Local volunteers dodge Haitian violence
LEWISTON – Tear gas stung the eyes of some of the boys living at Haiti’s Hope House orphanage in Les Cayes a couple of weeks ago. The women know this because the chemical was unleashed to quell a demonstration taking place the night before they arrived at the Rev. Marc Boisvert’s mission.
About a week later, Haiti’s troubles came closer.
“We heard gunfire at night while we were in Port-au-Prince,” said Linda Tremblay, one of a handful of health care professionals who volunteered their services to help the poor of the impoverished Caribbean island nation.
Faith Medler, another of the St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center workers, opened her eyes wide recalling the burst of shooting that rang out as a crowd of people could be heard singing, shouting and chanting in the distance.
Still, said Claudette Reny, they didn’t feel threatened.
“We were hiding behind the nuns,” she said.
They were staying at a convent behind a locked gate and surrounded by high walls in the Haitian capital. It was the night before their return flight to America.
They had been briefed before leaving Lewiston on the troubles rocking Haiti for the past three months. They knew there was discord, that some people in Haiti aren’t happy with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
None, however, expected the violence that erupted Thursday, only days after they left the island of Hispaniola shared by Haiti with the Dominican Republic. More than 40 people have died since in gun battles between insurgents and Haitian police.
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday urged that people avoid visiting Haiti. The International Red Cross issued a statement saying it’s gearing up to help treat an estimated 500 wounded. It called the situation in Haiti alarming.
“We always felt safe,” though, said Tremblay.
The St. Mary’s volunteers were accompanied by local people affiliated with either Boisvert, a Lewiston native, or a health clinic where some work in the rural village of Fonds des Blancs.
Of one of those escorts, Reny said, “I believe he’d lay down his life for us.”
Medler, like the others, has made several trips to Haiti. She said turmoil has been brewing on the island for years, largely fanned by wealthy landowners displeased by Aristide’s efforts to better the lives of most Haitians.
She and others were told that people taking part in anti-Aristide demonstrations were mostly paid peasants and inner city poor people. With an average annual income under $2,000, Haitian people will do nearly anything to get money to help feed their families, the women noted.
Roots of unrest
The political unrest is fanned by those “with old money,” they said, some still longing for the power and privilege they enjoyed under the dictatorships of Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
The younger Duvalier was exiled in the 1980s uprising that led to Aristide’s election as president in 1990. Later ousted by a military coup, Aristide returned to office supported by U.S. troops in 1994.
The women said they’ve seen evidence of progress under Aristide even while some in the nation accuse the president of corruption. A new public park in Port-au-Prince is used nightly by students who study under the lights, they noted. The capital’s airport has been reconstructed, and there’s new housing springing up.
The St. Mary’s volunteers plan another visit to Haiti in January. They’ll go sooner, they said, if they can raise money quickly to pay for the trip and the medical supplies they hope to bring with them.
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