Rich Gosser

I first met Fr. Rick Frechette, CP around 1992 when my wife and I began bringing groups to Haiti on what we called "reverse mission pilgrimages". (Unlike missionaries of another era who went to foreign lands to convert people to Christianity our groups generally consist of Christians from the US and the conversion we hope to accomplish is in THEM - the kind of experience that my wife and I had when we first came to Haiti 20 years ago this month!)

I was immediately captivated by his sparkling blue eyes, his impish smile, and his remarkable ability to articulate the complex realities of Haiti. "If we had ears to hear the cries of the poor like God does", he said, "the roar from this island would be deafening". Fr. Rick's religious community - the Passionists - identify closely with the sufferings of Jesus. On another occasion Rick said to me, "Being in Haiti isn't like touching the wounds of Christ, it's like being INSIDE the wounds of Christ". I confess that the first time I met him I announced that I'd like to be his shadow so that I could tag along behind him everywhere he went.

When I first met him, Rick was the director of Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage in Kenscoff, above Port au Prince. At that time the orphanage had over 200 children in a beautiful setting of group homes that resembled a village of children rather than an institution. Rick joked about being the "unwed father of 200 children" and - in a sense he wasn't kidding. Each of the children has his last name and Our Little Brothers and Sisters makes a life-long commitment to them. Every child is educated from preschool through secondary and even university or professional school if they have the talent. Today OLBS has more than 500 children and is one of the finest such places in Haiti.

Rick was also the director of a children's hospital on the edge of Port au Prince called Hospice St. Damien. During the troubled years following Haiti's 1991 coup d'etat Rick agonized over life and death decisions and watched children die because medicines, supplies, even electricity and water were in short supply. At the orphanage there was no resident physician and some sick children there died because medical treatment at the hospital was too far away. At the age of 42 Rick decided that he could serve Haiti's poor children better if he studied medicine. He completed his medical training in the US while continuing to direct the orphanage and hospital in Haiti.

Rick returned to Haiti and continued his work at the orphanage and St. Damien hospital, a cramped space in an old 4 story hotel. I hesitated to take groups there. There was usually only space for 1 or 2 visitors to enter it's crowded wards at a time. But Rick had also returned with a new dream - to build a new St. Damien hospital that would be a first-class medical facility dedicated to the care and treatment of poor children. After several years and many challenges, the new St. Damien's hospital opened in December 2006 along Route Tabarre, behind the Port au Prince airport. I got to visit it yesterday!

The children admitted to St. Damien's are all seriously ill. Some are abandoned by their parents, probably because they believe that their children will die and they have no money to pay for a funeral. Sick though they are, I wondered if maybe this place seemed like being at the threshold of heaven. It's certainly an oasis in a desert of despair.

Touring the hospital was a great treat. Spending an unexpected hour or so with Fr. Rick and some of the volunteers at the hospital was a still greater treat! We talked about the work he does in Wharf Jeremie and City Soley where twice a week he takes his "mobile clinic" and enters what many describe as a "battle zone" and where shoot-outs between rival gangs are commonplace and where assaults by the UN "peacekeepers" here in Haiti have added to the suffering of what might well be the some of the most desperately poor people in our hemisphere. (The UN recently acknowledged that in one such shoot-out last July their troops discharged more than 22,000 rounds of high powered amunition in this crowded shantytown of houses made of wood, cardboard, and tin.)

One of my greatest satisfactions in working in Haiti or in support of development in Haiti is that I get to meet some remarkable people - not just a few, but a LOT of truly remarkable people. Among the many remarkable people I've met here, there are few as remarkable as Rick Frechette. I won't ever get to be his shadow. It's just as well. I could never keep up with him and don't have anything like his courage or compassion. I'm just happy to enjoy the privilege of knowing him as a friend.

rich • Jan-Feb 2007 2 comments

I first visited Hospice St. Joseph (HSJ) in 1990 when I came to Haiti as a member of the Washington Office on Haiti (WHO) delegation that had been invited by the Conseille Electoral Provisoire (CEP), the council of the Haitian government charged with organizing the historic 1990 elections that were the first free and fair elections in Haiti's modern history.

