PORT-AU-PRINCE — You think you are teaching your children. All the while they are teaching you.
We rang in the new year as we always do here at the orphanage, with pizza and juice and cake and long tables and a ceremony of sparklers poked in the dirt, with wishes for the coming year draped over their twinkling.
When the sparklers extinguished, we sang “Auld Lang Syne” (mostly we la-la-ed it) and hugged and kissed and yelled “Happy New Year!”
Then we went to bed, woke up, and got on with new business.
The new business this year is infancy. There are more babies in our program than ever before, and in their joy and tears and squeals and diapers, they have taught us something:
We can go early. We can start sooner. And the smaller we begin, the bigger difference we can make.
So this year, with your help, we are building a nursery, hiring specialists, and, yes, after 13 years in Haiti, diving into diapers!
Photo: Erika Carley
Opening new doors
Now this was not always the case. Admission to the orphanage has been a backsliding number, slowly dropping, like the ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
When I first I arrived, we only took kids that were six or older. The thinking was at that age, they might have had a bit of schooling, possessed language skills, and, significantly, no longer wet the bed. We were going through mattresses like crazy!
After a couple of years, we realized that kids that age in Haiti brought other issues. Many were seriously behind in communication. Starting school at age six or seven was a challenge. And worst of all, most of them, by that age, had been sexually abused, a plague that brings so many issues in a crowded, young environment.
Photo: Erika Carley
So we began dropping the number. Five year-olds. Four year-olds. Still, we found abuse. Three years-old became the new entrance point. And we stayed there for some time. The thinking then was similarly simple: they are young enough to have eluded the abuse, but old enough that we don’t need to delve into diapers, bottles, pacifiers, and the attendant staff that kids younger than three require.
Nadie, as regular readers here know, arrived at 6 months and seven pounds, severely malnourished, anemic, and hanging to life by a thread. With love and food and incredible medical care, she has blossomed into our brightest new light, and, having just passed her first birthday, is speaking, engaging, nearly walking (more like running) and developing into an intelligent, curious and well-adjusted child.
“She’s a miracle,” many say.
But she doesn’t have to be.
Nadie being fawned over by other children of Have Faith Haiti
Providing a head start
What Nadie taught us is that early intervention can make all the difference here in Haiti, where infant mortality is unacceptably high, and nearly 50 out of every 1000 babies don’t live past their first birthday.
We were walking around our new property last year, and inside what we call “the white house” is a large room with its own double bathroom and a door that opens to a small yard that is conveniently self-enclosed.
“You know,” someone said, “this could make a great nursery. We could fit around eight beds. The kids could sleep in play in this big room. It’s got lots of closet space. They’d have their own bathroom, two toilets, a shower and bath. And they could go through this door, play outside, and be safe.”
I thought about it. Visions filled my head of little rug rats racing about, the din of happy squealing, the tender sounds of lullabies as they slept in cribs or Pack ‘n Plays. I felt myself smiling.
Then I thought of the nutrition problem we could solve, and the early stimulation we could provide, and the jump start we could give their language and education process if they began with us at age one or younger. And I smiled some more.
As the days passed, my fear of diapers and bottle feedings faded. The fact is, even the kids who come to us at age three so often have been neglected, left to sit in the mud of a tent, the chance at early development evaporated by the poverty of this beleaguered country.
“OK,” I said, “Let’s do it.”
Photo: Erika Carley
Turning miracles into purpose
So we are. We now have seven children three years or younger, including Luxie, MyLove, Pouchaline and Nadie. We have a one-year-old named Marvin who is battling tuberculosis. We have a three-year-old named Bradley who arrived so severely malnourished, he cannot walk or talk.
These children are teaching us. They are teaching us that we can make an even greater impact with the right facility and staff.
Our goal for January in our Year of Thanks & Giving is to fund the building-out of the nursery and the hiring of a program director. Our target is $47,000. The great news is the program is already in operation, we just need a home for it, and the right person at the helm.
This month starts my 14th year in Haiti. If you had told me, when I first arrived here, in the dust of the 2010 earthquake, that I would be welcoming newborns, buying formula, and changing diapers 14 years later, I would have laughed.
Now I laugh, but for different reasons. I laugh because our babies make us laugh, and fill the new year with the remarkable possibilities. Look at these faces and try NOT to smile.
Thank you, as always, for any and all help you can give us.
We put the baby in her car seat. We pulled a pink hood over her head. We shut the doors and drove off to the doctor. It was a short ride, with the windows up and Christmas music on the radio.
