About twenty-six years ago, in 1981, Ralph Stowe had the opportunity to go on a retreat. Twenty-two people, including Ralph, traveled to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the third world nation of Haiti. Ralph was among a group of both clergy and lay people. For him, this trip became a life-altering experience. His group worked for a day in Mother Theresa's two homes, one for children suffering from malnutrition and the other for the dying.
We spent a day with Father Bonin, a Salesian priest from France
who has worked in the slums of Port-au-Prince for twenty-five years. He has built several schools in this area called Cite Soleil, including a vocational school. He has also built a soup
kitchen that feeds over a thousand children every day. Though the food consists mainly of dry meal, it is essential to those for whom nutrition is scarce.
The group I was with split up into smaller groups to go and live with missionaries. My group went to a town called Jeremy on the western end of Haiti. Driving for thirteen hours in two small jeeps, we crossed over two mountains and through water a number of times. We stayed with the missionaries on top of a mountain for three days. There, we visited a school with a thousand children who came from all over the mountain, some walking for two hours just to get there. We watched people walk down the mountain to carry water back up. Some went down the mountain with heavy baskets on their heads, carrying things to sell like bananas, coffee, charcoal, and coconuts. Some carried down baskets full of clothes to wash in a river or stream, drying them on the bushes, and then carrying them back up the mountain, a whole day's work. We even saw women carry cement blocks, two at a time, up the mountain on their heads to build an addition onto the school.
Afterwards, we returned to Port-au-Prince to rejoin the other members of our group and share our different experiences. When I went home after
the 10-day retreat, I had a feeling of total confusion. We take for granted the basic things in our lives like electricity, water, roads, schools and our whole way of life. The Haitian
people must work so long and hard just to obtain the basic essentials and yet I see as many happy people there as I do here. I knew I had to go back. In my own life at that time, I was
working as both a vocational instructor in the Boston school system, teaching woodwork to eighth grade students, and as a carpenter and building contractor. As my five children were by now
grown, this allowed me the free time to return and spend more time in Haiti. After the original trip, I returned a year later for another retreat. I decided to spend most of the next
summer in Haiti. I spent the summer working with Sister Monique and her thirty or so nuns. She had three small schools for children up to the sixth grade as well as a large school where
she took teenage girls off the street and taught them a vocation. My time there was spent making desks for the students and furniture and benches for the chapel. In one of the schools, the
classrooms had no doors. With the help of some teenage boys, I made doors for the classrooms. I worked all summer with no electricity, using only hand tools.
Over the next six years, I also worked with Sister Monique to build a larger school in the center of Port-au-Prince. Each summer I was there working, I would spend four or five days in
different villages with the families of Haitians I met in Boston area. I would bring photos and messages to the various families. This also gave me the experiences of living in villages
with no running water or electricity. For the past fourteen years, I have been visiting the home of a friend of mine in Haiti located on the top of a mountain called Saint Rock. Since my
first visit to Saint Rock, I have been in love with the place. It overlooks the Atlantic Ocean as well as Port-au-Prince, in all its utter confusion. It feels so peaceful, especially at
night with the lights below and stars above. Saint Rock is much like the first village I visited. People carry large baskets of produce down the mountain to sell in Carrefour and return
with other products. They carry water and clothes to be washed. I have walked down the mountain myself, and it takes about one and a half hours.
Saint Rock covers a large area and has two schools, providing education to about the sixth grade level. Education beyond that is in Port-au-Prince. There is a new priest on the mountain
that has obtained funds to tear the church down and build a new one. He is also building a school to teach beyond the sixth grade and hopes to bring nuns from France to teach. About
two-thirds of the way up the mountain, there is a partially finished home. The home was being built to be an orphanage, but the person building it died before its completion. I have had my
eye on this house for some time. Each time I passed the house, it almost spoke to me to finish it. It eventually became possible for me to purchase this property, and I am now in the
process of completing the house. When it is finished, the house will have a cistern to supply water, and will be rough-wired with electricity. It will require a power source such as solar
energy, a windmill or a generator. The home has six large bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and dining room areas. The foundation of the home has been strengthened so a second floor could
be added for expansion.
