Update on Help – food, water , books, and benches

Posted on by mlhilton

Update notes: The villagers in Boileau are working to recover from the quake and flooding rains.The water has started to abate and they are trying to salvage what they can from the flooded gardens.Some is recoverable; much was destroyed by the floods.

Since we had help in the pipeline, we’ve been able to get them some food and medicine. Thanks to help from you, even the families hit hardest are still able to have a little food.

The initial reports were that all the wells had survived the quake and floods.It turned out that three wells were actually damaged. Again, thanks to your sacrifices we could respond quickly to repair the three, damaged wells; they now have clean water again.

Kids are returning to school. Again, because of your generous donations, the refugee children will soon have benches and books.

Donations to the garage sale–and the hard work of volunteers–produced a huge impact: the two weekends generated $1,900.00. Despite the snow and cold, the first weekend earned $500The second weekend almost tripled that – $1,400. This money will help repair homes. We are planning a third garage sale on April 17.

We are working with a group in New Jersey to use the Boileau clinic as the treatment center for a medical mission in late April.  They will have 10 to 15 doctors and nurses there for a week.  The buildings in Cavaillon they planned to use were damaged by the earthquake. This is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with another group.  We are hoping to build some on-going collaboration for expanded medical care.

Thanks for everyone’s help!!

First-hand Account From Hotel Montana

Posted on by mlhilton

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If you think back to your visits at the Hotel Montana during our trips, think about walking out on the various terraces, you might find this first-hand account of the earthquake especially gripping.  Father Tom Streit is a priest at Notre Dame.

When the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck on Tuesday, Jan. 12, Father Streit was at a meeting at Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Montana with colleagues Sarah Craig ’98 and Logan Anderson, and post-doctoral student Marie Denise Milord. The group was in the capital to attend the semi-annual partner’s meeting for the Neglected Tropical Disease Initiative, along with some 25 Haitian colleagues.

The meeting had concluded, and when the earthquake hit, “we were all on different rooftop terraces,” says Father Streit, who had been standing below another terrace but managed to step out from underneath seconds before the collapse.

“The building around us came down, and we were all thrown to the ground,” says Craig, the Haiti Program’s manager, who was on a fourth-floor balcony. “We held on to literally nothing because we were on a tile floor. The building below us just collapsed, and we could feel it going down each floor until we ended up somewhere between the first and second floors, with the rubble beneath us.”

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The four sustained only minor cuts and bruises, but one colleague “had a double fracture to his leg,” Father Streit says. “Others from the meeting were trapped in the rubble (and) were buried in the building for a few days, but were found unhurt.”

“I was thinking this was something I see on TV, not something I experience,” says Anderson, the Haiti Program’s financial manager. “Sarah, who is a former emergency first responder, went right into first aid mode. I took off my shirt and we started tearing it up into strips. We found two sticks, and I helped hold (the colleague’s) leg while Sarah splinted it.”

After helping carry injured people from the hotel and assisting with first aid, the four found a grassy spot near the hotel to rest and spend the night. “I could hear people praying and chanting,” Anderson says, “and the sound of more buildings coming down during the aftershocks. You could just hear thousands of people screaming. That will stay with me for a while.”

120 New Refugee Students at St. Therese of Boileau

Posted on by mlhilton

During the past few weeks, we’ve had only little droplets of communication: very brief telephone calls which were disconnected after a few minutes, compressed emails which seemed to escape and reach their destination accidentally.  During the past few days the droplets have started to become a trickle.  We’re getting a little more detail.Father Kensy reports: “We presently have a total of 120 new refugee students St. Therese School, and they came to us empty-handed. Several of their parents have disappeared.  We need to make benches for them and get books and supplies for them.”

Finding space for the benches will also be a problem.  The school was already crowded, but their tradition is to share whatever they have with those in trouble.  He reports, they cannot just turn away from people seeking help.  They share whatever they have, not just their excess.

He also reports that the costs of food for the school lunch program have increased even more so they are challenged to spread less among more hungry mouths.