From a distance, young adult missioners continue support of Haiti

Brooke Nixon and Olivia du Bois didn’t expect to spend 11 days in Haiti. 

When protests and unrest broke out in the small Carribean nation of about 11 million in July 2018, the best friends and the rest of their mission group from the Archdiocese of Baltimore were scheduled to fly home that same day. 

After a week of helping run a summer camp at Les Bons Samaritains (Good Samaritans School), an elementary school in St. Marc that serves some of Haiti’s poorest youths, they followed embassy guidelines to shelter in place instead of risking the trip south to the airport in Port-au-Prince. After four most uncertain days, they boarded a jet for home with more of a mixed bag of emotions than they could have anticipated.

“I just couldn’t stop asking myself — ‘Why did we get to leave? Why is that fair?’ Those questions have really stuck with us,” said Nixon, a parishioner of Sacred Heart in Glyndon.

Two years later, the 2018 graduates of Maryvale Preparatory School and rising college juniors, Nixon at Christopher Newport University and du Bois at the University of Richmond, continue to wrestle with those questions. After hearing how the coronavirus pandemic has affected communities across Haiti, they rallied their former mission group for a fundraiser in support of Les Bons Samaritains and its community’s response to COVID-19.

“I just felt my heart breaking, over and over again,” Nixon said, of the news coming out of Haiti as the pandemic took hold. 

“It just hit us, this is something we can do right now, this is how we can help,” added du Bois.

The “11 Days in Haiti” campaign is an homage to the 11 days that Nixon and du Bois’ spent in St. Marc. All proceeds from the fundraiser benefit the three schools started and operated by the Mortel High Hope for Haiti Foundation (HHH), an organization founded by Deacon Rodrigue Mortel, M.D., a native of the town, and former director of both the Penn State University cancer center and the Baltimore Archdiocese Missions Office.

Rachel Bowles, director of operations with Mortel HHH, was 16 in 2001 when she participated in the archdiocesan Missions Office’s inaugural trip to St. Marc, the center of local efforts in the Diocese of Gonaives.

“To see them (Nixon and duBois) want to do more was incredibly heart-warming,”  Bowles said. “It was a reminder for us, that’s why we do these trips.”

The World Bank ranks Haiti as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and the COVID-19 is proving a formidable challenge in a nation already facing health and sanitation issues. As Bowles explained, many families live in crowded housing and do not have consistent access to clean water, making social distancing nearly impossible and preventative hygiene difficult.

“As soon as we heard that COVID-19 was in Haiti, we just kind of saw the writing on the wall,” Bowles said.

Haiti has 7,053 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 World Map. Though that number is far lower than the nearly 54,000 cases from its island-sharing neighbor Dominican Republic, the New England Journal of Medicine stated in June that testing capacity in Haiti was “overwhelmed” and that the actual infection rate is likely much higher.

Bowles and Mortel HHH are stepping up to the plate to meet the challenge, though. Their pre, primary and secondary schools are in the heart of St. Marc, and all have opened handwashing stations for public use among other response measures.

Schools across Haiti have been shut down since March, but Bowles said that they are looking to reopen in August. Mortel HHH has been collecting masks so as to ensure that its students will have one to wear once school is back in session.

When the Mortel HHH schools reopen next month, they will dedicate August, September and October to completing material from the 2019-20 school year before taking on the 2020-21 curriculum, Bowles explained.

Unrest that preceded the pandemic kept schools shuttered for several months in late 2019. That grew out of protests calling for the ouster of President Jovenel Moises, viewed as a continuation of those that broke out in 2018 over substantial increases in fuel prices — the protests that kept Nixon, duBois and their fellow missionaries in Haiti for an extra four days.

July 21 marks the 11th day of the fundraiser. Nixon and duBois, who have rallied the other members of their group to contribute blog posts reflecting on their experience in Haiti two years ago as parts of the campaign, report that they have raised nearly $1,200 so far. They will leave the donation site up indefinitely, in hopes of exceeding their $1,500 goal. Donations will support the Mortel Foundation’s establishment of hand-washing stations and purchase school supplies.

“We wanted to go on this (2018) trip to strengthen our faith,” Nixon said. “It changed our lives — we are so glad it opened our eyes and our hearts and how it changed the way we see even little things.”

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