The Labordes (Joseph Laborde is the lay leader of St. Philippe – St. Jacques) are all alive and uninjured. Jonas (the oldest son) escaped “by a miracle.” He was at the Episcopal University [in Port-au-Prince], on the roof, when the earthquake occurred. The building collapsed around him, killing many of his classmates and professors. Jonas found a small hole and crawled through “like a snake.”

The Labordes’ home is cracked but standing, but, like everyone in the area, they are living and sleeping outside [...] they are having three or four aftershocks a day. Joseph has led morning prayer outside, in front of the collapsed church.

Kerwin+ himself was reportedly in Port-au-Prince with his brothers, Carlo and Roosnel, when the earthquake occurred. They were stuck in the city overnight, but were able to return to Léogâne on the following day. Kerwin+ has celebrated Eucharist on the grounds at Sainte Croix—Dianne reports, “he thought nobody would come, but in fact 200 – 300 people came.”

With this report, we now know that no one with close ties to St. John’s, at least, was badly harmed, although their situation remains extremely difficult, and virtually everyone there has lost friends or family. We continue to pray for them, and the Minnesota parishes with partners are discussing how best to help our partner congregations as they begin to rebuild.

On Friday, February 5, 2010, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., the Art for Haiti Relief Committee and St. James on the Parkway (directions) will host an ‘Exhibition and Art Sale for Haiti’.

The exhibit will display paintings, sculpture, and a variety of artifacts at a variety of prices. These works are for sale to help raise money for the vast needs of victims in Haiti. All proceeds go to victims of the Haitian earthquake for immediate life saving and sustaining uses.

As everyone now knows, this beautiful but poor country and people have suffered incredible destruction. Haitian history, too, has been rife with difficulties: slavery, colonialism, and natural disasters. Haiti’s people, by nature, are peaceful, honest, creative and family-loving, which makes their plight all the more close to the hearts of us who have an easier, safer life.

The artworks on display are primarily from Haiti, plus others from the Caribbean and from tribal cultures in Africa, North and South America, India and Oceania. These art pieces and artifacts are infused with essential life-loving and native esthetics, often pure, simple and vivid. Such works have sometimes been called Naive or Primitive Art; at their heart, they invoke warmth, hope, resilience, and joy.

Haitian work includes small paintings of landscapes, farming and village life, as well as reliefs in thin steel that express fantastic animals, figures with foliage, and a ‘garden of Eden’, made of metal cut from oil drums. Small wood carvings show native figures and enchanting animals. Other items for sale include posters, photographs and Haitian coffee.

The “Exhibition and Art Sale for Haiti” is free to all. Refreshments will be available.

St. Luke’s and St. Alban’s are among Episcopal and other churches helping this one-day activity.

Please help support this relief effort any way you can. Proceeds will be distributed through Partners in Health and Episcopal Relief and Development.

Dianne Pizey spoke to Kerwin+ on Monday morning:

He told me what we already knew – Haiti is almost completely destroyed, the church has lost almost everything, every person he knows has lost at least one loved one, everyone is sleeping outside and they have nothing but the clothes on their back, everyone is crying [for] their loved ones. He didn’t lose any immediate family, but he lost three cousins in Port au Prince. He lost many, many parishioners from Ste. Croix in Léogâne, including three young people who had just started at the Episcopal University in Port au Prince.

At St. Philippe – St. Jacques, the church is completely destroyed, and the school is very badly damaged, just like all the other churches and schools. He said there were not many deaths there.

Kerwin+’s wife, Rholcie, and daughter, Kercie, are both okay but still shaken. Terry Franzen, who leads the Haiti partnership at Christ Church in Norcross, GA, and joined the St. John’s trip to Haiti last June, reports from a conversation with Kerwin+ on Tuesday:

[Kerwin+] has made arrangements to get Rholcie and Kercie to the Dominican Republic on Friday and then to Ft. Lauderdale, where Kerwin’s cousin will meet them.

St. Joseph d’Arimathie, Jasmine

In the same e-mail, Terry relays news from Kerwin+ about Christ Church’s partner congregation, of which he is also Priest-in-Charge:

Kerwin said that he spoke to Maxo, the lay leader for St. Joseph’s today. He said that the church is badly cracked and that everyone is sleeping outside because of the damage to their homes and their fear of another quake.

