Par: Pierre Emmanuel 01 mai 2011 La communauté haïtienne de Montréal veut relancer le débat sur la reconstruction d’Haïti, à quelques jours de l’investiture, prévue le 14 mai, d’un nouveau président à la tête du pays le plus éprouvé ces dernières années dans la région.
Environ 300 personnes, membres d’organisations régionales, associations socioprofessionnelles haïtiennes et simples citoyens vont se rencontrer, les 6 et 7 mai, à l’occasion d’une deuxième conférence populaire sur la reconstruction d’Haïti organisée par la radio CPAM. «Il faut passer de la parole aux actes. Nous allons faire le bilan de la situation 17 mois après la catastrophe et proposer des projets concrets», a dit Jean Ernest Pierre, directeur de la station.
Reconstruction d’Haïti: projets structurants et intégration régionale est en effet le thème retenu par les organisateurs de la rencontre. Divers conférenciers, dont Wilson Saintelmi, Daniel Cuccioletta, Erold Joseph et Jean Fils-aimé aborderont la question de la reconstruction dans une perspective de développement durable.
La présentation du sismologue haïtien, Claude Prepetit, qui avait tiré la sonnette d’alarme sur les risques d’un tremblement de terre des mois avant la catastrophe, sera un moment phare de cette rencontre de deux jours. Comprendre le 12 janvier pour mieux reconstruire Haïti est le thème qu’il débattera à l’ouverture de la conférence, le vendredi 6 mai, au Centre de congrès Cristina.
Contacté depuis son bureau à Port-au-Prince, le professeur Prepetit s’inquiète de la manière dont on prépare la reconstruction. «On ne tient pas compte de certains aspects techniques qui pourraient être des facteurs extrêmement aggravants dans l’éventualité d’un nouveau tremblement de terre», selon lui. Il croit d’ailleurs que le prochain séisme pourrait être d’une magnitude beaucoup plus importante que celui du 12 janvier 2010.
Plusieurs centaines de personnes avaient participé à la première conférence populaire de la diaspora haïtienne de Montréal sur la reconstruction en avril 2010, au lendemain du tremblement de terre qui avait entièrement détruit la capitale haïtienne et plusieurs villes de provinces. La catastrophe avait fait plus de 300 000 morts et près de deux millions de sans abris.
«Dans la foulée des grands débats d’experts, le citoyen ordinaire de la diaspora s’était senti mis de côté, alors qu’il s’agit de son pays également. Il fallait donner à tout le monde la chance de dire son mot, car on se sentait tous impuissants à distance», a insisté Jean Ernest Pierre. En ce sens la conférence populaire de la diaspora haïtienne de Montréal gardera toujours le même objectif a-t-il dit.
Deuxième conférence populaire de la diaspora haïtienne de Montréal, 6 et 7 mai 2011 Complexe Cristina: 6566, rue Jarry Est
Infos: CPAM (514) 668-4157
http://www.journalmetro.com/blogue/post/847420--la-diaspora-haitienne-relance-le-debat-sur-la-reconstruction
dimanche 1 mai 2011
Haiti orphanage proceeds
Gengel family presses forward By Brian
Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
The Gengels are closer to fulfilling their daughter and sister’s last wish.
In Grand Goave, Haiti, workers last week laid reinforcing steel for an orphanage being built in Britney Gengel’s memory. Concrete will be poured in the coming days.
The 19-year-old student at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., was among more than 300,000 people killed in the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Port-au-Prince, the impoverished Caribbean country’s capital city.
Britney, of Rutland, arrived in Haiti the day before the earthquake to work with orphans.
Her mother, Cherylann Gengel, said Be Like Brit, a nonprofit organization the family started, hired local Haitians to dig the facility’s foundation.
The family is also excited that a company installed a water well on the premises, said Mrs. Gengel, who will give an update on the orphanage’s progress at St. Hedwig Parish in Southbridge at 3 p.m. today.
Britney’s father, Len Gengel, a builder, returned from Haiti Thursday night; he goes to the worksite two or three times a month.
“It went very good — for Haiti,” Mr. Gengel said. “Everything takes time and it’s a process.”
Mr. Gengel was there for eight days. It took four days to get the steel and concrete delivered.
“It makes us happy to be able to start construction to honor our daughter and help the children of Haiti,” he said.
Mr. Gengel called this the biggest challenge of his 29-year construction career.
