Croix des Mission After the Earthquake

About six weeks after the earthquake, the Port-au-Prince District Superintendent of the Haitian Methodist Church was able to visit the site and take these photos.  This VIM (Volunteers in Mission) team's goal is to put on a roof.  However, we are unskilled; skilled, hired Haitian workers will put up the metal trusses and the metal roof.  We unskilled will haul gravel to fill in the area enclosed by the foundation.  It may take 100 yards of gravel.  Fortunately, some church members and neighborhood volunteers will help do this laborious, manual labor.  (As you can see, there is much more to be done to complete the church.)

The neighborhood people voluntarily work for food.  The each day lunch will be served.  And, the lunch will include meat.  I suspect that some of the people will not have had meat since the earthquake.  In the pre-earthquake time, the very poor could seldom afford meat, pork, chicken nor beef.

There is a pecking order when lunch is served.  Although we discourage it, the Haitians want to feed the North Americans first.  They consider us their guests.  Then, the paid workers are fed.  After, the other adults who have been working and the children.  Sometimes other neighborhood people show up for lunch.  They patiently wait to see if there is enough food for them.  We always have enough and these late comers always remain and work in the afternoon.  Port-au-Prince is the only place I have been (I have been to three dozen countries including Somalia and Ethiopia) where people work for food.  (Haitians are a hungry people where pre-earthquake 70% of the children nightly went to bed hungry.)

The Croix des Mission church treasurer is in charge of preparing the food.  She has to buy more fuel, hire some ladies, and probably borrow enough pans and dishes to cook the food.  (Most Haitians still cook with charcoal.)  She has fed as many as 110 people for lunch.  In Haiti, that is a big undertaking.

This gives a little background.  In the next few days, we will add more of this type of information.