Life still is not easy in Haiti nearly four months after a magnitude-7 earthquake devastated the country, but the Episcopal Diocese of Haitiis working on reconstruction plans and has begun again its long-standing education ministry.
That was the report April 29 from the Rev. Kesner Ajax, Diocese of Haiti partnership coordinator, during a day-long meeting at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City. Ajax, who holds a number of positions in the diocese, is also the executive director of the Bishop Tharp Institute of Business and Technology (BTI) in Les Cayes in southwest Haiti.
"It is not easy right now," Ajax said at a briefing for church center employees.
The diocese is dealing with the same problems of poverty that it tried to alleviate before the earthquake, he said. The earthquake damaged or destroyed most of the diocese's churches and other institutions, and shifted the country's population, with many Port-au-Prince residents now living in the countryside. Thus, the diocese, along with the nation, must make decisions about where and how to rebuild, he said, adding "life is supposed to continue."
To that end, a crisis committee convened shortly after the earthquake by Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin will release its master plan for rebuilding "very soon," Ajax said. The plan is expected to guide the diocese's efforts and give other Episcopalians opportunities to partner with Haitians in those efforts.
Meanwhile, he said, some of the 250 schools run by the diocese before the earthquake have re-opened in recent days and weeks. Many are in the countryside, but in Port-au-Prince they also include an elementary school and the College St. Pierre high school, the site of an earthquake survivors' settlement run by the diocese. The diocese's seminary has relocated outside of the capital.
Ajax told the briefing meeting that the Haitian government helped the diocese clean and prepare the elementary and secondary schools for the students' return, but "they did not care about universities and tech schools." While Episcopal University in Port-au-Prince remains closed, its nursing school campus in Léogâne and BTI in Les Cayes are operating again, Ajax said.
The schools reopened despite the fact that some of them have no desks, chairs, toilets or administrative offices. In addition, he said, school officials have been trying to locate the students and their parents. Some moved out to the countryside, while others have left for the U.S., Canada and the Dominican Republic.
In response to questions about the impact of the approaching rainy season on recovery efforts, Ajax said "we cannot talk about a season for disaster in Haiti" because another natural calamity seems to occur before the country has regrouped from the one just past.
Ajax said the work in Haiti is long-term. "We can work together, not to change our situation in one day, but step by step," he said. "Partners are welcome. We have to figure how to go forward with the partnerships. We want to do things right."
"We need your prayer, we need your presence. We would love your money," he said. "All of them are welcome … we feel that we are not alone."
Ajax told ENS later in an interview that "the kingdom of God is always in the process of being built. We have to continue to take care of his church -- take care of his people -- until Jesus comes back."
Alex Baumgarten, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C. and its international policy analyst, told the briefing via an email that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori earlier this week conducted a series of "advocacy visits" with the Obama Administration and congressional offices. She focused on U.S. funding for the rebuilding effort, expansion of trade preferences for Haitian exports to the United States, broadening and extending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in the United States while waiving application fees, ending a backlog of 55,000 visas that have been approved, but not actually granted, to Haitians wishing to come to the United States and ending "the unfair interdiction policies of the U.S. Coast Guard, which place unique burdens on Haitians coming to the United States that are disproportionate to those placed on migrants from other countries."
Jefferts Schori also convened a dinner with Haiti experts from non-governmental organizations, academia, and the ecumenical and legal communities as "an opportunity to share experiences and trade wisdom among those supporting the relief and rebuilding effort," Baumgarten's email said.
One of the advocacy visits came April 26 with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti Task Team Coordinator Paul Weisenfeld and Deputy Director of the Department of Health and Human Services'Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Ari Alexander
"The meeting touched on internally displaced persons and the short- and long-term strategies for developing permanent housing settlements, boosting economic investments and partnerships, and leveraging involvement of the Haitian Diaspora," an USAID news release said.
Weisenfeld and Jefferts Schori agreed that USAID and the Episcopal Church will "increase information sharing and outreach," according to the release.
At the end of the church center briefing, Canon Margaret Larom, Episcopal Church global partnerships team leader, told Ajax that "words really fail us to describe the sympathy we have to you and others trying to cope with this day by day. We hope that this day as you are meeting individually with people that you will feel affirmed in your ministry and that we will find more ways to be supportive."
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Haiti 31
My colleague Tammi Mott has been stationed in Haiti to work with the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti on recovery efforts following the January 12 earthquake. She shares below her experience of the beginning of the rainy season and what it will mean for Haitians already struggling in the quake’s aftermath.