“To build a 19,000-square-foot building in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere — it’s quite a challenge,” he said.
The work is being done under Mission of Hope International, a nongovernmental organization.
The orphanage will be in the shape of the letter B and will house 66 Haitian children — 33 girls and 33 boys, symbolic of the 33 days Britney was missing at the Hotel Montana.
The Gengels, who have since moved to Holden, have an ambitious goal of completing the project by Jan. 12.
Mrs. Gengel says May or June of 2012 is more realistic.
The final price tag, unknown at this time, could reach $1 million. Steel and cement costs doubled since the earthquake.
More than $500,000 has been raised, with 80 percent to 85 percent of the donations $100 or less from individuals.
“That’s the part that blows us away,” Mrs. Gengel said. “Brit’s college friends donating $5 and $10,” she said. “Little girls doing bake sales.”
A book is being written about the Gengels. Proceeds will support the orphanage.
The family plans to endow the orphanage so that it will always be taken care of once children are situated there, Mrs. Gengel said.
Architectural and structural plans were donated by two Boston companies, which helped intensify the pace of the work, she said. Plumbers and electricians have also indicated they want to go.
“We’re thrilled,” Mrs. Gengel said.
As important as that help will be, the Gengels intend to continue to employ local Haitians, so that they can learn American standards of plumbing, electrical and structural work, she said.
Gama Parayson, a former Athol resident, has moved back to his native Haiti to serve as the project’s clerk of the works.
Mrs. Gengel said that by chance, the orphanage is situated near a fishing village Britney was supposed to visit the day after the earthquake.
Mrs. Gengel said Britney went on the trip because she was at a crossroads. Britney’s college roommate had gone to Jamaica with the organization Food for the Poor and told Britney how the experience changed her life.
“She was always a kind kid,” Mrs. Gengel said. “But when she was down there she really just fell in love with the children of Haiti. She just could not believe that the children just literally had nothing.
“She said to me, ‘Mom, you don’t understand. They have a tin roof over their head and dirt on the floor — and they have nothing. But they’re happy. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.’ ”
Mrs. Gengel said the Haitians with whom they are involved are beautiful, giving people who work extremely hard and want more out of life.
Mrs. Gengel said she hadn’t understood the country’s level of poverty until she saw firsthand. It was like a movie scene out of the 1800s.
“They walk five miles to get water with buckets on their head.”
She said locals have put up tents on both sides of a road the Gengels built to the orphanage.
Anyone who wishes to donate to the project can visit www.belikebrit.org or the organization’s Facebook page created by Britney’s brother, Bernie, a 19-year-old freshman at Suffolk University in Boston.
Contact Brian Lee by email at blee@telegram.com.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110501/NEWS/105019815/1003/NEWS03
Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
The Gengels are closer to fulfilling their daughter and sister’s last wish.
In Grand Goave, Haiti, workers last week laid reinforcing steel for an orphanage being built in Britney Gengel’s memory. Concrete will be poured in the coming days.
The 19-year-old student at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., was among more than 300,000 people killed in the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Port-au-Prince, the impoverished Caribbean country’s capital city.
Britney, of Rutland, arrived in Haiti the day before the earthquake to work with orphans.
Her mother, Cherylann Gengel, said Be Like Brit, a nonprofit organization the family started, hired local Haitians to dig the facility’s foundation.
The family is also excited that a company installed a water well on the premises, said Mrs. Gengel, who will give an update on the orphanage’s progress at St. Hedwig Parish in Southbridge at 3 p.m. today.
Britney’s father, Len Gengel, a builder, returned from Haiti Thursday night; he goes to the worksite two or three times a month.
“It went very good — for Haiti,” Mr. Gengel said. “Everything takes time and it’s a process.”
Mr. Gengel was there for eight days. It took four days to get the steel and concrete delivered.
“It makes us happy to be able to start construction to honor our daughter and help the children of Haiti,” he said.
Mr. Gengel called this the biggest challenge of his 29-year construction career.
“To build a 19,000-square-foot building in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere — it’s quite a challenge,” he said.
The work is being done under Mission of Hope International, a nongovernmental organization.
The orphanage will be in the shape of the letter B and will house 66 Haitian children — 33 girls and 33 boys, symbolic of the 33 days Britney was missing at the Hotel Montana.
The Gengels, who have since moved to Holden, have an ambitious goal of completing the project by Jan. 12.
Mrs. Gengel says May or June of 2012 is more realistic.
