Friday, February 26, 2010

Memory Eternal, Gail!

On Saturday I’ll be leaving Haiti for a few days to attend the funeral of Dr. Gail Walton, one of my most important teachers and mentors from Notre Dame. Gail was the director of Music at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, and the director of the Liturgical Choir, the group that I sang with all four years of college. She was suffering from leukemia and died on Wednesday from complications after a bone marrow transplant. I’ve written many pages of memories and reflections on how important she was for me and so many others in our journeys into adulthood, but I’ll keep it short here.

I joined the Liturgical Choir in the first weeks of my first year at Notre Dame, and in the following four years I discovered a passion, learned a whole set of new skills, developed some reasonably well informed opinions about sacred music, grew into a more adult understanding of my Faith, formed some of the most important friendships of my life, worked really hard, and had so, so much fun. Gail was an incredibly accomplished musician who somehow tolerated – or rather seemed to enjoy – leading a choir of 60 eager but not all well trained undergraduate singers. I don’t know how she got us to sing the complex music we sang as well as we sang it … except that she was just an incredible teacher. I couldn’t read music and didn’t know a fermata from a subito piano when I started singing with Gail, but fifteen years later I’m still singing some of that same music with my choir in Cambridge, and even have a lot of it memorized from when I learned it with Gail. She taught us to appreciate the liturgical significance of the music we were singing and to approach our music ministry with so much care and respect. She knew that while the Sunday morning Masses at the Basilica might become routine for us, that each Mass brought first time visitors and prospective students and returning alumni and people who were suffering or searching, and that it would be our music that would help them to pray more deeply. We knew we were ministers, not performers, and because of this she demanded excellence.

Beyond music, over the years Gail shepherded hundreds of undergraduates through that often tumultuous transition through college into adulthood. She was sometimes one of us – laughing along with our jokes, and standing with us flipping burgers at pre-game concession stands. But she was just as often the adult voice of reason helping us with the difficult decisions, challenging us to be better than we thought we could be, cheering along with all of our success, and helping us pick up the pieces when we screwed it all up. I will always treasure the memories of making beautiful music with Gail, and I will always be grateful for her guidance and friendship in these past fifteen years. I have no doubt that Gail Walton’s kindness and passion and hard work set an example for me that helped me become who I am today.

In the years after college I stayed in close contact with Gail. I would see her every time I was on campus, and at so many weddings of choir friends all over the country. She always responded to e-mails, even the ones that were just to say hi. I saw Gail back in June at Notre Dame at my 10th reunion, and told her that I would be spending the next school year in Haiti as a volunteer teacher. While many people struggled to make sense of that decision at this point in my life, Gail just smiled and said how proud she was – followed immediately by all the motherly questions about safety and security. Throughout the next few months, every time I sent an e-mail update from Haiti she always responded with a quick line or two of encouragement and support. After the January 12 earthquake one of the first e-mails I received was from Gail, offering her thoughts and prayers, even as she herself was suffering so much.

When I got the news that Gail was in her last days, I really struggled with the decision of whether or not I would make the complicated trip from here to South Bend to be with her family and the legions of choir people at her funeral. I knew that I wanted to be there more than anything, but I felt sort of guilty even thinking about spending so much money and time away from my work here. I know that funerals are for the consolation of the living rather than any benefit for the dead, so it just seemed sort of selfish for me to consider going. So I decided I wouldn’t go. Instead, I told myself that I would stand in solidarity with some of my colleagues here and the thousands and thousands of Haitian people who didn’t have the privilege of attending funerals when buildings collapsed on their loved ones last month. I decided that like them, I would just have to find a different way to say goodbye.

