"It's an oasis."
I heard this description of the Hospital de St. Boniface from the people on our immersion trip, from the hospital staff, and from the patients. That is to be expected, but I also heard this same voice of respect and appreciation from the students who attend school on St. Boniface scholarships, from the fishermen in the fishing villages, and from the beekeepers at the cooperative. It is an oasis of hope that has also created a network of health workers, new homes, and community leadership. And it has coordinated a wide range of health and community grants from international NGO's.
"Twenty years ago there was a small clinic here," explained Father Dick Butler, who has been on the board of directors and has made many trips over the past two decades. "And now the hospital serves three hundred patients a day and employs a hundred people."
The hospital is an oasis in a desert. The ten members of our immersion group (six had never been to Haiti before) experienced the desert, too. In all my travels, Port au Prince is the one place I don't feel that I could navigate by myself. There were no police, although there were the U.N. truck patrols mounted with 50 mm machine guns, and the city gave the appearance of a sprawling camp of displaced people. Bernard, our driver, was absolutely invaluable and he gave all of us confidence. Then there was the six-hour drive from Port au Prince (which included the tem miles of rutted roads and river crossings that took almost two hours to navigate.)
The first morning we walked the dirt streets of Fond des Blanc during the Friday market.
I saw hundreds of people, most of them with almost nothing. A donkey and a bundle of leeks, a bag of dried beans for sale, or a tray of penny candy and cookies in cellophane. The most enterprising had pureed fruit in plastic bags that they sold out of coolers. I wanted to buy mangoes or peanuts or millet, but the lack of sanitation discouraged me.
In many ways the market represented the fact that the region of the Fond des Blanc had changed little over time. The major export is still charcoal, which has resulted in decades of deforestation. Farming is subsistent on the soils that remained after widespread erosion. There is still no electricity or cooking fuels. There is no access to other resources, and no parallel economy into which poor Haitians can assimilate. Although later that day we also saw young patients who came to the hospital recharging their cell phones while they waited.
During the tour of the hospital we were introduced to Dr. Cadet, the hospital administrator. He is proud of the growth of the hospital, but he is also a realist. "As an administrator, I want to provide more health services. I know that if we accept more patients that we need more staff, more housing, and more benefits. More services means more money. We keep exploring partnerships with UNICEF, HIV/AIDS grants from the U. S. government, and funding for tuberculosis treatment. We very much need to establish clinics in three or four more areas of Fond des Blanc, because some patients now travel many hours for our services. And we can expect very little financial support from the Haitian government.
"The other important part of our work is that we have a holistic approach to our patient population. We have to teach mothers about prenatal care. We have to bring good drinking water to the villages. We have to help feed the children through school programs. It's the only way we will have a lasting impact."
The children who were given long term care for malnutrition, and the HIV/AIDS network of health workers, were evidence of Dr. Cadet's broad mission. Fifty thousand patients a year create a great deal of good will and hope. The hospital has worked hard to empower a wide community of people.
Dr. Cadet works closely with the board of directors from the St. Boniface Foundation, and he also has the help of two of the happiest, most dynamic young men you could hope to meet.
J. P. Schuster is in his second year as a full-time "volunteer." Conor Shapiro came to St. Boniface on a work/study while he was an undergraduate. He came back to teach English, added a masters degree in public health, and now he has been the Program Manager for the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation for the last two years. Both young men have a wisdom beyond their years.
I saw J.P. mediating a meeting between the school's headmaster and the visiting directors from the St. Boniface Foundation in Boston. The headmaster (who is also the parish priest) was thirty years his senior and J.P. was a model of respect, clarity and focus.
The same day he introduced me to a woodworker who was passionate about his work, but whose toolbox included two planes and three chisels. J.P.'s first thought was what he could do for this young man. He also brought our group to meet the beekeepers at the new cooperative, and he elevated each of the men, giving them status and respect.