The final price tag, unknown at this time, could reach $1 million. Steel and cement costs doubled since the earthquake.
More than $500,000 has been raised, with 80 percent to 85 percent of the donations $100 or less from individuals.
“That’s the part that blows us away,” Mrs. Gengel said. “Brit’s college friends donating $5 and $10,” she said. “Little girls doing bake sales.”
A book is being written about the Gengels. Proceeds will support the orphanage.
The family plans to endow the orphanage so that it will always be taken care of once children are situated there, Mrs. Gengel said.
Architectural and structural plans were donated by two Boston companies, which helped intensify the pace of the work, she said. Plumbers and electricians have also indicated they want to go.
“We’re thrilled,” Mrs. Gengel said.
As important as that help will be, the Gengels intend to continue to employ local Haitians, so that they can learn American standards of plumbing, electrical and structural work, she said.
Gama Parayson, a former Athol resident, has moved back to his native Haiti to serve as the project’s clerk of the works.
Mrs. Gengel said that by chance, the orphanage is situated near a fishing village Britney was supposed to visit the day after the earthquake.
Mrs. Gengel said Britney went on the trip because she was at a crossroads. Britney’s college roommate had gone to Jamaica with the organization Food for the Poor and told Britney how the experience changed her life.
“She was always a kind kid,” Mrs. Gengel said. “But when she was down there she really just fell in love with the children of Haiti. She just could not believe that the children just literally had nothing.
“She said to me, ‘Mom, you don’t understand. They have a tin roof over their head and dirt on the floor — and they have nothing. But they’re happy. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.’ ”
Mrs. Gengel said the Haitians with whom they are involved are beautiful, giving people who work extremely hard and want more out of life.
Mrs. Gengel said she hadn’t understood the country’s level of poverty until she saw firsthand. It was like a movie scene out of the 1800s.
“They walk five miles to get water with buckets on their head.”
She said locals have put up tents on both sides of a road the Gengels built to the orphanage.
Anyone who wishes to donate to the project can visit www.belikebrit.org or the organization’s Facebook page created by Britney’s brother, Bernie, a 19-year-old freshman at Suffolk University in Boston.
Contact Brian Lee by email at blee@telegram.com.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110501/NEWS/105019815/1003/NEWS03
An Army National Guard battalion will haul more than two tons of surplus medical supplies to the ravaged island.
By Emma Bouthillette ebouthillette@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer
SCARBOROUGH - A crew of volunteers and members of the Army National Guardspent part of Saturday at a Scarborough warehouse, loading a military truck with medical supplies that would otherwise have been taken to the dump.
"Is the truck full yet?" asked Elizabeth McLellan, president of Partners for World Health, which collects the supplies.
"It's certainly not empty, but it's not full yet either," Lemke said.
The 716th Engineering Battalion of Somersworth, N.H. will be taking the medical supplies with them later this month when they deploy to Haiti, where the materials can be put to good use.
McLellan, a nursing administrator at Maine Medical Center, founded Partners for World Health three years ago. Her group collects supplies that hospitals must dispose of due to strict government regulations, but which are still perfectly usable and desperately needed by people and organizations around the world. The nonprofit organization donated more than 100,000 pounds of supplies to over 50 recipients in 2010, she said.
When Lemke heard about McLellan's efforts, he contacted her right away.
The battalion expects to work with three clinics, two churches and two schools while in Haiti. Even though it has been well over a year since a major earthquake devastated the country in Jan. 2010, there is still much to do, Lemke said.
"It's improving, but it is still a huge mess as far as trying to rebuild," he said.
Lemke, an EMT for the South Portland Fire Department, serves as a medic for his unit of 177 members. He has been trying for the past year to find medical supplies for the battalion to take to Haiti, but said he has been hampered by a lack of funds.
Materials loaded onto the truck included anything the unit members may need while in Haiti, as well as supplies they can leave behind to help with relief efforts, Lemke said. McLellan said the people in Haiti need everything from stretchers to dressing supplies, IV fluids, sterile syringes and linens.
While trying to get surplus supplies to people who need it, McLellan also hopes to educate area residents and foster community service. She works with area high schools and colleges to bring in students for volunteer hours, including the eight members of Portland High School's Key Club who helped out Saturday.
Inside the 10,000-square-foot distribution center, Alexandra Kiladjian, 17, vigorously cleaned more than 100 plastic bins with disinfectant. A mound of medical supplies was piled higher than the door behind her.
