13 September 2008

Dear Friends,

The Guayamuque (Gway u mook) River, some 45 above normal flow level, as it passes north of the city of Hinche. Several hundred houses were flooded; the majority of the families lost most or all of their belongings. Most families here were able to get out without loss of life.

Jenny and I are writing you all with a great mix of emotions—sadness and frustration, great doubts, fear, but also some sense of hope. In the last five weeks, Haiti was affected by four hurricanes—Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike—resulting in profound destruction throughout the entire country. Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the director of MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay–Farmer’s Movement of Papay) says the situation is without precedent. MPP is the organization with which I have been working for the last four and a half years. Along with other national and international organizations, MPP is beginning to get a grasp of the level of devastation, but it seems impossible that anyone will ever be able to make a full accounting of the loss of life and property.

One of the many fields and plantations damaged by the flooding in the last several weeks. Corn and bean fields were especially affected. Corn will be easier to recuperate thatn bananas, and bananas are a particularly important food staple during the dry season. Many families will be without food next January, February and March.

Many of the root causes of the poverty in Haiti—weak government, inadequate communication, lack of roads and other infrastructure, virtually non-existent social services—have always made Haiti vulnerable to the full effects of disasters such as these. The same conditions now make it difficult and in some cases impossible for a quick response to those who need help the most. It is even nearly impossible to know who needs help the most. In the last two days, I have heard of whole communities without food and water, with no help in sight. Lack of real roads has always isolated these communities. Now, damage to bridges and other weak points along the roads has increased the number of people who are isolated and deepened the level of isolation for people already living at the limits.

Jenny and I live beside people who carry on their daily lives with grace, great generosity, and wonderful senses of humor, despite the profound limitations. Now, these same people, some of whom are close personal friends, have lost homes and possessions, and we know they have no resources, or hope, for recuperating their losses. We have a great need to help, but we ourselves do not have the ability to provide any significant help, even at the local level, not even for the 52 MPP families whose homes were flooded last week. Multiply the needs of the folks in Hinche by all of communities in nearly every part of Haiti and you can understand our frustration. What can we do? Within the sadness and frustration I also feel some guilt, because we ourselves are safe and suffered no damage either to our home or the project where I work.

We wonder whether the kind of help that is starting to come could be adequate, given the enormous need. And will the assistance that comes be directed toward the root causes of poverty in Haiti? Will the funds help rebuild roads and bridges so that they are better than they were, or will it be used to make the highways and byways merely passable, subject as always to rapid degradation by normal use? And will the international lending agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund, encourage the Haitian government to create “safety nets” that can help families and communities recuperate losses? Or will they follow their standard policy, insisting on budgetary stringency, regardless of the needs of the most vulnerable—the poor in general, and women, children and the aged in particular?

It is impossible to write about the current catastrophe without mentioning the ongoing global crises of food prices, which are spiraling out of control. In MPP’s project called “The Road to Life Yard”—the project that I help coordinate—the crew prepares and shares two meals a day. We produce all of the vegetables for these meals ourselves, but for the items we can’t produce (corn, rice, coffee, oil etc), we paid a total of around $100 in May. In August, we spent around $ 135 for the same supplies, and in September we spent $175. In a country where over half the population earns less than a dollar a day, the situation was devastating before the hurricanes. How many of those who survived the flooding will now die from hunger, giving in at last to ongoing deprivation?

And the fear we feel, where does that come from? Haitians have a marvelous way of dealing with difficult situations that I have come to respect a great deal. They sing, they laugh, they joke, and suddenly, the load lightens and the way forward opens up again. There is also a great deal of tolerance, or patience, with unjust conditions. But there are limits. The suffering from the food crisis was becoming nearly intolerable before the hurricanes. If there is not a rapid, reliable, and comprehensive response to the current situation, especially by the Haitian government, there will almost surely be massive unrest, probably focused in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti.

Is there anything that can counterbalance the discouragement? First and foremost is faith—the faith of Jenny and me as well as the profound faith of Haitians in general. We do believe in a God who makes a way where there is no way—our God who sent our savior, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross, not only to demonstrate God’s profound solidarity with his chosen people, but also to completely and finally put an end to despair. Because we are Christ followers, we hope, and there is nothing that can separate us from that hope, from the constant renewal of that hope. As Jenny and I and several crew members were heading into Port au Prince Monday, September 8, we passed through an area just north of the city of Mirebelais (Mee be lay) where the farmers have access to irrigation. In field after field as we traveled down the road, farmers were out in those fields transplanting rice, hoeing rice, irrigating rice. Just one day after Hurricane Ike had passed through, the fields were already moving from devastation into abundance, farmers moving from being victims to being the agents of their own resurrection. What a miracle. What a God.

In Christ,

Mark and Jenny

Contributions for the crisis in Haiti may be sent to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). Please write on the check “DR-000064 Haiti Emergency” Mail it to: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Individual Remittance Processing P.O. Box 643700 Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700.

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The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 269