Haiti Fights for Survival
Episcopal News Service. January 19, 1989 [89010]
Linda M. Logan , Editor of The East Tennessee Episcopalian
NEW YORK (DPS, Jan. 19) -- Haiti is not far from disaster, a Haitian priest said. If the Church throughout the world does not unite in "warm solidarity," and if scientific help for the country does not come soon, it may be too late to save the black republic.
"It is a shame," said the Rev. Jean Albert. "Sometimes I say to myself that life in Haiti is an insult to God."
Albert's remarks about conditions in his country were made in early December 1988 at the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee held in Johnson City, Tennessee. East Tennessee and Haiti are in the midst of a three-year companion diocese relationship within the Anglican Communion.
"I come to tell you that Haiti is dying," Albert told the convention delegates. "I come to tell you to intensify your help....Dear brothers and sisters, God is suffering to see the life in Haiti."
Although the country's current president, Prosper Avril, is "open" and "committed to dialogue," Albert said, the problems the country is suffering are simply beyond the capacity of the government to address.
Thirty years of oppression under the Duvalier government, and erosion so severe that the country's hills are becoming a desert, have resulted in poverty so extreme that, in Albert's opinion, it "is now too late for Haiti."
More than 50 percent of the country's population of 6 million is jobless, the priest pointed out. Per capita income hovers around $200 a year. People are dying from malnutrition. The sugar industry -- the only major industry to survive the political turmoil surrounding the canceled elections of November 1987 -- is now beset by severe export quota problems in trade with the United States.
"We need solidarity between the peoples of this earth," Albert said. "I don't know what Americans can do for Haiti -- only establish a very good solidarity with the Haitian people."
Albert said his country's survival is up to the churches and to science, not the government.
"Jesus did not ask the state or the government to take care of his lambs; he called on Peter, a member of his Church."
The relationship of the diocese began in December 1987 with the visit to Chattanooga of Haiti's Episcopal bishop, the Rt. Rev. Luc Garnier. Last June, four priests and laypersons from East Tennessee visited Haiti. Albert's December 1988 visit was the first of a Haitian priest to East Tennessee in the context of the companion program.
Albert is chaplain at Holy Cross Hospital, at Leogane in southern Haiti. The hospital, recognized as one of the best in the country, is a joint operation of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches. The Presbyterians supply the hospital's medical staff and equipment; the Episcopalians provide the hospital's leadership and chaplaincy.
Dr. David McNeeley, formerly of Norris, Tennessee, directs the hospital's operations. He has guided the hospital from its small beginnings as an outpatient clinic in 1968 to its present position as a major health care center that serves the needs of more than 300,000 people. The 64-bed facility is surrounded by 41 rural clinics, located on land owned by the Episcopal Church, in buildings owned by the Presbyterians.
The hospital's preventive medicine program has made such an impact on the health of people in its part of Haiti that the government has given it full responsibility for the health care of all of the poor in the area. McNeeley's dedication to the care of the rural poor has led him to make horseback journeys into the most remote areas of the island. It has also led him to seek ordination to the Episcopal priesthood. After his ordination on December 14, 1988, McNeeley will be taking the sacraments of the Church, along with his medical supplies, on his visits to people in villages so remote that they see a priest only once every three or four months.
The social services provided by the churches in Haiti are a large part of what keeps the county afloat. Education in Haiti is largely the work of the churches located there. In this nation of 20-percent literacy, the Episcopal Church operates 130 elementary, secondary, and professional schools -- and this with the assistance of only 29 members of the clergy.
At St. Vincent's School for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital, 250 handicapped children from all over Haiti are housed and educated by the Episcopal sisters of the Order of St. Margaret. For the past year, this school has been the site of another medical ministry, one provided by retired Chattanooga dentist Dr. Frank Green, an Episcopal layman.
Green also reported to the Johnson City Convention. In a voice that choked occasionally with the emotion of memory, Green recalled his year at St. Vincent's supplying dental health care to lame, blind, and deaf children and his weekends of performing extractions in the rural areas, areas so mountainous and remote that a four-wheel-drive vehicle was the only means of transporting his dental chair.
More than 90 percent of Haiti's people lose their teeth, Albert confirmed when he addressed the convention. He said that people simply are not educated regarding proper dental care and they have no funds for items such as toothbrushes.
Green, a participant in a national program of the Episcopal Church called Volunteers for Mission, has responded to the Gospel in the "most important way," East Tennessee's Bishop William Sanders told the convention. "By life, not by words."
The diocesan convention these speakers addressed had just pledged the Church in East Tennessee to a year of focusing on the vows undertaken at baptism. Among those are promises to "seek and serve Christ in all persons," to "strive for justice and peace among all people," and to "proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ."
"These are the commitments that make us a people able to serve God in this area," Sanders told the convention. What the Church is focusing on, he said, is the "fundamental calling of the Church as the way of being the Church."
What the Church has to offer in this age marked by dehumanization and exploitation, Sanders said, is a "pilgrimage toward life, a pilgrimage toward new creation." It is a pilgrimage, he said, begun in baptism when "we are anointed to share Christ's ministry of reconciliation."
The Diocese of East Tennessee, whose boundaries follow those of the eastern grand division of the state, has 45 congregations and 12,000 communicants. The Diocese of Haiti has 77 congregations and 84,000 communicants. The companion relationship is expected to result in numerous visits and projects of ministry.
The churches of East Tennessee sent more than $5,000 to the Diocese of Haiti in the spring of 1988. The money, raised in large part in a Lenten project of Church school children, is to be used for the education of Haitian school-children.
In another diocesan-wide project begun this fall, medicines and medical equipment are being gathered for use at St. Vincent's School. A donation of $10,000 in children's physical therapy equipment made by the Orange Grove Center in Chattanooga was driven by Green from Chattanooga to Sarasota, Florida, the last weekend in November. The equipment, which is destined for St. Vincent's School, will be flown to Port-au-Prince as space becomes available on commercial flights.