The Goat Project is off to a wonderful start! The committee from Baissin Caiman sent three members on a motorcycle taxi to a town two hours away because they have the best goats! They walked with 12 goats through the night back to Baissin Caiman. A goat is a wonderful investment and savings account for people in the countryside. Their investment grows as the goats have litters of kids. The families that are selected for the Goat Project receive a goat for three years. Each time the goat has offspring, one goat is given back to the Project and the family keeps the rest.

Doug and Jeff are heading to Haiti with a small team Monday morning. We have a lot we want to do in four days. First of all we want to visit all of our partners and communities to see how everyone is doing. This winter the news from Haiti has been overwhelming. Cholera continues to threaten the most vulnerable; those people who lack the most basic infrastructure of clean water and proper sanitation.

This past fall, we began the first composting outhouse in Bassin Caiman. We have plans to add more this summer, but I am excited about collaborating with an organization who is working in Port au Prince building similar outhouses in the tent cities. We will visit their site with members from the Bassin caiman community. Composting is a new idea for people in the countryside, we hope that seeing a working system will help reinforce the benefits of this system.

We will also be visiting another mission that installs water purification systems, powered by solar energy  There is tremendous potential for partnering with them to build these systems out in the countryside.

The next few days will be filled with site visitations, project planning, logistical details and many miles in between. But our deep love for our friends make it more like a homecoming. We get to join them in their joy of bringing hope to their community.

Plans are underway for three teams to visit Haiti in the spring of 2011, and we will begin work in the community of Plain Matin. We are also developing several small business opportunities and will continue our work on clean water and sanitation.

Thank you again for partnering in our work.  Please consider giving a year-end gift to help us continue to provide hope and opportunities for the Haitian people.

Panera Bread-Waterworks (community room)

Find out more about joining Team Haiti H2O for the Pittsburgh Marathon (May 15, 2011). We are looking for marathoners, half-marathoners, and relay teams. We need both runners and walkers.

-Discuss team responsibilities.
-Training plans for new runners/walkers.
-Schedule for our group training runs.
-Set up an online fundraising plan.

Run for a reason and make a real difference in SW Haiti.

RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=185271528166211

or erin@haitih2o.org

It’s the middle of summer. For Haiti H2O, this means we’re busily preparing our next Short-Term Mission (STM) teams to travel to Haiti, from July 18^th thru August 8^th. Vaccinations, passport applications, cross-cultural and language training, prayer and scripture study – it’s all part of getting ready for an experience that transforms the lives of everyone involved. And yet, ever since we first began leading these trips in 1997, no two trips have been the same. (follow our trip on Facebook.)

Want to join in, be part of such an amazing experience? Check it out: http://haitih2o.org/trips/planning-a-trip

According to the UN, only about half of the people in Haiti have easy access to clean water sources, without which they must rely on dirty water for everyday use and expose themselves to water-borne diseases. So, among other projects this summer, we’re working with community leaders in Bassin Caiman to develop plans for water and sanitation systems. We’re of course delighted to help community members enjoy clean water and become less vulnerable to serious illness; we’ve begun referring to our next team as the Haiti H2O Team Bèl Dio (Beautiful Water). Our next monthly update will let you know how this initiative goes!

STM W/ H2O

“It is one thing to read about statistics, and it is another when they’re lying in your arms.” -  Haiti H20 STM participant
LEARN MORE ABOUT HAITI

You may have seen the recent article by journalist John Seabrook about his experience adopting his daughter from Haiti just after the January earthquake.  He provides a thorough reflection on international adoption and how recent events have affected adoption and orphans in Haiti. Also, several individuals and agencies in Pittsburgh were major advocates for adopting Haitian orphans.

(“The Last Babylift: Adopting a child in Haiti” by John Seabrook http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_seabrook )

(See also these articles in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10015/1028425-455.stm

and

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10055/1038068-455.stm)

GET INVOLVED

Remember, every donation to Haiti H2O is critical to the communities we serve.

• $40 enables a child to attend school, by providing her with books, supplies and a uniform
• $80 feeds a child lunch for an entire school year
• $400 supports a teacher’s salary for one school year
• $800 trains a local student to be a teacher

To donate online, go to http://haitih2o.org/ and click on the “Donate now” button, or mail donations to the following address:

Haiti H2O

1110 Portland Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15206

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:

to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

James 1:27

For more on Haiti H20: http://haitih2o.org or follow us on Facebook.