And I stuck with that decision for approximately four hours … during which time I realized exactly how much I need to be there. I’ll make the journey through Santo Domingo (since commercial flights are not flying regularly out of Port au Prince yet) and I’ll arrive in Chicago with my one hoodie sweatshirt and 1 pair of close toed shoes and hope there’s not a blizzard going on. I still don’t feel quite right about taking such obvious advantage of the privileges of wealth and my American passport, but I know it’s what I need to do. It makes me smile to think about the music that we’ll sing, and the choir reunion the likes of which will never happen again. It will be beautiful – and for once Gail won’t have to be in charge of every note and every cue and every cutoff. This time, she’ll just sit back and enjoy it all. As the Orthodox Christians say - Memory Eternal, Gail!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

School - A Shaky Start

After the earthquake, the government announced that schools would be officially closed for a month. Certainly many schools were incapable of opening due to severe physical damage. Many schools lost students and teachers – some who were killed, and others who left the city for the relative safety and calm of the provinces. The government ministry responsible for education was also decimated – its physical building collapsed and many of the people inside it buried in the rubble. And of course, there was the psychological trauma that everyone was dealing with. So a mandatory closure of all schools in the region for a period of time seemed reasonable to give everyone time to pull themselves together and reorganize.

At LCS we didn’t have any classes at all for a week after the earthquake. But once engineers had pronounced most of our buildings safe, we moved forward with a “para-curricular” school program. I put my well tested scheduling skills to work and devised a shortened school schedule utilizing only the buildings we had available, with only the residential staff as teacher (not the visiting professors who normally come work for a few hours each day). The kids didn’t wear their uniforms, and we didn’t have grades or move on with the standard curriculum. Instead we used that time to get back into some kind of routine, since everything we know about kids after disasters says that the return to normalcy is the best medicine. The student population changed each week – sometimes even day to day – but we carried on as best we could with whomever was here each day.

A month came and went, and we heard little from the government about the future of schools, so we decided to “officially” open school this past Monday after the traditional holiday week of Carnaval. Sure enough, the Friday before, the government announced that schools were not ready to reopen, and that no school – public or private – should do so until more schools were able to begin again. The primary arguments against allowing some schools to reopen were based on solidarity, and equity. There is a perception that if some kids go to school again while others are unable, that it will unfairly position them for success on the state exams. The solidarity argument is simply that everyone’s in this together and needs to stay in it together. Honestly, despite the fact that I almost always support arguments based on solidarity and equity, I think this argument is absurd. By that logic, no one should begin rebuilding their house until everyone can. No one should reopen their store until everyone can. No one should stop living outside until everyone does. So we should all just sit on the rubble and wait … and wait … and wait in solidarity for the magical cure for all our problems that’s never going to come. The solutions will come when individuals – on their own or with the assistance of the government and all the international aid organizations – take those first steps toward normalcy. I’ve seen more and more people out rebuilding their walls. I’ve seen teams of people in the streets of Port au Prince wearing USAID T-shirts cleaning up trash. More and more stores, restaurants and even a few nightclubs downtown are reopening. With each of these small actions – individual and collective – people begin to see a way out. Why can’t it be the same for the schools? Young people in school uniforms are a great source of pride for people of all social classes in Haiti, since public and private schools at all levels require uniforms. They have always been a sign of hope for a better future – not just for the students themselves but for their families and for the whole country. Wouldn’t the sight of kids in uniforms bring much needed hope at a time like this?

So, we opened school anyway. We backed off on wearing uniforms so as not to attract too much attention, but our professors were willing to come back and we announced to the kids that grades were back, and that the 2nd quarter (which should have ended after the third week in January) would end after the first week in March. On Sunday afternoon at 4 pm, we had the usual gathering of all of the kids at the end of the weekend, and we had 237 students, the most we’ve had since the earthquake. There was a very normal excitement and noise level all afternoon, as there is every Sunday afternoon. The kids crowded into dorm rooms (since some of their usual rooms are in buildings that are not usable yet), and even dug out their notebooks during the evening study hours to begin preparing for classes once again. It all felt so wonderfully routine.

