How beautiful upon the mountains..

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good tidings". (Is 52:7)

Dear family and friends,

For one or two weeks more I will write out these updates.

The St Luke team is doing huge work, and there are updates on the stlukehaiti.org website.

These particular messages are the work of my own team. The work is tough and requires a lot of rough driving, loading, carrying, walking, visiting people, listening to their challenges, and practical help.

I am sorry there are always errors in my text, but it shows I don't have a ghostwriter!
There is just not a lot of time to write carefully.

I wrote last week about "Stainess", who was riddled with seven bullets.
Thankfully, they are all flesh injuries- no bones, vessels or organs- and most of these in the legs.

He is home from the hospital, and we sent him a good pair of crutches that just came in a container- and he is starting to walk again

Also from last week's message, I am glad to report that Benicia was released unharmed by her kidnappers. She came to tell me about the ordeal.

A story about how she was suddenly taken from the street, becoming an object for barter, her personhood counting for nothing, and being totally dependent on criminals she could not see with her banded eyes, or feel with her bound hands, and whose voices were unknown to her.

Alone, unless they came to her briefly to offer water or rice (she always refused strongly to accept anything from their hands), at one point they said to her,
"Your brother (who was the negotiator) told us you mean nothing to your family, and that we should just kill you and throw your corpse on a heap of rotting garbage."

Benicia did not believe this, but acting fast she responded, "So, that means I have no family. Maybe you need to be my family, and show that you care for me by letting me go."

They came again then next day and said, "Who are you, anyway? All radios are demanding your release, all social media are bursting about you, you have closed two hospitals, even the employees and sick kids are demonstrating on the street for your release. You are a hot potato in our hands, we might have to let you go for free. Who are you?."

Benecia said, "I don't believe you about my brother, but I do believe you about the media. Who am I? I am someone who belongs to the two families of Nos Petits Freres et Soeurs, and St Luke Foundation. We care about each other, we are not just employees. We are all important to each other and we will stand up for each other."

She said they were astounded. She was released the next day, but after she spoke she was offered juice and rice.

"Please eat this. Please drink this. We want you to return your family and friends strong."

There is an Irish prayer I heard once a long time ago:

“May those who love us, love us;
And for those who don't love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we will know them by their limping."
+++++++

Here is more good news.

After a week of working out details of lengths, widths, and weights of materials, and longitudes, latitudes, and weather patterns, and thanks to US Ambassador to Haiti and USAID, we were able to finally get the 500 aluminum roofing sheets, along with hammers, saws, and nails helicoptered to the people living in the shadow of Peak Makaya, in Pourcine, which I wrote about last time. USAID and Haitian Civil Protection doubled our load by adding equivalent weight in food, blankets, and other kits full of necessary personal items.

Dr Adrienne, who was the one who advocated to us for the community, was on the helicopter flight for the great homecoming. It turns out that taking a helicopter ride was also on her "bucket list", so that was an element of fun for her. We will sure return to that mountain community when the mudslides are dug through, especially trying to restock their animals and replant the farms.

As last week galloped along, by Thursday we had loaded a caravan of 5 vehicles to head to the south again. We were delayed because of total bedlam in Martissant again, and barricades made of containers on the main roads through the markets on Grand Rue and at Croix des Bossales. We finally made it through, and we made a number of stops, including delivering the medicines for our various clinics in the south for the month of September, and restocking our various teams working in communities hit hard by the earthquake.

We also brought supplies to Dr Rivette in the hills beyond Cavaillon, and tons of iron and aluminum (and all of our welding equipment), and in two days built a huge area for her to hold her clinics (including 30 simple beds, which we also brought in the caravan). Dr Rivette is an Emergency Medicine physician, native of Cavaillon, and has been attending the people in her hometown as she has best been able, considering her low level of supplies, and the fact that she was mourning one of her children killed in the earthquake. It will be an important structure for the community, and I hope the video is posted on the St Luke site of the jubilant community when the last blinding sparks of the welder turned cold.

We went on to Les Cayes and we slept at our favorite Inn- the courtyard of the Missionaries of Charity, again under the stars. This time we all had mosquito nets. The Sisters had brought their many patients back inside after three weeks of everyone sleeping in the courtyard. The reason was sickness seemed to be increasing among the disabled children, a few had symptoms of fever and mucous buildup, and one had died.