One evening a few weeks ago, as we were winding down the day in Port-au-Prince, heavy rain started falling. Those drops announced the arrival of the rain and hurricane season that will continue through October.
The rainy season is bringing yet another layer of trials for people hit hard by the January 12 earthquake. Philogène Magalie and her family are currently living with about 3,000 others in a tent camp at College St. Pierre, a school run by the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti (our program partner). “The water was coming down on our heads and up around our ankles,” she told me. “All we could do was hold on… and now we are trying to dry out before the rain falls again.”
The biggest and most obvious hardship is for people like Philogène, who is among an estimated 1.3 million that lost their homes to the quake. But really, the rain’s arrival is a huge blow for all. As Père Frantz Cole said, “The rain falls on everyone. It falls on those in camps and those in temporary shelters or homes in disrepair. It falls on people in the flood plains and on the sliding mountainsides, and it falls on the rich and the poor alike.”
Père Cole is Director of CEDDISEC, the development arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. The agency has supplied over 710 tarps, 900 tents and materials for building temporary shelters to more than 2,000 homeless families in Port-au-Prince and around Léogone (the quake’s epicenter). With the rain’s onset, CEDDISEC is helping people raise their tents off the ground with platforms and making sure that drainage systems are in place so shelter areas won’t flood.
It’s bad enough that the rain is adding new challenges to everyday life for people who have already gone through so much. But it’s also dashing the hopes of many who wanted to try to recover their belongings from the rubble. And even those who were lucky enough to salvage items are now struggling to keep them dry, like Philogène’s neighbor in the camp—a local university director who chose to get soaked himself so he could keep his precious books safely covered.
Please pray for the people of Haiti in the face of these ongoing hardships, and for our partners—Bishop Duracin and the diocesan and CEDDISEC staff—who have suffered as much loss as the people they serve, yet continue ministering to the overwhelming needs while trying to plan for the long road to recovery.
_____________
Episcopal Relief & Development is supporting the Diocese of Haiti in addressing the urgent need for transitional housing that will withstand the rainy season. To learn more about our work in Haiti, please visit our Haiti Crisis web page.
One evening a few weeks ago, as we were winding down the day in Port-au-Prince, heavy rain started falling. Those drops announced the arrival of the rain and hurricane season that will continue through October.
The rainy season is bringing yet another layer of trials for people hit hard by the January 12 earthquake. Philogène Magalie and her family are currently living with about 3,000 others in a tent camp at College St. Pierre, a school run by the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti (our program partner). “The water was coming down on our heads and up around our ankles,” she told me. “All we could do was hold on… and now we are trying to dry out before the rain falls again.”
The biggest and most obvious hardship is for people like Philogène, who is among an estimated 1.3 million that lost their homes to the quake. But really, the rain’s arrival is a huge blow for all. As Père Frantz Cole said, “The rain falls on everyone. It falls on those in camps and those in temporary shelters or homes in disrepair. It falls on people in the flood plains and on the sliding mountainsides, and it falls on the rich and the poor alike.”
Père Cole is Director of CEDDISEC, the development arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. The agency has supplied over 710 tarps, 900 tents and materials for building temporary shelters to more than 2,000 homeless families in Port-au-Prince and around Léogone (the quake’s epicenter). With the rain’s onset, CEDDISEC is helping people raise their tents off the ground with platforms and making sure that drainage systems are in place so shelter areas won’t flood.
It’s bad enough that the rain is adding new challenges to everyday life for people who have already gone through so much. But it’s also dashing the hopes of many who wanted to try to recover their belongings from the rubble. And even those who were lucky enough to salvage items are now struggling to keep them dry, like Philogène’s neighbor in the camp—a local university director who chose to get soaked himself so he could keep his precious books safely covered.
Please pray for the people of Haiti in the face of these ongoing hardships, and for our partners—Bishop Duracin and the diocesan and CEDDISEC staff—who have suffered as much loss as the people they serve, yet continue ministering to the overwhelming needs while trying to plan for the long road to recovery.
_____________
Episcopal Relief & Development is supporting the Diocese of Haiti in addressing the urgent need for transitional housing that will withstand the rainy season. To learn more about our work in Haiti, please visit our Haiti Crisis web page.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Haiti 30
Easter joy comes in the midst of death
Haitian Episcopalians welcome risen Lord, pray for the future
By Pat McCaughan and Mary Frances Schjonberg, April 06, 2010
[Episcopal News Service]
A spirit of resurrection was evident in Haiti's Episcopal churches from the capital city Port-au-Prince to the rural countryside during Holy Week and Easter.
