Haiti

12-16-2021

With continual uncertainty and insecurity, maintaining health care services in Haiti has become as much as a challenge as it is needed. “I don’t know what our patients would do if MSF couldn’t provide them with free health care anymore,” Joachim says. "The situation in Haiti is catastrophic. I only hope it could change."

Michael Woolf 9-29-2021

Photo credit Daniel Becerril via Reuters Connect | A Haitian migrant seeking refuge in the U.S., sits outside the Casa INDI shelter as they try to reach the border with United States, in Monterrey, Mexico September 28, 2021.

In the United States, white supremacy has made it impossible to see immigrants — but especially Haitian immigrants — as siblings who God commands us to love as though they were our neighbors. The U.S. has long resisted seeing Haitians not only as neighbors but as humans.

Josiah R. Daniels 8-20-2021

Photo by Kimiya Oveisi via Unsplash.

Whenever I am writing, editing, or reading, it feels wrong to be without a cup of coffee (black, no sugar). I know I am not the only editor who feels this way. [Editor’s note: Can confirm] Also, I feel confident in speaking for the editorial team when I say the 10 stories we have picked for you this week are best enjoyed with a piping-hot cup of joe.

Danté Stewart 8-19-2021

A man searches the site of a collapsed hotel after Saturday's 7.2 magnitude quake, in Les Cayes, Haiti Aug. 16, 2021. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo

The earth quakes. It rumbles. It trembles, sort of like a roar, a shiver. I didn’t see it; I’ve never experienced it, but I heard the news. “1,900+ Haitians are believed to be dead,” the faint voice of the news reporter says over my car radio, “and hundreds are believed to be missing.”

Another headline reads: “The latest on Afghanistan as Taliban take charge.”

Another: “13-year-old Mississippi girl dies of COVID-19.”

Archange Antoine 7-15-2021
A fresh produce vendor looks on at a street market a week after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on July 14, 2021.

A fresh produce vendor looks on at a street market a week after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on July 14, 2021. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo

As we continue to seek the truth behind the assassination, the real fear among Haitians is over what might happen next. Especially because we have seen how Western powers repeatedly use periods of Haiti’s “destabilization” as a pretext for exploiting the nation’s resources and people.

Sam Cabral 11-07-2019

March for DACA and TPS protest in Battery Park New York City in October 2019. strgaphoto / Shutterstock.com

Several top diplomats repeatedly warned of the consequences of rescinding legal protections for immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti, but the Trump administration ignored them, according to a report out Thursday from the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

the Web Editors 11-20-2017

A U.S. flag flutters over top of the skyline of New York (R) and Jersey City (L), as seen from Bayonne, N.J., Aug. 6, 2011. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
 

The United States will end in July 2019 a special status given to about 59,000 Haitian immigrants that protects them from deportation, senior Trump administration officials said on Monday.

Hannah Reynolds 9-21-2017

Image via Marion Doss/Flickr

More than ever, people living under TPS live in a kind of incomprehensible uncertainty. They have few options, and the Trump administration has signaled that these options are about to narrow even further.

Ronald J. Degges 5-10-2017

Image via RNS/Kit Doyle

In 2010, a terrible earthquake struck Haiti that caused the deaths of over 100,000 people and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. The U.S. granted TPS to 58,000 Haitians to live in safety and rebuild their lives, work, and support family members still in Haiti.

Image via RNS/Kit Doyle

Religion reporting doesn’t usually put a journalist in harm’s way. We spend much of our time in church pews and at interfaith singalongs. But a few days earlier, Religion News Service had been offered a chance to go with Samaritan’s Purse relief workers as they distributed aid in Haiti to victims of Hurricane Matthew.

Cathleen Falsani 10-19-2016

A pregnant woman rests in the shade near the J/P HRO clinic in Port-au-Prince. Image via Josh Estey/CARE.

It’s been three weeks since I returned from Haiti and a fortnight since Hurricane Matthew made landfall along the southern coast of the Caribbean island, bringing its Category 5 devastation to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

And in the time that has passed since my first visit to Ayiti (as they say in Creole), I can’t stop thinking about her.

Rose Marie Berger 10-12-2016

Photo provided by Ginette Thomas

As for us, Lord, we who are far away from the rubble and the flood,
from the sobbing and moans, but who hold them close in our hearts,
imbue us with the strength of Simon the Cyrene.

the Web Editors 10-07-2016

Photo via IFRC

As the east coast of Florida braces for Hurricane Matthew to pass, the people of Haiti are assessing the toll the hurricane has already taken on their country. After the worst storm in more than 50 years ripped through the island nation, Reuters has reported at least 478 have died.

A country all too familiar with natural disasters now faces picking up the pieces again. Some cities like Jérémie saw 80 percent of buildings levelled. 

Heather Adams 3-12-2015
Screenshot via Youtube / RNS

An iTeam doctor supports patients in Haiti. Screenshot via Youtube / RNS

Judith Mesadieu has dreams of becoming a doctor, but her poor eyesight and partial blindness makes it hard to study.

A corneal transplant could fix the problem, but the procedure remains rare in Haiti, which has just six eye surgeons for every 1 million people, according to the International Council of Ophthalmology.

Fortunately, Mesadieu snagged a spot on the recent surgery docket of a U.S.-based eye surgery missions group called the iTeam.

The iTeam, based out of Kansas City, Mo., has been traveling to Saint Louis du Nord for about 16 years. They preform eye surgeries twice a year alongside local ophthalmologists, teaching them new skills and improvements.

Lydia Allen, 66, is a nonmedical staff member of iTeam and said the Bible calls on her to continue to go these trips and help in any way possible. 

