Search for hope continues in quake-ravaged Haiti

LEOGANE, Haiti (RNS) About 20 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, this city was near the epicenter of Haiti’s catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake. Some 80 percent of Leogane was destroyed, but at the Lamb Center Ministries’ Children Center Home, they’re still singing about joy. There doesn’t seem to be much to be joyful about. The orphanage’s main […]

(RNS2-APR12) American relief groups remain engaged in Haiti following the country's Jan. 12 earthquake, including distributing food aid provided by the U.S. government. For use with RNS-HAITI-HOPE, transmitted April 12, 2010. RNS photo courtesy Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

(RNS2-APR12) American relief groups remain engaged in Haiti following the country’s Jan. 12 earthquake, including distributing food aid provided by the U.S. government. For use with RNS-HAITI-HOPE, transmitted April 12, 2010. RNS photo courtesy Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

(RNS2-APR12) American relief groups remain engaged in Haiti following the country's Jan. 12 earthquake, including distributing food aid provided by the U.S. government. For use with RNS-HAITI-HOPE, transmitted April 12, 2010. RNS photo courtesy Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

(RNS2-APR12) American relief groups remain engaged in Haiti following the country’s Jan. 12 earthquake, including distributing food aid provided by the U.S. government. For use with RNS-HAITI-HOPE, transmitted April 12, 2010. RNS photo courtesy Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

LEOGANE, Haiti (RNS) About 20 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, this city was near the epicenter of Haiti’s catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake. Some 80 percent of Leogane was destroyed, but at the Lamb Center Ministries’ Children Center Home, they’re still singing about joy.


There doesn’t seem to be much to be joyful about.

The orphanage’s main building was completely destroyed. Several staff members were killed in the collapse, although all of the 260 orphans who lived in the compound survived. The children sleep in a nearby tent city and come here for activities during the daytime.

The Rev. Jeanot Deceus said that while he is having a difficult time finding regular sources of food and water, he nonetheless has faith that God will help them.

“The kids are the hope of the country,” he told the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”

Hope can be easy to miss in a nation still reeling from what people here call “le tremblement de terre” — the trembling of the earth. And it’s not easy to see at the former Petionville Country Club, where some 40,000 homeless Haitians now live in tents on what was once a golf course.

“This is about as complicated as food distribution can get in terms of logistics,” said Niek de Goeij, camp coordinator for Catholic Relief Services.”It took us a good two days to figure out how to do it, and I think now we’ve got it down.”

The camp’s terrain makes it difficult for big delivery trucks. They drive as far as they can, and then the supplies get transferred to smaller pickup trucks that can maneuver further into the camp. From there, workers take the bags of food by wheelbarrow to the waiting families below.


They can deliver USAID-donated cooking oil, flour, peas and bulgur to about 7,000 people a day. Over several days, they provide everyone in the camp with food rations that should last for a month.

Thousands of people, mostly women, wait in line for hours in the blazing sun to get their rations. The camp has the women receive the rations, de Goeij said, because they’re less aggressive than the men and less likely to start food riots.

Conditions in the camp are not ideal, but it is still considered one of the most successful camps in Haiti.

“We don’t have a good government, so it was a grace from God that the other nations came to help us,” one woman said.

CRS and other relief groups are also working on long-term recovery plans, but it’s hard to think far ahead when meeting immediate needs is still such a huge undertaking. The magnitude can be overwhelming, yet de Goeij said he tries to focus on what has been accomplished, not on what still needs to be done.

“I come home at night and I’m grumpy … and then I have a colleague slapping me on the shoulder and saying, you know, whatever happened today, 7,000 people are eating tonight because of the work that you did today. That helps,” he said.


At Hopital Adventiste d’Haiti — the Adventist hospital in the suburb of Carrefour — doctors were on the scene within a matter of days after the quake. The hospital, which has been adopted by Adventist Health International and the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, has become one of the best medical facilities in the country.

“Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with quake-related trauma that has yet to be cared for,” said Andrew Haglund, a Loma Linda professor who serves as the acting hospital administrator.

“It’s very, very difficult,” he added. “You’re … exposed to things that you would never see at home. We start the day with prayer, and we end the day with prayer, and pray all day long for the safety and healing of this nation.”

With all the earthquake-related orthopedic injuries and amputations, the hospital is specializing in prosthetics and rehabilitation, and the Americans are training Haitian doctors to carry that work into the future.

“That’s where I see the hope, that we can make a difference and that hopefully we are bringing light to this nation where hope is rare,” Haglund said.

For Phil Hudson of Cure International, a faith-based medical ministry supporting the work at the hospital, hope is defined by each person helped


“It all comes back to this child is good and they’ve been touched by the love of God even if no one ever says anything to them about God. And that’s what does it for me,” he said.

Hudson worries that American concern about Haiti is already starting to wane.

“If we only leave Haiti the way it was before the earthquake, we will not have done a good job,” he said. “And so everything that we’re doing needs to be for the long-term, and I’m hopeful that we can leave things better than they were before.”

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