For the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, His Grace Bishop Michael, and Fr. Deacon Matthew, risked a second trip into the troubled land of Haiti, to help meet the growing needs of the community of the faithful.  Happily, their visit was untroubled by the surrounding difficulties, apart from the usual complications of difficult communications and transport.

Bishop Michael ordained an additional reader, Augustin Gesnel, for service in the parish of St. Augustine, on the south coast near the city of Jacmel.  There, the community has rapidly outgrown its rented chapel space.  Fr. Grégoire Legouté is able to serve there approximately once a month — and on all other Saturdays and Sundays and feasts heavily-attended readers’ services are conducted.

In the district of LaPlaine, on the northern edge of Port-au-Prince, the community, which now forms the backbone of the parish of the Nativity of the Theotokos, continues to grow, despite frequent serious difficulties in reaching the parish church.  On numerous occasions, heavy rains have prevented the chartered transport from operation — once leaving the dozen and a half present for Saturday vigil to spend the night in the church… a good way to assure timely arrival for liturgy!   For several weeks, political disturbances made it unreasonably dangerous for all but two or three intrepid men to make their way to the church for services.  These circumstances obviously call for a more immediate presence in the area.

To help meet this need, as well as provide needed assistance for services at Nativity (Fr. Jean and Fr. Grégoire are absent at least one Sunday a month each for service in Jacmel and Cap-Haïtien), Bishop Michael ordained Amboise Noël (whom he himself had ordained reader on his previous visit) to the sacred diaconate.  It is our hope that in the near future a “chapel of need” may be erected at LaPlaine, at the Foyer de Ste-Marie d’Egypte, recently acquired upon Bishop Michael’s insistence, where readers’ services might be conducted with dignity on those occasions when it is unreasonably difficult or impossible to reach the parish church.

Longer-range plans at LaPlaine include hope for the acquisition of a substantial piece of property (50 centièmes, about 1.25 acres) which we have been offered at a reasonable price… situated directly on a highway under construction which will inevitably, when political conditions stabilize, be the principal highway from center city to the north.  Bishop Michael inspected the property, which lies a stone’s throw from the new home of Katherine’s family (see previous issue), and encourages its acquisition.  Even if seen only as an investment, the property is of immense value, without reckoning the desirability of placing a church in Port-au-Prince in a highly visible and easily reached (in the future!) location.

The evening after the ordinations, a long-time friend, proprietor of the OK Corral Restau-Ranch (temporarily closed due to the political situation) hosted a festal ordination dinner.  Highly recommended to potential visitors!

To the newly-ordained Deacon Amboise, and newly-ordained reader Augustin, Many Years!  Axios!

What to expect?  A beloved country after months of turmoil, the resignation and/or kidnapping of its president, the arrival of occupation (“peacekeeping”) forces.  News images of burning buildings, charred bodies, horrors of every sort floating in my head.  But it was time to go back.  Information from our people there indicated that while conditions were drastically more difficult than before (difficult to imagine), they were reasonably secure.

First day or two on the streets I saw nothing unusual, though I had no reason to leave the relatively tranquil area around the airport, the church, and the Mission House.  Then a column of obviously very uneasy young men trotting down the thoroughfare leading from Mission House to the airport area, heavy weapons at the ready.  Leaving to go to Jacmel, one of the most serious traffic jams I’ve ever experienced ultimately decorated by a lengthy column of armored vehicles (including rubber-tired bulldozers… certainly useful for clearing barricades), each with a soldier atop with a machine-gun at the ready.  Not the kind of stuff to make one feel terribly secure… at least not me.

I never had reason to enter the areas where I knew the damage had been most severe, but saw signs here and there of the lawlessness which had rendered the country all but immobile for weeks.  No one could get to church except those who were close enough to walk… in daylight only.  All schools had been closed for several weeks, and had just re-opened when I arrived, though with only a fraction of the students in attendance.  No one had been able to work for weeks.  Prices on consumer goods were up 40-60%, in some cases much more.  But astonishingly, the value of the dollar against the gourde had dropped about 15% in the wake of the occupation, apparently the work of international currency speculators.  Electrical power was all but entirely absent in Port-au-Prince, with the result that even those with cellphones found it difficult to impossible to keep them charged.  I was amongst the privileged few… our host at MM has a private generator, and the house is equipped with a battery bank and inverter — enough power to keep cellphone, computer and, from time to time, a fan operational.

