It started with water. And food snacks. And paper towels. It progressed to hardware. Faucets. Shower heads. Over the years, it has morphed into school supplies, ink cartridges, acne cream.
There’s a lot of talk about supply chain these days. But at our orphanage, the supply chain has been chugging for more than 12 years. It begins with us shopping, continues with us packing endless duffel bags, and culminates in our arrival in a van or pick-up truck, unloading the goods as the kids circle anxiously and loudly volunteer to carry it all.
Socks, deodorant, boys underwear, educational videos…
The simple truth is, there are many things you can’t buy in Haiti. Other things are crazy expensive. Haiti is an island, so everything is imported. That raises costs. And some of what is sold there is inferior quality to what can be purchased in the U.S.
All of which launched us into a human delivery service. FedEx has nothing on us.
Crayons, aspirin, coffee maker, water filter….
Every month, depending on how many are coming with us, we maximize luggage allowance to incorporate the latest supply needs. We know every airline, every baggage limit. Over the years, we have made friends with porters and handlers who will shrug it off if we are one or two pounds over. It’s amazing when you say, “This is all for an orphanage” how nice some people can be.
Filling up an airplane in Michigan with supplies headed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake / Photo courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Delivering the basics, at first
The first haul we made was our initial trip to Haiti in early 2010. It was just after the earthquake, and we were told what was most needed were the basics: water, snacks, sanitary items, toothbrushes, toilet paper, soap.
In those days, you landed, you took your stuff off the plane, and you pretty much walked out. Operations at the airport were threadbare due to the earthquake, and few people bothered with customs or checking your luggage. This was when the Detroit Muscle Crew, a group of volunteer tradesmen from the Motor City area, began making trip after trip to our orphanage thanks to the generosity of Roger Penske and Art Van Elslander, who let us piggyback on their planes.
Minimal infrastructure at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport shortly after the 2010 earthquake / Photo courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
We stuffed everything from tile saws to lumber in those cargo holds. And no one ever asked us a thing when we landed.
Paintbrushes, PVC pipe, screwdrivers, twine…
As the years passed, our needs grew beyond construction. It was clear that certain things made more sense to buy in the States — reams of paper, computer cords, monitors, certain snack foods. We began to load every bag with as much as possible.
Then, when our school really got going, the supply needs tripled.
Math books, erasable markers, instructional DVDs, small plastic chairs…
Slowly but surely, month by month, we built up a supply closet, simply from taking one trip after another. Any visitor who joined us was asked to push their baggage to the limit. Periodically, when we are fortunate enough to be offered trips on private planes — the Masco corporation, for example, was kind enough to donate multiple flights — we took full advantage of the space, stuffing the empty seats with duffel bags.
Garage > airport > plane: our mini supply chain in 2022
Now, supplies to thrive on
These days, we have become quite specialized. Thanks to new programs and incredible volunteer instructors, you might find us filling our suitcases with art supplies, ribbons, Portuguese language books, basketballs. The music program has multiplied the supply needs, and airplane by airplane, we have built a small orchestra.
Violins, guitars, keyboards, ukuleles…
We’ve even managed to construct drum sets, one piece at a time. And since Dennis Tini, our musical director, is also a safety and CPR expert, we have brought with us fire blankets, emergency equipment, and even a full-sized mannequin to practice life-saving. I’m not making this up.
Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo Photography
There is pretty much nothing we won’t try to bring down if it enhances our kids’ lives.Is it heavy? Yes. Do we appear ridiculous? Often.
But the look on the kids’ faces when we pull in and unload is priceless. There is a sense of wonder. And you realize what a rare privilege it is to live in the world of FedEx, Amazon delivery and 24-hour supermarkets.
You realize how many people go through their days with nothing new being introduced. Nothing to unwrap. Little to open.
Our kids gather in the kitchen or the supply room and help us unpack rolls of paper towels, bathing suits, soccer nets, ice packs, guitar strings, silverware or boxes of quinoa. They marvel. They “ooh” and “ahh.” They say, “Is that for us?” We say, “Who else would it be for?”
We deliver. They smile. The supply chain chugs along. And it’s all worth it.
Top image: Stephania comforts Fabi, our newest and youngest at Have Faith Haiti
Youth has its privileges. Being the youngest child at our orphanage means your feet never touch the ground. The older kids, the nannies, the teachers and the adult visitors are all instantly lifting you up, carrying you, hugging you, making a fuss.
