesday morning, a woman came with a baby to the gate. She is an example of the “Good Samaritan”. Monique is a mother of 5 children who lives in the Boston section of Cite Soleil. She is a widow as her husband was shot and killed a couple of years ago in Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil has a bad reputation and people who live in this slum are oftentimes looked down upon. Monique started her morning with no food in the house to give her children as well as having no money. She left her home in search of food assistance. Delmas 31 has a couple of large missions that provide food to the poor and she went into this area with the hope of getting some food help. Not too far from Coram Deo she passed some people looking at a baby that was lying by the side of the road. Somebody had abandoned it a little while earlier. She looked at it too and noticed the baby was still alive and then she moved on in search of food help. The sight of seeing this abandoned baby touched her heart and a little while later she returned and found the baby still lying there. She went up to the baby and saw it was dirty and soiled and removed the dirty clothes. She noticed the baby’s feet were deformed. She concluded this was the reason the baby was abandoned. Like the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Bible, people had walked by and maybe even drove by the baby but nobody stopped to help. She decided that she would help this baby. She came to Coram Deo carrying the baby in her arms and explained what happened to me. The baby is a girl and she is only a couple of weeks old. Because she was never properly looked after or washed well since birth she had developed skin problems. Her skin was sloughing off in areas. By the condition this baby was in, this baby had been considered a reject since her moment of birth. I called a missionary who runs an orphanage and they agreed to take in the baby but we had to get a police report first. I thought this would be easy but it ended up being difficult. A couple of months ago one of the major news networks did a story on the trade of buying and selling of children here in Haiti. A journalist proved how easy it was to find a child to buy here in Haiti. This created quite an uproar with the Haitian people and government. When we went to the police station to make a report they told us that they couldn’t make an abandonment report. We would have to go to the court and ask the judge to do that. We then drove over to the courthouse on Delmas and the judge was not there (probably out for lunch). Somebody told us to wait and we sat on a bench in the waiting room area. It was then that the people waiting noticed a white person sitting with a Haitian woman and a baby. This is when the problems started. One person said that I was buying a baby and that this practice was wrong. I tried to explain that this baby was abandoned and that we were only trying to get an abandonment report so that we could find help for it but this person didn’t want to believe me. Other people heard and started in on the accusations too. I guess they didn’t want to believe my side of the story. They were also accusing Monique of selling this baby and telling her how could she do this. Pretty soon it was very noisy inside the courthouse as more people got involved in the yelling and I was beginning to get worried that the security would decide to put us in the locked room with the rest of the prisoners waiting to see the judge. I went outside to make a cell phone call to Vanessa of Angel Missions and told her that I made the mistake of trying to go to a courthouse as a white person with a baby and that I was being accused of trying to buy a baby. I asked her if we could go to her clinic to get formula and also if her Haitian worker could help to get the abandonment paper from the court. I went back inside to tell Monique that we were leaving and it was much quieter inside the courthouse. Monique got fed up with all the yelling and removed the baby’s covering and showed everyone her twisted feet and bad skin condition. That shut everyone up. We then drove over to Delmas 91 and a visiting American doctor examined the baby and thought that the skin problems might be caused by syphilis. A Haitian/American doctor agreed to have his nurse look after her until we got testing done on the baby. Monique didn’t head for home until 4:00pm. Vanessa gave her some things for her family and I gave her some food to take home to her family. She went home knowing that she did the right thing. She told me in the car that her mother had taught her the parable of the Good Samaritan and now Monique has an example to teach her children this parable as well.
The next day we went to the children’s hospital on Tabarre and they did the blood work. She didn’t have syphilis and she also doesn’t have HIV. She weighed 5 pounds. It only proves that the only reason this baby was abandoned was because it was born with crooked feet. When we were driving to the hospital we had to come up with a name for this baby. Everyone in the car decided that her name should be Grace Hope. It was the grace of God that kept her alive and into the hands of people who could help her and she now has hope for a better life. It is amazing how many lives she touched in that one day. Pray for Grace as she gets the rest of the blood test results on Monday and that an abandonment paper can be obtained so that she can be admitted into an orphanage. Pray also for Monique as she struggles to feed her family and for the unknown mother who abandoned her baby.
The Haitian/American doctor is a member of Lamp Haiti. They have a clinic in the Bois Neuf area of Cite Soleil. We were able to see the area where this clinic is located before taking Grace to the hospital. Now I know where I can send the people from the Ti Ayiti area of Cite Soleil to get medical care.
Here is a poem about the grace of God.

His grace is great enough to meet the great things –
The crashing waves that overwhelm the soul,
The roaring winds that leave us stunned and breathless,
The sudden storms beyond our life’s control.

His grace is great enough to meet the small things –
The little pin-prick troubles that annoy,
The insect worries, buzzing and persistent,
The squeaking wheels that grate upon our joy.

Annie Johnson Flint

That’s all the news for today. Have a good weekend!

Karen Bultje, Coram Deo

photos - tou kayman surrounding area

Tou Kayman is a village on the Tomazeau road. This is the creek area behind the walls of the spring. In the distance is the tall grass.

Tou Kayman is in the plain area. The lands are used for pasture and growing things.
This area is a view of the area left of the spring.

It is amazing how fertile that watered land becomes. This is a view across the stree on a hillside where the waters of the spring doesn't reach. Here only cactus thrives.

Here is a farmer looking after his cattle. This is a view to the right of the spring.

photos - swimming in Tou Kayman

This is the natural "sous" (spring) in Tou Kayman ("Crocodile Hole") where the local women wash their clothes and also where the villagers go to swim. The water was clean and not deep. It was perfect for the children.

Everyone jumped into the water with the water toys and had a lot of fun!

Paulna and one of the other children are sitting on some rocks in the creek behind the rock wall of the cliff. The water from the spring flows as a small waterfall over the rock wall.

Even John Charles bathed in the water with his mother. The family enjoyed this outing.

Here is another photo of the children playing in the "sous".