"The devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, does not stop us from singing in joy and gladness, 'Alleluia, He is risen' in this Easter season," Episcopal Diocese of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin said in his Easter homily, which was read in every Haitian Episcopal Church congregation on Easter morning,
"Even though we are in trouble, we are not alone," Duracin said, calling on Haitians to move into what he has called a "new creation."
"We have to put our faith in action so that the Lord can come deliver us, because he is not far from us, he is in us and he is among us. He is suffering with us, so he can lift us up to rejoice. So we have to be just, we have to love one another, in solidarity, in fraternity, with respect for each other and with respect for our environment, for we cannot destroy God's marvelous creation."
Proclamations of resurrection in the midst of Haiti's devastation and challenging future echoed across the diocese. At St. Andre's Episcopal Church in Hinche, a central Haiti town of some 50,000 located about 80 miles northeast of the capital, organist and school headmaster Etienne Balde said "There is much joy here today. Jesus Christ is risen and we are celebrating."
Duracin preached his homily to several hundred people gathered in what he has been calling the diocese's open-air cathedral, a mostly roofed, wall-less structure of two-by-fours erected on the site of the wreckage of Holy Trinity Cathedral. The ruins of the cathedral are visible behind and to the right of the structure. To the left is an open space where the diocese's Holy Trinity school complex once stood, its ruins recently demolished and carted away.
The last body was removed from the school ruins in late March, according to the Rev. Lauren Stanley, Episcopal Church-appointed missionary in Haiti and Duracin's liaison in the U.S.
"In the midst of nothingness and devastation, the Haitians welcomed the risen Lord," Stanley told ENS in a telephone interview on Holy Monday April 5 as she drove to Cange for the diocese's annual synod, set for April 6-7.
Stanley returned to Haiti for Holy Week and Easter Week, celebrating her first Easter Eucharist in Haiti on April 4 at the St. James the Just Episcopal Church in Petionville.
"It was beautiful and holy and very hard all at the same time," she said. "The Haitians have known death intimately, and yet proclaimed the resurrection with both great joy and tears."
In his Easter homily, Duracin spoke of "the awful odors from the many bodies [that] have invaded us and invaded us again" and loss of Haiti's traditional mourning rituals in the aftermath of the quake.
"As we reflect on biblical themes such as repentance, conversion, forgiveness, we remember as well a relative, a friend, one who was close to us, all of whom, in most cases, were denied funeral ceremonies where we could say goodbye with human dignity," he said. "Thus, crossing the desert has been and still is long and extremely difficult."
The feeling of celebrating resurrection while walking through the desert was not limited to Haiti's Episcopalians, of course. On Good Friday, a procession of several hundred Roman Catholics paused to pray at the site of the diocese's Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, which as was the case with their own Notre Dame cathedral, was reduced to a pile of rubble during the Jan. 12 magnitude-7 earthquake.
Setting up a portable altar, the officiant prayed while the faithful chanted and sang responses, holding rosaries aloft before they continued through the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Also at Holy Trinity on Good Friday, Duracin and other clergy preached on the Seven Last Words of Christ and venerated the cross.
The Rev. Pierre Auguste, rector of Paroisse Epiphanie in L'Acul in the Léogâne area, which was 85 percent destroyed by the earthquake, compared the earthquake to the Scriptural story of Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
"I was with my family in the car, on the way to Léogâne," he recalled. "The car went up and down three times, and during that moment I experienced a moment like I imagine happened with the apostles when they were crossing the sea with Jesus. Peter saw Jesus coming and was very afraid because of the movement of the sea. But Jesus said 'take
heart, I am with you.'"
Auguste said the feeling remained after he arrived in Léogâne and learned several of his parishioners had died.
"We are in this world to share the glory of the Lord," he added. "I discovered the love of God in that event. Churches fall down, houses fall down, people die, but the love of God is still there, a known force. While on earth we share that, people continue to magnify God of love, love is I Jesus and it must continue among us."
Paroisse Epiphanie's building was destroyed, but the congregation meets on the site every Sunday, he said. The school, which had 124 primary students, is structurally unsound and unsafe, but Auguste hopes to restart classes within the next few weeks using tents.
Meanwhile, at St. Simeon Episcopal Church in Croix-de-Bouquets, about ten miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, the Rev. Frederic Menelas prepared family members and godparents for Easter vigil baptism, and organized a Holy Week youth festival and acolyte retreat for 60 young people. Menelas said he felt a spirit of resurrection throughout the church in Haiti.
