COMPELLED TO CARE

Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, is less than a two-hour flight from Miami. When our 13-member mission team arrived there on July 13, we didn’t know what awaited us.

In the week that followed, we learned a great many things about this troubled area of our world. Some facts:

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere because of violence and instability.

It is the size of the state of Maryland, with 8.4 million people.

Seventy percent of the people are illiterate, and life expectancy is 54 years old.

One out of every five Haitian children dies of malnutrition, dehydration and diarrhea.

The unemployment rate is 80 percent.

The desperate situation of the Haitian people only grew worse in January 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians.

Our mission team was made up of 10 volunteers from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Boardman, New Lisbon Presbyterian Church in Lisbon and Canfield Presbyterian Church and three volunteers from Western Reserve United Methodist Church in Canfield. The purpose of the visit was to learn more about a successful organization called CODEP, Comprehensive Development Project, which is financially supported by the Presbyterian Church, USA, and to help out in any way that we could.

We lived in the CODEP compound, which was a clean, modern and friendly gated community with a path leading out to the beautiful Caribbean Sea. Once we left the compound, however, life for our team changed drastically.

CODEP works with Haitians and engages in environmental reclamation and reforestation. Over the past 20 years, the organization has planted more than eight million trees — a living, breathing forest in Haiti. Haiti suffers from vast deforestation because a tree is quick cash.

The hard part isn’t planting the trees; it’s keeping the Haitians from cutting them down. To try to prevent this, CODEP offers incentives. If the trees stay in the ground two years, CODEP will replace a thatched roof with a tin roof. After three years, Haitians can earn a water catchment system and a cistern. After five years, a house is the reward. Some 600 people in remote villages are harvesting seeds, planting trees and tending their own wood lots. Communities volunteer together to improve their land in exchange for a small stipend and the chance at a house.

Longevity has contributed to CODEP’s success. It has lasted 20 years. Results of its work are not immediate but long term. Some organizations want to see results much quicker.

Which brings us to the question — what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars that were raised and supposedly sent to Haiti after the earthquake? Many Americans made a contribution and wonder where their money went.

The answer is complicated.

It seems there were a lot of good intentions for Haiti, but few who can agree on what is needed most and how it should be provided. Much of the money has never even been used to help the Haitian people. The article: “Beyond Relief: How the World Failed Haiti” by Janet Reitman in Rolling Stone magazine, Aug. 4, 2011, offers details.

Our team witnessed the best and the worst of living in Haitian culture. Families and friends are close and care for one another, the Christian faith is a prominent part of their lives, children laugh and play as they would in any other culture.

Port-au-Prince has become a city of make-shift tents and trash heaps with debris still strewn about from the earthquake. Life seems to be a bit better in the mountains, where we visited project sites with CODEP.

We met with Haitians who were working to make a positive change in their lives and for other Haitians. We enjoyed participating in the work we were seeing by helping paint a recently built CODEP-sponsored house.

Girls and young teens we met on our visits were delighted as we distributed new dresses. Some on our team helped build a chicken coop, and others in our group helped with projects improving the CODEP compound. Everyone did what they could to help out in any way, and the staff was happy with our efforts.

Why Haitians live in such misery remains a troubling mystery to all of us who spent time there. After returning home, I was overcome with emotion thinking about all I had seen and encountered. I called my daughter, Sarah, and shared my sadness with her.

“We pray and God answers our prayers,” I said to her, “why doesn’t God hear the prayers of the Haitian people?”

“He did hear their prayers, Mom,” she answered. “He sent you.”

While we don’t understand why such overwhelming poverty exists in a world where we live with so much, there is always something we can do. Learning more about good people doing what they can and supporting the successful efforts of missionaries and organizations already at work in Haiti is a start.

We left Haiti with a sadness in our hearts. When will substantial relief come to the kind and loving Haitian people? While that question lingers, we held on to a glimmer of hope that the good work we witnessed during our short visit would continue to grow and touch even more lives.

The Rev. Kathryn T. Adams is director of Protestant Campus Ministry at Youngstown State University.