It begins with a trip by Yonel, our intrepid Haitian director, out to various locations around Haiti. This year, Yonel was aided by Siem, one of our graduates now attending Madonna University, who has returned home for the summer to work with us.
The two of them journeyed west a few weeks ago, flying in a cramped commuter plane out to small villages in the Mirogoâne and Les Cayes area. Both men are familiar with pastors, community leaders and families there. They arrived with a simple question: Are there any children here in need of our orphanage?
The answer was yes.
The answer is always yes.
The harder question follows: which children can we take in, and which can we not? Yonel and Siem did the first whittling of the list. They told the communities we could only consider children with no living parents, or one living parent enduring dire circumstances. If the child was in a secure home – meaning a solid structure owned or rented by the family – then we also could not consider them. It is part of the Solomonic process under which we must decide our new entrants.
Mylove, who we’ll end up taking in, sleeps in her grandmother’s arms as she recounts her story
It never gets easier. Families beg us to take their children because they cannot feed them, they cannot clothe them, they have no chance of giving them an education in a country that charges tuition for public school, tuition poor people cannot afford.
We say “no” far more than we say “yes.” It is the backdrop of heartache that shadows every new admittee.
Playing Solomon
Once Yonel and Siem identified potential children, they returned and scheduled a second visit with me. We arranged for the kids and their guardians to meet us in an outdoor pavilion 30 minutes from the Les Cayes airport. We ordered a vehicle, sandwiches and drinks for all, as we knew from experience it would be a long day.
In the past, I have spoken through interpreters to let the people know who we were and what we do. This time, after years of Creole study, I attempted to speak myself.
I think it went ok. Every few minutes, I would stop and ask “Eske nou konprann mweh?” – do you understand me? They nodded. So I continued. I spoke about our philosophy, our school, the fact that we never adopt children out, so they could come and visit and the kids would always be there.
This brought sighs of relief. One huge fear Haitian families have is that orphanages will take their children and ship them away. Even sell them. Sadly, this has happened.
We assured them that was not our operation. We showed photos of our location. We played videos. Over the last 12 years we have been to these communities before, so many people there know and trust us. It makes a huge difference.
After my labored Creole speech, we got down to the business of interviewing. This is the hardest part of all. One by one, a child and his or her guardian sat across the table and we asked the same questions:
Why do you want to give us this child?
How has he or she been living?
What has he or she been eating?
Who does he or she sleep with at night?
What is the medical history? The vaccination history? Who else lives in the home? Has there been any schooling? Has the child been hit? Abused in any way?
Through these questions, we hear the stories. They were heartbreaking. One child had been bounced from place to place and ate once a day. Another had been raised in a shelter and has been sick for months. Another lived with the grandmother because the mother died and the father disappeared.
As they spoke, the children, sitting in the laps of their guardians, woofed down the sandwiches that we gave them. They ate aggressively, their hunger sadly apparent.
Even more new boss babies
I will spare you the sad details of those we could not take and focus instead on those we welcomed.
There is a two-year-old boy named Dada, brought to us by his grandmother. She explained that his mother, who was just a teenager when she gave birth, ran away and is living elsewhere in the country. The father is unknown.
Dada, 2
There is a little girl named Mylove. Yes. Mylove. Two years old, with colorful clips in her braided hair. Her mother passed away from an illness earlier this year. Her biological father “refused to acknowledge this was his child” according to the child’s grandmother and has not been seen since Mylove’s birth. The grandmother lives with nine other people in a single dwelling with no indoor plumbing.
Mylove, 2
“I cannot take care of her,” she said. “The child deserves a better life.”
There is another little girl named Luxsi, a precious infant just 18 months old. Her father died in a motorcycle accident and the mother, with five other children, has no place to live.
Luxsi, 18 months
And one more little girl, Marilyne, 20 months old, fatherless, homeless, and suffering from scabies.
Marilyne, 20 months
These four were chosen, after much deliberation, for trial admittance. Which meant we loaded them in a car and drove to the tiny Les Cayes airport. We brought a couple of the people from the village with us, so the children would feel more comfortable. And we crowded onto a small plane for the 30 minute ride back to Port-Au-Prince.
Dada’s first plane ride
When the van pulled into the orphanage, our kids were already gathered in a curious huddle. They rose to their toes to peek inside the windows. When the doors opened, they all but mobbed the new children, and we had to remind them to be mindful of their space, that this was all brand new and clearly overwhelming to them.