When we got to the office, the staff welcomed us with cooing and oohing and “Look how big she’s gotten!” We sat for a few minutes in a waiting room filled with toys. Then they ushered us in for her check-up.
We put baby Nadie on the scale. Fifteen pounds, nine ounces! I let out a shout. In less than six months here, she had more than doubled her weight. After measuring her and consulting his tables, the doctor, Marty Levinson, looked at me and smiled.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but she’s on the chart. She’s in the range now. Her head. Her weight. Her height. If I didn’t know her backstory, I’d think she was simply a smallish, normal one-year-old.”
Never was anyone happier to hear the label “normal.”
Nadie when she first came to usNadie turned 1 this week
Brought to us when she was six months old, and weighing only seven pounds, this little girl, we were told, had eaten nothing but sugar water since birth. She was severely malnourished, and severely anemic. Her eyes were closed by conjunctivitis. She barely moved.
But because we were able to get her to America, where the kindness of doctors, friends, and caregivers was abundant, Nadie opened her eyes. What she saw was a small village of loving adults, all holding out their arms. From that moment forward, her thriving had begun.
It has culminated in a healthy, ebullient, constantly-in-motion child of one, whose curiosity ranges from pulling hangers off racks to sticking pieces of avocado in her mouth. She eats constantly. She spews countless sounds. She pronounces words like “Mama” and “bye bye” and “Amen.” She waves when you wave. She smiles when you smile. She is alert, aware, in the moment, and endlessly happy.
She is also extremely lucky.
Others are not.
Three years behind
Down at the orphanage right now, we have a three-year old boy named Bradley. He was brought to us last month weighing ten pounds. Ten pounds? At three? His spindly legs were not strong enough to support him. His eyes were crossed and he seemed dazed. He did not speak. He barely moved.
His birth mother, a young woman in her early 20s, apparently had two other children before him. Both died. She had no means to support this one, and was sleeping from place to place, with no room to call her own. Eventually, Bradley was brought to our gates.
Bradley
He is not as lucky as Nadie. We scramble to find him formula that is good for him in his condition. There are no doctors easily available. No waiting rooms with toys. No good news reports. Bradley struggles each day, as we employ a full-time nanny to watch over him, change his diapers, try to get him to use his legs.
We would like to get him to America, as we did with Nadie, but opportunities like that are limited, the process can be long and the U.S. embassy is on an emergency-only basis now.
Meanwhile we pray he improves.
How much, we don’t know.
In addition to Bradley, we have one-year-old Marvin, who came to us with tuberculosis. Marvin is weak and glassy eyed. He has been isolated in a room at our old mission for four months now, due to the highly contagious nature of TB. We took him for tests, got bounced from one hospital to another, and were told the medicine he needed was in a clinic located in the heart of gang activity, which was impossible to reach.
It took weeks until we were able to navigate our way there and get the pills. Now months later, we are told in order to get his phlegm tested to prove he is no longer contagious to others, we must take him to a specific place that is, once again, in the heart of the gang violence and civil unrest. Nobody is willing to drive there.
So Marvin waits, in isolation.
Marvin
In need of safe passage
I wrote recently about the need for a “safety vehicle”, one that is armored against bullets, with a trained driver who knows how to evade trouble. It is not only critical for our daily operations, it is directly the difference between kids like Marvin and Bradley getting the care and attention they need – or not.
Nadie had the blessing of safe passage. A safe passage to the orphanage. Safe passage to America. Safe passage to the doctors who helped heal her.
Safe passage happens in loving arms and in safe cars
Safe passage is what we seek for all our children – especially the youngest and most helpless.
We have taken a new turn at the orphanage. With the space afforded by the move to the new property, we have decided to create a program specifically for infants under three years of age. In the past, we avoided kids that young, due to the potential burden of diapers, feeding, inability to express their issues, and the need for one-on-one care. We simply were not equipped.
But we now realize — thanks in part to Nadie’s incredible improvement — that if we take children as young as her, we actually give them the best chance of developing their learning, attention, affection and social skills at the most impressionable age. In short, their chances at their best lives improve the earlier in life they get to us.
The baby brigade
So if you came to visit us these days, you’d do a lot of baby squeezing, from Nadie and Marvin to Mylove, Luxie, Dada and others. We’re getting younger by the day, but bouncier, too, with more squeals and pacifiers and baby steps.
It’s a major turn to go from abject poverty, starvation, and lack of attention to a food-filled, needs-met, loving environment. But the changes are a sight to behold. Like the moment the doctor tells you the little girl is all right, she’s “normal,” she’s made it through the storm,
Safe passage. That’s all we wish for our new baby brigade. And what we wish for all of you as we careen towards the holidays and another new year.
