Recon of western La Gonave

For one reason or other, in spite of all the food distributions I’ve ridden out on, I have never been able to get to the Western half of La Gonave. It may not seem too far away by map but it is by real life – you know it’s the road because there aren’t any trees in it. This has meant that all of our thoughts on that half of the island are based on second hand information and this always bothered me. This last week I stopped waiting for an opportunity and we forged one, especially on account of having our brothers, JD and Chris from Ywam Montana here to scout the island that their base has been helping so much to feed.

We talked to our good friend here, Jean Berna, who is fluent in English, a mechanic, knows everybody, and is a real Christian, and he said he wanted to take us. He says that others have helped him greatly, since his humble beginnings as a kid on the Saline, and that he wants to help us help La Gonave. So he borrowed Butch’s truck and we headed West along the North coast for Gros Mange where we would bring food to the local church for distribution and stay the night.

We spent the afternoon until dusk walking about the town interviewing the people and local leaders and discussing their needs and hopes. We would repeat this in every town we stopped in during our three day trip. I wish there were time to flesh out the details because it was a pretty rich experience but alas, a few anecdotes is all that will fit our constrains.

I will tell you that all most villages suffer from the same sets of problems. Most are in dire need of drinking water. Thankfully, we aren’t the only ones who know this and organizations like Compassion and Haiti Outreach have already drilled wells and will be installing purifiers to remove the salt, a common problem in the coastal towns. However, there is a great deal still to be done just to meet this most basic need.

Everyplace we visited, on this trip and on many others, is extremely economically depressed. I cannot say with any certainty what unemployment might be by percentage but it is obviously higher than 50%. Unemployment is only part of the problem. What work there is earns so pitifully little money, even relatively, that even those who have full time work are in real poverty, no matter how one defines that word. A telling example is as follows. Chris Cambell sought out this number in Pointe-a-Racquette, the second largest city on the island with a population in the city of 7000 which includes 4000 refugees from the earthquake. For that population, we learned that only three sources of monetary income are charcoal, fishing, and money gifts from NGO’s or relatives in the U.S. There is no way to determine the amount of money sent from the States but we Chris worked out with some community leaders that the total income from fishing was $200 (USD) per month and $15,000 per month from charcoal. Spread that number over 7000 people? $2.17 per person per month. Again, they tell us this is the town’s only source of income. That’s their economy. I saw their wharf, it was shallow and poor, and I believe them. All of the other places we visited were in a similar way.

This lack of cash translates, of course, into a lack of food. But food is grown some on the island, just nowhere near enough. None of the three of us has the training to provide a thorough analysis but common sense still reveals a good deal. People who subsistence farm here are hungry for large portions of the year and that’s without an influx of refugees. Everyone without exception who we spoke to reported this. Even a cursory visual inspection of any agricultural land speaks of terrible soil conditions, lack of irrigation, lack of weed control, and lack of any applied fertilization, even animal. (Animals mostly free range here which means their waste stays where it lies and the plant nutrients are wasted.) Without being qualified to offer a prescription, it is intuitively obvious to me that the food yielded from the island could be multiplied significantly with even the most basic tools and methods.

The needs reported or obvious to us on this trip, and the many others I’ve taken, are many and various. The primary and secondary schools that exist need food and funding. More schools are needed. The chance of a bright young person from any of these places attending university is very slim. Healthcare is all but non-existent in the smaller or more distant towns and the road to the hospital in Anse Galets is long and difficult. Infrastructure is often little more than a single salty well and some bad jeep trails for the smaller towns and not a whole lot better for the larger. The list goes on.

I’m happy to report that we aren’t the only ones looking, in fact there are some excellent organizations trying to tackle these problems in some of the communities. Scottish Lemonade, the ones funding the total rebuild of the Wesleyan Hospital, and their partner Compassion, together have also improved roads, dug wells, run temporary clinics, sent children to school, and plenty more. There are other groups and praise God for them. However, the need is still far, far bigger than the supply. Have something on your heart for La Gonave? There’s a need waiting for it.

There’s something else happy to report and that’s that this island is absolutely beautiful. Before this trip West I didn’t know the half of it. Chris, JD, and I went to some places that very few North Americans get to see. Little towns set in palm forests on the beach, mountain villages growing crops out of red soil with the ocean in distance. These are things I should be showing with photographs but, once again, my bandwidth is restricted. Still, you’ll have to take my word for it that apart from the poverty this is a place unspoiled.

I don’t mean only the landscape, either, people here are warm and friendly and could teach some of us real lessons in hospitality. In Pointe-a-Raquette, for instance, we stayed at the house of the Wesleyan pastor. This kind man and his wife put us in their beds in their house. We realized that they were about to sleep on the ground outside and tried to make a fuss about it. They claimed that they don’t stay inside since the earthquake and that could be true but it wasn’t the kind of house that falls on you so I wonder. I think I could pick up the roof if it did. They also insisted on serving us their best meals, fish for supper and conch, which I love, for breakfast. But they didn’t eat with us, they served us as we ate. I’m not saying this made me feel comfortable but it sure does speak to their kindness to strangers.

It may be cliché but it’s a strange contrast, the third world poverty with the back drop of beauty and warmth. Being here, especially on our trip the last few days, sometimes feels like being in a movie. I hope that in the end, we’re not here just for an adventure. I’d ask those who pray for us and for Haiti to please ask God to lift up people to come answer many of the prayers of the people on the island. Praise God for what He’s already allowed us to do in this relief feeding. I pray that He will use the relationships we’ve forged in the process for the long term good and growth of His church and this island.

HS
Caleb Thompson