But, as always happens, it didn’t take long to acclimate. These new faces have been here two days now, and already they are in a routine. They eat with gusto, they wear clothes handed down from the previous young admittees, and their feet barely touch the ground, because the older kids can’t wait to hold them.
Samanza, our oldest girl, holding Luxsi, who will now be our youngest
It is an extraordinary transition, from extreme poverty to needs fulfilled, from cramped shacks to a clean and well-lit dormitory, from sleeping on the dirt to having their own bed, from familiar faces to a sea of unknown ones – all in a single day.
We cannot fathom what goes through their young minds. But we look for smiles and thankfully we see them, and we exhale at the completion of one long, tedious journey, and the start of yet another.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — When I was a kid, my family moved three times before I was two years old.
I don’t remember any of it.
What I do remember is our colonial style house in New Jersey, on a block of trees, two houses from the corner, four blocks from a school, a right turn and a left turn away from our favorite pizza place.
My sister and father in front of my childhood home.
Home. We lived there for 15 years, until my junior year in high school, when my parents announced that we were moving into the city of Philadelphia.
“Not me,” I told them.
What are you talking about?
“I’m not going.”
But we’re selling the house.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to go. I’ll rent my room from the new people.”
The truth is, I was scared of change. I always had been. Didn’t like new clothes. New schools. I remember having a guitar teacher whom I really didn’t click with, didn’t like his methods, didn’t like his personality. But when my mother suggested we find another one, I objected. “No, no, don’t! He’s fine!”
Change was scary. And moving? Well. We’d never done it. How do you just take all your stuff and put it someplace else? Leave all your friends? Move your bed? Alter the view from your window? Lose your knowledge of the streets? Which family lives where? Which potholes to avoid with your bicycle?
How do you call someplace new “home?”
New for me, too
Flash forward four-plus decades. Here we were in Haiti, at the orphanage in Delmas 33, the place I had visited just weeks after the 2010 earthquake, the place where I fell in love with the kids, the place I had taken over a few months later and had been operating for the last 12 years, coming every single month until my passport needed new pages.
It was the only place I’d ever slept in Haiti. More importantly, to many of our kids who arrived at early ages, it was the only home they remembered.
Now we were talking about moving.
And it was still scary.
But the alternative was too good to pass up. Our friends, Jean Marc and Verena DeMatties, had offered to sell us Verena’s childhood home, which sat on nearly seven acres of wooded land, about 20 minutes away from where we were. It was a place where the kids could run. Could feel grass beneath their feet. Could pick avocados and mangos.
It was a place that had – hold your breath – a swimming pool.
That might have clinched the deal.
Swimming has always been a luxury for our kids. It is so hot in Haiti, you could swim every day of the year. But visiting a pool was, at best, an annual thing for our group. They waited month after month until we cobbled together the money for two busses, drivers, baskets of food and a trip to a beach club, which also had a pool.
The kids got so excited, they didn’t sleep the night before. They had their bathing suits on by breakfast. It was always one of the happiest days of the year.
And now they might be able to do that regularly?
A visit to a beach resort in 2019, the last before the pandemic
Imagining the potential
Janine and I went back to the property multiple times. We walked up into the thick trees. We surveyed the parking lot, currently occupied by a large NGO. We checked out the existing buildings.
“That could be the new school,” I said.
“That could be the new dormitory,” Janine said.
One of the many buildings with possibility
There was a structure that could be converted to guest quarters. An area for storage. And a large white house which could hold the kitchen and the dining room.
“Sight lines,” I said. “Sight lines are the most important thing.” How could we see all the kids from one spot? In our current place, it’s easy. You just walk outside and can survey pretty much everything.
But a place this big? How could we ensure that no child walked off, broke from the group, wandered into the thick trees?
“We can cut trees down,” Jean Marc said. “We can level the ground. Whatever you need to see, you can see.”
Jean Marc leads us down a path
They had given us a price. It was expensive for us, but it was fair, given the property. They also agreed to let us pay it out, so we could try and raise the money over time.
Janine and I looked at that swimming pool. I began to form an idea.
“What if we told the kids we were taking them for a pool party (which, thanks to Covid, we hadn’t been able to do in two years) and we brought them here to swim, and at the end of the day, we asked them if they wanted to live here?” I asked.
Janine grinned.
Imagining that moment may have been the nudge that pushed us to a yes.
Grass! Actual grass.
