Gonaives, Haiti

It seems we have a team in Haiti once again. This team is much smaller than the previous one, but this time they are mostly interested in gathering information and getting to know the people of Gonaives.

After some research, I discovered that Gonaives lies in the western part of Haiti and due to the geography of the area, is very prone to severe flooding. The city is surrounded by mountains and hills on three sides, with the Caribbean Sea on the fourth. Floods resulting from two deadly tropical storms within the past six years killed more than 3,000 people in Gonaives. Many people fled the city, primarily to Port-au-Prince, after the catastrophic floods. When the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince in January, many of them returned to Gonaives with only the clothes on their back. Gonaives is now home to 40,000 earthquake refugees.

I found the story of a family from Gonaives who lost a daughter in the floods during Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004. Devastated, they packed up and headed to a place with better schools and "better fortune". They had been living in Port-au-Prince for only a few years when the earthquake hit and their son was crushed in their rented house in the downtown area. Now they have gone back to Gonaives. The mother said, "Living in Port-au-Prince is a problem. Going to Gonaives is another problem. Everywhere you go is a problem. If I could, I would have left this country and been somewhere else by now. But I have no way to do that".

We all know that Haiti is an extremely impoverished country. These devastating natural disasters have wreaked havoc on the already desperate situation in which these people live and despite many of them giving their best effort, there seems to be no way out.

One of the goals that our team in Haiti is trying to accomplish is to get some of the locals set up with microloans. I do not know all the details, but Jeremy has been in contact with an organization in Haiti called Fonkoze, which deals with these loans.

Another goal is to get some medical training for some of the locals, perhaps students from the school where they are working this week. If there are people in the community who can take care of medical issues when they arise, as well as handle some preventative care, they will not have to rely on outside doctors and nurses to come in and do it for them.

Self-sufficiency is the ultimate goal and we would like to come alongside them and help where we can. We are learning as we go and want to help the situation rather than make it worse. This does not appear to be an easy task, but with God's guidance we believe we can make the right decisions. And if we make the wrong ones we will learn from our mistakes and try something different.

Jeremy has put together an extensive document about the purpose of these Haiti missions and I think he plans to put it on the blog. It explains all of this in much more detail, but I hope this gives you a preview of what is going on.

Later tonight I plan to post an update about their experiences in Gonaives over the past few days.