"We are without a cathedral, our diocesan institutions have been destroyed, but even though the buildings are not here anymore, the church is still alive," he said.
About 65 miles further north in Hinche, the courtyard of St. Andre's buzzed with activity on Holy Saturday April 3, beginning with the sounds of choir rehearsals as early as 7 a.m.
Later in the day, the voices of participants in two retreats -- one for women's ministries and the other an acolyte festival -- could be heard raised in song.
During the vigil that evening, the Rev. Waldin DeCamps told a packed church that the good news of the resurrection was that they, too, could enjoy new beginnings and new life.
"As Christ is risen so we, too, can rise to a new way of thinking, a new way of reflecting, a new way of enlightenment … a rebirth to renew our daily life in the way we think and act and behave," said DeCamps, St. Andre's rector, who also oversees 14 mission congregations, and is training five seminarians, some of whom are assigned to the mission congregations near Hinche.
On Easter Sunday, St. Andre's three-hour service included worship in French and Creole with several guest choirs and bands. A bus from St. Matthias Church in Thomond arrived with about 50 people including the Union Brothers, guest singers and dancers who performed during the service.
At St. James the Just, Easter vigil was followed by an early Easter morning English Eucharist which was attended by many relief and aid workers from various denominations, Stanley said. That service was followed by a Eucharist in French.
As they celebrated, Haitians looked to the future. Each congregation took up a collection on Easter for the rebuilding of Holy Trinity Cathedral.
"Haitians are putting up the forward the first dollars for reconstruction of the cathedral," Stanley said, adding that the collections will be presented and tallied during the diocese's annual synod.
Echoing Duracin's call for solidarity and fraternity, Stanley said churches, aid organizations and all those who want to help Haiti rebuild have to cooperate.
"The problem is it's been more competition than it has been cooperation. It's the people at the bottom who have suffered from that," she said. "In this new creation, we're going to have to learn to cooperate on everything and if we do that, then the people's voice will be heard and then the people will be helped."
That help is desperately needed, Duracin said, describing in his homily that "with millions of people without proper shelter, without work, living in desperate conditions, the situation is truly lamentable."
Haitian Episcopalians welcome risen Lord, pray for the future
By Pat McCaughan and Mary Frances Schjonberg, April 06, 2010
[Episcopal News Service]
A spirit of resurrection was evident in Haiti's Episcopal churches from the capital city Port-au-Prince to the rural countryside during Holy Week and Easter.
"The devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, does not stop us from singing in joy and gladness, 'Alleluia, He is risen' in this Easter season," Episcopal Diocese of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin said in his Easter homily, which was read in every Haitian Episcopal Church congregation on Easter morning,
"Even though we are in trouble, we are not alone," Duracin said, calling on Haitians to move into what he has called a "new creation."
"We have to put our faith in action so that the Lord can come deliver us, because he is not far from us, he is in us and he is among us. He is suffering with us, so he can lift us up to rejoice. So we have to be just, we have to love one another, in solidarity, in fraternity, with respect for each other and with respect for our environment, for we cannot destroy God's marvelous creation."
Proclamations of resurrection in the midst of Haiti's devastation and challenging future echoed across the diocese. At St. Andre's Episcopal Church in Hinche, a central Haiti town of some 50,000 located about 80 miles northeast of the capital, organist and school headmaster Etienne Balde said "There is much joy here today. Jesus Christ is risen and we are celebrating."
Duracin preached his homily to several hundred people gathered in what he has been calling the diocese's open-air cathedral, a mostly roofed, wall-less structure of two-by-fours erected on the site of the wreckage of Holy Trinity Cathedral. The ruins of the cathedral are visible behind and to the right of the structure. To the left is an open space where the diocese's Holy Trinity school complex once stood, its ruins recently demolished and carted away.
The last body was removed from the school ruins in late March, according to the Rev. Lauren Stanley, Episcopal Church-appointed missionary in Haiti and Duracin's liaison in the U.S.
"In the midst of nothingness and devastation, the Haitians welcomed the risen Lord," Stanley told ENS in a telephone interview on Holy Monday April 5 as she drove to Cange for the diocese's annual synod, set for April 6-7.
Stanley returned to Haiti for Holy Week and Easter Week, celebrating her first Easter Eucharist in Haiti on April 4 at the St. James the Just Episcopal Church in Petionville.
"It was beautiful and holy and very hard all at the same time," she said. "The Haitians have known death intimately, and yet proclaimed the resurrection with both great joy and tears."