In any case, we ultimately agreed. We started the paperwork. And when we came back to Delmas 33 that day, we were changed. We knew something the kids didn’t. Maybe we felt like my parents did 40-plus years ago, when they were planning to break the news that the old house would soon be home no more.
I hoped that none of our kids would cry, object, say they weren’t going, they were going to rent their old rooms from the new owners.
I thought about the swimming pool. And somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem.
Jump in to “Life at the Orphanage” and help support our next chapter
You remember I wrote about seeing a property that belonged to our Haitian friends, Jean Marc and Verena DeMatteis. They took us there on a Sunday morning and we walked through tall trees and dirt paths and it felt as if the country had unrolled itself compared to our cramped little third-of-an-acre property.
Concrete floor of the gazebo on our current property
It turned out this was Verena’s childhood home. And when we later told her how beautiful and spacious it was, she and her husband said, “Well, we think it should be your orphanage’s new home. We want to sell it to you.”
And our jaws dropped.
We had never really considered purchasing property in Haiti. For one thing, we were too busy every month dealing with orphanage operations; there was never time to look. In addition, we were often warned that property ownership in Haiti is a precarious undertaking. Paperwork is a huge challenge. So many written records were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake that who owns what is a regular battle.
We knew of a man who owned some land on the corner of our street in Delmas 33. He was in the process of building a structure on it when one day another man showed up with a gun. The gunman said, “What are you doing on my property?” The other man said, “It’s my property. I bought it.” The gunman man said, “Not from me you didn’t. And I own it. Get out.”
It turns out someone had a bogus deed to the land and the purchaser was duped. You hear a story like that (plus the added element of the gun) and you very quickly shy away from real estate down here.
Driving into Verena’s former family home
From one family to another
But this property, we were assured, was something different. The home had been in Verena’s family for many decades. The titles were clear. The land and buildings (in addition to the main house, there were a couple of three-story structures) were currently being rented by a large American NGO. They had more than 200 people working there, which explained the many cars filling the parking lot. The property itself was several acres, which dwarfed the space to which we had grown accustomed.
“Can you imagine,” I whispered to Janine, “what our kids could do there?”
She nodded cautiously. It was almost too much to consider. How do you protect a property like this? Who takes care of all these trees? What about all our workers who live near the current facility? How would they get here? And would our kids even want to move? How would they handle it? They had already gone through so much upheaval in their lives. Would moving be a blessing or a burden?
Jean Marc
“Think about this,” Jean Marc said, “you could build a soccer field.”
“Where?”
“Where the parking lot is.”
“But it’s a parking lot.”
“That’s why we have bulldozers.”
I should mention that Jean Marc owns a construction company. So moving earth to him is like reloading a printer.
“You can do that?” I said.
“We can do anything,” he said.
“Could we build a pavilion where the kids could play and practice music and have graduations?”
“Why not?”
“Could we build a new church?”
“Whatever you want to put in. There’s enough room.”
My mind was racing.
House hunting
We asked if we could return to the property for another look. This time, Janine and I walked through like surveyors. We got inside the buildings and saw that the main house – we called it ”the white house,” due to its paint color – was filled with desks. Every few feet, another desk. This was how the NGO worked. But it made envisioning things a challenge.
“I guess this could be the dining area,” I said, pointing to an area covered with desks.
“And that could be our new living room,” Janine said, pointing to another area covered with desks.
We checked out the kitchen and the potential bedrooms (currently filled with, you guessed it, desks.) We looked at the parking lot that Jean Marc assured us could be dug up and turned into a soccer field. We walked up into the wooded area, dense with trees. We noted a few green ball-shaped items in the dirt.
“Avocados,” Verena said, pointing up to branches that were thick with them.
“We could eat them?”
She laughed. “Yes.”
I looked at Janine. Growing our own food?
“There are mango trees here, and breadfruit, and lots of avocados,” Verena said. “My father planted many of these.”
She looked wistful. I asked if she’d had a happy childhood here.
“Very happy,” she said.
From concrete borders and barbed wire to a wall of trees
I formed an image of our kids being happy, watering plants and trees, picking fruits and vegetables, learning to cook them. After so many years of squeezed city living, not a blade of grass, backing up to a trash facility, the idea of the children seeing what the Haitian soil could yield, being able to run through trees and eat in a dining room and fit into a kitchen and maybe have a soccer field – well, it was more like a fantasy than a plan.
But it was possible.
Janine and I went back to our place. When we bumped through the gates and stepped out onto the concrete, it seemed especially small. The buildings showed their age. There were still cracks from the 2010 earthquake, and we were never assured that it could endure another one.