"This is such a great cause," she said. "It's so smart to do this. They waste so much in the hospitals."
"This is such a great cause," she said. "It's so smart to do this. They waste so much in the hospitals."
The organization's mission fits right in with her goals for the future. Kiladjian is headed to the University of Vermont this fall and intends to major in biology. She hopes to become a doctor and travel to places where people need help.
The organization currently collects material from 10 hospitals and 10 nursing homes around the state. McLellan said her goal is to have all the hospitals in Maine donating their surplus to the cause by the end of 2011.
In the meantime, she said, "we will take everything we can get."
Staff Writer Emma Bouthillette can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:
ebouthillette@pressherald.com
Rock Hill teen 'learned patience' on medical mission to Haiti
Seeing malnourished, poor people 'happy' offers her perspective Andrew Dys - Columnist
ROCK HILL --
When Sierra Gilmore left for Haiti, a place 14 months removed from an earthquake, she was, in her own words, "a little stingy, and I wanted everything right now."
Which means Sierra, 16, was like just about every other teenager.
After a week in Haiti with a team of doctors and nurses, ministering to the sick and the hungry as the sole teenager on the trip - seeing the ribs of children her age and younger stick out as they waited four and five hours for medical help - Sierra was changed.
Andy Burriss - aburriss@heraldonline.com - - Sierra Gilmore gives a presentation to her history class at South Pointe High School about her trip to Haiti as part of a medical mission.
"I learned patience," Sierra told her classmates in her history class at South Pointe High School after she returned. "I don't fuss anymore. I have seen what other people have to deal with.
"And they still are...happy."
Mission trips for churches are usually in the summer or other vacation times. Sierra took a week off from the 10th grade - she had to make up the class work she missed - to go to Haiti.
She raised money through her church, Mount Zion Baptist in McConnells, and went with Dr. Nikita Lindsay of Rock Hill Pediatrics and other providers.
Lindsay brought up the idea to take Sierra on the medical trip. For five straight years, Lindsay has been a part of Haiti Outreach Ministries medical teams. She knew Sierra as a patient who had an uncommon yearning to help others.
Sierra's parents, Linda and Steve Gilmore, thought the trip would be a good experience.
After coming home, Sierra wanted to share with her classmates what she saw, so she gave a slideshow presentation in Kristy Riese's history class. Sierra showed where so many people live in Haiti.
"Tents - that is their home," she told the students, who just couldn't believe that tens of thousands of Haitians live in tents 14 months after an earthquake. A couple of students said they have seen a few homeless living in tents in Rock Hill, but that is it.
Sierra showed communal showers, buildings destroyed, more. She showed a concrete building with no windows - tarps over the openings.
"This is a good house in Haiti," Sierra said.
Her classmates were speechless.
She showed a woman washing clothes in a bucket.
"This is little girls waiting to see the doctor," Sierra said of another picture.
Sierra's job was to check the weight of people, help take temperatures, and other tasks to help the doctors and nurses dispensing medical care and basic pharmacy supplies.
"Most times they needed so much," Sierra said. "There was one man who just passed out."
She talked about the Haitian people walking miles to go to church.
"They never miss," said Sierra, of people who have so little but worship devoutly.
The other students wanted to know if the Haitian kids - in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ravaged by an earthquake - had toys for little kids, or cars or cell phones or anything that an average Rock Hill teen has.
"They have happiness," Sierra told them.
Because what she showed most were the people of Haiti, in so many pictures, smiling.
"Hopefully, we can all appreciate what we do have and understand that there are people who have much les," Riese told her class.
Every head nodded.
Lindsay - who knows from her own experience as a doctor that poverty was made worse by the earthquake and that so many Haitians had social and psychological traumas long after the TV crews left - said Sierra was efficient and helpful on the trip.
She, too, saw a change in Sierra that can only come through helping another human being with her own hands - and heart.
"Sierra saw that other people's lives are not as our lives are," Lindsay said. "She was great."
Sierra took every question from her classmates. She was in no rush to finish. She wants to be a lawyer some day, but she is in no hurry to get there.
"People would wait in line for four or five hours in Haiti to see a doctor," Sierra said. "And here we get upset if we wait 10 minutes for anything.
"I learned patience in Haiti."