"Conor is at home with everyone. Despite his frantic schedule and wide network of initiatives, he always has time to talk to the directors, to the medical staff, to the drivers, to the fishermen in the villages, to the nurses doing immunizations, and to the kids who follow him through the streets," said Kate Moynihan, Director of Development for the St. Boniface Foundation and the leader of the immersion trip.
Their mission is all about compassion in the broadest sense. I can't imagine that other young people their age touch as many people in a day as they do. And they want more. They are creating partnerships with UNICEF, Heifer International, Food for the Poor, Rotary International and others. Their work has progressed to the point that these NGO's are coming to them with initiatives.
We also met the former mayor of Fond des Blanc, Briel. We went with him to visit families who lived on the back streets of the town. We were invited into homes with thatched roofs in which the parents and ten children lived in two rooms. He described again the holistic needs of this family.
"The thatched roof leaks and no one can sleep, the charcoal fires cause respiratory illnesses, the children are too hungry to function in school and the older kids don't have the thirty-five dollars a year to stay in secondary school."
Father Dick Butler said of this experience, "The mother brought her only two chairs into the yard, covered the seats with a clean t-shirt, and asked me if I would like to sit down. I can't tell you how moved I was by that gesture."
On one of our trips to the outlying villages of the region of Fond des Blanc, we met Henri who was supervising the screening of babies in the town of Cha Cha. He was recording the weight and health of the local babies. Conor said, "He already believes he can do more. He wants to use a computer. He wants to learn how to give immunizations. We will support him in every way possible."
We were introduced to John at Moulliage Fouquet, a fishing cooperative which had been given four new motorboats by Food for the Poor. He was one of the first Haitians to be hired by the hospital to canvas the villages and bring the needed daily medicines to people sick with AIDS. Since then he has taken on responsibilities for helping with data collection on how many children attend schools.
I met with six young students in grades ranging from eighth to philo (a post high school year before university.) Three of them wanted to pursue careers in medicine. Each of them said that it was because of what they had seen and experienced at St. Boniface. Another young man aspired to be an electrician - if St. Boniface could help him with the $1,100 annual tuition. He hoped that he could work for the hospital some day.
The "luckiest" member of our group was Sabrina Selim, a young doctor from Concord, NH. She assisted with two deliveries the second day we were there (she went along on the ambulance call for the expectant mother.) She was staying for a month at the hospital. She also spoke French, which is close to Creole and which is also the language taught in the schools.
Renee, a dentist from Rockingham, NH., spoke about the "immersion" she was feeling. "I'm letting all he images sink in. It is a totally different range of sensory experiences than I've ever felt before. But I know that there is another richness in the depth of the Haitian people's stories. When I come again, that will be my priority."
I also remember the look of shock on Renee's face that lasted for hours after she assisted the hospital's dentist in his clinic. "He needs everything. The repair work he can do is only temporary. He could make great strides if we could just provide him with the tools and amalgams and sanitizers that dentists in the U.S. use everyday."
The need for medical supplies of all kinds is a priority of the Foundation. Each person in our group came to Haiti with a small carry-on for our personal items, and two large duffel bags filled with medical supplies.
Many things are not readily available in Haiti, even in Port au Prince. The visiting surgical teams that were coming the next week were bringing another load of supplies. Sometimes that was not enough either, as the hospital also sent a young man to Boston for surgery on a tumor and for facial reconstruction. But as our group witnessed repeatedly, there always seemed to be a way to make miracles happen.
We visited two fishing villages that had each been given four new fishing boats and a freezer locker through the combined efforts of the Foundation and Food for the Poor. These men had fished for generations from dugout canoes, and now they were on a steep learning curve as they had to learn new fishing techniques for deep-water fish. They also had to keep records, negotiate the prices for their fish with buyers from Port au Prince, and then decide how to invest their money to improve the condition of life in their villages.