A Year of Thanks & Giving Project 2: A Safety Car
StatusLuxury Safety
The road to an armored car can take many forms:
If we can raise enough to purchase a used armored vehicle, we’ll then manage import to Haiti and customs duties.
A gently used, not flashy vehicle — such as a minivan, or older model SUV — may be donated. If the vehicle fits strict parameters, we will use funds to upgrade to armored protection (cost to do so varies widely, but average estimate is $50,000 – $60,000). Let us know here if you think you have something that works here in this form.
A donated armored vehicle is ideal — spread the word to any organizations or companies that have access and can help.
The most frightening thing I ever experienced in Haiti took place in a vehicle. We were coming back from the airport, heading to the orphanage, and turned onto a street that intersected with a mob of angry protesters. They spotted our car and, for no apparent reason, charged it, throwing rocks and bricks. One rock hit the hood of the car and ricocheted up into the windshield. I was sitting in the front passenger side. Had that rock hit two inches higher, it would have shattered the glass into my face.
We escaped that incident, despite the protesters jumping on our car and banging on the windows, thanks to the quick thinking of our director, who was driving the vehicle. He popped out, hands up, and started shouting who we were, that we ran an orphanage, that they had no beef with us.
We finally drove away — with half a dozen protesters riding on the roof and sides — shaken and scared. But not surprised. You can’t be surprised at anything that happens in the streets of Port-au-Prince these days. Fires. Kidnappings. Shootings. You have to expect the worst.
Over the past year, we have been paying expensive fees to hire an armored car service to take our kids to the hospital, or our director to shop for food, or our volunteers to the airport. It costs around $200 per ride. That’s crazy expensive for an orphanage. But we keep asking ourselves “What choice do we have?”
With your help, we may have one.
The new kitchen should be completed before February 2023!
Thank you for the food security
Before I speak about our December goal in this Year of Thanks & Giving campaign, I want to thank you all so much for racing to the rescue on our November target. Our goal was to build a new kitchen at our new location, so that our children could continue to eat healthy meals. We put out the number we needed, and you got us there.
Thanks to your generosity, we hope to have that new kitchen completed by the end of January, a place where we can feed 100 people per meal, teach our kids about cooking, and safely store nutritious food to feed our children, in a nation where half the population can’t meet minimum daily calorie requirements. You have made a small miracle in record time.
Who stole the kòde from the kòde jar?
One goal down, next one up.
We’ve dealt with nutrition.
Now we must deal with safety.
We need to purchase a Safety Car. What that means is an armored vehicle that is impervious to gunshots. That may sound like something out of a “Mission: Impossible” movie, but I can assure you, such vehicles have become essential in Haiti. Foreign officials will not travel without one. Government workers. Businessmen. Well-to-do families.
What about children? What about orphanage directors who need to shop for food? What about nurses who need to take sick children for medical care?
We recently hired an armored car to take a child with tuberculosis to the hospital, only to find out that half the staff was not there because the streets were too dangerous for them to come into work.
A Safety Car is essentially an older vehicle — we do not need a new one — that has been fortified with bulletproof panels, windows and tires. The typical kidnapping methodology in Port-au-Prince is to surround an unsuspecting car with motorcycles, have the bandits jump off and wave guns, and force the passengers out of the car.
If you’re afraid of the bullets, you must acquiesce. If the bullets can’t hurt you, you drive away. I hate to be that blunt, but this is how it is. Nobody asked for the streets to devolve into a war zone. But we simply cannot function behind our gates all day. We need to get places. Our children need to get places. We need supplies, medicine, food.
A Safety Car can get us there.
It is difficult to describe the relief a strong gate like this can bring
Mission: Possible?
The cost of a vehicle like this — usually an old model SUV or minivan — is around $55,000. We are seeking to raise that money in the month of December, as well as $10,000 for a driver trained in evasive tactics, usually a former police officer.
I know it feels weird to be asking this in December. December should be about toy drives, stocking stuffers, something holiday-ish to bring out the spirit of the season.
But there are no holidays without security. We feel safe behind the gates of our new home, but not outside them. And we must go outside them.
Here is the reality: in the first six months of this year, nearly 680 people were kidnapped in Haiti and nearly 1,000 killed. This year alone, over 100,000 Haitians in Port-au-Prince have had to flee their homes due to gang violence.
Orphanages are not immune. Most of you recall the bus full of volunteers and kids from a Haitian orphanage that was commandeered by a gang, and all the passengers kidnapped and held for months.