Then at 4:30 in the morning we were all shaken awake by the largest aftershock we’ve felt in a few weeks. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? There were nervous screams – distinct from the screams of actual terror from the first earthquake – as kids and adults ran outside in their pajamas and assembled on the basketball court. There was no damage, and everyone was OK. Mr. Pierre the principal even joked about being careful to check for “pu pu” on the ground on the way back, in case anyone had – um – had a fear induced accident. The kids all laughed, and though we got an earlier than usual start, we went about the morning as normally as possible, despite some of that old anxiety lingering in the back of everyone’s mind.

The school day went as well as could be expected. I had to laugh to myself as I repeated a mantra in my head that has helped me maintain sanity for many years of working in a forward thinking school …”change is hard … people fear change … change is like death ….” Teachers were confused with the new schedule, and couldn’t understand why we hadn’t just gone back to the old pre-earthquake schedule. Some kids didn’t think we should be starting again at all. And of course, despite my best estimations, the schedule I devised had to be almost completely reworked for the following day. A few of the classes have more than 40 kids in them, so instead of keeping each class in one section, we had to split them into two. While this isn’t terribly complex in terms of the schedule itself, I’m not so sure where we’re going to put these new classes, since six of our classrooms are in a building that needs some serious work before it will be structurally sound enough to hold classes again. We’re working on getting classroom sized tents … or maybe for a while they’ll just have to sit under a tree somewhere. Actually, now that I think of it that might not be so bad … there are thousands of mangoes about ready to fall from those trees!

Now it’s Wednesday, and after significant aftershocks on two subsequent nights, many kids – typically at the urging of their parents – have decided to go home. We have about 160 lefft, but that’s down by almost 80 from Monday morning. It’s incredibly frustrating. I don’t mean to be melodramatic here, but sometimes it honestly feels like we’re fighting some cosmic battle between order and chaos. We’re scratching and clawing and fighting to maintain order here, and the chaos outside just keeps coming. Not chaos in the social or political sense, but in a deeper, almost spiritual sense. Despite all the rational explanations about aftershocks, people continue to insist that these two in a row must mean that another “big one” is coming. The radio spouts inflammatory rhetoric about not going back into any buildings (regardless of their structural integrity) for another month. The government insists on keeping schools closed. These kids are so smart, and after a few weeks and so many explanations and conversations about it all, they were on board. They were laughing and playing basketball again and sleeping inside and getting their friends to come back to school. Now the fear is back and the same old questions are back and lots of kids are going home where they’ll sleep outside in tents instead of inside our perfectly safe buildings. Some days it definitely feels like the chaos is winning.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Helping - why is this so complicated?





Shouldn’t it be simple to help people in desperate need? There has been such an outpouring of support from around the world, billions of dollars and tons and tons of donations without thousands of aid workers and volunteers on the ground. It’s amazing to watch first hand, how incredibly complicated this is. It can be done well, and it cone be done so badly – even with the best of intentions.

First, how do you distribute food? How do you know who really needs it most, and how do you ensure that they get it? I know the TV has been full of images of riots over food thrown from the back of a truck, and police shooting people suspected of stealing that food, and I’ve seen glimpses in person of what that looks like. Even in our little neighborhood this morning a truck pulled up with some bottled water and bags of rice and our normally subdued and peaceful neighbors went a little crazy, yelling and pushing each other to get to the truck first. It’s strange because most of them are not actually worse of now than they were before the earthquake, so honestly that same thing probably would have happened two months ago if a truck full of free stuff had pulled up. But certainly in the tent cities there is a much more acute need, and sense of desperation, so when the food comes to the those places the reaction is even more intense.

