What I do everyday....March 3, 2025

From this morning’s gospel at Mass:

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up,
knelt down before him, and asked him,
"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus answered him…..
You know the commandments…."
He replied and said to him,
"Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth."
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
"You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (Mark 10:17-20)

To meet the astounding number of urgent humanitarian needs which are overwhelming our budget, including the cancellation of the USAID funds which supported our 600 HIV/TB patients, I am glad to sell what we have to give to the poor.

Just the new obligation we have inherited to keep the 600 people alive on medicines CRUCIAL to their survival, requires about $20 for each person per month, for an additional $12,000 per month, which is all beyond our stressed budget.

As I mentioned already, I sold our peanut butter making equipment. Today I sold my dumptruck. It is essential that we sell what we have unless we cannot possibly function without it. We can still make peanut butter by hand. It is possible to use wheelbarrows and my tractor for heavy work. It’s just harder and longer.

We will find away to keep our HIV/TB friends and colleagues alive.

We are in a new reality in Haiti, namely, the use of bombs from drones against the gangs. There have been three strikes these past few days. Everyone is becoming more radicalized in their hatred over these past six months. Understandably. But there are consequences.

The entire population, in particular, and also benevolent organizations, get doubted by both criminal rings and law enforcement, never sure whose side the “neutral” people are really on. The people’s revenge on the gangs if often enough toward the unknown innocent, and the police revenge on supposed spies for gangs in the markets and roadways, also results sometimes in the violent loss of innocent life.

On of the young men who grew up in our orphanage, Wilner Desir, was killed and burned nearby in Tabarre yesterday, in these dynamics. Wilner worked in the programs of Gena and Finesse for the disabled. We are shocked and saddened by his death. Wilner and Wilflo had also become close friends.

We tried to gather his remains today, but what was left of his earthly dwelling was already shoveled off the street by the Town Hall. Andre will try to recuperate his remains again tomorrow, for a proper burial.

We would never have imagined such difficult times when we started in Haiti in 1987. We also would never imagined such difficult times on the world scene as we are living now.

The reading from the book of Sirach this morning warned, the difference you can make after you die is the same as the difference you can make before you were born. ZERO.

The time to act is now, while we live and breathe. May our living and breathing dedicated to preserving our humanity and civilization.

Wilner Desir, rest in peace as we pray to God for you and so many others with deep grief and faith.

What I do everyday...February 25, 2025

Last night and today were full of heavy gunfire, all around the city. Delmas 30, and the area of the airport, and here in Tabarre among many other places. People were killed, houses were set on fire.

Here in Tabarre there was a massacre, and about 15 people were killed. Houses were burned. These events are just down the road- a short walk.

We honestly don’t see how this downward spiral will be stopped. Drone footage shows many emptied and destroyed areas of Port au Prince. It is troubling to think that 500,000 Haitians or more, working in the USA, might be returned to this death trap with their children. If they must be deported, another country is a better option than Haiti.

If you read this message I wrote yesterday morning, you will see how very often a pet dog fares much better in Haiti than the multitudes of poor human beings:

“When my dog Beau died during the night, I could not help but reflect on how his life over twelve years and death over three weeks was a much better life and death-one hundred times better- than the life and death of the poor people of Haiti.

Beau’s quality of life was blessed compared to Marie France and Madame Milord, two very poor and very sick women who also died last night at our St Luke hospital

In particular Marie France had bilateral breast cancer that spread to her brain.

In a country of closed hospitals and with her economic means bring zero she found no help, until her family found us at the very end of her life. Cancer is already a huge suffering for anyone in any country. Cancer with no treatment even for the final agonies of cancer pain is worse than a nightmare We did our best to manage her pain these days with round the clock fentanyl.

Her life was tougher than nails and we offered mass for her eternal peace.

I will miss Beau for sure. His life and death, companionship and witness to death, give me lessons for my life and death.

But the lessons of Mme Milord and Marie France give me lessons a hundred times more profound.