When a new young one enters the orphanage, everyone knows it. The child draws a crowd like a rock star in a parking lot.
For a while, our youngest child was Babu. Her grandmother had brought her to us not long after the 2010 earthquake, and had told us she was 2 ½ years old. That was pretty young for us back then, but her needs were great so we decided to admit her. Months later, when the grandmother finally brought us a birth certificate, we saw Babu was not even 2. But by that point, she was part of the family.
Babu, then and now. Photo credit: Brian Kelly / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Babu grew up, as they all do, and relinquished the “youngest” title to Knox, who came to us when he was 3, a victim of brain trauma in his infant years. We all carried Knox and fussed over Knox, until eventually, Esther and Stephania came to us from hurricane-ravaged Jérémie. They were both just three years old, born a month apart, and the older kids scrambled from one to the other, showering them with such love that it explains the utter confidence both of them have now, at the ripe old age of 8.
Knox, Esther, and Stephania in some of their youngest photos
I’m not sure who came directly after them, but I know pretty soon, Jerry took over. Jerry came to us through a staff member who knew the family situation, and asked if we could help. From the start, Jerry was so damn cute, a round face and hundred-watt smile, that kids would tag along behind each other, calling out “Jerry! Hey, Jerry!” and waiting for their turn to hold him.
Jerry!
Clubhouse rules
Jerry got so used to the carry-around treatment, that it was a shock to his system when, at age four, his crown was snatched by some younger kids from Les Cayes, like Esteven Belcom, who, after much prodding, told us, in a terribly quiet voice, that his real name was “Jeff.”
Soon the new kids were getting the New Kids Treatment, and we’d occasionally see Jerry watching the parade go by, lifting his arms as if to say, “Hey! Yo! What am I now, chopped liver?”
Recently, the youngest kid title belonged to Djoulissa, a charismatic ball of energy is who now approaching her third birthday.
But the current leader in the clubhouse is named Fabi. She just turned 2 last month. She has big eyes and prominent ears and a sometimes-dazed expression, which is understandable given the whirlwind she has been through in recent months.
Fabi celebrates her 2nd birthday with a bunny cake.
She comes from a village outside Les Cayes. Her father and sister were killed during the earthquake last August, her small home was destroyed. Her grieving mother, responsible for two older children, sought us out during a visit to the area. She knew of Siem, who was born in the area in the early 1990’s before coming to our orphanage as a young boy.
Siem is now in college in the U.S., and had gone with me to Les Cayes to help rebuild his mother’s house, which was destroyed in the earthquake.
Fabi’s mother, a tall, thin woman named Nadej, walked to the site of the wreckage with Fabi, then just 1 ½ years old, in her arms. She asked to speak privately with Siem, and then he translated for me.
“They had a house around here…it came down in the earthquake…a lot of them died…her mother, her husband, her daughter…she has two other kids…she doesn’t have a way to feed them…she wants us to take this one…she says she wants her to have a better life. She heard about me, and how I was raised at the Mission and the chances I’ve been given…She wants her daughter to have that…”
New kid treatment
As she spoke, I noticed she had a small packed bag with some clothes in it.
“Is she asking if we can take her daughter now?” I asked Siem.
“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
We had to tell her we were not equipped to do that, but that we would return in a few months after looking into the situation. She asked when that would be, perhaps doubting we meant it. We promised we’d be back around the new year, and we kept that promise.
And that is how Fabi came to us.
The new boss in town, Fabi
I look at her now, playing with Djoulissa, the youngest and the former youngest, still both in pull-up diapers, and I realize that one day, not too long from now, there will be another new one, with another story of desperation, and another chance to turn that desperation to hope.
And one day, Djoulissa and Fabi will be lifting the new young additions and comforting them when they cry, and telling them everything will be all right. Perhaps they will remember when they first got here, perhaps not. We can only hope the loving attention each “new youngest kid” receives upon arrival sets them on a course of feeling secure, in a large, unusual but ever-loving family.
Image: Dr. Paul Farmer at the new Butaro Hospital built by Partners In Health for the Rwanda Ministry of Health. | Location: Burera, Rwanda. (Photo by William Campbell/Corbis via Getty Images)
What takes you off your path? What catches your eye, your heart, your mind, and lures you to wander ever away from the road that others — and maybe even you in an earlier time — had so carefully laid out?
Paul Farmer was one of those wanderers. He was a student at Duke, headed to medical school, when he visited nearby migrant labor camps and met some Haitians working there. He liked them. Grew interested in their stories. Upon graduating, he wrote a long article about their plight. He called it “Haitians Without A Home.”
