The irony of it all. The MCLC is a model community that encourages people to grow their own food and buy local food, avoiding imported rice. Yesterday, one of our staff brought back 8 large sacks of Haitian rice and some cooking oil from St Marc. The staff was content and I too was pleased to hear this. This can cover the school breakfast program for both Matènwa elementary schools for a month. What was distressing was that this is all he found in the large port town of St Marc on the mainland. There was no corn meal nor millet to buy. The depots on Lagonav did not have any sacks of food to buy either. There was more food in the market than last week, but still not enough given the amount of people. Benaja states, “Even though the eastern half of the island was hit harder by the quake than the western half in terms of physical damage, it is always the western half (referred to as “anba lagonav”) that suffers more in terms of food. They have manioc and sweet potatoes in the ground. That might last two weeks.” In the face of starvation, never say never.
They didn’t act worried for the present moment, having lived through other times of natural disasters, taking one day at a time. I, on the other hand, have been brought up to look ahead. With the daily influx of relatives and friends seeking refuge on Lagonav, without outside intervention people are heading for hunger and starvation. Distressed, I searched for options to get food to the island all weekend. Deliberating about the best action to take, we decided on buying 20,000 pounds of rice and beans that will be shipped into Haiti within 3 weeks and will supposedly have safe transport to Lagonav. I hope that it does not get held up in customs.
A grandmother in Plezans holds her daughter’s newborn in their new makeshift home after the earthquake.
Many people have been asking, “Did the earthquake reach Lagonav?”
Abner and Benaja walked house to house in several communities to see how many houses were damaged and how many people lived in these homes. I have listed the name of the communities, how many homes they found damaged in each area and how many people were effected as a result. This is just a small sampling.
Locality Homes People
Gwomapou 5, 31
Nan mango 9, 47
Fontina 10, 64
Masikren & Matènwa 11, 85
Zèb ginen 33
GranSous 10
Nan Iske 7, 50
Plezans 36, 176
Working as a silk painter at the Matènwa Art Center, Nini had been proud of being able to get a roof over her family’s head, little by little she had been adding to it, envisioning the ability to put down a cement floor as more of her scarves sold. Nini’s house now has holes in it. The rainy season will arrive soon with wind and rain. We hope you will help Nini and other families like her not just patch but repair their homes with better materials, before they are living in the rain. All the 12 homes that we rebuilt after the hurricanes are still standing proudly. Your donations make a huge difference. We are estimating that on average $1000 can repair a 2 room home. Severly damaged home that need to build a new structure will take $3500.
