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Last revised 19 January, 2008 11 October, 2001: It's been a month since the terrorist attacks in the United States. This week, we have seen people who's homes look like the pictures we've seen of Ground Zero in New York. The only difference is that no one is trying to clean up. No one is offering them shelter until they can get back on their feet. No one is trying to help. No one, that is, except organizations like Food for the Poor. And yet, the people of Haiti have asked us to tell America that they are praying for us. The faith that we have encountered here is unbelievable. When you ask the man dying of AIDS how he is doing today, he answers that God is good, while the flies feast on his open sores. The naked man at the AIDS hospital who has lost both his legs asks us to take his picture so we can show Americans what life is like in Haiti. The mother thanks us because her child is born in a hospital sponsored by Food for the Poor, and we represent the donors who keep it in operation. I have used superlatives many times, but it truly has been an incredible week. Today, we had the chance to decompress. We began the day at a hospital sponsored by Food for the Poor, and met the medical director who is a dead ringer for, of all people, James Earl Jones! I kept expecting him to say "This - is - C-N-N...", or perhaps, "Luke, I am your father." His voice is deep enough. He tells us a very different story from what we've heard most of the week. His hospital is clean and well stocked. It is totally funded and operated by Food for the Poor, unlike the other medical facilities we have seen which are operated by others and partially funded by FFP. Then, we took a trip up into the mountains to visit a rural church parish that needs a school. Our driver, Yvan (pronounced ee-VAN), must have taken some of those curves on two tires as he dodged the carcasses of busses that had gone over the side when their brakes failed on the way down! So what do you do when you come up on a blind curve at top speed with a mountain on one side and sheer drop on the other? Well, you speed up and lean on the horn, of course! Anyone have a Meclizine and a Prozac? We survived (you probably figured that out) going up this thing that only charity allows me to call a road. Then we got to this space between two shacks. Then we turned right. Then we kept going! Clouds were building in the mountains. We had been hearing about Tropical Storm Jerry heading through the Caribbean south of Haiti. It had fallen apart, but anyone who lives in areas susceptible to tropical weather knows that the rain is often more severe in weaker storms, and here we were heading up a narrow, winding, dirt road into a mountain rainstorm! Finally, after what seemed like a week (probably closer to 30 minutes), we reached a house, and the bus stopped. We're here! Wait. What? We're not here? We're only as high as the bus can go? We walk the rest of the way? You're kidding, right? Did I forget to mention I'm fat, out of shape, and entirely too close to taking my last oxygen-deprived breath? I'm a Louisiana boy! I'm used to the air at sea level, not at 3500 meters (or however high we really were ... I don't think anyone knows). OK, Lord, I'm here to see what you want to show me. You wouldn't let me die on a mountain in Haiti, would you? What we saw was a church and an elementary school. We were told that the church of St. Michael the Archangel (sorry, I can't do it in French) and it's 8 missions serve some 24,000 people in the mountains near Jacmel. It's a four hour round trip to get water, and of course there's no electricity or television or telephone. (Unfortunately, there are also no batteries, and the ones in my camera were nearly dead, so I didn't get many pictures.) Here's our project. They need a high school (actually, it's closer to what we would call a vocational school in the US). A previous attempt to build one failed when the money ran out. Food for the Poor has had a Haitian architect design the project, and made sure that the parish has the resources to operate the school after it's built. They will hire Haitian construction workers, probably from the neighborhood, to build the school, which will provide marketable skills for their children so they will not join the million people crammed into the slums of Port Au Prince. Right about now, we feel raindrops on our faces. We really do not want Yvan to have to try to drive down the side of a mountain on a muddy road in the rain, so we head back for the bus. We're scheduled to eat lunch here, so we do, but we hurry. We brought our own lunch of bread and cold cuts, but the people of the area have prepared a feast including goat, tomato jelly, and fresh beets. The goat and tomato jelly were surprisingly good! And yes, I understand the irony. I'm willing to travel to a foreign country, visit slums, dance with the elderly, hug sick children, embrace AIDS patients, climb a mountain, and even eat goat, but I won't try the beets. Such is life. After we get back into radio range, we learn that the bishops of Haiti will be holding a memorial service for the victims of the terrorist attacks in the United States a month earlier. No doubt as Americans we would be honored guests and the priests among us might even be invited to participate, but we decide unanimously that we would hold our own private mass and memorial. A massive memorial at a huge cathedral just doesn't seem to fit in with the week we have experienced. Our mass that night is an intensely emotional experience that no one outside of our group would understand. Follow these links to the pictures
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