We never want anything like that to happen to our precious children. So, weird as it may sound in December, all we want for Christmas is to be safe. A Safety Car and driver will help. It will let us function. And being able to function — to transport our sick children, to keep our teachers from harm, to protect the volunteers who travel all this way to help us — well, that would be the best gift of all.
Thank you for anything you can do to help us. And treat every safe minute you enjoy in America as a blessing. Because it is.
A Year of Thanks & Giving Project 2: A Safety Car
StatusLuxury Safety
The road to an armored car can take many forms:
If we can raise enough to purchase a used armored vehicle, we’ll then manage import to Haiti and customs duties.
A gently used, not flashy vehicle — such as a minivan, or older model SUV — may be donated. If the vehicle fits strict parameters, we will use funds to upgrade to armored protection (cost to do so varies widely, but average estimate is $50,000 – $60,000). Let us know here if you think you have something that works here in this form.
A donated armored vehicle is ideal — spread the word to any organizations or companies that have access and can help.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — In the middle of a construction site, I lined up the kids in various poses. One stood against an exposed interior wall. One stood against a small tower of rebar. A few stood in the foundation. Two others pressed against a beam.
“Now,” I said, going one by one, “tell me what you are.”
“I’m the freezer!” one hollered.
“I’m the pass-through window!” yelled another.
“I’m the propane burner!”
“I’m the mop sink!”
They laughed with each claim, as if they were appliances come to life in “Beauty and the Beast.” And as they laughed, my chest swelled with joy. We were standing in the middle of a soon-to-be new kitchen.
And we were feeding dreams.
With Thanksgiving now upon us, I realize the most grateful moments of my life are mostly here in Haiti, a place that has the least. But in a place that has the least, a little bit feels like a lot.
And that’s the ground floor of gratitude, isn’t it?
The one constant is your kindness
A little bit feels like a lot. You, the readers of these pieces, alongside hundreds of others who know about our orphanage through visits, media reports, friends, or my books, have done so much to make our children prosper.
I remain amazed — and humbled — by the continuous stream of donations. Someone I once met. Someone who read about our kids. Someone who saw a video.
One act of kindness from a stranger stays with you. But hundreds of acts of kindness? Well, that changes you.
And you all have changed me — and our kids. Thanks to donations from all over the world, the 60 kids we raise here go from starving to eating, from sickness to health, from boredom to engagement, from abject poverty to their own bed, three meals a day and school.
And occasionally, we get to dream even bigger.
“Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it like it was your child.”
— Field of Dreams
So we moved to a new facility, with trees, and open spaces, and no waste facility behind us like we had at the last place.
And now we are building a kitchen from scratch, a place to feed 100 kids and staff members every meal. And before we build it, the kids get to see the dirt, the framework, the wiring, the drainage. They see what goes into a dream.
Thanksgiving is a memory-maker, and a reconnector. To me, that’s its greatest value. I am blessed to have a large Thanksgiving gathering each year — I think we’re pushing 60 people this week — and nine of those 60 will be Haitian kids from our orphanage, seven of them college students, one a college graduate en route to medical school, and one an 11-month old baby girl.
Baby Nadie, happy and healthy today
To them, Thanksgiving isn’t an historical event. They didn’t grow up with stories of Pilgrims and Native Americans. They were all born into the harshest of circumstances, where starvation and death were regular visitors.
I wonder if they privately say to themselves “That’s enough food to feed my family for a month.” I wonder if they think us terribly indulgent.
But then I’m reminded that they are here, going to college, through the kindness of others, schools, sponsors and donors. They speak English thanks to volunteers who come and teach them in Haiti. They have solid health because of doctors volunteering their time, hospitals waiving their fees, U.S. embassy workers speeding through visas.
A crowded temporary kitchen, where staff work to cook – and clean for — at least 300 meals each day.
I hate to fall on an old cliché, but it really does take a village to raise a child — more than a village, an international community. And somehow we have built that, thanks to you.
And those are the words I want to say. Thanks to you. Thanks to you for the privilege of watching children grow and laugh and pray and love and stand in a construction site pretending they are a freezer, and knowing one day there will actually be a freezer there.
The first kitchen was not a kitchen at all. It was a small propane burner that held a pot for rice and beans. There was no sink. No place to store dishes or silverware. No place to sit. Kids got their bowls and found a spot on the ground, or a wall to lean against. And they ate.
The “kitchen” in 2010
In 2010, not long after I arrived, a crew of Detroit-based volunteers came down to change that. Using concrete, wooden beams and yards of screening, they created an enclosed area, then installed a sink, more burners and electricity. We purchased a refrigerator.