By the time he was in Harvard Medical School, he was tugged all the time. He spent much of his class time in Haiti, taking his books with him, flying back for exams, then returning to Haiti, where he was volunteering at a hospital and imagining ways to bring medical care to isolated, impoverished regions.
Eventually, Farmer and some partners established Partners in Health (when he was just 28). PIH began in a desolate area of the Central Plateau. It has since grown to 16 locations, employing 7,000 people across the country. Through education, equipment, research, and distribution of medication and vaccinations — in Haiti and in several other countries — Farmer is easily responsible for affecting millions of lives, saving a great many of them.
We were supposed to meet this year. I’d admired him for a long time, knew he was still coming to Haiti, met people who knew him, got a message to his people, found out he would be willing to meet me and tried to coordinate our varied and harried schedules.
Then, last week, Paul Farmer died, suddenly, in his sleep, while visiting one of the many operations he started, this one in Rwanda. He was 62.
CANGE, HAITI – JANUARY 23, 2010: Naomie Marcelin, shown on Jan. 23, a registered nurse who works at Partners in Health’s Cange hospital, lost a sister and a niece in the Haitian earthquake and still continues to work. (Photo by Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
A wealth of service
Farmer’s death left me sad and depressed. He was still doing so much good. He left behind a wife and children and so many he had touched. But his story got me thinking about how many others Haiti has beckoned in her lonely, desperate way, and how those people, like Farmer, strayed off the easier path to try the difficult way of changing things that Haiti demands.
One of the earliest hospitals Farmer tried to work with was the Albert Schweitzer hospital of Deschapelles, in central Haiti, a few hours north of Port-au-Prince. You’d think by the name that Schweitzer, the great humanitarian physician, might have established the place.
He didn’t. That hospital was actually built by Dr. Larimer Mellon and his wife Gwen. If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because Mellon was part of the famously rich Mellon family. His great-uncle was Andrew Mellon, the banker who founded Alcoa. His father was William, who co-founded Gulf Oil.
So Haiti was the last place a guy like Larry Mellon would end up. But something lured him. Something about Haiti’s awful poverty stirred the dream of a beautiful thing rising from its desperation.
Mellon and his wife left behind a life of luxury in Arizona and moved to the Arbonite Valley, where life expectancy was about the lowest in the western hemisphere.
And they built a hospital.
PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI- NOVEMBER 1: Cholera patients lay connected to IV solutions in the Albert Schweitzer Hospital November 1, 2010 in Port au Prince, Haiti. (Photo by Antonio Bolfo/Getty Images)
That hospital operates to this day. It is where the Mellons are buried. A man named Jean Marc de Matteis, who was running a highly successful construction company, became aware of some challenges the hospital was facing through his wife, Verena, who was on the hospital’s board. He could have shrugged and said, “Not my problem.” Instead, he offered to help, provided guidance, got deeper and deeper involved, and now is the Hospital’s CEO.
Lured off the path.
Family legacies
There’s an orphanage in Grand Goave, Haiti that is home to more than 60 children. It’s called Be Like Brit, named after Brittany Gengel, a passionate, caring, 19 year-old from Massachusetts who came down in 2010 to to help Haiti’s children. One day she texted her mother: “I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.”
Three hours later, the earth shook, and Brittany, along with nearly 300,000 others, was killed.
Her family could have, understandably, wanted nothing more to do with Haiti. Instead, they raised money to make her dream come true. In 2012, they opened the Be Like Brit Orphanage, which now features a school, a large staff, and a first-class operation.
Len, choking back tears, and Cherylann Gengel address the media after receiving word earlier in the morning that the U.S. State Department had identified and recovered the body of their daughter, Britney Gengel, in Haiti on Feb. 14, 2010. Gengel was in Haiti on a mission working with an orphanage during the Jan. 12 earthquake. (Photo by Kelvin Ma/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images
I’ve met Len Gengel, Brittany’s father. He was in construction in the U.S. and never figured he’d be founding an orphanage. But something about his daughter’s dream, which was to nourish Haitian children’s dreams, got to him. He told me it was something “We had to do.”
Lured off the path.
Children from Have Faith Haiti were welcomed at Be Like Brit in July, 2019. They played basketball, volleyball, ping pong, and even swim at the beach with their new friends.