Let’s pray for peace, and the chance for the people of Haiti to live a normal and dignified life

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

All institutions here are struggling to survive. Many have failed already. Ours are greatly reduced because of the flight of professionals from our workforces, the enormous inflation, the dangers for the staff and the sick to reach our hospitals, and for students and teachers to reach a number of our schools in Port au Prince.

In order to survive I have been selling anything not totally essential, and using the money for food for refugees, surgeries for the destitute sick and victims of trauma, and to help relocate people to safer areas (more honest to say less dangerous areas).

It is sad to dismantle what was once successful and productive, but by same same token in a neighbor’s time of extreme need, its best to “sell what you possess and give to the poor.” (Matthew 19:21) I am selling the industrial seed and peanut grinder pictured below. Today I sold my small dump truck. I am sure God will keep score of our sacrifices and one day help us to build back even better than we were.

Port au Prince was just listed in a report as one of the most dangerous cities in the world to life. How did we ever slide to this level of destruction.

Please thank God with us that things are quieter in Kenscoff these days.

For the sake of our sanity, and being productive, you will see some pictures from our garden. Some of our vanilla vines are flowering, and since they need to be pollinated by hand we learned how to do it with a toothpick. See some pictures below. You will also see we have no need to curse our fig tree, as Jesus had to do with his, because it is giving us some welcome figs.

We appreciate your concern and friendship and prayers. We all strive to keep our hopes high and our good works strong. God is our helper and our strength. God is our Provident.

What I do everyday.....February 17, 2025

Dear friends,

This morning with the Sisters, we offered mass for the mother and child victims of the bandits in Kenscoff. It is a barbaric event involving the bandits forcing the mother to throw her baby into the fire or be killed. The young mother was forced to do so, and ran off and went crazy, and died of profound distress.

I hate to even repeat such a hateful and painful story, but it shows what terror is being inflicted on the population. Also, for those of us who are believers, our prayerful sharing in their suffering by lamenting their passion and death before God grounds us in compassion and trust in God’s final judgement and victory

There was also a massacre of 13 people, last night or this morning, in our area of Tabarre.

You can well imagine why, when we got near Kenscoff today, we had to pass through three different brigades of masked local people with machetes. They are so radicalized against the kinds of crimes I just mentioned, that they are vigilant against anyone approaching Kenscoff (and many other areas) that if they find an armed person or a person with no proof of identity, they are killed by the blade on the spot. This happens all around the country.

The roads were timid above Fort Jacques and beyond. Everyone knows the bandits are still present, in hiding. Kenson had mentioned that the police had returned in force last night, to prevent another attack. We saw them reenforcing their numbers again today about 4pm, by the time we were heading down the mountain.

We arrived at St Helen about 2pm with 20 sacks of rice, 10 sacks of beans, 4 cases of oil to help with the extras at meals (refugees). The best plan and the one being followed is when the day is free of shooting, the refugees return to the homes and gardens and come back to sleep in safety.

This works for refugees where we are (in Obleon) but not in Furcy, because many of those refugees had their simple, peasant houses burned.

We had the same quantities of food for the Furcy refugees, and they came to St Helene to get them.

We also had complete emergency kits for the refugee compounds, 10 each for St Helene and Furcy.

We also had three well prepared bullet injury kits for the police combat vehicles. They include tourniquets, injections to promote clotting where pressure banadages wont work (internal injuries), and thick compression gauze and pads, with elastic bandaging. We are also working on getting powder for blood clotting (BleedStop) and rapid Seal Wound Gel from USA.

This is especially a challenge with closed airports and borders.

We found Nirva, Kenson and all the team to be in good spirits in the face of their dangers and we are heartened by this.

There are two pictures of delivery below.

Also, as I was leaving for Kenscoff, Timario brought Jeannine and her mother to see me. Jeannine’s surgery for hydrocephalus went very well. Even though it is distressing to see such a huge head, anyone who saw the pre-surgery picture can see how relaxed and unstressed Jeannine looks now, in the third picture below, all thanks to God.

What I do every day...February 16, 2025

Dear friends,

If you reread what I wrote on Feb 7 about bandit attacks near our NPH Childrens home in Kenscoff (St Helene), today some of the concerns of that day came to pass.

