St. James Haiti Outreach

What have we learned about Haiti?

After returning from a trip to Haiti in November 2008, Ruth Anne Olson and Louise Robinson wrote a series of essays to share their observations with us. This is the sixth of eight essays. See complete list here.

6. The Church in Haitian Life

This installment by Ruth Anne.

Imagine a meeting of our vestry if the St. James operating budget supported the only elementary school in South Minneapolis; if emerging neighborhood businesses looked to us for microloans; and if our church leadership participated in the organization of every health care, safe water, and nutrition program in the community. Imagine too the demands on lay leadership at St. James if our priest was assigned to serve six other parishes like ours—each lying one-to-four hours distant.

Such, in fact, are the responsibilities of Episcopal churches in Haiti. For in a country where the government offers few services to support the daily lives of families and communities, large portions of the population depend directly on church-supported programs to meet basic needs. In our brief travels in Haiti, Louise and I focused primarily on schools (as Louise described in the second of this series), but we’ve also been privileged to glimpse several other programs of the Episcopal church.

We met the Dean of the Haiti Nursing Foundation, a school of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti which will see its first graduating class of thirty Haitian nursing students in January 2009.

We learned that St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children in Port au Prince, once a model for care and schooling throughout the country, is struggling to survive, as is the Hospital Ste Croix in Lèogâne. Both are Episcopal institutions whose crises leave whole communities with only minimal stop gap medical and educational services.

Prosthetics Workshop—St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children

Madame Felix—One of the Ladies of Foyer Notre Dame

Many grandmothers in Haiti voluntarily leave their families when they believe their own need for food or medical care will jeopardize the lives of their grandchildren. The Foyer Notre Dame in Port au Prince, run by the Episcopal Order of the Sisters of St. Margaret, offers some of these women an option to living on the streets. One of my most pleasurable mornings when I visited Haiti in 2007 was a lively hour-long conversation (translated) with “the ladies” of the Foyer. (Just how do you describe snow to someone who’s lived all her life in the tropics?) Last month Louise and I visited the Foyer again and found the ladies eagerly expecting us. Even with my meager knowledge of Haitian Creole, I was able to tell them that Louise is the mother of twin girls, and they were able to tell us what very good luck that is. When we presented St. James’ gift of drapo lapè (peace flags) their deep pleasure was palpable as they waved their hands above their heads repeating prayerfully, Lapè. Lapè.

Marila, Louise and Sr. Marie Margaret with Peace Flags from St. James

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church of America, with fewer than 30 priests serving nearly 180,000 parishioners in 98 congregations, missions and preaching stations. It’s obvious that resources are spread very thin to do the work of the Episcopal church throughout the nation of Haiti—work that is, by any definition, work of the world.

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