All and Nothing
By Fr. Rick Frechette
Fr. Rick Frechette is a Passionist priest-doctor (and FIRST contributor) who has been working in Haiti for a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port-au-Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. One of the two hospitals he directs was destroyed by the earthquake. (Two medical volunteers from the U.S. died there.) The other, newer, state-of-the-art hospital,was damaged but it's functioning. NBC reported on the work being done there last month
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#34868097. The reporter noted Fr. Rick had been taking care of his dying mother in Connecticut when the earthquake hit. She insisted he return to Haiti. He went back and forth, returning to U.S. in time to be with his mother as she died. He's now in Port-au-Prince again and he's updated friends and donors on the situation there: http://www.compassionweavers.com/. Please consider donating to Fr. Frechette's hospital and orphanage: http://www.compassionweavers.com/donate
Fr. Frechette's extraordinary new book of stories from the depths of poverty, "Haiti: God of Tough Places, Lord of Burnt Men", is available now from Transaction (which is contributing a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book to Haitian relief efforts). See: http://www.transactionpub.com/cgi-bin/transactionpublishers.storefront/4b637941001f4eb4ea6fc0a80aa506dd/Product/View/1-4128-1420-0
Fr. Frechette allows problems caused by the earthquake are "overwhelming" and that it "will have severe ramifications well into the future." But his past writings remind us that Haitians has repeatedly been in states of emergency. His reflections in the wake of previous natural (and unnatural) disasters in Haiti have a resonance that won't quit. Here are excerpts (from FIRST's back pages):
Thursday, June 18th 2004
During this past week we made two trips to the impoverished flood areas. The truth is, all these towns and indeed most of Haiti would be considered a disaster even if there had not been a flood. They are terribly poor, and lack the most basic services including schools and clinics. It is impossible not to be deeply struck by the depth of poverty and hunger in this country, once you stray away from Petionville where there is an illusion of development. Many of the people who come to these various towns hoping to get a little bag of beans and rice are not from the flood areas. Hunger drives them to seek help wherever they can.
As a doctor it is easy to diagnose illnesses as you offer a little bag of food and talk for a few minutes to the people. Many are so very polite and want to show their gratitude and they stay close by to talk a little bit. I am thinking of a woman who has the bulging eyes and enlarging neck from thyroid disease. I notice she had a chain tightly around her neck, surely the attempt of the local voudou doctor to stop the growth of her thyroid gland. I see a very old thin man, groaning with belly ache, his legs discolored and ulcerated. I am sure he is diabetic. And I see a very pathetic ten year old albino boy. He is doing his best to keep up with all the other children, as curious as they are about us and what we are doing. He has his tee shirt pulled above his head to keep the sun off his pained eyes, since the sunlight hurts his tender retinas. His legs are red from sunburn, and dry and flakey. I can see he already has a patch of melanoma on the skin over his collarbone. How much could have been done for this boy in another setting: simple sunglasses, ultraviolet protective sun lotions, proper education and proper clothing regarding sun exposure. Instead of this, he is a small, fried boy with a deadly cancer...but he is ALL BOY. I gave him two bags of rice, and he squealed with delight and ran off. This child haunts my sleep now.
I will go find him again and see if that melanoma can be removed and hope it hasn’t spread. I will give him a big hat and sunglasses and ask the next person coming over from Miami to bring lots of 15 or higher sunblock. There is so much to do it is hard to know where to start.
The bishop has a good idea. To build a little chapel on high ground, and a little school next to the chapel, and a little clinic next to the school, and a little market next to the clinic will bring EVERYONE to high ground. It sure is worth a try.
July 12, 2004
The little albino boy I mentioned in a previous report is with us now in our hospital. His name is Ronald. His grandmother wanted to just GIVE him to me, for life. It is amazing how often people offer you their children for keeps. We have Ronald outfitted now for the tropical sun...glasses and creams for UV protection, and a big floppy hat. He will be with us for a few weeks while being evaluated by a dermatologist for removal of cancerous and precancerous skin lesions. He is a delight.
Jesula, who lost her leg in a big market accident a few weeks ago, is suffering a number of setbacks. She is often in tears now. Poor healing and recurrent falls when she tries to negotiate a walker have her very discouraged. To cheer her up, I offered her my own right leg, with the caveat that it might not look good on her since it is white, hairy, and defective (since my surgery last November)! She chuckled alright, and then ACCEPTED! She still has her sparkle. Prayers are appreciated for her! We will send her to the Dominican Republic for an artificial leg when healing is complete.