Formerly a tourist hotel called "Buddy's Place", Hospice had been founded by a priest from the diocese of Lafayette, IN and a Sister of St. Joseph from Tipton, IN. It's mission was to provide hospitality for guests from the US traveling to Haiti to visit "sister parishes" in Haiti and for guests from the rural provinces of Haiti who were seeking medical treatment in Port au Prince and had nowhere to stay.

The mission soon expanded to provide direct medical services to the Christ Roi (Christ the King) neighborhood around HSJ through an on-site clinic staffed by Haitian physicians. Today the HSJ clinic operates 5 days a week from about 9 am to 2 pm.

Hospice is situated in the section of Port au Prince called Nazon. Just down the hill from the gate is the bustling Christ Roi, open-air market where "ti machann" (market ladies) sell fruits and vegetables, chicken and turkey parts (dark meat only since it is packed and frozen in the US where palettes show a preference for white meat), and every imaginable household commodity.

Also for sale in the neighborhood is the ubiquitous "chabon" (charcoal) which is used for cooking, baking, ironing (yes, Haitians use irons heated with burning charcoal), and even dry-cleaning!

Charcoal is the cheapest fuel around since petroleum products (like natural gas and propane) all have to be imported from other countries. Once completely covered with dense hardwood forests, Haiti has become an environmental catastrophe with 98% of the original forest cover GONE. Hardwood trees were cut soon after the successful Haitian slave revolt defeated Napoleon's army in order to pay an indemnity that the international community imposed on the new Haitian Republic to compensate France for her loss of property - namely the 500,000 human beings from W. Africa who had been held captive by the French in the most brutal slave colony of the new World.

The slaughter of the Kreyol Pigs in the early 1980s resulted in a mass exodus of peasants from the countryside to Port au Prince. This produced an increasing demand for charcoal so those peasants remaining in the provinces - no longer having pigs to sell when they needed cash - turned to making easily transported charcoal to satisfy the insatiable urban demand for fuel.

The migration of people from the rural provinces also resulted in sprawling slums like the notorious City Soley, built on what used to be the garbage dump of Port au Prince. There more than 300,000 people are crowded into wood and cardboard shacks in a rat-maze of narrow corridors amidst fetid canals that serve as latrines and sewers and spew putrid water into those same shacks when those sewers flood and overflow during the rainy season.

City Soley today is too dangerous for foreigners ("blan yo") like me to visit today. Many people are also nervous about having to be around the airport for a long time, because it's an area where numerous kidnappings (for money) have occurred. In most parts of Port au Prince however, people go about their business as usual.

Today I went out with one of the directors at Hospice St. Joseph to shop for crafts. The streets were bustling with activity. Traffic moved normally. That is to say, in the seemingly endless, chaotic dance that makes first-time visitors to Port au Prince wonder how it's possible that anyone can get anywhere driving here!

Thousands of people were walking or riding the Tap-Taps, the ever-present mass transit vehicles that double as moving folk art and billboards of religious faith like the one below. "LaFoi, L'amour, L'esperans" (Faith, Hope and Love) - you've got to have them all - especially love - and MOST especially you've got to love Haiti!

rich • Jan-Feb 2007 Leave a comment

Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti, is a city of more than 2 million souls. It is so different from rural Haiti that it is sometimes referred to as the "Republic of Port au Prince" - a kind of country within a country. I arrived here at Hospice St. Joseph yesterday after leaving Fondwa around 9 in the morning. The trip from Fondwa takes about two hours with about half that time spent getting through Carrefour ("Kafou"), one of the crowded and densely populated suburban neighborhoods of the capital.

