Day 1
I met the other members of the trip at the Food For The Poor headquarters in Coconut Beach, FL. It was so nice to connect with old friends, especially Angel Aloma, the Executive Director of FFP whom I have known for many years. There was a beautiful new statue in the foyer of a poor beggar on the floor – once you got down on your knees to get a better view, you realized the beggar had Jesus’ face. Very moving! I distributed the Rosaries from Fr. Frank to the other members of the trip, so that they could then distribute them to people who touched their hearts on the trip. After a lunch there and a tour, we returned to the hotel for an early rise the next morning.
Day 2 – Part 1
We depart for Port au Prince and arrive at the Louverture Airport. Your first view of Haiti is of all of the men aggressively looking to help newly arrived passengers with their bags. There is 80% official unemployment in Haiti – most people do odd jobs or sell whatever they can on the streets. We were greeted by Mme. Guerre (our Haiti FFP liaison) and Daniel (our bus driver). We came to find out later in the day that Daniel’s wife just had a baby and there were complications – but yet he spent all day with us until the evening without seeing them.
We first visited Little Children of Jesus Orphanage which serves mentally and physically handicapped children. We arrived in time for Mass and all of the children participated the best they could – it really moved my heart. We all had a chance to then hold some of the children and be with them. There were few workers, so many of the children had limited one-on-one contact. All of the beds were lined up in the main gathering place, side-by-side. Flies were everywhere. The child that moved me the most was a small boy with encephalitis and twisted limbs who just laid there on the bed with lies on his face. These children had been abandoned because of their conditions – Delane Bailey (the FFP Haiti Projects Director) explained that normally these children would have been left to die, so this is truly the best situation currently available to them in Haiti.
Our next stop was to Merge, the first Operation Starfish village. On the way, we have a flat tire and all then cram into the back of a pickup truck! We were greeted by 300 school children for another Mass. The space we were in was a cafeteria/church made of cinderblocks with no air conditioning. To think that only after a few minutes I was sweating buckets – and the kids had been there all morning in uniform practicing for the Mass… Parents take great pride in their children attending school. Every child has their uniform neatly ironed, even if they have only a rusted tin roof over their heads. Delane explained that families rise at 4:00 or 5:00 to just get their children ready for school. After school, children gather around the street lamps to do their homework as it is often the only light in the village after dark. Time and time again, I was struck by how much effort parents put into providing their children with an education, how much education was valued, and how very lucky children were to receive an education. Many times, if a family has multiple children, only a couple of children are able to attend school because the family simply couldn’t afford to send them.
Back on the road again, we encountered the ever present “Tap-Taps”, or old small-sized pick up trucks with the bed brightly covered and rigged to handle about 10 passengers. This is the mode of transportation in Haiti – when you want to get off, you “tap tap” on the roof! The Tap-Taps all have religious sayings or Bible quotes – God Provides, Jesus is my Savior, God is Patience, etc. – and this is one of the first examples a visitor sees of the Haitian’s unwavering faith and how pervasive faith is in everything they do.
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