Lea Crivello has been to Fond des Blanc before, but she said, "I have never felt as deeply about poverty as I did in the fishing village of Losandeau. The houses were made of woven sticks and thatched roofs, and the children were dressed in rags, if they were dressed at all. Many children had light colored hair, a sign of malnutrition. Some women asked the young girl who was with us if they could have her white dress. And yet we were there to see the new fishing boats that Food for the Poor had given the village. The men showed us a cooler filled with fish. They were very proud that they could sell the fish to buyers from Port au Prince. And I was struck by the beautiful symbol of bounty in a place of such poverty."
In the village of Moulliage Fouquet we enjoyed an afternoon on the beach. I played soccer on the beach with pick-up teams of young men, and I introduced a group of children to the game of foxtail, which features a ball with a long kite tail that you throw high into the air. The other team tries to snatch it out of the air by the tail before it hits the ground.
Katie Wisel witnessed a remarkable scene that revealed something deeply ingrained in this community, and possibly in the Haiti people in general. Our desire to give money or food or goods to people on the streets or in the villages had always been dilemma for all of us. In this instance, Katie gave her extra sandwich to a boy who had been helping her find seashells. At least ten of his friends gathered around him and he never hesitated - he divided the sandwich between all of them.
On the last day of the trip, the group traveled to Port au Prince and stayed at the Hospice St. Joseph. The Hospice is providing the equivalent of a Ronald McDonald house for young patients and their parents. It also grants 165 scholarships to students in kindergarten through twelfth grade, as well as two university students. It provides an after school tutoring program, a Saturday activity group, summer camp and after school meals.
The visit to the Mother Theresa's Mission of Charity Orphanage in Port au Prince begins as you walk into a room of twenty-five babies in cribs lined up like cars in a traffic jam. Some are crying, some are bouncing and laughing, and some are gaunt and unresponsive. There are many rooms like this, and the staff is in constant motion feeding, cleaning, changing diapers and doing cursory health checks. We were soon immersed in this world. Kate Moynihan remembers that "the first baby I held was severely malnourished. I thought the baby was about 6 months old as it weighed maybe 10-12 pounds, but then I realized he was very alert for a baby and had a mouth full of teeth. . . and was probably 2 years old, not 6 months! There were twenty other babies in the room. I held every baby in the room over the course of the next two hours. Each one of them sunk into me as soon as I held them. I know that they felt calmer and loved, if only for that short time."
Andrew Shores led a group of children to the playground, and Patricia Cadreau and Renee spoonfed the youngest and neediest of the babies. Father Butler and Katie sat in the rocking chairs and held children in their arms. I swung children into the air and gave them airplane rides - they laughed and begged for more like my own children.
These were truly the "poorest of the poor," beyond even the destitute families who lived in the streets of Port au Prince, and yet here, too, from children who could not yet speak, was the cry of humanity for compassion.
John Healy described an image that he will never forget. "In Port au Prince we asked Bernard to show us a wealthier suburb of the city. We drove up a long hill, and as we did, the first things we noticed were the new cars with no dents. Then we saw the police and the security guards and walls lined with razor wire. We turned into the gate of one of the nicest hotels and there were more men guarding the luxurious lobby of the hotel. Five minutes before we had been in a neighborhood strewn with garbage, buildings covered with graffiti and miles of street vendors. In five minutes we saw the great gap between the rich and the poor in Haiti."
Our last visit was to the Xavier House, which is where the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation houses the university students that are on scholarships. These young men were studying medicine, business, education and computer technology. They were as engaging and idealistic as any student in the U.S. Education was helping them to realize their intellectual potential, but it also was transforming them into the confident next generation that Haiti so desperately needs.
Kate Moynihan, led this immersion trip because, "I wanted to share the Haiti that I knew. It wasn't something you could just talk about. I wanted people to understand what St. Boniface has meant to the Fond des Blanc community. It's really about the hundred patients who are lined up at the hospital at 5:00 a.m. Or the pride of that a beekeeper has for the honey he produces. Or the fishermen who now can go out to the outer reef to catch bigger fish. It's about people like Henri, who started by recording the weights of all the babies in ChaCha, and now he wants to learn how to keep his records on a computer and how to give immunization shots. That's the story of Haiti that I wanted people to experience."