Bonne Nouvelle, Bigonet

Maria Roesler, a friend of Ruth Anne Olson of St. James on the Parkway’s Haiti partnership, spoke to Kerwin+ on Sunday about Bonne Nouvelle in Bigonet, St. James’ partner congregation.

He reports that the church is destroyed and the school was badly damaged, but nobody from the Bonne Nouvelle church or the school died. He did mention another church that is nearby (I didn’t catch the name) and says that a lot of people from that church died. [...] [M]ost people are sleeping outside, as their houses were destroyed. [...]

He says that they truly need prayer in this time, because many people are crying for family that they have lost. He was encouraged to hear about the prayer service that was held here for Haiti.

Epiphanie, L’Acul

Epiphanie, the Episcopal congregation in the town of L’Acul near Léogâne, is partnered with Messiah in Saint Paul. Mike Carlin, co-director of CODEP, which is located across the road from Epiphanie, sent this report to Suzanne Wiebusch, Messiah’s liason for their partnership, on Monday:

Epiphan[i]e has some serious damage to [its] facility. I will be assessing the damage the[re] later today with an architect that is stopping by. We worshipped outside yesterday and had a beautiful service.

When Jean-Louis and his family arrived at Gressier, however, they found no one there. Many of the residents had moved to the mountains for fear of remaining near unstable structures or for fear of an oncoming tsunami. Jean-Louis joined his family. [...]

Jean Louis promised the citizens of Gressier, now living in makeshift shelters on the district’s mountainside, he would help raise funds for basic needs like tents, medical supplies, and water.

full story

We have received word from Crochu, a small mountain village (and also, I believe, an arrondissement) where St. John’s has done several mobile clinics with Carmel Valdema. Burt Purrington reports:

I was especially worried about Berline (“Méla”) Vètinèl, a recently-graduated nurse and the daughter of Elinèl Vètinèl, the head lay leader at St. Alban’s, Crochu. [...] Last Friday, Berline’s niece, who lives in Atlanta, called to say she’d talked to Berline and her mother and they were all right although they were staying outside their home because of the fear of aftershocks.

She also told me that there had been some damage at Crochu but that Berline’s sister, Tazia, and her family were OK.

This morning, after 10 days of unsuccessful calls from both ways, Tazia and her husband, Louis-Jacques, got through—and I was able to call them back when their calling card got low. [...]

Today I learned that some people in Crochu were injured by the quake, and a cousin of Louis-Jacques was killed (though he may have been in [Port-au-Prince] at the time of the quake). There was considerable damage at and around Plaisance (and I assume most of southwestern Crochu and perhaps all of Crochu). The damage was especially bad in the poorest communities on top of the mountain above Plaisance and Bouzi. Vètinèl’s home collapsed, so Berline doesn’t have a clinic any more. Tazia & Louis-Jacques’s home is badly damaged, and their kitchen & twalèt (probably the best in all of [southwest] Crochu) collapsed. Same with [Louis-Jacques'] mother’s home on top of the mountain. The sewing machines that Tazia and the young women in her sewing co-op use are badly damaged. A generator that [Louis-Jacques] just bought was damaged too. Thankfully, the spring at Plaisance is still flowing, and people can still go down the mountain to buy rice, cooking oil, spaghetti, canned fish, sugar, salt, etc. at the markets in Bon Repos & Croix-des-Bouquets which is good. The people of Crochu, like most people in rural Haiti, depend on store-bought goods from the cities, and they would be in big trouble if supplies of these staples weren’t maintained. Because prices for these goods are considerably inflated now, people in poor areas like Crochu will have even greater difficulties keeping their families fed.

This morning’s quake has widened and lengthened cracks in the walls of the School somewhat, but buildings are still in use.

More importantly, they are still serving patients in Léogâne.

Word arrived Tuesday evening that a truck with Dr. Chip Lambert and many supplies arrived at FSIL. Chip Lambert, M.D. is Director, Mission Service, Medical Benevolence Foundation, partnering with the Presbyterian Church USA. This morning we had word that “Chip is miraculously with Hilda doing great stuff after an heroic effort to pack and transport more than 3000 lbs of just what she needed…”

Dean Hilda Alcindor, students, and a visiting nurse faculty volunteer were mobilized within a half hour after the first quake. They have set up 10 first aid stations around the town of Léogâne. The Dean said that 5,000 Léogâne townspeople are being cared for in the yard of the school.