We talked about it. We prayed about it. We went home and thought about it and thought about it some more.
When we came back, we sat down with Jean Marc and Verena, exhaled, and looked them in the eyes.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — I have been writing about our need to move to a new home, and there are developments on that front, and I want you to hear them.
But for today’s installment, a momentary deviation, because, as The Jamies once sang, “It’s summertime, summertime, sum-sum summertime”, and as Alice Cooper once sang “school’s out” and as Queen once sang, “We Will Rock You,” and so…let’s check in on the bands!
That’s right. It was time for another concert at the Have Faith Haiti orphanage, our Summer Kickoff Extravaganza, and the bands were in fine form, and there were new groups forming left and right.
Starting with the old favorites, The Hermanos Brothers, our band of brothers, the teenaged boys — well, their repertoire has grown pretty large. If they practiced hard, honestly, they could do an hour-long concert by themselves.
Band practice. Photo: Theresa Finck
But our audience contains 2-year-olds and so attention spans are short. The boys decided on three songs, two new and one old.
For the new songs, they went with an anthem perfectly suited to young, hopeful voices. It’s called “Wavin Flag”, written by the Somali-Canadian artist K’Naan and turned into a huge hit as a fundraising song for Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
When I get older
I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom
Just like a wavin’ flag
The Hermanos Brothers attacked it with vigor. As usual, Appoloste and JU were out front singing (vocally, they have become the Lennon and McCartney of the group). Meanwhile, the ever-steady Louvenson handled the drums, Kiki rocked the electric guitar, J.J. smacked the electronic handclaps, Widley handled the synthesizer strings, Nahoum shook the shakers and Edney – back from college! – powered the whole thing with his bass guitar.
The result was strong:
Becoming a believer
But the biggest joy in a band is when a member surprises you, shooting forward with a sudden burst of talent. So it was for the Hermanos Brothers second song, “I’m A Believer”, which people my age remember from the Monkees, but people their age remember from the movie “Shrek.” (Really?)
As I began to teach the guys the chords, someone yelled out “J.J. should sing it!” Then someone added “Widley!”
Now you should know that neither of those two are vocalists. They shy to the back, find keyboards or percussion equipment. Widley is our violinist. I mean, how much further from singing can you get?
But as the boys yelled, “Widley! J.J.! Widley! J.J.!” the two of them surprised everyone by stepping to the microphones, grinning sheepishly. And as we launched into it, they did, too.
I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me
As J.J. and Widley powered through, I wish I could paint you the smiles. Were they great singers? No. But were they trying? Absolutely. Was it joyous? You bet. And the delight of making joyful noise is what teenaged bands are all about.
I mean, just listen to the crowd!
Destiny’s daughters
Let’s talk about the girls. Our teenaged band, Destiny 7, made up of our 7 oldest female students, went with two new songs as well.
Now, the girls tend to like low-key, soulful numbers. I sometimes have to point out that a Billie Eilish breathy ballad isn’t the most exciting thing for a concert at an orphanage.
But this time the girls went eclectic. They opened with “We Are the World,” singing all the various individual parts as one, unified voice. And then, much to my delight, they opted to do Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.” For the normally reserved Destiny 7, this was like watching Janis Ian do Metallica.
Junie-Anna handled the bass. Djouna played the guitar part on a synthesizer. Louvenson and I helped out on the drums and keyboards, and the rest, like much of rock and roll, was attitude.
The concert also featured new ensembles. Our fabulous musical director, Dennis Tini, guided a small group of musicians, Nahoum (guitar), Widley (violin), and John Carey (piano), appropriately called “The Trio.”
He also formed a singing class that spanned grade schoolers to grandparents. This group included volunteers, teenagers, and kids as young as 8-year-old Esther. They did three songs, finishing with a tune written by Dennis’ wife, April Tini, which has become our official anthem.
Have Faith Haiti Mission are we.
Brothers and Sisters one family
Sounding off our family tree
Have Faith Haiti Mission are we
The singers got a huge ovation. All the bands got huge ovations. The passion, the joy, the sheer dynamic energy of children making and enjoying music was loud enough to temporarily drown out the mayhem in the Haitian streets, the oppressive heat, the broken infrastructure, the poverty all around.
Music does that. Kids making music does that. It was as fine a way to kick off a summer as we could imagine. Joan Jett had it right. I love rock and roll. Who doesn’t?