I’ve seen food distributed really well too. The US military lines people up on a huge field, then releases them a few at a time to walk across another field to the place where the bags of rice are being handed out. Then tap taps wait on the other side to drive the people and their huge bags of rice home. Of course there are guys standing guard over the line with automatic weapons, so that helps maintain order, but the whole thing looks calm and dignified. The Missionaries of Charity are my favorites though. They have been here so long, that they know who really needs the food. They go out into the neighborhood and the tent cities and hand out tickets with a date and time stamped on them. People with the tickets then come to their door, and they only allow the ones with the [roper ticket into the compound. Then they each receive a bag with all the staples – rice, beans, cornmeal, soap, crackers, oil, and bulgur wheat. I’ve helped in the packaging and distribution of that food, and it’s a totally peaceful, dignified process. People smile and say thank you. Most of the people who come are women, the ones likely to be caring for their family, whereas most of the food riots you see on TV are battles among young men. Butt even the sisters say it’s hard when they go out into the tent cities and bring prepared food directly to the people there. They don’t know everyone, and the desperation is so acute, that they often need help controlling the crowds. But this is their mission, to serve the poorest of the poor, and they are doing it with as much love and tenacity now as they ever have before.

At LCS we decided early on that we would not become a large scale food distribution site, but rather would follow more in the example of the Missionaries of Charity and St. Vincent de Paul and bring assistance directly to the people in need. In the days after the earthquake that meant setting up a huge pot of rice and beans on the street and serving it directly to our neighbors who came by and ate it, then handed their spoon and bowl to someone else who hadn’t received any yet. That worked pretty well for a week, but it was never a long term solution. Now we’re back to feeding the neighborhood children at the school, as we always have. But since we’re a well established organization, many individuals and some of the larger aid organizations are beginning to turn to us to help figure out how to get help to the people who need it. The Red Cross of Colombia just made a huge drop off of food and supplies to LCS this week. We spent Thursday sorting the food into study shopping bags with brightly colored cartoon characters on them. Then on Friday we handed one bag to each student on his or her way out the door, and personally delivered them to families in the neighborhood, and some of the hardest hit families even beyond our immediate neighbors. There was no drama, or pushing, or yelling, or fear. Everyone got one. Now I think one of my first Spanish classes next week will need to be focused on reading the labels ad directions on some of this food that the families are a little less familiar with …

And how do you prioritize what to do first? Of course our first priority is caring for our own students and neighbors. We’ve also worked downtown excavatig the Cathedral, but then our focus shifted to one of the few functioning hospitals. While we were able to provide some actual medical help in the form of LCS graduates who are medical students, and current students to work as translators, one of our main roles at the hospital became … surprise, surprise … managing the trash. I’ve noted in the past my newfound appreciate for waste management, but this is a whole new thing. What do you do with the medical waste when the incinerator that usually burns the trash collapsed in the earthquake, and the national trash company that usually picks up the trash is a little overextended right now? We burn the trash ourselves. I’ve never personally participated in this oh so glamorous activity, but the stories of rats the size of cats are enough to give me a pretty good sense of what that’s like.

Where do you start on the physical reconstruction? The “monuments” to the earthquake are everywhere, and I worry that the longer the piles of rubble and broken buildings sit there, the more normal they will become. And once people stop noticing them, then the urgency to remove them will disappear. This is the same lack of urgency that lets people walk past piles of trash in the street here without blinking, and if the rubble problem becomes like the trash problem, then this country will not move forward. So, in our own neighborhood we’ve worked hard to clean up our own rubble, and encourage neighbors to do the same. We’ve even started paying a team of unemployed young men from the neighborhood to do some of that work. They cleaned up a large, destroyed house on a prominent corner, and are now helping to build a foundation, and eventually a house, for another neighbor who lost everything. Even the little kids in the school were helping this week, carrying cement blocks in wheelbarrows, and even on their heads, from our own pile of rubble to the site of the new house where they were being used in the foundation. After this house is constructed, we’ll move on to another one.

I’m hearing all the weird stories about utterly useless things that have been donated and shipped halfway around the world. And I’ve felt the frustration as I sit in gridlocked traffic in a line of cars bearing the logos of prominent NGO’s … each with one person inside. But I honestly don’t know enough about international aid organizations and disaster relief to offer any real criticism or analysis of what’s gone on here, and how it all could have been managed better. I just think that for myself,if I’m ever looking to make a contribution to assist people after a disaster, I think I’ll give it to the Missionaries of Charity. They know who needs the help most, and they know how to distribute it.