What I find more disturbing, though, are the two subtext points he seems to be making:

1. Charities working in Haiti already have plenty of money to support their relief efforts there.

   His given example is that Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières , or MSF), on their US donation page, is asking for unrestricted donations to their general Emergency Relief Fund. From this he extrapolates (falsely) that MSF “has already received enough money over the past three days to keep its Haiti mission running for the best part of the next decade.” He goes on to compare the earthquake in Haiti and subsequent outpouring of support to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. But as the US Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders points out,

   comparisons to the Tsunami are misplaced because the medical systems affected by that crisis were not decimated and the short and long term emergency surgical needs of the population were much narrower.

   Furthermore, even if MSF did have plenty of money to support their work in Haiti, other organizations don’t. Groups like Partners in Health, which is now running the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, are serving thousands of patients with extremely limited supplies, doing surgery with no anesthesia, making splints out of whatever’s handy in lieu of casts. They need money to purchase supplies and get them into the country. (Incidentally, they also need clearance to actually land the planes full of supplies.)

2. Money donated to charities working in Haiti won’t all go to Haiti anyway.

   To demonstrate this point Salmon cites the recent hubbub over accounting at Yéle, and takes particular exception to the fact that 20% of the funds from the George Clooney telethon will go to Yéle. I’m not convinced that there’s anything so fishy going on at Yéle as is being alleged, and it may well be racism that’s partly fueling the scrutiny of that organization in particular. But I would point out that the other 80% of money raised by the telethon will go to Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, and UNICEF, organizations that have an established presence in Haiti and are respected for putting all donations to use in the place they’re needed (although the Red Cross is not without their share of controversy).

By all means, when you donate for relief in Haiti, donate unrestricted funds, so that the organizations receiving them can decide for themselves how best to use them. And don’t let Felix Salmon’s faulty framing of that point deter you from doing so.

While we’re at it, let’s stop referring to Haiti (or any other country?) as a failed state. It’s patronizing and unhelpful, and moreover it insults the Haitian people: Haiti is a country with remarkably functional communities, given the poverty and instability imposed on them (largely by the rest of the world). If its national government is dysfunctional, it’s not because of any defect in the Haitian temperament or culture that the term ‘failed state’ implies.

CNP team is in a vehicle on the way to Leogane now to go set up too and jump in with what has been started. [...] Save [the Children] and CNP are working on getting camps set up and we’re addressing food and water issues.

and in another e-mail:

CNP is finalizing a partnership with Save the Children and we will work with FSIL and the Notre Dame Filariasis Program to help in Leogane. Anyone interested in donating to CNP can do so at http://www.cnphaiti.org/.

According to Suzi Parker, who runs the guesthouse at l’Hôpital Sainte Croix and has been in relatively regular e-mail communication with CNP staff, the hospital is helping Doctors Without Borders to set up surgical facilities in Léogâne:

There are 3 areas of medical care in Leogane right now besides at HSC [Hôpital Sainte Croix]. The nursing school [FSIL] which operates under the umbrella of HSC has seen an enormous number of people, and had several babies born there. The soccer field in town also has seen lots of patients, and I hear that the UN compound just outside town has a group there. All over town, tent cities have grown up, and folks are building lean-to’s from salvaged building materials. [...]

Latest news is that Doctors Without Borders is setting up an operating unit in the field behind the hospital, using our electrical and water. We are lending them gas from the generator until they are operational, hopefully by tomorrow. Another NGO, Caritas, wearing Catholic Relief Services t-shirts will come and help in the day clinic. Good news, as they talked about docs, pharmacist, and supplies, and we need more of all of them.

I just talked to Rev. Yyan Francois who told [m]e that Rev. Kerwin Delicat is fine. We do not know Gressier [...]

He and others also report that Fr. Elie Charles, who was at Ste Croix when the first Minnesota-Haiti partnership began, and his wife are fine.

Several updates from around Haiti also came through yesterday, several of them via Lauren Stanley+. One that I missed yesterday:

John Talbird says: Just talked with Jean Jacques Deravil. He is at home. He, his wife, and daughter are safe.