We went with the Sisters to check on Marie, the one they were currently worried about. Marie was laying on her side, her spine sharply arched backwards from previous meningitis, her head abnormally large from hydrocephalus.

Bhavesh and I did what doctors do: looked in her throat, checked her oxygen saturation, checked her temperature, listened to her chest, and hypothesized about the probable causes (Covid in the immunodepressed was on the list of possibilities). That's what doctors do.

One of the Sisters did what mothers do. She bent low to her ear, called her name, started singing to her a song about another Marie (Jesus' mother). Sister said she would not stop singing until Marie smiled again, as she always done when this song is sung to her with such love. I saw half of her mouth curl upwards and thought this is amazing. Sister said, "it's not her full smile" and kept going until there appeared a warm, wide grin.

St Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic physician and Doctor of the Church, would say that Sister elicited the most important of the vital signs, called viridans. "Greenness." How much life force is still evident.
This isn't solicited by a gadget it the ear or clipped onto the fingertips or held against the back while you are ordered to breathe.

You have to cross an abyss to elicit viridans. Hearts and souls have to meet across the divide of the sickness.

Having done what doctors do and what mothers do, we now turned to what priests do: we offered our prayers of blessing and intercession fo Marie.

We went on from there to purchase and load more roofing materials in Les Cayes, enough for another 20 families, which we delivered within Les Cayes, then in Picot and in Maniche.

We went to Picot to fulfill my promise to the student there from our Academy for Peace and Justice. Like Benicia, he gets it. We really care.
He beamed as we delivered the materials, and his small community helped us unload.

The funeral of those who died in the peristil (as I mentioned last week) was being celebrated just over the hill.

As we left, I said to Pierre Louis, "Here is a little out-of-school lesson.
You see I came back, as I said I would?
Let your yes always be yes, and if you can't say yes, have the courage and humility to say no.
You will always be respected for your golden word."

Finally, when we went to Maniche to deliver other promised roofing. We were treated royally to mountain coffee, fresh pineapples, spaghetti with sardines, and "tomtom" offered by people who were still up to their ankles in rubble. We started plans with the Curé (Pastor of the fallen Catholic church) in order to raise at the church what we raised in Cavaillon: enough of a solid shelter to be able to resume the sacramental life of the parish. Even alb, stole, chalice and linens are needed- all is lost.

There is a Spanish Passionist priest visiting us at the moment for three months, Fr Juliano. He has been a missionary in Honduras, Peru and Chile. He asked to come on this caravan trip, and he later confided to me that we we returned he was only able to sleep from exhaustion, otherwise sadness would have kept him from sleeping.

His view was that all these small helps to individual people and communities is so little. It is evident that the destruction is so very vast. He is surprised and shocked there is not a huge international effort to to help all these poor people, especially the ones in the rural mountains.

He is totally right. In fact, Cardinal Chibly of Les Cayes said practically the same thing today in an interview with Agenzia Fides.

The problems are massive. What any of us do does not even make a dent.

But individual efforts can make human consciousness rise, in the same way leaven raises bread.

Then there is a chance for both "more" and "better".

I think of Benicia and the effects of our public resistance to her kidnapping, both on her and her kidnappers.
I think of the Sisters singing into the ear of Marie.
I think of Pierre Louis as a young student, learning that there are people who really care.
I think of what 5 loaves and two fish did, in the right hands.

Lastly, I think of one of the young men we raised in our NPFS home and schools here in Haiti, Anous, who is now an architect.

He came to see me today, to offer his help in the roofing designs, on learning that we want to avoid tarps and tents.

Our conversations went on to the poverty of the country, the deplorable bandit presence taking over all areas, the vastness of the earthquake destruction in the mountains.

He said, "in twenty years we will solve all of this."

I asked him how- just starting with the bandits.

He said he doesn't know how yet, but we will solve it.

I persisted, how do you solve it with no plan?

He said, "it's enough that the numbers of us who want change are growing and growing. It's enough for now. If we keep this desire alive, the way to do it will become evident.

He smiled a big toothy grin and put his hand on my shoulder, thanking me for my own work.

I thought, is he foolish? Is he young? Is he naive?

The answer is yes.

But in my heart I know he is also right.

We should all live with his optimism, and keep alive in our minds eye, the world we want to see tomorrow.

May God bless our foolishness, and make it fruitful in a lasting way.

Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
September 7, 2021
Port au Prince