Parish reaffirms Haiti commitment

By Dave Peironnet
Redeemer, Kansas City


Food riots broke out in a city
only 20 miles from Redeemer’s
mission school in Haiti. Five
people died in the riots during the
second week of April.
Redeemer’s vestry voted to
“reaffirm its commitment” to St.
Thomas de Mersan school, said
the Rev. Louise Baker, rector, and
to rededicate itself to seeking
long-term solutions for problems
in the impoverished area St.
Thomas serves.
“We have made friendships
with people who live not far from
where rioting took place,” said
Kathy Peironnet, a member of the
Redeemer team that visited the
school only a few weeks before.
“These are no longer just pictures
of some distant place. These are
people we know. They are in our
hearts.”
The Rev. Colbert Estil, the
Episcopal priest who serves both
the school and church in Mersan,
immediately took action to close
not only St. Thomas but other
schools supported by the Haitian
Episcopal Learning Partnership.
In e-mail reports sent to members
of Redeemer, Colbert assured
friends in far-off Kansas City that
the schools, their students and
teacher were safe.
A friend and interpreter for the
Redeemer team, Wilfrid Mutil
even placed an overseas phone
call to give an on-the-scene update.
Inadequate food supplies
have caused malnutrition in the
past, but starvation is now a real
possibility among those in the
lowest income areas. Nonetheless,
Mutil emphasized that Episcopal
churches and schools are seen positively
by Haiti’s citizens and were
spared from violence.
St. Thomas de Mersan enjoys
strong support among families
whose children attend the school.
Test scores demonstrate a vigorous
commitment to academic
achievement, thanks to the staff
and motivated students.
However, the region is still impoverished.
Teachers reported to
Baker that many students do not
have enough to eat and oftentimes
have no food before coming to
school. As a result, students lose
attention by midmorning. A medical
team sponsored by HELP determined
that nearly all students
are at least mildly anemic.
A fear is that rising food prices
will force students to drop out of
school. Meager resources of many
families are already stretched so
that, in many cases, only a single
child in a family can go to school.
Given a choice of not eating or
giving up school, the student may
have to drop out.
Michel Gabaundan, regional
representative of the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees, told a
conference in Kansas City that this
is a rising concern. Students who
drop out of school then become
easier to “recruit for extremist
groups.”
Frank Orzechowski, an official
at Catholic Relief Services, underscored
the potential impact of food
shortages by explaining that it is a
dangerous situation that could
“spin out of control for emerging
democracies.”
Haiti’s government is its first
freely elected leadership in many
decades.
The U.S. government’s annual
conference on global food aid was
coincidentally scheduled in
Kansas City for mid-April long
before food riots broke out in Haiti
as well as many other underdeveloped
countries.
Redeemer has committed itself
to improving St. Thomas de
Mersan by adding classrooms, acquiring
books and instructional
materials and initiating a breakfast
program.
“We’re going to be part of
Haiti’s future and become part of
the solution to Haiti’s challenging
problems,” Baker said.