Haiti
Feeding Body and Spirit in Haiti Quake Camp
By Sara A. Fajardo
They announced Fr. Gabriel’s arrival to the Petionville camp with a battery-operated bullhorn. Nixon Saint Fleur shouldered the compact speaker system and walked the trampled greens of the once sprawling golf course while calling, “the father has come to pray with you.”
Dressed in an impeccable black polo and dark blue jeans, Nixon, the one-time diplomacy student, strolled the pathways lined with houses made of sheets, beckoning to his estimated 50,000 new neighbors.
Fr. Gabriel Michel of St. Angela’s Church in Mattapan, Mass. presides over a prayer service at the Petionville camp for displaced people in Haiti. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
“Join us on the hillside for prayer,” he cried to the legions of Petionville squatters who transformed the exclusive country club grounds into a vast public homestead after the Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed their homes.
As Nixon and others called to people for half an hour, a small crowd began to gather around the gentle priest. They stood on the same site where CRS had fed tens of thousands only days earlier.
One-by-one and then en masse each person approached Fr. Gabriel to unburden themselves of their worries, “We’ve worked and they haven’t paid us,” or “We are living day by day.” The Haitian-born Fr. Gabriel listened patiently, “how long will we be in this camp father?” the concerned voices grew. He scanned the crowd with his trademark smile, he’d come all the way from St. Angela’s Church in Mattapan, Mass. to soothe weary Catholic Relief Services’ workers and spread hope to his people.
“God has not abandoned you,” he reassured the crowd, “I am here, the people of CRS are here to show that we care about you and are here to support you.” He studied the faces of those gathered around him, while the handmade kites of the camps’ children flapped in the vast skies above. “What will we do if it rains?,” asked the group.
A man reflects and prays during a prayer service. Fr. Gabriel Michel leads prayer services at the Petionville camp for displaced people in Haiti. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
The sight of the camp, the voices of his people were overwhelming. Visions of all that had happened in his country gripped Fr. Gabriel, the mudslides of Gonaives, and now the earth-ripping quake. For days he’d been listening and counseling the CRS Haiti national staff as they recounted the horrors of that late afternoon: lost loved ones, homes gone, the fear that the earth would never stop shaking.
Even after nine years living in the Boston area, Fr. Gabriel’s Haitian roots are firmly planted in his native soil. He traveled from the U.S. to Port-au-Prince with scraps of paper scrawled with 15 handwritten notes—names and phone numbers of his flock’s loved ones —ucked into his pockets. Fr. Gabriel vowed to check on each of them while tending to the spiritual and emotional needs of the CRS staff.
It had been an emotional week. He’d toured battered Port-au-Prince, passed the ruins of the Notre Dame Cathedral, was told that the seminary where he had first become a priest was heavily damaged, and helped to set up a counseling center at CRS Haiti headquarters where he could listen to and console CRS employees traumatized by the quake. Now he stood on the golf course that in a matter of days had grown into the size of a small city. Fr. Gabriel surveyed the hillside and when he was asked once again, “what will become of us father,” it was too much. Fr. Gabriel bowed his head and wept.
He took a few minutes beneath a shady area of the course, wiped his eyes, and turned to the crowd. Nixon handed him the megaphone, a man in a brown cap stood on a small stone wall beside the priest and positioned the attached speaker on the branch of a tree. Fr. Gabriel welcomed crowd of about 100 that had gathered. Most were Catholics, some were not, but all came for the same reason, spiritual renewal.
“Ayiti pap peri,” Fr. Gabriel inspired them with popular Creole saying “Ayiti ap viv. (Haiti will not die, Haiti will live). A Lebanese Caritas social worker sang psalms in French. The crowd lifted their palms in prayers. An elderly woman chanted her needs, while a man buried his face in age-weathered hands. People took turns praying and all the while Fr. Gabriel reassured them “keep fighting,” he said, “because Haiti will live.”
An earthquake survivor prays a rosary during a prayer service at the Petionville camp for displaced people in Haiti. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
When the prayers, whispered and sung, were finished, Fr. Gabriel pulled out rosary beads and prayer cards with the patroness of Haiti, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. And like the 240 metric tons of food that CRS had distributed to the camp that week, Fr. Gabriel began his own small-scale distribution and began to hand out the beads and cards to all those who needed them.
“It was so important to have this prayer service,” Nixon said as he held his own set of white plastic rosary beads, “ “it’s not only essential to give food to people. It’s also essential to feed their spirits.”
When he returns to Boston he returns to his parish with the good news that all 15 names scrawled on loose pieces of paper have been accounted for, and that all 15 send well-wishes to their friends and families in the States.
Sara A. Fajardo is a CRS information officer and photojournalist reporting from Haiti.
Tags: Haiti
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