A different planet called Belo





I know that I’ve mentioned a place called Belo in past blog posts, but I don’t think I’ve ever really described it or posted pictures of it. Given the image of Haiti that most people – including myself – have always had, especially post-earthquake, I just want everyone to know about Belo. This place is inching higher and higher on my list of favorite places on Earth every time I visit. When I tell Haitians about visiting a little place called Belo, they have no idea what I’m talking about. To give people a clue, you have to mention the bigger tiny town nearby, about thirty minutes farther down the mountain. Even if they know that town, most have never been there or anywhere like it. When I show the kids at school pictures of Belo, many can’t even believe it’s Haiti, since they themselves have never been to such a remote, mountainous place.

Belo is barely even a town – it’s more of a truck stop at the end of a rutted, windy dirt road on the top of a mountain south of Port au Prince. A few trucks come and go each day, to drive workers the two and a half hours down to the city, and transport goods back up to the people who live in tiny houses scattered throughout the mountainside. There are a few large landowners up there as well – our friend Patrick Brun is one of them – and they have worked hard in the past nine years to replant trees in the largely deforested region. Amazingly, in such a short time, trees are thriving, and the soil is improving with it. The primary mode of transportation around Belo is walking – or sometimes riding horseback – and the primary mode of transporting goods is by carrying them on one’s head. It’s cold in Belo, in the low sixties at night, and often misty by day as the clouds swirl around among the mountaintops. There are no mosquitoes in Belo and the stars at night are brighter and night sky has more depth than any I have ever seen. People in Belo are incredibly friendly in that way that small town people around the world always seem to be, especially when compared with their more jaded and suspicious countrymen who live in the crowded cities. They wave and smile and don’t ask for money, and they absolutely do not speak one word of English. Every time we come, they always seem somewhat amused and intrigued by the carload of blan arriving from the city. However, the best thing of all about Belo these days, is that the violent fingerprints of the earthquake are nowhere to be found.

Of course the people in Belo felt the earthquake. It’s actually much closer to the epicenter in terms of miles, but the elevation (more than 6,000 ft) seems to have cushioned them from most of the shaking and destruction. One man explained to me that some small houses were destroyed, but that everyone from the area who actually died during the quake was killed in the city, not in Belo. Mr. Brun’s house is simple and well constructed, and the only damage his house sustained was some broken glasses that fell from a shelf and a large granite table on the back patio that tipped over. When we made the turn off the paved road onto the dirt road about 45 minutes from Belo, we saw fewer and fewer piles of rubble and collapsed houses, those sad remnants we have termed “monuments” to the earthquake. There are no tent cities or UN trucks, or traffic, and the thin mountain air refreshes the body and spirit in equal parts.

What is there to do in Belo? Nothing really, and that’s why it’s wonderful. We’ve gone there a few times, always a collection of volunteers, staff and Moynihans, but this time we went alone, just the volunteers. This week was supposed to be a vacation week in the country in celebration of Carnaval, and we had plans to spend it in the DR sipping cocktails with umbrellas in them on a beach somewhere. But Carnaval didn’t happen, and traveling is still complicated, and it just didn’t feel right to party it up in the DR while people here are still digging out. So instead we opted for two nights at the Bruns’ house in the mountains of Belo. We played Chinese checkers sitting in the sun on the patio, read a lot, went on long walks in the hills, and spent tons of time cooking and eating. It was nice to sleep a little later, lounge around in our PJ’s, curl up under blankets on the couch and watch the clouds roll in and out. We grilled chicken and potatoes that Bernard, the caretaker of the house, literally dug out of the ground for us. In the morning he brought us some freshly laid eggs, and we enjoyed the tastiest omelet I’ve ever eaten. At night we built a huge fire in the outside fireplace and made s’mores while sipping Barbancourt rum and Cokes.

