Haiti - A Happy Remembrance 1-15-10

Anderson, South Carolina

One of my happiest memories in Port au Prince occurred while wandering in the school yard at the Episcopal School attached to La Cathedrale De La Sainte Trinite. There the happy cacophony of childish laughter bounced off the walls of the courtyard as hundreds of children pranced about in their clean crisp uniforms of emerald green, so full of hope and promise. That such an oasis could exist in the surrounding squalor was a testament of the power of faith and vision. The school with its children and the cathedral with its magnificent artwork are total losses. Enjoy these images below of what once was so promising in a land of dark hopelessness. You don’t want to see what is there now.

A casualty number being floated by a senior senator in Port au Prince is 500,000 dead. If this number holds, we will have just witnessed one of the all-time disasters anyplace anytime in our world history. What is important is that the world now mounts an all-time compassionate response to a nation that has lived in misery for nearly the whole of its existence.

I have just heard from Jackie at the Zanmi Lasante facility that the fine large church there in Cange has been made into a hospital. The multi-building hospital in Cange survived and is immediately adjacent to the large church. This grand facility with its beautiful botanical plantings will be an oasis for those able to make it there from Port au Prince. The gracious volunteers working there have been able to provide bed covers and even baths for the wounded that have already arrived. Great work by Sarah Marsh (midwife), Drs. Koji and Thierry and a visiting surgeon who got caught by the disaster, and Dr. Lisbet have enabled a lifesaving hand to be offered to the desperate who have already arrived at the gate, which is open to all who come. Jackie, who normally runs the Artisan Center, teaches French, and does much hospitality work for visitors to Cange, has taken on another kind of hospitality work of the highest order. As she puts it “I’ve taken up bedpan duty.” There is no better place in the country for people to go for healing than Cange. Along with medicine they will get a message of hope for their souls.