Fr. John Talbird works with the Children’s Nutrition Program. According to the Chattanoogan:

Rev. Talbird was in Haiti to interview a candidate to lead the reopening of the Hospital St. Croix at Leogane.

Rees Johnson reports:

Carmel has set up a medical clinic at Croix des Bouquets and is using all of the supplies we left from our last mission trip and all the meds she has there in her program and those we left. She is making a big pumpkin soup to feed all of those people who are hungry.

which sounds precisely true to form. Mary White of CHAP, the non-profit that funds Carmel’s nutrition program, Lespwa Timoun, reports from a conversation with Carmel and Pere Val’s children:

[T]heir house is still standing but they are afraid to go in for long, just dash in to get something, as most of their neighbors homes have collapsed. They have lost many friends. The water system, church and school in Crois-des-Bouquet are OK, just the wall collapsed, the new walls on the building and the perimeter wall at Lewspa Timoun have all collapsed. The church at Gorman is destroyed. Praise God the school and church at Thomazeau appear to be OK.

The Sisters of St. Margaret posted on their website that they’ve found housing for the Sisters in Haiti. David McNeely has a house in Delmas, and they were able to determine that it was still standing. He reports:

She said they will try to make their way to our place with the help of the driver from St. Vincent’s today. … Soeur Marie was relieved to have a place to go to. She said “Nou pas ka rete la!” [we can't stay there!] [in the field]. I told her to do all they can to get to the house because there will soon be spread of typhoid, malaria, and other illness.

Léogâne

Several bits of news from Léogâne have come up on Lauren Stanley+’s blog. Hilda Alcindor, director of FSIL (the nursing school in Léogâne), had this to say (read more at Lauren+’s blog):

Our students are doing a wonderful job.

FSIL is about the only healthcare facility in Leogane. We need all kind of medical supplies.

The students are delivered so far four babies: 3 boys one girl. All of them are healthy.

We lost three students ( 1 senior, 1 junior, 1 sophomore) The sophomore perished with her little girl. It is overwhelming but I am holding on.

The staff of the Children’s Nutrition Program, all of whom are now back in the US, also sent an update that confirms previous reports about the state of the Sainte Croix hospital compound. They are preparing to send a medical team to Léogâne to set up a field clinic within the week and are requesting donations to assist in that effort.

Dianne Pizey, who has led many of the St. John’s trips to Haiti, spoke with Yoleine Gateau, the owner of a guesthouse in Léogâne where St. John’s members stayed in June 2009 (a different one from the Ste. Croix hospital guesthouse). She reports as follows:

[Yoleine] had just returned to New York from Haiti a week before the earthquake. Today she was able to contact her friends and family at the guesthouse. They are all uninjured. The top floor of the guesthouse collapsed.

Her family tells her that helicopters have arrived in Léogâne with aid. They say that there are many orphaned children in the streets. Yoleine is hoping to get a delelgation together to travel there in February, to try to organize care for the orphans.

Confirmation that aid is reaching Léogâne is starting to come through on the news. A 40-person British search and rescue team has arrived there, as has a first shipment of UN food aid. The attention may have come because of video footage the BBC showed yesterday and another report filed today. According to that report,

The UN base at Leogane is full of vehicles, equipment, food, water and men [...] [b]ut instead of being out in the village, the UN representatives at this base are clustered around the front gate, laughing as they buy shampoo from a local salesman.

This in a town that the UN’s spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Elisabeth Byrs, is reporting is “the worst affected area, with 80 to 90 per cent of buildings damaged” (report via Australian Broadcasting Company—the other ABC).

Gressier

News is also beginning to come in from Gressier. The aforelinked ABC article reports 40 to 50 percent of buildings there are destroyed. An account from Haiti Health ministries (not affiliated with the Episcopal Church as far as I know, but they do have a Minnesota connection) from Thursday describes much the same situation as in Léogâne. There, as at FSIL, babies are being delivered amongst all the trauma care being provided, and as in Léogâne, supplies are short.

Other news from Gressier comes from Michele Braithwaite, who commented here on Thursday about the House of Hope orphanage, which is supported by Good Shepherd in Burke, VA, as well as from Tryggvi Arnason of Holy Innocents in Atlanta, GA, who received the following from Precene Louis at St Mathieu in Gressier:

Dear Father, thank you for your message. we are at the residence are alive. we are living out side the gate. let me tell you that this morning I went to father Jean Berthold . I met him. he told me that he has so many people died from the church. And i see the church is destroyed. he told that everything is gone.

keep praying for us because we need help.