On one of our walks we journeyed to a nearby hotel that we had heard has a restaurant, but when we got there we were informed that it was closed for the season until March. But since one of the gates was close with only a coat hanger … we decided to do a little exploring anyway. It was the strangest place! It was sort of a cross between the hotel from The Shining and the family summer camp from Dirty Dancing. There were little cabins, and well maintained gardens, and a big outdoor pavilion with a creepy Phantom of the Opera chandelier. There was a restaurant with a patio for outdoor seating, a soccer field, some horses, and the ugliest, mangiest dog I’ve ever seen in my life. Men were working on the grounds, and smiled and waved as we walked around, but other than that it was totally deserted. Eerie. I imagine that people must come there, and one of the caretakers explained to me that in the summer there are lots of big parties and weddings there. I think it must be really beautiful, and it gave me a glimpse into the tourist industry that this country could have … if visitors didn’t have to pass through the trash piles of Port au Prince in order to get here. Maybe if Haiti rebuilds right and foreigners invest, then tourists will come. I hope so. I’d love to come back to Belo with friends some day.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Pictures

It has been hard at times to take pictures. There are so many things that were just too personal, or too sad, or too ...just plain wrong ... to photograph. But I also know that people care and really want to see. You'll note in these pictures lots of hard working volunteers and staff, lots of smiling children, and lots of broken buildings. It's a little overwhelming to drive around downtown right now, since the buildings are all so close together, and they're in general larger, the destruction is that much more daunting. But every time I go out I see more and more pieces of heavy equipment, and more and more people clearing rubble and rebuilding walls. There's a well loved Kreyol expression that I've been quoting daily around here ... "piti a piti n'a rive." Little by little we'll get there.

Please enjoy the pictures, but please do NOT copy and paste and share them. These are real people's lives and homes, and I would feel terrible to know that their loss was someone else's entertainment.

Nou pare pou rebati Ayiti!

Notre Dame – not that one, the other one …

I spent the day today literally climbing around the rubble of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in downtown Port au Prince. I never had the opportunity to go inside the cathedral before it collapsed on itself on January 12, but I had driven by it several times. It was enormous and pink. There aren’t many enormous buildings in Haiti, to be honest, so this one was really special. It was a building as grand and glorious as those in any fine city, and it was a place that Haitian people were proud of. Climbing around inside today I think I got a vision of what Germany looked like in 1944. It was just really sad – to see a place that must have been so lovely, now so utterly humbled. It has no roof at all anymore, and the top sections of all of the walls have fallen in. I crawled around on the rubble on top of the main altar area, but could see no signs of an altar beneath. To make things even a little more pathetic, everything of value has been taken from the church already. The tabernacle, all the robes and sacred objects, even some of the wooden drawers and cabinets in the sacristy have been taken away. We were there today because there is no one left in the Church in Port au Prince really to do this work. The Archbishop is dead, the staff is dead, and the buildings are destroyed. So a little band of LCS people and neighborhood guys is working on the excavations. I went today mostly to photograph the whole affair. The highlight of the day was when Angelo, one of the neighborhood guys, found a document in a cardboard tube. It was the original decree from Pope John Paul II installing Serge Miot as the Archbishop of Port au Prince. Certainly saving old Church documents and artifacts isn’t as important as saving lives at the hospital down the street, but it’s not insignificant either. So much has been lost here. To preserve even little bits of culture and history for the future is another small step toward rebuilding this country.

MRE’s – part 2

MRE has another meaning in Haiti, stemming from the tumultuous period of political upheaval in the 1990’s. I know that I’m not an expert in Haitian history, especially not in this incredibly complex and still hotly debated period, but here’s my basic understanding based on lots of reading and conversations with people who lived through it. In those years, the divide in the country was quite clearly along economic lines – the people vs. the military and the so called MRE’s – “morally repugnant elite.” Surely throughout Haiti’s history those with wealth have in general done little to demonstrate any real care for the suffering of the masses. They ran their businesses, which provided jobs for some, but graft and corruption in the business community seem to have been as ubiquitous as in the military and the parade of failed Haitian governments of the same period. No one trusted anyone. People with wealth and power used their influence to brutally repress the democratic movements of Aristide, and as the years went on, Aristide’s gangs responded with gruesome violence. A favorite tactic of the day was “necklacing,” in which an MRE or other undesirable would have a tire placed around his neck, be doused with gasoline and lit on fire.