At about 2am this morning, bandits started attacking the area around us, targeting some private houses, and the Teleco communication antennas vital in part to police communication.

Kenson called me early this morning as things were unfolding. He said the orphanage was flooded with some 250 refugees (neighbors running for shelter), that one was injured by a bullet, that shooting was intense all around.

He told me that he was able to send the injured down the mountain. I told him that as soon as I got Andre, Jocelynson and Fanfan we would be on our way there to help.

My goal was to be in shoulder to shoulder solidarity, help figure out how to manage the unfolding dangers, and when I returned to Tabarre to bring anyone with me who wanted to leave.

I only got as far as Petionville, because the police were forbidding any vehicles to enter the Kenscoff area except their own, and because we were warned that both vigilante groups and the bandits were radicalized on high adrenaline, and often attack approaching vehicles who the suspect are coming with bad intentions.

Even if I was in my ambulance, very often crimes are done in stolen vehicles like ambulances, and criminals often wear stolen uniforms of doctors or police to reinforce the criminal activity.

If anyone were injured on site, or if the bandits had stormed St Helene, of set fire to any part of it, I would have persisted against all danger to get there, but frequent updates from Kenson showed this was not the case. So we did not persist.

By the end of the day the police were reinforced and drove the gangs off. But the police left again, and the gangs will surely return.

Among the casualties of law enforcement officers was John Calo. John taught music in our St Helene home from 1998 to 2009. His wife, Immacula, is the cook for our guest house at St Helene. John was killed in the line of duty. We mourn his loss, we grieve with Immacula and her family, and we honor John for defending the people of the mountain.

We will find the best way to support Immacula, as well as the 250 refugees within the embrace of our walls.

Andre reminded me of the funeral at St Helene, in 1999, of the American nun. Sister Grace Jennings was from Vermont. She was a School Sister of Notre Dame, a missionary for most of her life in Puerto Rico. She came to us from there when she was very old, and was a wonderful caregiver to very sick and dying children at our original St Damien Hospital in Petionville.

Sister Grace was a poet, and I remember very well how when she was frustrated or angry about something, she turned it into a poem and promptly hung it on the main bulletin board. The poems were clever, biting, and very funny.

After some years, Sr Grace had a stroke and we burried her at St Helene. John, pictured below, as the music teacher, prepared the music for her funeral. He had taught a dozen children from St Helene to play a dirge on their flutes, and they followed me in a long procession as we led Sister Grace’s ashes from the gate to our own cemetery. The music was sweet when they played together, which is hard to do when walking and one cannot hear the other. At their off moments the music sounded like a bunch of cats trying to get out of a burlap bag.

I pictured the flutes as the musical version of one of Grace’s poems.

I tell this story because to say “there were deaths” is as cold as a number. But to say “who died” brings grateful memory and deep regret.

May John’s soul be sped to heaven by God’s mercy, and may God help each of us to light up the path to peace, from the very place each of us is standing, here and now.

What I do everyday, February 10, 2025

Lots of shooting nearby, at Tabarre bridge and Croix des Bouquets as police square off with bandits.

Also lot’s of shooting in Kenscoff mountains, especially Berlot.

Estimates of those killed in the Kenscoff mountains (Bonga, Carrefour Bet, Berlot, and many other places) is at least 150, and refugees there are estimated at 5,000. Today we will invest Gds 210,000 (US $1600) to buy bales of clothes and sheets to send to the mountain refugees.

A drop in the bucket, but at least there is still a bucket to drop into.

Part of the work with the street children yesterday was filmed by Stevenson on his phone (viedo below) . It’s not a professional clip but will show a few things: the enthusiasm of the street youth for help, how the distribution has to stop occasionally to get them respect order, and the plastic baskets the team bought for them because the distribution is of sweets and treats for them to resell on the street to make a little cash.

Also, a long awaited moment for our farm: some of our VANILLA vines have first buds. Vanilla require manual pollenation, so we are watching youtube videso to be ready. See the buds below.