I never got to meet Paul Farmer. In this life, I never will. But the spirit that brought him to Haiti is actually all over this hot country, in hospitals and schools and orphanages and missions. People who, like Farmer, see hunger and try to cure it, see sickness and try to heal it, see open arms and try to embrace them.
What takes you off your path? Something purer? Something more satisfying? Here’s a nod to all those who have bravely taken that left turn from an easier life. Their impact, like Farmer’s, will ripple for a very long time.
Each issue from “Life at the Orphanage” chronicles the joy and lessons learned among 50+ children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Our kids at the orphanage don’t know much about technology, but they sure do know cameras.
Although we lack computers, television or decent internet, pretty much everyone who comes to visit brings a camera. Might be an iPhone. Might be an SLR. Might be one of those big fancy things with a long lens. Might be a cardboard disposable.
But everyone wants to take a picture, and for the most part, we are OK with it. Even our youngest kids now know you smile when someone yells “souri!” (the Creole word) and then you curl around and look at the person’s screen to see the results. In a place that has very few mirrors, it’s the best way to check yourself out.
Over the years, we’ve been blessed to have some amazing photographers visit our little third-of-an-acre facility. They’ve captured the spirit, the color, the happiness and the shabbiness.
Some were quite accomplished. Rick Smolan, the award-winning TIME, LIFE and National Geographic photographer who created the “Day in the Life of“ series has been to the orphanage, bringing his family with him. He left behind a few cameras that were way too good for us. We used them anyway.
Photo credit: Rick Smolan // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Rick took some incredible portraits of our kids and captured moments (some in mid-air) that we would otherwise never get. The kids hung all over him. “Let me see! Let me see!” they yelled, every time he clicked his shutter.
Other photographers have dropped in as well, including Romain Blanquart, Mike Shore and Jenny Risher out of Detroit, along with numerous cameramen with local and national TV shows.
Last week, we were joined by Brian Kelly, a photographer and video director out of Grand Rapids, and his videographer Mark Andrus. They brought a good deal of equipment, lenses, camera bodies, a steady-cam harness. You might think a team like that, loaded up, would cause a disturbance or a distraction amongst 54 kids.
Rick Smolan clowns around with Variola // Romain Blanquart, photojournalist and the co-founder of Capturing Belief, a youth mentoring program in Detroit that works with students at our SAY Detroit Play Center.
But somehow, with all the general mayhem that takes place in the yard, the new guys just blended in. You glanced around and there was a street hockey game, there were kids coloring at picnic tables, there were Brian and Mark taking pictures, and there were babies sleeping in the gazebo. It all just meshed together.
I guess I am partial to having good photographers visit because like many parents and guardians, I want to chronicle our children’s lives. Their growth. Their development. As you get older, the moments become so precious, and being able to see them again, especially when we are away from Haiti, brings us great joy.
Photographer Brian Kelly with kids from Have Faith Haiti
Brian had been here once before, seven or eight years earlier. During that time, he had most of the kids take portraits by a narrow palm tree in the middle of our yard.
The tree has since been removed to make room for the kids to play. But Brian was able to get some of the kids to pose in the same spot, which allowed us to see their astounding growth in side by side photos. If you want to get a real sense of how fast kids grow up, this is how you do it.
Some feel you can overdo photographs with kids, and there’s merit to that argument. But I confess, I love having pictures after the fact. Over New Year’s, I showed the kids photos from 10 years earlier, and the shrikes of laughter and delight I heard made any inconvenience worthwhile.
Videographer Mark Andrus shows the little ones a view from the lens
Photographs for some may be a series of selfies you could easily do without. But for our kids, who have no access to their baby photos, don’t have a school photographer, will never have prom shots, and can’t get to the local portrait artist, these photos by visitors are more than quick snaps. They are history. Their individual histories. Their shared histories.
There’s a country song by a singer named Richard Laviolette that has these lyrics:
My childhood’s a blur somehow
One day I’ll forget me now
I might need someone to tell
My story when I’m gone
These photographs, and the men and women who have taken them, will tell our story and the story of the orphanage when we’re gone. For that, how can I not be grateful?
(Click the Instagram post above to see then-and-now photos of Bettinie, Esterline, and Danois, taken 10 years apart by Brian Kelly.)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Faith comes from within, but that doesn’t mean you can’t import a little help. This week, the kids found themselves taking a class with a 73-year-old rabbi named Steven Lindemann.
“Who here knows who the first Jew in history was?” Lindemann asked.
“Abraham!” came the response.
Will miracles never cease?