Jacmel

Although Minnesota Episcopalians don’t have direct connections to Jacmel, many of us from St. John’s who have been to Haiti have enjoyed an afternoon on the beach there. It’s reportedly hard-hit as well. KONPAY is attempting to get medical aid into Jacmel by boat and by plane. The Miami Herald has posted a video of the destruction there (warning, graphic). The Ciné Institute, a film school for Haitian youth in Jacmel, is regularly posting news, video, and photos, and Gwenn Mangine is blogging from the hospital there.

Episcopalians in the news

I’ll close this post with a roundup of mainstream media coverage of the Episcopal Church’s efforts in Haiti after the quake. Mallory Holding, one of the Episcopal Young Adult Service Corps missionaries assigned to Haiti, was interviewed by her local ABC station on Friday (via by Lauren Stanley).

A local TV station in Austin, TX, [interviewed John & Suzi Parker's daughter][3], the content of which is mostly drawn from the e-mail Suzi sent on Friday:

The main news we’ve received recently is a report directly from Suzi Parker, who has been running the guest house at l’Hôpital Sainte Croix with her husband, John. She provides some more details about their situation and the state of the Sainte Croix compound:

Hopital Ste. Croix is standing. John and I are fine. The administration [office] collapsed under the guesthouse, and our apartment collapsed under the story above. [...] John was caught under the wreckage for about 4 hours, but the roof above was supported [b]y the lintel of the slinding glass door, [...] so he was uninjured except for a small cut on the top of his head.

[...] The Ste. Croix church is cracked, I don’t know how badly. Eye clinic looks fine. Pere Ker[w]in’s [the Priest-in-Charge of Ste Croix] house looks OK, Pere FanFan’s [the hospital administrator] house looks OK with some damage, Pere Pierre’s house is damaged, but st[i]ll standing. Doctor’s quarters and penthouse are fine. If we can get it open, John and I may try to move in there for a while.

At night we sleep in the yard behind the hospital where the bandstand was. It has fallen, as has the Episcopal school. The[r]e are 2–300 people who sleep in that field at night. Th[e]y sing [h]ymns until almost midnight, and we wake up to a church service, with hymns, a morning prayer, and the apostle’s creed. The evening sky is glorious. In the field there is a real sense of community. Of course, we are the only blancs [white people] there.

She also reports that there are doctors treating injuries there. They have seen upwards of “300 people with cuts, fractures, etc.”.

I’ve been poring through photos of Léogâne that were posted today (warning: some are graphic), looking for any hint of Sainte Croix. If I’m not mistaken, these three photos are of the compound. If you can confirm this, leave a comment.

FSIL’s facility has also become a major treatment center for the Léogâne area. (FSIL, the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de Léogâne, is the nursing school of the Episcopal University of Haiti, and is funded by the Haiti Nursing Foundation based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.) From the sound of updates posted to their website, they have plenty of staff but are running extremely short on supplies.

We still haven’t heard anything about the Delicats aside from Roosnel’s short note from yesterday.

Elsewhere

On past St. John’s trips to Haiti, we have visited the Sisters of St. Margaret, an Episcopal order based in Boston, whose convent in Port-au-Prince was destroyed along with the rest of the Sainte Trinité cathedral and school complex. As I posted earlier today as an update to my initial entry on the quake, the Sisters are alive and well, and have provided news of Foyer Notre Dame, a home for elderly Haitians who had been homeless.

The Foyer has partially collapsed, but at least some of the residents survived and are camped out with the Sisters. The Foyer also has a guest house that was completed in 2006(?)—no word on whether it has also been damaged.

We have also heard from multiple sources that Carmel Valdema, the nurse who runs the Lespwa Timoun nutrition program in Crochu and other remote communities and with whom people from St. John’s have done mobile clinics, is safe, along with her husband, Pere Val, the priest of St. Simeon in Croix-des-Bouquets.

I’ve also just noticed on Lauren Stanley’s site that Epiphanie in L’Acul, which is partnered with Messiah in St. Paul, as well as the CODEP (Haiti Fund) compound across the road from Epiphanie, are largely unharmed.