One thing that’s been particularly unique, I think, about my experience in Haiti is that I have had the opportunity to get to know people from so many different parts of Haitian society. Obviously most of the children that we serve in the school come from the poorer neighborhoods and slums, and since most of the staff are graduates of the school, so do they. But many graduates have managed to move up quite a bit in society. Many have laptops and a few have cars, and some can talk about traveling to the DR or even to the United States for vacations. But another of the most important groups in the LCS community is formed by some of the wealthiest people in this country. The project has worked hard in the last few years especially to engage the Haitian business community in supporting LCS, but also in supporting charitable endeavors all over the country. The notion of social entrepreneurship is new here, and many small grocery stores and even the giant cell phone company Voila are getting on board. One of he local store owners donated many essential grocery items to the school each month. Sadly, that man and many of his family members were killed when their store collapsed on them. Voila has made sizeable contributions to the school’s “office of external affairs” which supports graduates in finding university scholarships and job opportunities. Four days after the earthquake, Voila handed us 10 new cell phones with lots of minutes on them. Maybe the “haves” in this country are starting to get it finally, that their fate is inextricably linked with that of everyone else. Many have great hope that the shared experience of the earthquake will further that sense of solidarity.

One of my absolute favorite people in Haiti is a man named Patrick Brun. Truly, each day this guy is inching higher and higher on the list of the people that I admire and respect most in the world. Patrick was born into privilege in this country of so much poverty. His father’s business was in construction and hardware sales, and as a child he enjoyed an education at the fancy Catholic school, vacations in Europe and a life of relative comfort. In the 90’s he came in contact with Louverture Cleary School and the infinitely persuasive Patrick Moynihan. First he started selling building materials at cost, then consulting on construction projects. Before long he had drunk the proverbial LCS Kool Aid and had what he describes ad a true conversion. Now he’s up to his eyeballs in this place, and the chair of the Board (one of only 2 Haitians on the board.) On a personal level, Patrick Brun and his family have been a great gift to me and the rest of the US volunteers. They’ve had us over to their lovely home in Petonville and fed us chips and salsa and chocolate cupcakes. We’ve spent a few wonderful days of R and R at their small home in the mountains, where there are no mosquitoes, no tap taps, no TV’s, and no noise except for the mooing of cows. Patrick’s visits to the school are frequent, and he always takes the time to talk and to listen.

On the night of the earthquake, when we were missing our two senior most leaders, all I wanted all night was for Patrick Brun to walk through the door of that soccer field because I knew that his presence would calm people down, and that he’d help us to make good decisions. Sure enough, at about 8 pm, there he was, and it was like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders. He brought us the first real news of what was going on outside. He had been downtown when the earthquake hit, and before returning home, he knew he had to come check on us at the school. Along the way, he picked up strangers along the road who needed to get to hospitals. We stood and talked for about 20 minutes about what to do with the diesel drums and whether or not it was safe to go into the dorms to get the kids blankets and mattresses to sleep on, and what should be our top priorities in the morning, and what were the signs of shock that we needed to be looking for in kids. Then he said goodbye – since there were people sitting in his car on the driveway who needed to get to hospitals – but he promised to come back the next day.