Not much has changed here in Port au Prince since my last visit in June 2006. The streets are congested with traffic - the omnipresent, overcrowded tap-taps moving people in all directions - pedestrians, open air markets and garbage. In spite of a campaign (funded in part by USAID) to provide people with jobs picking up garbage, it looks pretty much as it always has. I had a chance to ride up to a lookout above the city yesterday with two Americans I just met who were visiting in Port au Prince from Jeremie (in the far West of Haiti) where they are working with the Haitian Health Foundation and with an English Language "institute". The view is a familiar one to me now, but for them it was a "first time" experience. I enjoyed pointing out landmarks to them.

Port au Prince, Haiti - the view from Boutilliers

My wife Daneen and I visited that lookout on our first trip to Haiti in 1987. It always reminds me of the story of Jesus' temptation on the heights overlooking Jerusalem! The street vendors there have always been "devilishly aggressive" and they lived up to my expectations again yesterday!

This morning I went to mass at St. Louis de Montfort parish - a vast, city parish of more than 30,000 souls established 8 years ago. The pastor, Fr. Nicolas Gerard, is a friend of mine as are Sr. Eileen Davey and Sr. Helen Ryder, Holy Union sisters who work in the parish. Partners in Progress (through the "Skip a Lunch, Save a Child" program of it Rich in Mercy division) supports a "head start" program in the parish that provides early education and nutrition to about 70 pre-schoolers. The parish continues to grow with people flooding its poorer sections to escape even worse conditions in Port au Prince's notorious slum called City Soley, built on what used to be the garbage dump.

St. Louis de Montfort neighborhood

rich • Jan-Feb 2007 Leave a comment

Yesterday I spent the morning at the St. Antoine School here in Fondwa with my friend Missy Owen. It was my second visit to the school in two weeks. This time I went to meet with some of the elementary school children and deliver to them Song Books, Story Books, audio casettes and photographs that came from Holy Trinity School in Ligonier, PA where I live! We also recorded some songs that the St. Antoine kids has prepared before our visit. Below is a picture of some of the kids pouring over a picture of their counterparts in Ligonier!

Haiti is only an hour and half flight from Miami, but in almost every way it is "a world away" from everything most of us in the US take for granted. Public education in Haiti exists, but teachers there are poorly paid and very often don't have a degree or any particular training in education. If you've completed a grade, then you're qualified to teach it even if you've only progressed one year beyond the grade you're teaching.

I was very impressed when I walked into the third grade classroom at the St. Antoine School. Written on the rudimentary chalk board in French was the statement: "Education is the foundation for all change". It's a powerful statement. Most Haitians I've met would agree.

Although getting an education - especially a good education - is extrmemly difficult here, just about everyone I know here attaches tremendous value to education. On the one hand it's a teacher's nightmare here. There are few books. Classrooms are poorly lighted and overcrowded. Children often spend hours walking to get to school - most often without breakfast. (There are some kids who attend the St. Antoine School who must walk as much as three or even four HOURS to reach the school and - trust me on this one because I know from experience - the walking is VERY rugged!)

On the other hand though I would LOVE to have a chance to teach some of the young people I know here. They have such a desire to learn. They work so very, very hard in spite of the obstacles. I grew up in a family that instilled in me a love for education. I've always loved learning. I've been privileged to attend some very good schools and earn several degrees. If I'd been born in Haiti, I don't know if I would have had the energy or endurance to complete elementary school. There are kids here who are as gifted - or more gifted - than I. They will never have the same opportunities as I've had. It's my privilege though to help level the playing field for them somewhat by supporting some of the initiatives of APF and our other collaborators in Haiti. Education IS, after all, the foundation for change.

rich • Jan-Feb 2007 1 comment

My friend Meredith suggested that people reading this blog might like to see what it looks like here in Fondwa from up on the road to Jacmel. The picture below was taken along that road looking down on the Fondwa road. The structure to the right along the road is the APF Visitors' Center where I'm a guest. The others living here include three long-term volunteers, the community of Sisters of St. Antoine, and assorted staff people. I hope this gives you all some better idea of what it looks like here!

Fondwa Road - APF Visitors' Center

rich • Jan-Feb 2007 Leave a comment