Haiti - 7 months on.

By Lexie Waters,

Special to ResonateNews.com

PORT-au-PRINCE, Haiti – Pictures of an utterly devastated Haiti have long disappeared from newspapers and TV screens. However, the plight of the Haitian people is still very visible. The newest tent cities in the capital city of Port-au-Prince are becoming more permanent. This is happening not through government or NGO efforts to help people rebuild, but from those who live in the tent cities, desperate to find some sense of normality.

The tent city directly opposite the National Palace is now woven between damaged buildings and national monuments. Roofs are no longer just plastic sheeting, but iron or tin to protect from torrential downpours experienced every year in the wet season. What was initially a temporary solution for many has become long term as the weight of relocating these communities is too heavy for the nation’s leaders to handle.

Peterson and Lucy Georges are directors of the nondenominational Christian ministry Youth With A Mission in Port-au-Prince. They said they believe God wants families who lost everything in the earthquake to have a permanent home. Peterson, a native Haitian is leading a project to build houses for those currently living in makeshift shelters, often in perilous areas.

Their initial goal is to build 120 homes at the cost of $4,000 U.S. dollars each. For the Georges, the best solution is not about handing out ready-made houses; it’s about community development.

Peterson Georges said, “Our plans are not just for the houses themselves, but to build whole communities, with roads, markets, basketball courts and schools.”

Lucy Georges said that to qualify for their help, some conditions must be met first.

“The family must be willing to work to help build their family's house,” she said. “They must be able to pay a minimum of $40 U.S. dollars per month toward paying off the house, so that one day they can own it themselves.”

The spiritual climate in Haiti after the earthquake is changing, the Georges said. One month after the January earthquake, Haitian President Preval decreed that for three days from February 12 – 14 the nation would fast and pray to the “good God.” The annual Kanival (Mardi Gras) was cancelled. Instead, throngs of people marched around the national palace worshiping and praying to God over the three days.

American Rodney Gephardt and his wife and three children live and work in Haiti. Gephardt was based out of Port au Prince with YWAM for the first seven weeks after the devastating earthquake. Gephardt facilitated mostly medical teams, including those from Mercy Works of Tyler, Texas and treated more than 20,000 earthquake victims, he estimated.

When asked about the present spiritual state of Haiti , Gephardt said,

“I believe that because of the earthquake – and therefore the amount of people who turned to God during times of prayer and fasting, that spiritual curses (as a result of Voodoo practices) over Haiti were broken," he said. "But now the people need Christian modeling and teaching. The people need a ‘Moses’ to lead them, whether that is done by many people, local pastors or just one person.”

Without continuing the Christian modeling it is easy for people to return to their superstitious ways, Gephardt said. The Bible is needed in the native language.

“One of the biggest needs is for the people to have Bibles in Creole, the dominant language of the Haitian people,” he said. “The amount of Bibles produced in Haiti total about 40,000 a year.”

That is just a fraction of number the nation’s population of an estimated population of 10 million.

People are asking for Creole Bibles, Gephardt said. He recalled one hot day when handing out the few Creole Bibles he had. He and his partner were resting under a tree when a Haitian man walked up to him and said, “I’m ready.”

Rodney thought, “Ready for what?”

The man persisted, “I’m ready.”

In his hand the man held out a tattered New Testament written in French and Rodney realized he was being asked for a Creole Bible. When he gave the man the last one he had, the Haitian immediately began reading aloud from Genesis. A group of children who had been throwing rocks and yelling loudly, Gephardt said, suddenly became silent as they came and gathered around the man to listen.

“I believe I was witnessing the power of the word of God in action," Gephardt said, "as this man – who said he’d never read the Old Testament before – taught these children. The Bible says, 'For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.'”

Freedom in Thailand...

Itsera bags from MercyWorks on Vimeo.

After the earthquake in Haiti, February, 2010

Haiti Report from MercyWorks on Vimeo.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100227/RELIGION/2270316

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100227/RELIGION/2270316

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100224/RELIGION/2230345

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100224/RELIGION/2230345

Streets of Rubble

This afternoon we drove down roads where we saw collapsed buildings in every block. The rubble on the main streets of Port-au-Prince has now been pushed to the sidewalks, though some of the smaller laneways are still impassable. Telephone poles teeter at ninety-degree angles toward the ground, and live wires hang loosely above our heads.

Throughout Port-au-Prince there are many such streets. Our co-worker Rodney shares how just days after the earthquake he visited this particular one. The difference then was that the last time he was there, corpses lay on the sidewalks covered by sheets. Rodney says, “People were everywhere up and down the street, looking under the sheets, trying to find their families.”

As we drive around Port-au-Prince, windows are down to let in the breeze and the air is filled with the smell of diesel. But then, as we pass what used to be a cell phone business, the smell changes. A strong whiff of what I assume to be sewerage fills my nostrils and then leaves as quickly as it came. When we’ve passed the house Rodney asks, “Did you smell that?” I answered, ‘Yes, what was it?” He said, “That smell was everywhere at the beginning, it’s death, there may be bodies still under that building.” I wonder to myself how many will never be recovered.

The medical team today split into different areas. Some went to the University of Miami field hospital at the Port-au-Prince airport and other took mobile clinics out to tent cities. The team members return at night saying how intense it is to work within their roles in this situation. The mentality at a hospital here is different to the US, queuing is not necessarily part of the Haitian persona. The Emergency Room (ER) is situated outside the building in a tent, surrounded by the noise of helicopters and jets. MercyWorks volunteer Dr Luzanne Grundling from South Africa says, “You just tune it out after a while.”

Another group of team members go to a tent city to put tents up for people who haven’t a home anymore. When they return, they say people are desperate for shelter and this causes a chaotic situation.

The rain is becoming an increasing problem, especially as the wet season has officially begun. It rained heavily last night for about three hours and my tent was flooded, I may as well have been floating around a swimming pool on my airbed.

But then I stop and think about all the people in the tent cities. As I said in my previous article, their homes are made from thin wooden poles and plastic sheets. When the rains hit, these homes turned in leaking mud pools. This morning after the rain we heard that the tent crew wouldn’t be going out today because it was impossible to reach the tent city. What sort of conditions must those people be enduring? And it will only get worse as the wet season is just beginning. Torrential rains will come and because of them the risk of disease will increase one hundred fold. The after shocks from the earthquake may have subsided, but the on-going risks of sickness and death could be disastrous.

Today I will go into Port-au-Prince again, to some of the hardest hit areas. People here have noted that the atmosphere in the city is even more aggressive than normal. It is understandable that the accumulation of tension from the past weeks would cause this outcome. Haiti has a population of 10,000,000 and of those people, 70% were unemployed before the earthquake, that percentage will be much higher now.

Though the obstacles could seem insurmountable, the medical situation in Port-au-Prince is progressing. The initial emergency response directly following the earthquake is now transitioning to ongoing care and need. However, now Haiti and her people need our prayers and support for a rebuilding initiative.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100218/RELIGION/2180319

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20100218/RELIGION/2180319