Salesians Continue to Respond to Needs in Haiti

Salesians Continue to Respond to Needs in Haiti
Fr. Mark Hyde left on Wednesday morning, January 20, for Port-au-Prince via Santo Domingo in order to take part in a morale boosting exercise and a strategy-development working session with the provincial councils of the Antilles and Haiti provinces. The meeting will be held in Port-au-Prince on Friday. Fr. Mark is bringing satellite phones with him.

In Fr. Mark’s absence, Jaime Correa and Adam Rudin of the New Rochelle office and Hans-Jurgen Dorrich of the Bonn office, who came to New Rochelle on January 8 for business that obviously had no connection to the earthquake, are managing the command center in New Rochelle.

The Spanish NGO Jovenes y Desarrollo has offered to make available two of its staff personnel already posted in Santo Domingo to assist in the ongoing emergency relief effort. JyD has already supported the Antilles Province in setting up their project development office.

A proposal for the structure of an emergency relief and reconstruction data base has been developed and is being distributed for the comments and feedback of NGOs and mission procures.

Salesian Missions has been in contact with UNDP, who in turn has alerted a UN team to assist in recovery efforts of the 200-500 bodies trapped/missing/dead under the rubble at ENAM.

Many NGOs and Salesian houses are working non-stop to bring the necessary relief supplies as quickly as possible. The New Rochelle Missions Office continues with its role as the center for information, communications, and organization while the Salesians in the Dominican Republic are dealing with the practical side of things, ensuring the safe arrival of the help being sent.

The Salesian NGO Jugend Eine Welt in Austria has offered to make a request in cooperation with CARITAS Austria to the ECHO Emergency Relief Program of the EU for 500,000 euros. Jugend Eine Welt has received from MIVA Austria the approval of two project vehicles, one for the SDBs and the other for the FMAs in Haiti, to facilitate movement in the emergency situation.

The Spanish NGO Solidaridad Don Bosco from Seville has offered to support the reconstruction phase by submitting proposals to public donors in Spain.

Salesian Missions is working with Cross International to get 200 containers with relief supplies to Port-au-Prince. As of the morning of January 20, we were considering the international airport at Barahona, D.R. (there is a Salesian house there, the closest to the Haitian border), as the most likely reception and storage center for this material, from which to truck it to such destination or destinations as may be set up in Port-au-Prince. Part of Fr. Hyde’s work during his current trip is to learn what this/these are. But other shipping arrangements also were under consideration—whatever works to get the goods on site ASAP.

“Poor Haiti, poor Haiti.” Stretched out in a hospital bed in Santo Domingo, Fr. Attilio Stra gave a moving account of the moment the earth shook in Port-au-Prince on January 12 to Alessandra d’Asaro, a journalist from International Volunteers for Development (VIS).

The radio interview, in Italian, is available at the audio section of the ANS site: http://www.infoans.org/22.asp?sez=1&sotSez=13&doc=4699&lingua=2&tipoCorrelato=2

In spite of the constraints of his present situation, the veteran Salesian shows the great fortitude typical of missionaries used to being face to face with poverty, violence, and social injustice. His thoughts quickly turn to the 300 or so street children buried in the Salesian school in the Salina district of Port-au-Prince.

The number of pupils who were in the school at 4:53 p.m. on January 12 is unclear because on the streets you don’t count the numbers in the group. Here the youngsters had somewhere to go, and the possibility of hoping for a better future: getting away from the dangers of the streets, studying and learning a trade, as happens in Salesian schools all over the world.

In the BohnenMini Schools the silence is deafening. The youngsters and Bro. Sanon, who lost his life with them, have been buried in a common grave near the school. Among the ruins, pages from exercise books drift in the warm breeze, chairs, colored pencils, school reports have been scattered among the dust and the rubble by the earthquake.

Piles of debris heaped up, confusion among the upended floors. Through the gaps in the collapsed perimeter walls people come and go, taking everything – piles of paper cups, broken chairs, abandoned shoes, and those sheets of paper. In the tumult one comes across what seem to be pools of stagnant water. “It’s what was left by the corpses,” explains Fr. Lephène Pierre, a Salesian from the ENAM community. “We just need to rebuild the wall to avoid so much mess and to increase security, which in these circumstances is always too little.”

Fr. Lephene Pierre at ENAM

The Haitian government has been gravely wounded, with many ministers among those killed in the earthquake, and the presidential palace has completely collapsed. In the stead of the local government, the United Nations, the United States, various other countries, and many private charities—including the Salesians and the Salesian Sisters--have made it their priority to provide food, water, and first aid.

An 11-truck convoy with water, dry foods, and emergency relief items arrived safely at Port-au-Prince on Saturday from La Vega, Dominican Republic. It was escorted by a Dominican military detail. Pictures of this mission upon departure from La Vega and arrival in Port-au-Prince are awaited. The Salesians also have a water truck moving about the city offering its precious contents to the needy.

Food and water being distributed from one of the trucks that the Salesians brought in from the Dominican Republic.
“In this tragedy,” continues Fr. Lephène, “what is very moving is the solidarity being shown by the whole world.” At ENAM a team of civil defense workers coming from all over Latin America is working day and night, still hoping to find someone alive or dead among the ruins.
Lasting images: hands upraised to catch the water ration from the trucks on the crowded roads of the city; the loud noise overhead of planes and helicopters; makeshift tents at the side of the roads; and, in spite of everything, the Salesians continuing their work, never forgetting to smile even in the face of such tragedy.