This was my first time in Haiti since the earthquake. We walked off the plane–not down the steps and across the blazing hot tarmac as on past trips, before the airport was destroyed by the earthquake, but through a jetway, inside an air conditioned building and down the escalator! We were then quickly rerouted to a crowded little van that shuttled us to a nearby hanger, which served as the baggage claim and customs area. We waited, watched and sweated. Garage doors rolled part way up and luggage was scooted under piece by piece.

The broken and fallen buildings were like a bread crumb trail, winding through the streets of Port au Prince and leading to the epicenter at Leogane. Watching the coverage on television, I could imagine that the images were a series of disconnected shots strung together to emphasize the destruction. Driving through the actual streets was much more overwhelming. Yet there were still whole buildings interspersed among the fallen, and life had returned to the sidewalk markets as well. Ladies had set up their little wooden tables piled high with household items for sale. On the ground were little pyramids of oranges, mangos and potatoes. People walked everywhere. Two men cutting a tire apart with a kitchen knife to make gaskets yelled at me for taking their picture. They said I’d make money off the picture and they wanted to be paid. If a picture is worth a thousand bucks, I later thought to myself, I’d pay off Haiti’s odious debt tomorrow.

It was almost as if when you squinted your eyes, it was just another day downtown. But then we’d drive by one of the tent cities that had mushroomed into existence wherever there was an open flat space. Then, even if you squeezed your eyes closed, you couldn’t erase the image emblazoned on your retina. Conditions are bad and they are only going to get worse during the rainy season .

The quake was centered just 15 miles outside of Port au Prince, however the reverberations are still being felt throughout the whole country. Not only was PAP the capital of the country, it was the main artery, everything that came into the country flowed through its port. PAP was the destination of all who had any hopes of higher education, a professional career, or even just a job waiting tables, pumping gas or working in one of the few remaining factories, anything to get beyond subsistence living.

The community of Baissin Caiman is about 100 miles west of PAP. We talked to several people who literally felt the ground tremble, but mercifully the church, school, bread oven and outhouse, which we had helped construct, stood firm. Their economy, however, was shaken. The main occupation of the people in this community of about 7,000 people is to make charcoal, which is sold in the city. After the earthquake, the trucks that came to fill up on charcoal diminished. The engine of Port au Prince had sputtered, and with everyone concentrating on rescue and recovery the demand decreased. Times that were lean before January 12 have become even tighter for rural Haitians.

As we walked around the community, Pastor Celonde explained that they had received much more damage from the deluge of rain that caused flooding the previous week. We talked to Sainmillia who told us that th

e rain had stripped the clay stucco, leaving exposed woven thatch for the entire wall of her 13-foot by 18-foot hut. The hut doesn’t have a foundation, so water flowed right through her house, smoothing out the clay floor. As I looked up, I saw a termite nest about two feet in diameter built into the thatch roof. “How can people live like this?” This refrain grows louder in my mind with each new sight.

In Les Cayes, Pastor Paul Touloute, another one of our partners, described the affects the earthquake has had on the South, and on his ministry in particular. “Ministering in Haiti has always been a challenge,” he says, “and many people will go to the Pastor for family problems, house problems, health problems, school problems—all kinds of things, and they expect the Pastor to meet all of their needs. Since we have so little resources, it has always been a challenge. What the earthquake has done, it has just made matters worse.”

Our group surveyed a soccer field in Les Cayes, which was home to about 80 tents, all of them filled by people who had left Port au Prince in droves in hopes of reaching some medical attention, which wasn’t easily available in Port au Prince. The flooding then drove them inside Pastor Paul’s church.

Pastor Paul notes that local families have also had to take in many more people – relatives and others fleeing PAP – than their homes are built to handle. “They have to crunch themselves up to accommodate all these people who are from PAP. And since they came with nothing, [the pastor] has to provide food, clothing, all kinds of things.”

“And this is not the worst,” he adds. “Some of them may be in hospitals here, Les Cayes, in City Lumiere, and in Bon Fin. And since they have no one to provide for them, their family has the obligation to borrow money, to do whatever is possible to provide for these people. And when this happens with my parishioners, what do they do? They come to the Pastor. So it has put us, in the church leadership, in a very awkward situation.”