Travel to Jacmel was peaceful enough, once out of the city, and the visit there, to celebrate liturgy and wrap up the land purchase, pleasant and productive.  As we often do, Fr. Grégoire and I planned to meet at a road junction west of Port-au-Prince for a visit to Les Cayes, to celebrate vespers (in yet another borrowed location) and continue the search for a suitable building for services there.  In the course of looking at several thoroughly unsuitable places (most of them far too expensive), a glance down the street revealed the “perfect” building — almost certainly unthinkable, but one is allowed to dream and pray.  Situated squarely at the end of the main downtown street of the city, on the waterfront, within view of the RC cathedral and the city plaza, the house is unoccupied, the ownership shared by several heirs.  No word yet as to any possible price, either for rental or purchase.  Prayers are in order!

A late start for the return trip to Port-au-Prince brought us to Petit-Goâve at just the wrong moment.  A large truck slewed across the road ahead with no room to get around it on either side brought us to a halt… in the middle of a gun battle.  It was entirely unclear what was happening at first, who was shooting at whom or why, but at least one of the gunmen was within a few yards of the car.  Presently two Suburban-loads of uniformed personnel (whom Fr. Grégoire identified as Haitian security police) with others firing as they ran alongside roared past us (and, thanks to 4-wheel drive, around the truck), and the center of gunfire moved on down the road.  People began popping out of houses trying to see what was happening, wandering around more or less unconcerned.  Not so us!  Prayer and keeping a low profile had preserved us (and the car) from any injury, but we still needed to get out of there (and home).  As we were debating what course to take, an inter-city tap-tap (battered US schoolbus) drew up behind us and, without hesitation, plunged into a little dirt lane leaving the highway.  We spun around and followed in hot pursuit.   A half-hour or so of travel on badly rutted and frequently deeply mudded roads brought us to the center of the town, and back out onto somewhat normal roads… with the prayer that we wouldn’t catch up with the battle on the other side of town.  We didn’t.  The experience made for a somewhat more than ordinarily nervous return to the Mission House across pitch-black after-dark Port-au-Prince, without further incident.  The Lord preserves!

Such is life in Haiti today… much worse for those who must contend with it every hour of every day.

The present rented room for services, ample when we took it a little over two years ago, is now filled to capacity for readers’ services every Sunday… and when the Divine Liturgy is served, a dozen or more people are often compelled to stand around outside.

The generous response to our appeal in January for help in purchasing a suitable piece of ground for the future needs of St. Augustine’s made possible the purchase of two (contiguous) tracts, ideally situated for the parish’s needs:  the property lies within a few minutes’ walk of the present chapel, of the homes of nearly all the parishioners, of the Hôtel Cyvadier, and the Cyvadier beach.  It fronts on a paved, dead-end road, with a (legal!) power line alongside.

The property is L-shaped, approximately 100 meters long on each leg of the L (the upper leg will allow for a sizeable eastward-oriented church building), and about 25 meters wide on each leg.  About 30 coconut trees, a half-dozen “citroniers” (a delicious relative of the key lime), and a few oak trees grace the property.  A healthy crop of beans was harvested in April, corn and bananiers (a long-term lucrative crop) are on the way.  The crops are being tended by parishioners, under the guidance of our skilled gardener, Guillaume, with useful input from our university agronomy student, Nicolas.

The transactions were concluded, all notary’s fees and taxes (considerable!) paid during the April 2004 trip.  How long will it take for the whole matter to wend its way through the bureaucracy and yield a final title?  Unknown.  May be a few months, maybe a year or more.

Next?  The first order of business must be the construction of a fence around the property (posts and wire for the present), sufficient to protect it from wandering grazers (four- or two-legged); then, a “depot” — a simple secure block building for storage of tools and supplies, with installation of electrical power to service the property in the future.  Next:  a sanitary toilet installation and deep well (which in this region will yield potable water even without treatment).

These necessary (and unfortunately expensive) preliminaries taken care of, we hope to find the resources to build a simple good-sized open-air shelter (roofed but open on the sides), with a fully enclosed room at its eastern end.  This building should be able to serve as a chapel for a number of years, pending the possibility of building a “real” church — which, if it is of sufficient height, will be readily visible both from the main highway (perhaps two hundred yards to the north) and from far out at sea (the coast is less than 50 yards from the southern end of the property).

To accomplish this will of course require a great deal of assistance from those of us fortunate enough to live in more affluent societies — it is a rare Sunday when the offerings of the impoverished faithful of St. Augustine’s reaches so much as one dollar total.  There are some wealthy Haitians — but they are not Orthodox.