Since then, Patrick Brun has basically abandoned his family business and left it to his brothers. His work has become logistical support for the International Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services. He and a team of LCS students, staff and volunteers cleaned out one of his warehouses to be used for Red Cross building materials and medical supplies. He’s been on site each day this past week while another team of LCS affiliated people has worked to excavate the Cathedral and the Archbishop’s residence. The Church of Port au Prince is destroyed – church buildings are piles of rubble, hundreds of priests and seminarians (as well as the Archbishop and his staff) are dead, and all of the cultural and personal history that the Church preserves is buried under tons and tons of concrete. Since there’s no one left to organize the excavation and recovery of baptismal records and marriage licenses and cultural artifacts from the Cathedral and archdiocesan buildings, Patrick Moynihan and Patrick Brun are simply doing it themselves.

On Tuesday night I had dinner with a group of American surgeons and nurses who are staying at the residence of the Papal Nuncio while they serve in one of the city’s few functioning hospitals. The house is lovely, situated on the side of a hill overlooking the city. It was surreal to be in such a beautiful place, looking down on the city below without really being able to see much of the destruction, but knowing it was there (having just spent 2 and a half hours in gridlocked traffic to get up the hill.) Patrick Brun came over to me and I asked him how he was doing and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looked a little beat up, and admitted to me that he was really tired. Then he explained that he had read a Miami Herald article about how the wealthy of Haiti – the so called MRE’s – were basically unaffected by the earthquake. The article went on to explain that most had left the country and were doing little to assist in the recovery efforts. I looked at this man who had spent the last three weeks doing nothing but assist in the recovery efforts and said, “I’m really sorry Patrick. That must make you kind of furious.” He launched off on a little tirade about journalists being too lazy to leave their desks and find out the real story, and the danger of falling back on that old, divisive narrative at a time like this. After listing some of the other things people like himself were doing to help the country, he said, “this thing shows us that everyone in this country can die together, so we have to be able to live together. History started over on January 12, 2010.”

Someone suggested that he write a response to the article in the Miami Herald. For a moment he seemed to consider it, but then backed off. He explained that he could, but that it would be taken the wrong way by some and would just rekindle those old feelings of animosity, and this country can’t handle that at a time like this. So, Patrick Brun won’t defend himself, out of respect for the needs of his country. But I couldn’t let this one go. I wish American journalists would stop writing about heroic relief workers and start writing about heroic Haitian people like Patrick Brun.

MRE’s

The 82nd Airborne Division is housed down the street from us here in Santo, and one afternoon Patrick Moynihan saw them walking down the street, so he invited them over. They walked in the front gates in 2 lines, each young man wearing dark glasses, his hand on an enormous automatic weapon. It was surreal – but also so funny. As I looked at each 18 year old face – and I’m fairly sure none of them is older than 24 – I was honestly happy to see them, but also happy for them that they had the opportunity to spend time at LCS, and would get to meet such smart, fun, interesting kids here. Of course it was the middle of netwayaj (cleanup hour) when they arrived, so the kids were more than happy to drop their brooms and wheelbarrows full of cinderblocks that they were in the midst of moving from the collapsed front wall. Instead they all gathered around the basketball court and watched members of the 82nd airborne take on 5 of LCS’s best ballers. The kids wore flip flops or played barefoot, and they basically ran circles around their peers in the US Army who wore fatigues and T-shirts with heavy boots. The Americans were actually much better shooters, but the full court defense and quick passes of the Haitians won the day. The final score was something like 40 to 15. Let’s hope the Americans have more success in their efforts to help rebuild this country than they did on the court.

Since that day, this one platoon from the 82nd has come back several more times. They told us they’ve kept the school a secret from the other platoons, calling it their “oasis.” Today they came for lunch and to enjoy real showers for the first time in three weeks. Obviously it would be absurd for the US military to eat the food that we eat from Catholic Relief Services and Food for the Poor, so they brought their MRE’s and exchanged them with the neighborhood children’s plates of rice and beans. You can be sure that both sides were absolutely happy with this arrangement. The LCS kids love MRE’s. A few of the older kids who have been working as translators in hospitals around the city have come back to school singing the praises of the MRE’s they get for lunch sometimes. After today’s exchange, I think the rest of the kids are now fully jealous of the United States Military’s superior cuisine.