Unfortunately the gang violence has returned, as well as the kidnapping of children of wealthy people. The gangs are often in the slums where we work. Not long ago when we were in Wharf Jeremy, we heard an unbelievably wild lament. Many children were crying inconsolably. You knew immediately it was not the cry of someone who was just punished or who had fallen down. It was a chorus of deep, soulful screaming and crying. We walked until we found the shack where it was coming from. In all my life I have never seen a more pitiful sight. Five little children whose father was shot dead, left alone by the mother who had gone to find the body on the street, were out of their minds with grief. They were rolling on the dirt floor, covering themselves with mud, ripping their clothes and wailing and screaming a sound that would shake your bones. One was clutching a dead kitten. I did my best to console them, to hold them, the talk with them but there was nothing I could do to penetrate their frenzied grief. Finally we went out to find the fathers body, and there it was, baking on the street in the tropical sun, with the wife wailing at its side. We put the body in our truck and took the wife with the body to the morgue and gave her some money to do the official paper work at the city morgue and to buy something for the children, and some money for the funeral. You can imagine we go through money like water, facing these situation one after the next, and I dread the day when finances will not allow us to take an active role in helping with these problems. That day will be a huge challenge to faith, because we will be present but helpless...as helpless as the poor people themselves.
I didn’t sleep all night. I could not get the pathetic scene out of my mind, or the pathetic lament out of my bones. The next day, after mass at the orphanage, we went back to Wharf Jeremy with 7 chicken dinners. We sat in the little sweltering shack and talked with the children as they and their mom feasted in chicken. I made it a point to learn their names. This time they came to me, and sat with me, and we were able to express our sorrow to them and to try to give them an experience of goodness, of friendship, of love to counterbalance and offset the horror. It was deliberate on my part to offer a humane and spiritual medicine as close as possible to the moment of horrific suffering. It must have worked. The mother offered all the children to me, and the children begged me to take them. But such solutions are far from ideal.
Since then we have completely relocated the family out of Wharf Jeremy, and thanks to good friends in Scranton, Pennsylvania, they are in a safe and simple house with their mom, and we will get all the children in school.
St. Paul says that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. Thank you for the prayers and help that make St Paul as right as anyone can be.
September 17, 2004
When I heard from the Sisters in Port-au-Prince what happened in Gonnaives, we headed there at once. We would go in solidarity, and to show our friendship and care, and to see what help we could offer. We would go with our friend and colleague Phadoul, to help him search for his mother and brothers and sisters who lived in Gonnaives.
Five hours of terrible roads. We arrived after sunset. To get into the city we had to drive through a lake that had once been rice fields. Our headlights completely underwater, only darkness and dark waters were before us, waters which rose to our doors. Two guides stood on our sideboards, guiding us along so we would not fall off the underwater road, as had many overturned trucks and public buses which lay at our right and our left, like toppled buoys marking the 2 kilometer crossing. Gonnaives itself was dark and desolate and in ruins. There were no signs of people, at least not at night. We plowed through the waters, the garbage, they broken city until we arrived at the Sisters. They came out to greet us…muddy but happy to see friends, recounting in detail their ordeal. It was late….everything covered with mud, we had no choice but to sleep in the truck on the only clear patch of land we could find.
In the morning we had mass together, very early. A mass of thanksgiving, a mass for the victims, a mass begging for help. After mass, the Sisters gave us canned breakfast from army rations which they had, and eggs and bread. We made lists of what would be needed from Port-au-Prince, and we went off to the city again to find Phadoul’s family.
Wandering through the streets in water to our waist, as dead puppies floated by, and people washed muddy clothes in the even muddier water that engulfed us, it would be impossible to describe the extent of the disaster. Everything was destroyed to a height of 15 feet. Electric lines dipped in the waters around us. People greeted us from the roofs on which they were huddled together with whatever belongings they could salvage, on roofs which had saved their lives, and called down to us “be careful the white man doesn’t fall into the canals. He doesn’t know where they are on the side of the road. He is wet enough.”
Thank you! Ki gen nou ye? How are you?”
“Nou pa pi mal….we are not bad. When you still have your life you have everything.”
While the roads were filled with underwater garbage, furniture and rocks, the courtyards were filled with underwater mud. As we entered the courtyard of the house of Phadoul’s mother, our sandals were sucked off by the deep mud with every step. The body of an old woman was immediately apparent, buried face down in the mud. We uncovered enough mud from her enough to know it was not Phadoul’s mom, and we stopped to pray for her. We could not raise her body simply because if we did there was absolutely no place to put her. And we would never have been able to carry her back through the waters, two miles back to the truck. We had news that Phadoul’s mother had been taken to a friend’s house at high ground, and that she was alright. We trudged further into the city until we found the home of Phadoul’s brothers and their families. Belongings pile high on the roof that had saved them, drying in the sun, the family began the arduous task of digging 6 feet of mud out of their house.
With gratitude to God for the safety of the Sisters and Phadoul’s family, moved by the concern for us shown by many strangers from their rooftops, inspired by the great spirit shown by those grateful for life and already starting to reshape their lives, we headed back to Port-au-Prince so that we could start organizing serious help. The same help we continue to offer in Thiote since the terrible floods of last May. Everything is needed. Clothes, drinking water, cots for sleeping, food, medicine, seeds for replanting, cement for rebuilding, shovels for digging through the mud. Everything is needed, but the day is young…and when you still have your life you have everything.
From January, 2010
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