An end-of-year ode to the inspiring staff who press forward

PORT-AU-PRINCE — On this last day of the year, I’d like to pose a question: 

What do you endure to get to work each day?

Some of you, I imagine, do your jobs from home, so it’s fairly easy. Start a pot of coffee, log into your computer. Others may commute, and perhaps some of those commutes are annoying. An hour in traffic. Waiting for a train. Fighting for parking. Showing your badge to security.

What do you endure? I ask the question because I’m here at the Have Faith Haiti school and orphanage, watching our incredible staff of teachers, nannies, doctors, nurses, social workers, grounds crew and maintenance staff arrive to do their jobs. And I realize each and every one of them took at least a small risk to their life just to be here.

Every day, the streets in Port-au-Prince smolder with trouble. At any given time, shots can ring out and you can be caught in the crossfire. It might be police against gangs. It might be gangs against gangs. It might be a kid who got ahold of a gun and is shooting bullets for fun, never understanding that a bullet shot into the air has to come down somewhere.

It might be robbers on motorcycles who jump off and demand your phone or your purse. It might be cars that streak in from two directions and wedge your vehicle so you can’t escape. Then gunmen jump out and point rifles at your window, and next thing you know, you’re being kidnapped as they’re going through your contacts, calling them at random and demanding money.

Hazard in the streets

If this sounds exaggerated, I promise you it is not. It is the reason so many people no longer work in Haiti, or have lost the rare jobs they once had. It’s the reason shops have closed and factories have moved and even streetside stands have had to fold up.

Yet somehow, our staff at Have Faith Haiti endures. Many of them get up before dawn, and ride the back of motorcycles or cram into tap-tap cabs to reach a designated collection point for our van, which then navigates the dangerous streets to get them to the orphanage on time.

Others try to find rides themselves or with others. Or walk a different route each day, so that gang members don’t observe them and target them for a kidnapping.

“To get here every day is a challenge,” admits Peterson Pierre, a 25 year-old teacher who stays with his mother during the week to have closer proximity to the orphanage. He must take at least two tap-taps from her apartment to reach our facility, jamming onto benches with more than a dozen other passengers in the morning heat. “It’s kind of far and expensive to do this every day. And it’s dangerous for sure.”

Another of our teachers, Blanc Wilner, has been working with teens for years in the poorest neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, even teaching in prison programs. He too endures a dangerous commute to get to work each day. 

“Sometimes, it feels like the country is going backwards instead of forwards,” he says. “It impacts not just me; it impacts all of Haiti. Like, the gang issue, where we now have a group of gang members on every street corner. We used to have schools everywhere. Now more and more kids end up in gangs, because there is no school.”

Remarkable endurance

Imagine taking a chance with your life — not to make a fortune, or to win a lottery, but simply to get to work each morning at an orphanage where the pay is modest. What type of person does that?

The types who make up our staff. 

Some, like Miss Chantal, have been with us for decades, and helped guide the transition to our new home. Others are newer members who find Have Faith Haiti to be a place of inspiration, a place that makes enduring danger a worthwhile risk.

“The fact that the students here are learning, and then graduating, and then going to college and then coming back to help, that gives us hope,” says Pierre Gregory St Joe, another of our fine teachers. “Hope is so important. So is giving our children a chance. It is why I do this job.“

Today is the last day of the year. A good day to take stock. So many of you have been so kind to support our children, it feels almost uncomfortable to ask you to help again. 

But just as, once the holiday stretch is over, you will resume your routine, so it is for our staff — for the cooks and the nannies and the guys who cut the bamboo trees down and the security guards who stand with helmets on in the hot sun, protecting our precious children.

Their routine never stops. Neither does the risk, the daily danger, the darting eyes checking to make sure the corner is safe, or the tap-tap spot is secure, or there are no reports of crossfire on the route to work.

It takes a lot to endure that. It takes a lot to run a place that makes it worthwhile. If before the year ends, it makes sense to make a contribution, we welcome that. If you have already contributed, we thank you. And if you are unable to help at this moment, we still thank you for listening, and understanding how here in Haiti, even the simplest thing, like getting to work, can be an act of courage.