by Haiti after the earthquake
Hope struggled against despair in the Haitian community where Janet Dorrell was volunteering at a medical clinic after the January 2010 earthquake. People “were wounded, they were injured, they had broken legs, they had lost limbs, they were trying to take care of each other, take people to the doctor.” They did not want the visitors to offer solutions, Dorrell said, they just needed someone to be with them, and the children just wanted to play.
Haiti after the earthquake
Buildings in Port-au-Prince could not withstand the intensity of the earthquakeHope struggled against despair in the Haitian community where Janet Dorrell was volunteering at a medical clinic after the January 2010 earthquake. People “were wounded, they were injured, they had broken legs, they had lost limbs, they were trying to take care of each other, take people to the doctor.” They did not want the visitors to offer solutions, Dorrell said, they just needed someone to be with them, and the children just wanted to play.
A woman’s baby was dying. Dorrell wanted to know how she could help. “Just sit here and be with me when he dies,” the mother said. “The pain was so excruciating that she couldn’t do it alone,” Dorrell recalled. After the infant took his last breath, his mother had to “carry the baby home on a motorcycle and prepare for his burial.”
Children were afraid when they came to the clinic. The volunteers helped them “get their mind off of three missing fingers, or getting stitches.” Dorrell said. Helpers would sing songs with them or let them listen to Michael Jackson on an iPod. The message from the mothers was simply: “Come be with me. Come sit in my tent. Cry with me. Eat some of my rice and beans.” So this is what Dorrell did. She visited, she listened, and she observed.
“People were selling dirt cookies in one tent camp,” Dorrell said, then paused to collect herself before continuing. “If that’s all the money you had you would sit and eat dirt.” But she saw that other goods were available. Someone had a tray with razor blades and a couple of bananas and oranges for sale. In some places street markets were open, with venders selling cassava, manioc, greens, sweet potatoes, chickens, and eggs. The food was there, but the people’s cash was lost between the collapsed floors of crumbled buildings.
“I’m so sorry,” Dorrell said to one woman, and was surprised by the response. The woman grabbed her arm, winked, and said, “In God we really, truly trust.”
Aid is rooted in longtime friendship
Dorrell, a community developer with CCDA member organization Mission Waco, in Waco, Texas, has known people in Haiti since 1984, when she and some friends became involved in a project with World Hunger Relief. For years Mission Waco has worked with church leaders in the village of Ferrier, about four hours northeast of Haiti’s now devastated capital city. In cooperation with Haitian leaders, Mission Waco provides water wells, a medical clinic, and a child sponsorship program for families in Ferrier.
Shortly after the earthquake, Dorrell and her husband, Mission Waco executive director Jimmy Dorrell, got a call from their friends in Ferrier. Over 200 people had made their way from Port-au-Prince back to their hometown, and the community’s resources were stretched thin. By mid-February Mission Waco had collected more than $30,000; about a third of it would go to development projects, two-thirds to immediate relief.
“They’re sleeping in the streets, and yet giving their all.” —Robert Guerrero
Robert Guerrero, founding pastor of Iglesia Comunitaria Cristiana in the Dominican Republic’s capital city of Santo Domingo, also had existing connections in neighboring Haiti. His Del Camino Network, a CCDA member organization, has been developing relationships with pastors in Haiti for the past year and a half. A week after the earthquake, they sent church leaders from the Dominican Republic to make personal contact with their counterparts in Haiti to learn how they could help. The saw that the Haitian pastors “are sleeping in the streets,” Guerrero said, “and yet giving their all.”
Once back in Santo Domingo, the Dominican leaders sent out word of the needs through their network, and local churches became drop-off points for contributions to the churches in Haiti. These goods are brought to a warehouse Del Camino has set up in the capital, and from there deliveries leave for Haiti every three or four days.
Pastor Guerrero and Janet Dorrell both noticed that large aid organizations were having problems with distribution. Donated supplies were piling up at the airport, where they were guarded by the military. The Del Camino Network brought supplies purchased in the Dominican Republic to Haitian sister churches that could coordinate distribution locally. Accompanied by local leaders, Dorrell met with women in the tent communities and distributed small amounts of cash to each household so the mothers could buy goods for their families that were for sale in the functioning markets.
How we can help
Dorrell and Guerrero both said that the resource most needed in Haiti right now is cash. Cash to purchase food and other supplies produced or available in Haiti and the Dominican Republic; cash to assist Haitians’ rebuilding efforts. The largest pharmaceutical company in the Dominican Republic is donating a lot of medications, and medicines that it can’t donate, it is offering to the Del Camino Network at cost. One of the pastors in the network, Walter Dort of Croix de Bouquets, about 45 minutes from Port-au-Prince, is seeking demolition kits and funding to pay local people to clear property destroyed in the earthquake. As his community rebuilds, they need a water purification system and microfinance loans for small business development. “If we got lots of money,” Dorrell said, “it would be a great problem.”
Asked what the tragedy in Haiti has taught him about being a Christ follower in terrible circumstances, Guerrero responded: “It reinforces to me that the key . . . is community. The most powerful outcome of embracing the gospel is the kind of community it creates. I was able to see people truly embracing each other, helping each other. Having each other is basically what they have. It reinforces to me that deep community is the biggest resource we can have in this world.”
As fellow members of Christ’s body, Christians outside of Haiti are also part of the community of believers there. We can give and we can continue to pray, Guerrero urged. “This is a long journey. . . . Don’t forget.”
