Tag Archives: emergency

CRS, a caritas member from the USA, delivers food to the Foye Ti Zanmi Jezi Orphanage. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/Catholic Relief Service.

The G7 group, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, announced at the weekend that they will cancel Haiti’s US$ 1.2 billion outstanding unilateral debt.

Increasing pressure to do so were came from various NGOs, including Caritas Internationalis, for the international community to help Haiti recover from the catastrophic earthquake of January 12.

Caritas congratulates the G7 for their action and also applauds all the campaigners who put pressure on their governments for speedy action.

Kindergarten and first grade students of Catholic Academy in Granite Bay, CA. USA. wrote these prayers to share with the people of Haiti and all united around them in prayer.

First Grade Prayers:

Dear God the Father
You are the Father of all nations
Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus into the world.
Please bless Haiti. Keep them safe. Be with them in their troubles.
Most importantly, keep their faith alive.
Please take the people in Haiti who died into heaven.
We ask these things through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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Caritas sets up a mobile basic health clinic in Leogane, one of the areas hit hardest by the earthquake. UN Peacekeepers help with the unloading and provide the security. Credit: Katie Orlinsky/ Caritas 2010

Haiti has a soundtrack. Before the earthquake, Port-au-Prince swelled with the noise of two million people in a city that could comfortably accommodate probably one quarter of them. Then on January 12 the air exploded with the deep bass of the earth itself on the move. Then the screams and laments, the orchestra of the damned. The next day was quiet. People were too dazed and shocked.

On the first night after the disaster people started to sing. On the streets, in groups, afraid to go back indoors, they prayed and sang by candlelight. They sang for a better tomorrow because their yesterdays had failed so spectacularly to given them anything to sing for.

Now, more than two weeks later, the urban cacophony has returned. Clapped out cars jostle for space and attention on the roads. Cockerels seem to inhabit every patch of grass ensuring that nobody in this city can sleep much past 5am. People – so many people – are back on the streets, selling their wares at the tops of their voices.

But there is a new sound here now. One that makes the air vibrate almost continuously in a way that makes you think the much-feared second earthquake could be upon us. It is the constant thump of low flying military helicopters delivering aid and personnel all over the city.

There is no question that the logistical might of the United States Marines is impressive. They have mobilised aircraft, boats and vehicles with incredible speed. They have succeeded in delivering tons of urgent food and medical supplies to the stricken people of Haiti.

Caritas itself has benefited from both the US military and UN peacekeepers, who have provided security for aid distributions in Port-au-Prince and Leogane and helped our aid ships dock. We’re immensely grateful for that.

But military personnel are not aid experts and having such a large military presence brings with it tensions. Continue reading →

Children at a Caritas orphanage outside of Port-au-Prince await their food supplies by Caritas member CRS. Photo: Conor O'Loughlin/CARITAS

East of Port-au-Prince, things are calmer than in the city. The massive overcrowding of the capital is much less on show here and even the destruction seems lesser. But then, there are fewer houses here.

It is a peaceful place; smallholdings with banana plants and chickens stand on the roadside. But the aftermath of January 12 lingers here, too. Most houses have sustained damage of some variety; every third or fourth has been completely demolished.

A small orphanage sits among the scrub at end of a stony lane, found only by following the lead of a rusty, hand-painted sign directing us to the ‘orphelinat‘.

When the earthquake struck, their headmistress tells us, all of the children were in an upstairs room of their house watching a documentary “about how children live in France”. Then the building started to shake.

“The bigger children grabbed the smaller children and ran down the stairs”, she told us.

Seconds later, the whole building collapsed. Looking at it now, buckled and angry looking in the midday sun, it is a miracle nobody was hurt. The two floors of the school building, across a small yard now littered with debris and shards of their former life, is also completely fell. Inside the rubble there can be seen a smashed blackboard, the last day’s lesson still lingering, the broken desks strewn drunkenly amid the rubble.

Caritas has worked with this orphanage for some time, providing the nuns with the food necessary to feed 55 children. But since the earthquake, more children have come. In fact, the number of children at the orphelinat is now 96.

“Many children have come,” we are told by their carer. “People from all around have brought us children that they have found. We don’t know where they have come from or where their parents are.” Continue reading →

Brothers at Petionville camp in Port-au-Prince, which receives aid from Caritas. Credit Conor O'Loughlin Caritas/2010

There is a pervasive narrative around the crisis in Haiti about levels of chaos and violence in Port-au-Prince hampering the delivery of aid. But as the United Nations’ humanitarian aid chief John Holmes points out, “every disaster is chaos because that’s what disasters produce”.

Experience has taught us that in crisis situations such as this, the weaker voices in society, already vulnerable to abuse, become more so – including women, children, the elderly and the infirm. Aid is getting through (Caritas alone has already fed well over 100,000 people since the earthquake struck) and now as we slowly move towards the recovery phase, a new set of concerns come to the fore.

As the dust begins to settle here in Haiti and we get a better picture of where the relief effort goes now, we need to think beyond simply meeting basic needs – food will not keep communities safe from abuse and water will not protect them from violence.

In addition to the devastating death toll, hundreds of thousands of families are now displaced from their homes, the vast majority staying in insecure informal camps and shelters. Weapons are widely available. People’s means of earning a living have been largely destroyed. Family members have been separated, with loved ones still missing, including the heads of many households, leaving young children and vulnerable family members to fend for themselves.

As the world continues to help the beleaguered Haitians, the aid community is focusing on work beyond relief distributions alone. Food will not keep communities safe from abuse and water will not protect them from violence.
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Sr Eileen Davey walks in her parish with some children from her nutrition and education programme. 'You may go out by yourself,' she says, 'but you never come home alone.' Photo: Conor O'Loughlin/Caritas

In a small brick house under the shadow of the church of Louis Marie de Montfort church in Port-au-Prince live three nuns.

The house is by the airport and the constant thumping of helicopters overhead provides a disconcerting soundtrack to the searing heat.

The three nuns have lived here for a long time and devote their time to the poor people of the neighbourhood.

“People are very poor here,” says Sr Helen Ryder, a sister of the La Sainte Union order from Co. Offaly in Ireland. “There are poorer, but then in Haiti there is always someone poorer.”

Her colleague, Sr Maria Hawkes from Cork, spoke of the moment the earthquake struck: “I was in my room at about 4.45 in the evening. Just sitting by my bed reading a book. Suddenly I became aware of the wall shaking. I got up quickly. My bed was moving across the room. The cabinet above my  sink popped open.”

They knew immediately that this was a major disaster.

“It was very sad to see, like a pack of cards, all the houses flattened. We went over to an open space and we didn’t return until the next morning. We lay on the ground that night. When there was tremors you could feel them in your spine.”
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