The chairs were brought out early in the morning. You know it’s a big day at the orphanage when chairs are set in place. It’s either a Christmas play, a concert by our teenage bands, or a graduation.
And since it’s June, it must be…
Graduation. For years, it was nothing more than a short symbolic ceremony, seventh graders turning to eighth graders, eight graders turning to ninth. Our oldest kids were just approaching adolescence and our younger kids were still wetting the bed. Everyone was starting school again in September.
But last year, for the first time, we sent one of our high school graduates to college in the U.S. And this year, four seniors were preparing to go.
Four? Yes, four. Samanza, Esterline, Kiki and J.J. Two girls. Two boys. Each with a full scholarship to Hope College in Holland, Michigan. All four are ready for the challenge.
How could this be? Weren’t they just small creatures with high voices, racing across the yard in odorless sweat? Didn’t they used to jump in our arms when we arrived? Now, every one of them is taller than me, the boys’ voices are deep, the girls have extensions in their hair and college majors on their minds.
A look back: Samanza, Kiki, Esterline, and J.J. in 2011
My father, who had a great singing voice, used to croon a song at every family wedding or anniversary. The relatives would make him sing it and they would tear up when he did.
The song was “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Is this the little girl I carried
Is this the little boy at play
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?…
— Esterline, age 11, answering the question of how to spend a million dollars.
Now here they were, the little girls we carried, the little boys at play, wearing blue or white caps and gowns over their summer clothes. They stood in a line in 93-degree heat behind a seated crowd of fellow kids, teachers, volunteers, nannies, staff, guests, and a few family members.
I tapped the screen of my iPhone, and “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” played over a large bluetooth speaker. We’d dragged outside and connected an extension cord.
Hey. You do what you can.
But once the ceremony began, there was nothing jerry-rigged about it. The kids did us proud. They did everyone proud.
Here was J.J., who once wore plastic bottles on his feet and wandered the streets looking for money, now giving a commencement address that began, “This graduation would not be possible without so many special people…”
Here was Samanza, who was once the little girl of our orphanage and who now carries the babies as if she were born doing it, beginning with “In looking at all these beautiful smiling faces, one thing comes to mind…I’ve made it!”
Here was Esterline, once paralyzed with fear during the earthquake of 2010, now a statuesque, confident 17-year-old, thanking the teachers “whose lives were sometimes at risk to come and teach us.”
Here was Kiki, who spoke no English and had no underwear when he arrived at age nine, now delivering an emotional, 15-minute graduation address that brought a huge laugh when, after already speaking for eight minutes, he said, “To begin…”
At the end, the other teenagers came up and formed a line. And with Nahoum playing the guitar, they locked arms and swayed as they sang the song “Graduation” by Vitamin C:
As we go on, we remember
All the times we had together
And as our lives change, come whatever
We will still be friends forever…
— J.J., age 13, answering the question of how to spend a million dollars.
It wasn’t just the speeches by the kids, or the presentation of their diplomas, or the way we had to tell them to flip their tassels to signal they were officially graduated.
It was how the other kids watched them, with awe, with admiration, with joy. They couldn’t wait to pose for photos with them or try on their caps and gowns. Esterline, in her speech, said the orphanage had offered her “inspirations hiding in plain sight.” That’s what the new graduates were to the younger kids. Inspirations, literally right in front of them.
Just some of Chef Harry’s feast for the graduation party.
The heightened laughter, the joyous feasting on a huge meal by our cook “Chef” Harry, the endless hugs of appreciation from the kids to their teachers, their nannies, to us – well, it made for one of the top five days I’ve experienced since being here.
Why does graduation mean so much? Because in some ways, as Samanza observed, it means we made it. We made it through the dangers, the hunger, the storms, the violence, the natural disasters, the daily threats that stack up like a dam, threatening to halt the flow of their childhoods.
Photo credits: Danielle Cutillo Photography
We made it through all that and brought them to graduation, after which they prepare for their first airplane rides and a destination that will change their perspective forever. It’s a sense of pride, of joy, and, honestly, of relief. Nothing is certain in Haiti. Certainly not reaching adulthood. And definitely not heading off to college.
As we posed for pictures and the four graduates said their various forms of “thank you”, I could hear my father’s lovely voice in the back of my head, another milestone occasion, another passage of life.
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?…
I looked at the sky. I looked at the trees. I looked at the small miracle taking place in our yard. Four orphaned kids turned to four college-bound adults. Sunrise, sunset, indeed.
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.