And our first real kitchen was born.
Celebrating our first refrigerator
Truth be told, there wasn’t much to it. It was always hot and flies were constantly swarming. But for the next 11 years, that small rectangular room gave us a place to stir the Soup Joumou on New Year’s Day, to cut up mangoes when they ripened in season, to dish out oatmeal, to spread peanut butter on sandwiches, to make eggs, boiled chicken and memories.
And then we moved. And we had to start over.
This time we took a first level room in the school building, originally intended to be an office, and we cut a hole in the wall for venting, put in plumbing for drainage and water lines, and brought whatever we could fit from the old kitchen to create a new one.
Cooking in our makeshift kitchen at the new property. Photos: Theresa Finck
A dining room? Well. Seeing as the food was being made in the school, a dining room couldn’t be far beyond. We took an area originally intended for a classroom and jammed it with long tables and folding chairs. It is packed with kids and they have to eat in shifts.
That is how we’ve been operating. Getting by. Making due.
But Thanksgiving is coming up.
And we’d like to change that.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
Mother Teresa
Making food secure
This issue of the newsletter marks the launch of a very special campaign, “A Year of Thanks & Giving”, stretching from this November to next. It is our first ever organized capital campaign for the Have Faith Haiti Mission/Orphanage. We’re doing it because, with 60 children every year and 40 full time staff, we have grown to a level where our needs exceed our means.
We want to create permanent excellence, a place of stability in a country where stability is truly rare.
To do this, we have identified 12 projects that we think, upon completion, will make Have Faith Haiti the pre-eminent facility in Haiti for sheltering, nurturing, education and cherishing the nation’s most needy and abandoned children.
It starts with a kitchen, because most homes start with a kitchen, right?
Food is precious in Haiti. A report just last month showed that nearly half the population, 4.7 million Haitians, are currently facing acute hunger, including nearly 2 million in what they call the “emergency” phase.
Most of our children come from such backgrounds. I recently wrote of baby Nadie who was brought to us at six months old having had nothing to eat during that time but sugar water.
A kitchen is not only the place where we begin to rectify such issues, it’s also a symbol, a symbol of what is possible even under the most dire conditions. A place where the children can see, yes, we are making you food, yes, there will be a meal this morning, and another this afternoon and one more in the evening, yes, we have enough for you and all your brothers and sisters.
Regular meals are a promise made, and kept. Photo: Theresa Finck
And no, you do not have to be hungry anymore.
Hearth and home
We have drawn up plans for our new kitchen, hoping to make it the most complete facility possible. Currently, it is nothing more than a few walls and a hole in the ground. We are digging pipes and drains in anticipation of sinks and – for sanitation purposes – a dish washer, something we have never had.
We are pulling electricity in anticipation of a freezer and two refrigerators, so food can be stored and saved and not spoil.
We are planning for propane tanks to fire up a three-head burner for the large pots of rice, beans, chicken and other foods prepared en masse, which is how you have to do it when you are cooking for 100 people every meal.
A kitchen is not only the place where we begin to rectify such issues, it’s also a symbol, a symbol of what is possible even under the most dire conditions.
And we are hoping to add an oven, where we can learn and teach baking, in hopes of being able to make our own birthday cakes, since we celebrate at least 60 birthdays a year!
Our dream is to make the kitchen a place of sweet aromas, happy activity, responsible preparation and sanitary cleaning. We also hope to teach our kids – who love to help in the kitchen – how to prepare the food themselves, so when the time comes to step out on their own they are ready.
The hole and walls where a new kitchen (and dining area) will go. Can you envision what it will become?
In short, the kitchen, we hope, will become an aorta of the orphanage, a three times a day magnet, a place of hope that puts an end to the hunger nightmare with which so many of our kids arrive.
We are looking to raise $95,000 by the end of November, completing the first of a dozen projects over the next year. That estimate covers labor, materials, and equipment for a kitchen that meets our most basic needs, and that of the children of Have Faith Haiti.
In a few weeks, most of us will be gathering in dining rooms of our own, to eat a large, delicious, homespun meal for Thanksgiving, and to celebrate the bounty by which we have been blessed.
I can think of no better time to kick off A Year of Thanks & Giving, and no better way to start than by building a miracle kitchen for our children, so that one day, they too can celebrate a Thanksgiving of their own.
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.
It’s time to answer some questions.
There has been a great deal of media attention to the evacuation of our staff, volunteers, and founder. It’s likely you’ve read or watched the story by now.
Our founder, Mitch Albom, addresses the questions that may be running through your head; they are likely the ones we grapple with every day.
