“The police are scared and stay in, especially at night. The streets are patrolled by (Aristide) supporters and they carry heavy weapons, shotguns and M16s, it looks like.”
Father Marc Boisvert
Caution in Les Cayes
A priest from Lewiston does “God’s work” on behalf of Haitian orphans as chaos and rebellion threaten daily.
If it weren’t for the children, Father Marc Boisvert would be here, in the safety of Lewiston-Auburn.
Instead, he’s surrounded by extreme poverty and the desperation and violence it can breed. A sign of that despair – black, oily smoke – rises from burning tires used to block roads, obliterating what Boisvert calls “the beautiful views of the mountains.”
Fear, he says, is everywhere. In cities and towns to the north and west of his seaport city of Les Cayes, Haiti, there have been demonstrations and counter-marches. Relief agencies say more than 50 people have been killed in the violence that’s rocked this impoverished island nation for the past two weeks.
Now, former Haitian military death squad members and police officials linked to anti-government efforts have slipped over the border from the Dominican Republic. They’re armed and they’re encouraging rebels to step up their insurrection against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
“My family and friends need not worry about me,” says Boisvert, a Lewiston native. His mother, Marguerite Boisvert, and two married sisters, Gisele Biron and Denise Roy, live in the Twin Cities area.
“I am cautious and avoid trouble spots,” the 53-year-old priest says.
Still, he realizes there is danger all around him.
“I’d leave and head home but for the kids. If I leave, the kids will have to return to the streets and a life of despair. That’s simply unacceptable.”
It was the plight of Haitians, especially the youngest, that brought Boisvert to the impoverished Caribbean island in the first place.
As a U.S. Navy chaplain, he had been sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to minister to some “boat people” in the earlier 1990s. “The Haitians and their stories touched me profoundly,” he says. In the summer of 1997, he had a chance to visit Haiti. “I was overwhelmed to see the extensive poverty and misery in a small country so close to our shores.” On Jan. 1, 1998, he moved to Haiti, determined to help its people.
After a stint at a parish to learn the Creole language, he started working with street kids and opened a soup kitchen and a free school. “Kids showed up from everywhere and we were deluged.”
In Les Cayes, the largest city in southern Haiti, he found an abandoned house and quickly filled it with street kids. He asked the bishop for a larger facility and was offered an old former junior seminary that was in ruins. The “tin roof was all rusted and partially caved in. Rats everywhere. We moved in two weeks later,” Boisvert says.
Now he has a staff of Haitians helping him and 219 children living in the Hope Project orphanage that he runs. The project also operates three schools for poor children, a soup kitchen that prepares and serves 1,200 meals each day and a small dispensary, all of which has attracted “a very long line of children waiting to get in.”
Staff held up
Haiti’s unrest, however, is taking a toll on Boisvert’s mission. While he’s still able to obtain food and fuel, prices are soaring. Fear, meanwhile, is taking a human toll.
“The police are scared and stay in, especially at night,” he says. “The streets are patrolled by (Aristide) supporters and they carry heavy weapons, shotguns and M16s it looks like. … Vehicles are regularly stopped on the highway by pro-Aristide people looking for weapons. The reasoning is to keep the opposition and thugs from coming here with weapons.
“Three of my staff have been stopped at gunpoint and one was robbed,” he noted in an e-mail to the Sun Journal this week. It “makes for interesting trips as we never know what is going to happen.”
Earlier, another of his workers was held up at gunpoint. And an orphanage truck was damaged by stones hurled by a thug taking part in a demonstration.
Haitians, he says, expect that “the U.N. will intervene by sending in military types, and most think this is a good idea. Many, surprisingly, think that democracy is not possible here and and won’t be for a while. Some have said they they welcome an occupying force so they can go about the business of life without fear.”
Boisvert says responsibility for the insurrection isn’t clear.
“Some say it is Aristide; some say that it is Convergence (an opposition group) and some even say that it is the CIA,” he says. “One thing for certain: Aristide can no longer lead. He has been neutralized and should now leave his office.”
There’s no natural leader to replace him, but Boisvert says Aristide’s successor isn’t a priority.
“People are not thinking about that right now,” he says. “All they want is his resignation, as though this will solve anything. Shortsightedness is a common ailment here.”
No hero
Meanwhile, as violence escalated in northern cities, Aristide took to the airwaves Sunday to vow to remain as president, Boisvert says, in a “not exactly conciliatory” speech. He has repeated his intentions this week, but a Haitian minister on Tuesday acknowledged that the nation is facing a coup.
Boisvert says he met Aristide, a defrocked Salesian priest, last year.
“He is a pleasant, unassuming man who appears to have the best interests of the people at heart,” he says. “Then again,” he adds, “don’t most politicians come across that way?”
Political unrest aside, Boisvert says he intends to continue his mission in Haiti. It’s supported by many in Maine, he notes, including the local Rotary Club, the Episcopal Church in L-A, and St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, among others.
“I am here doing Theo’s (God’s) work and God is always faithful,” Boisvert said from Haiti, adding, “By the way, I don’t know of one missionary who has gone home.”
Then he says: “Don’t make me out to be more than I am. There are real heroes here, like the old missionaries who have been here 40 and more years. I’m a newcomer when compared to them.”
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