Fortunately, Pastor Celonde and Pastor Paul and other local leaders continue to serve, even if with limited material resources. They’re the ones with the natural capacity to lead here, with the community roots and connections necessary for addressing peoples’ needs. I’m reminded again that as a partner, Haiti H20’s role isn’t to lead these communities, but to come alongside these local leaders and support their work.

“Thank goodness,” Pastor Paul adds, “most of the time we have been able to help. Most of the time we cannot meet the financial, the economic problems, but we can talk to the person and help them see things from a different perspective.”

The immediacy has died down. The fervent fever pitch has subsided. The situation in Haiti isn’t any less severe; it’s just that daily responsibilities crowded their way back into our lives. I had to return to work. The kids needed to finish homework, go to guitar lessons and pack lunches for school.

Then the snowstorm hit. Our neighborhood banded together. We dug out cars, and dropped in chairs. School was cancelled. The kids dug tunnels and we went sledding at the local hill, piling six kids on a single truck inner tube. Inside the house, it was hot chocolate, Wii, coloring, Uno and Sorry.

But the misery in Haiti never leaves my mind. It’s like a sensitive tooth. I try to eat ice cream without it touching that back molar, but I can’t. I cannot ignore the suffering of so many in Haiti – where life was so hard even before the quake.

The novelty of the snow has worn off, the kids have to return to school, the stuff I put on hold is piling up. But all I want to do is turn everything else off and just read about Haiti. Not the articles circulating about how to rebuild or who is to blame. Not scrolling updates or intermittent tweets on my iPhone. But a book that gives me depth, real stories about Haiti. Stories that will remind me of my own experiences there.

I miss Haitian food, pica lese, the spicy shredded cabbage and carrots you pile onto fried plantains. I want to hear again the drip of rain on corrugated tin, feel the absolute fatigue of trying to hold up my end of a conversation in creole. And yet, deep down, I know that I will always be an outsider. And there is more than skin color and language that separate me from the Haitians I know.

I’ve been frustrated by the impossibility of contacting our Haitian friends, by not knowing how well they’re coping with this crisis. News trickles in like water dripping from the icicles growing from the box gutters of our Pittsburgh home. So we have few answers for friends and supporters here who want to know what’s happening.

I’m frustrated with not being there. Like so many other who’ve been touched by events unfolding on the TV, I want to do something. I know at this point I can gather resources to bring with our summer teams, spread the word for the need to be involved long term, and build up a community here to help the Haitians we know.

What an irony it is, our disgust at the city’s lack of a response to the snow, to the need for clear roads. There is no 911 in Haiti – or even a 311 line, like here Pittsburgh. And those mounds of concrete and rubble will not melt in a month.

Here, snowbound, we stay inside and sip hot chocolate. Haitians are sleeping outside, under sheets tied to trees. We’ve run to the store to buy milk and bread. I read of doctors who, lacking anesthesia, ran out to a hardware store and bought saws for amputations.

Sometimes the context of our lives overlaps with the lives of others, and this is where we make contact. When you know your neighbor, you want to help. A friend once told me “when it gets personal, it gets compassionate.”

Thank you to all who have contributed to the Haiti H2O Earthquake Response Fund. We are preparing a small team who will be leaving for Haiti as soon as the immediate disaster relief has been organized and we can be helpful.

While we are eager to go, our partners on the ground are responding and serving those in need. We have good news from Pastor Celon that his children who were studying at schools of higher education in Port au Prince (PAP) are alive and have returned home.

Our partner Jules Fresnal was in PAP during the earthquake; his home was destroyed, but his immediate family is alive. He remained in PAP until yesterday in an effort to bury some extended family members and to care for their children. He is now in Aquin helping to care for the displaced people from PAP.

We are continuing to raise funds for earthquake response. With your help, we hope to send in our team with plenty of supplies and money so they can empower our partners to continue serving. In the future, we will be accepting donated goods, but for now the best help is a financial contribution.

Thank you again for spreading the word about the needs in Haiti and for your help in the recovery effort.

We have created a Facebook fan page so that we can get news out more effectively. You can become a fan at Haiti H2O Fan. We also have a twitter account @Haitih2o.