Lindemann, who is a rabbi emeritus at a synagogue in southern New Jersey called Temple Beth Shalom (my childhood congregation) had been talking to me about coming to the orphanage for months. He is not the first man of faith we have hosted. Not even the first rabbi. A decade ago, Rabbi David Wolpe, of Los Angeles’ Temple Sinai, came down and helped us put tiles on the floor.
We’ve had pastors and priests from both America and Haiti. Church groups will periodically visit. Still, as a Christian-based orphanage, it was interesting to watch the kids seeing Hebrew words drawn on a chalkboard, and hearing about ancient commentary on the Bible called the midrash.
I listened in as “Rabbi Steve” (as the kids now call him) told the story of Exodus, the Jewish people’s escape from Pharaoh, and how the Egyptian army pursued them and perished in the Red Sea. The factual account, the kids knew from their Bible studies. But the midrash that Steve added was something new.
“After the Egyptian army was killed,” he explained, “the Israelites rejoiced at being saved. And the midrash says the angels wanted to rejoice and sing with them. But God told them no. God said you should not rejoice because you (the angels) were never in danger. You were not saved. And you should not rejoice in the death of the Egyptians, who were my people, too.”
Those were my people, too
I have heard that commentary before. I love it. I love it because it takes two peoples, two historical enemies, and shows that they are all one under the human umbrella, and in the eyes of God. Those were my people, too.
I think this speaks to why volunteers come to Haiti. Many of those who staff orphanages here, or operate NGO’s, dig wells or make medical field trips, are not Haitian. They can’t claim a national kinship with the people they aid.
But if we are all alike in the family of man, then anywhere you go, you are helping your people.
So here was Lindemann, who for 30 years stood on the pulpit in a spacious suburban New Jersey synagogue, now scraping chalk on the board in “Classroom 3” of our three-room schoolhouse. He had already endured an eight-hour plane ride, navigating a Haitian dinner, sleeping on an air mattress and being awakened before 6 a.m. by the machinery in the waste management plant on the other side of our wall.
Yet there he was, Thursday morning, his sliver hair topped with a yarmulke, his eyes twinkling with a teacher’s delight, spelling the Hebrew name for Abraham (Avram) and explaining that it meant “great father”, as 15 Haitian students wrote it down in their notebooks.
And a new wrinkle was added to their lives.
Photo credit: Brian Kelly Photography // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Hungry to learn
What’s the best you can do for your kids? Prepare them for the world. Let them know of its dangers, sure, but also its wonders, its vastness, its beautiful tapestry of people.
This is why I cherish visits from outsiders like Rabbi Steve, and why we invite so many people to come and spend a few days with our kids. Haiti these days is simply unsafe to navigate. The gangs that rule the streets make even simple trips a risk. COVID-19 is a silent, unknown lurker. Outside of two brief day trips last summer, our kids have not physically left the orphanage in two years.
Two years. The same third-of-an-acre view. The world can feel awfully small when you are stuck behind walls and a gate.
But when outsiders visit, teach, sing, perform, it’s a glimpse of the world our kids are missing, a reminder that life is beautiful outside these walls as well as behind them. And one day, that world will be available, and it will be theirs.
When Rabbi Steve finished his first class, I asked him his impressions. A smile spread across his face. “They’re very engaged and engaging kids. Asking good questions. And they are so focused. They want to learn. They’re hungry to learn.”
As he spoke, we watched the kids eating lunch at picnic tables in the yard. There were no cell phones. No selfies. No checking email. They were talking and laughing and eating. Pure childhood. I asked Rabbi Steve what made him want to come all the way down here.
“Well, first I wanted to see what you were talking about for so long, because you speak with such love about these kids.” He paused and looked around at the peaceful scene, and I was reminded of the psalm that begins “How good and how pleasant it is that brothers dwell together.”
“I guess,” Rabbi Steve said, “I just wanted to make a small contribution.”
A 73-year-old clergyman. A collection of young Haitian kids. A Thursday morning at the orphanage. Maybe miracles never do cease.
Make your check payable to “Have Faith Haiti Mission” and send to
Have Faith Haiti Mission
c/o A Hole in the Roof Foundation
29836 Telegraph Road
Southfield, MI 48034
Have Faith Haiti is operated by the A Hole in the Roof Foundation, a 501(c)(3) org (TAX ID# 27-0609504). Donations are tax deductible.
About the Mission
The Have Faith Haiti Mission is a special place of love and caring, dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti’s impoverished children and orphans. You can learn more here.