I hoped to use the building to start a health clinic and foster home for the people of Saint Rock. There is a group from Quincy, MA, that
traveled on a retreat to Haiti about the same time I first traveled there. They started a group called St. Boniface for Haiti. They have built a hospital with complete surgical ward in a
place called Fonds-des-Blancs. Two of the leaders of this group, Nanette Caniff and Father Gerry Osterman, are guiding me in setting up a foundation to start the clinic and foster home.
My first goal was to set up a health clinic, mainly for children. The average life span in Haiti is merely in the forties, unlike here in the U.S. where it is in the seventies. The main
reason that many in Haiti don't make it to their fiftieth birthday is because they do not have access to health care. The people of Saint Rock and its environment will benefit from that
health center. The health clinic will help by providing necessary vaccinations and medical aid, and would offer immunization program for the children. We would like to have a full time
nurse and additionally have a Haitian doctor come in one or two days a week. There is room for people to stay overnight. The priest on St. Rock has suggested that we could be affiliated
with a hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Gradually, we would like to provide room for children to live on the property. There are children in Haiti who have no parents or a single parent who cannot afford to provide for them, and
such children end up as indentured slaves to other families. Most of them receive no education. We would like to help a few of these children avoid such a fate. These children would
receive an education and could help with chores in the home but would also have time for recreation, as a normal home life would provide. Additionally, there are many families who don't
have the small amount of money needed to send their children to the missionary schools. The foundation would like to help them.
We already have the people of Saint Rock who will run this home and health center. We have someone to fill the position of director and someone to cook and clean. A full-time nurse will
start the clinic. The pastor has offered his nuns from France to help when they come to teach in the school he is building. The brothers of St. Theresa who run one of the schools in St.
Rock have offered to help in any way possible. I also want to have groups come on retreats to experience Haiti and work in the home. We have someone in the Boston area who will run these
retreats.
The board of the Foundation consists of people in the Boston area who have been to Haiti and a group of Haitians in Boston and New York whom I met in here and in Haiti. Six members of the
board live in Haiti. The house will be leased to the Foundation for one dollar a year for as long as it is needed for use as a health clinic and foster home. What the Foundation needs now
is money and sponsors to help purchase medical supplies and to clothe and feed the children who will eventually live there. The house needs to be furnished with beds and other furniture.
We also need to develop a power source to supply electricity for part of the day. We need transportation to carry supplies up the mountain and transport patient in case of an emergency. In
addition, we need money to pay the small staff needed to run the house. My plans for the health clinic with a nurse and part time doctor will not be expensive to start and operate, but if
it grows to be a foster home helping children receive and education, the expenses will grow. It will only be as successful as the sponsorships and donations allow it to be.
Most people in the rural villages exist on an average of three to four hundred dollars a year. They live a simple but busy life. As more and more people move to Port-au-Prince in the quest
of finding a better life, the city is becoming far too overcrowded, and most people live in unsanitary conditions. Now the government is struggling to make the city more livable and
sanitary. One source of aid comes from the many Haitians who have found their way to the U.S. and who send a large portion of their income back to their families in Haiti. Another primary
source of hope is the many missionaries and charitable foundations seeking to provide quality health care and education for the people in both the city and the villages of Haiti.
If our foundation is successful, it will not only provide health care and education to the people in one small village but will join the many missionaries and organizations throughout
Haiti, working to develop the nation and bring hope and improved living condition to its people. If we can work to improve the villages, many people would begin to move back to the
villages and thus ease conditions in the overcrowded cities. Working together, the combined efforts of all these many individuals and groups will create a real substantial improvement for
the people of Haiti.
Many of these goals have already been reached! Read our latest news for updates.