In his Easter homily, Duracin spoke of "the awful odors from the many bodies [that] have invaded us and invaded us again" and loss of Haiti's traditional mourning rituals in the aftermath of the quake.
"As we reflect on biblical themes such as repentance, conversion, forgiveness, we remember as well a relative, a friend, one who was close to us, all of whom, in most cases, were denied funeral ceremonies where we could say goodbye with human dignity," he said. "Thus, crossing the desert has been and still is long and extremely difficult."
The feeling of celebrating resurrection while walking through the desert was not limited to Haiti's Episcopalians, of course. On Good Friday, a procession of several hundred Roman Catholics paused to pray at the site of the diocese's Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, which as was the case with their own Notre Dame cathedral, was reduced to a pile of rubble during the Jan. 12 magnitude-7 earthquake.
Setting up a portable altar, the officiant prayed while the faithful chanted and sang responses, holding rosaries aloft before they continued through the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Also at Holy Trinity on Good Friday, Duracin and other clergy preached on the Seven Last Words of Christ and venerated the cross.
The Rev. Pierre Auguste, rector of Paroisse Epiphanie in L'Acul in the Léogâne area, which was 85 percent destroyed by the earthquake, compared the earthquake to the Scriptural story of Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
"I was with my family in the car, on the way to Léogâne," he recalled. "The car went up and down three times, and during that moment I experienced a moment like I imagine happened with the apostles when they were crossing the sea with Jesus. Peter saw Jesus coming and was very afraid because of the movement of the sea. But Jesus said 'take
heart, I am with you.'"
Auguste said the feeling remained after he arrived in Léogâne and learned several of his parishioners had died.
"We are in this world to share the glory of the Lord," he added. "I discovered the love of God in that event. Churches fall down, houses fall down, people die, but the love of God is still there, a known force. While on earth we share that, people continue to magnify God of love, love is I Jesus and it must continue among us."
Paroisse Epiphanie's building was destroyed, but the congregation meets on the site every Sunday, he said. The school, which had 124 primary students, is structurally unsound and unsafe, but Auguste hopes to restart classes within the next few weeks using tents.
Meanwhile, at St. Simeon Episcopal Church in Croix-de-Bouquets, about ten miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, the Rev. Frederic Menelas prepared family members and godparents for Easter vigil baptism, and organized a Holy Week youth festival and acolyte retreat for 60 young people. Menelas said he felt a spirit of resurrection throughout the church in Haiti.
"We are without a cathedral, our diocesan institutions have been destroyed, but even though the buildings are not here anymore, the church is still alive," he said.
About 65 miles further north in Hinche, the courtyard of St. Andre's buzzed with activity on Holy Saturday April 3, beginning with the sounds of choir rehearsals as early as 7 a.m.
Later in the day, the voices of participants in two retreats -- one for women's ministries and the other an acolyte festival -- could be heard raised in song.
During the vigil that evening, the Rev. Waldin DeCamps told a packed church that the good news of the resurrection was that they, too, could enjoy new beginnings and new life.
"As Christ is risen so we, too, can rise to a new way of thinking, a new way of reflecting, a new way of enlightenment … a rebirth to renew our daily life in the way we think and act and behave," said DeCamps, St. Andre's rector, who also oversees 14 mission congregations, and is training five seminarians, some of whom are assigned to the mission congregations near Hinche.
On Easter Sunday, St. Andre's three-hour service included worship in French and Creole with several guest choirs and bands. A bus from St. Matthias Church in Thomond arrived with about 50 people including the Union Brothers, guest singers and dancers who performed during the service.
At St. James the Just, Easter vigil was followed by an early Easter morning English Eucharist which was attended by many relief and aid workers from various denominations, Stanley said. That service was followed by a Eucharist in French.
As they celebrated, Haitians looked to the future. Each congregation took up a collection on Easter for the rebuilding of Holy Trinity Cathedral.
"Haitians are putting up the forward the first dollars for reconstruction of the cathedral," Stanley said, adding that the collections will be presented and tallied during the diocese's annual synod.
Echoing Duracin's call for solidarity and fraternity, Stanley said churches, aid organizations and all those who want to help Haiti rebuild have to cooperate.
"The problem is it's been more competition than it has been cooperation. It's the people at the bottom who have suffered from that," she said. "In this new creation, we're going to have to learn to cooperate on everything and if we do that, then the people's voice will be heard and then the people will be helped."
That help is desperately needed, Duracin said, describing in his homily that "with millions of people without proper shelter, without work, living in desperate conditions, the situation is truly lamentable."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