“Go ye therefore into all the world,” Allen said, quoting Jesus’ Great Commission.

Photo via Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, Md. / RNS

Photo via Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, Md. / RNS

Christian missionary work spans the globe. But Jewish mission trips?

Your average American synagogue is not planning a congregational visit to a poor corner of the world. But a few are starting to, and some rabbis are lobbying for more to follow.

“At a time when synagogues are losing market share and ‘Next Gen’ Jews are deeply ambivalent about how much they are prepared to identify as Jews, I can testify that this kind of service mission is a game changer,” said Rabbi Sid Schwarz, founding rabbi of Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in suburban Bethesda, Md.

Unlike many Christian groups, Jews don’t believe in proselytizing: It’s just not in their religious DNA. But alumni attest that synagogue-sponsored mission trips provide a hands-on way for Jews to fulfill the obligation of “tikkun olam,” Hebrew for “heal the world,” as they strengthen Jewish identities.

Schwarz and 20 congregants returned from a 10-day trip to Haiti in December — the congregation’s third trip in four years to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. There, they partnered with a pastor and used their bodies and their bank accounts to build houses and provide school tuition for Haitian families, many who had been living under tarps since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Schwarz can point to less than a handful of synagogues that have done similar mission work. One is Temple Beth El in Hollywood, Fla., which has made more than 10 mission trips to Haiti since 2007 and leaves again for the island on Jan. 19.

“The Christians have a tradition of missionary work, and part of it is to Christianize the world. We Jews have no interest in Judaisizing the world,” said Beth El’s Rabbi Allan Tuffs. Nevertheless, “we should be out there.”

The Editors 1-14-2015

In 2014, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) premiered Water Everlasting? The Battle to Secure Haiti’s Most Essential Resource, a documentary film addressing concerns about Haiti’s public water system.

Government agencies and charitable organizations have spent decades attempting to provide clean water to Haiti, but administrative weaknesses often impede these efforts. The 2010 earthquake exacerbated the problem. Suddenly, millions of people lacked access to safe drinking water, and waterborne diseases reached epic proportions.

Yet, despite the many instances of lack, there is good being done in Haiti in various capacities. Read “On a Firm Foundation” to learn of the many positive accomplishments of Haitians working in their own neighborhoods. 

the Web Editors 1-12-2015
Children in a tent, Haiti 2014. Image courtesy Chuck Bigger, Compassion Internat

Children in a tent, Haiti 2014. Image courtesy Chuck Bigger, Compassion International.

Five years after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti on Jan.12, 2010, killing hundreds of thousands of people, Haitians are still working to rebuild the poorest country in the hemisphere.

In August, Sojourners Editor Jim Rice traveled to Haiti to meet with nonprofits, ministries, and residents. His reports from the trip became the cover story for Sojourners' February issue. For the week of Jan. 12 only, we've released the story from our paywall. Go here to read for FREE. 

See the slideshow of photos from the trip at the jump. 

 

 

Edwidge Danticat 1-05-2015

A YEAR BEFORE her death from ovarian cancer, my 78-year-old mother finally started losing weight. She gave up fatty foods and sweets and went to herbalists who sold her pills that were supposed to regulate her digestion. In addition to all this, she was seeing her primary physician every three months.

The weight flying off seemed like a reward for her good behavior. The only downside was that my mother, who now weighed less than me, was burping all the time, as if there was thunder trapped inside her ever-shrinking body.

At Christmas time, I invited her to come spend the holidays with me and my family in Miami. At first she said no. Her birthday was three days after Christmas and she wanted to spend it at her home in New York.

She changed her mind right before Christmas, and she cooked us a wonderful Christmas dinner, and we took her to one of our favorite Haitian restaurants for her birthday. At her birthday dinner, my two daughters performed a birthday dance for her in the middle of the restaurant, and my usually reserved mother laughed and clapped with joy, a kind of joy we would rarely see again in the months that followed.

Jim Rice 1-05-2015

Photo: Chuck Bigger

HILDA DE BOJORQUEZ holds a set of blueprints in one hand. Her other hand is pointing. At a better future, perhaps, if things go well.

De Bojorquez is the chief engineer at this construction site in a neighborhood just outside Port-au-Prince still blemished with rubble from Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. She commands respect from the all-male crew of Haitians working at the site—she tells a group of visiting U.S. reporters that her gender has never been an issue in the male-dominated world of construction, here or in her native El Salvador.

When asked about obstacles on the project, De Bojorquez goes on for 15 minutes—she’s an engineer, after all—but the point is that they’ve tackled them, one by one, and done so the right way. She extols the importance of a solid foundation and robust retaining walls. She points to the cinder blocks and the rebar, and explains how her group had to teach a company how to provide high-quality materials, with the promise that they’d buy everything the company made. And she emphasizes that she’s there not just to oversee a number of construction projects, but to train Haitians to do it themselves the next time—and to do it right.

The steel-reinforced blocks are rising into walls that will surround a new six-room school for perhaps 200 children in this neighborhood four miles east of Port-au-Prince. The narrow site is wedged between two crumbling buildings, both showing earthquake damage. Even to an untrained eye, the differences are obvious between the fragile, deteriorating blocks next door and the solid retaining walls rising at our feet.

The Editors 3-18-2013

Three years after the 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, the impoverished island nation is still struggling to rebuild. The ruins include Notre Dame de l’Assomption, Port-au-Prince’s renowned cathedral.

Hope abounds, however, as the capital city seeks to reconstruct this sacred place of worship. Edwidge Danticat’s “House of Prayer and Dreams,” in the April 2013 issue of Sojourners magazine, beautifully illustrates why the cathedral is central to the city’s past, present, and future.