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065 adys@heraldonline.com
Read more: http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html#ixzz1L6vg9Ov6
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html
ROCK HILL --
When Sierra Gilmore left for Haiti, a place 14 months removed from an earthquake, she was, in her own words, "a little stingy, and I wanted everything right now."
Which means Sierra, 16, was like just about every other teenager.
After a week in Haiti with a team of doctors and nurses, ministering to the sick and the hungry as the sole teenager on the trip - seeing the ribs of children her age and younger stick out as they waited four and five hours for medical help - Sierra was changed.
Andy Burriss - aburriss@heraldonline.com - - Sierra Gilmore gives a presentation to her history class at South Pointe High School about her trip to Haiti as part of a medical mission.
"I learned patience," Sierra told her classmates in her history class at South Pointe High School after she returned. "I don't fuss anymore. I have seen what other people have to deal with.
"And they still are...happy."
Mission trips for churches are usually in the summer or other vacation times. Sierra took a week off from the 10th grade - she had to make up the class work she missed - to go to Haiti.
She raised money through her church, Mount Zion Baptist in McConnells, and went with Dr. Nikita Lindsay of Rock Hill Pediatrics and other providers.
Lindsay brought up the idea to take Sierra on the medical trip. For five straight years, Lindsay has been a part of Haiti Outreach Ministries medical teams. She knew Sierra as a patient who had an uncommon yearning to help others.
Sierra's parents, Linda and Steve Gilmore, thought the trip would be a good experience.
After coming home, Sierra wanted to share with her classmates what she saw, so she gave a slideshow presentation in Kristy Riese's history class. Sierra showed where so many people live in Haiti.
"Tents - that is their home," she told the students, who just couldn't believe that tens of thousands of Haitians live in tents 14 months after an earthquake. A couple of students said they have seen a few homeless living in tents in Rock Hill, but that is it.
Sierra showed communal showers, buildings destroyed, more. She showed a concrete building with no windows - tarps over the openings.
"This is a good house in Haiti," Sierra said.
Her classmates were speechless.
She showed a woman washing clothes in a bucket.
"This is little girls waiting to see the doctor," Sierra said of another picture.
Sierra's job was to check the weight of people, help take temperatures, and other tasks to help the doctors and nurses dispensing medical care and basic pharmacy supplies.
"Most times they needed so much," Sierra said. "There was one man who just passed out."
She talked about the Haitian people walking miles to go to church.
"They never miss," said Sierra, of people who have so little but worship devoutly.
The other students wanted to know if the Haitian kids - in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ravaged by an earthquake - had toys for little kids, or cars or cell phones or anything that an average Rock Hill teen has.
"They have happiness," Sierra told them.
Because what she showed most were the people of Haiti, in so many pictures, smiling.
"Hopefully, we can all appreciate what we do have and understand that there are people who have much les," Riese told her class.
Every head nodded.
Lindsay - who knows from her own experience as a doctor that poverty was made worse by the earthquake and that so many Haitians had social and psychological traumas long after the TV crews left - said Sierra was efficient and helpful on the trip.
She, too, saw a change in Sierra that can only come through helping another human being with her own hands - and heart.
"Sierra saw that other people's lives are not as our lives are," Lindsay said. "She was great."
Sierra took every question from her classmates. She was in no rush to finish. She wants to be a lawyer some day, but she is in no hurry to get there.
"People would wait in line for four or five hours in Haiti to see a doctor," Sierra said. "And here we get upset if we wait 10 minutes for anything.
"I learned patience in Haiti."
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065 adys@heraldonline.com
Read more: http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html#ixzz1L6vg9Ov6
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html
New Orleans Jazz Fest dances to rhythm of all things Haitian
Published: Friday, April 29, 2011, 7:59 AM
Updated: Friday, April 29, 2011, 8:20 AM
By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune
As the New Orleans Jazz Fest prepares for the world's largest presentation of Haitian music since last year's earthquake, it will also be preparing for what might be best called political royalty.
After kompa singer Michel Martelly was elected president this month, he named his cousin, Richard Morse, a presidential adviser. Morse, a featured performer at Jazz Fest, leads a prominent Haitian band called RAM that plays what he calls "vodou rock'n'roots" and what is known in Haiti as mizik rasin.
"It's a fascinating time for Haitian music," said Ned Sublette, author of "The World that Made New Orleans." "Haitians voted for the music ticket. You cannot deny the importance of communication through music in Haiti. And this is something New Orleanians know well."
The biting lyrics of Morse's band fit into a long tradition of Haitian musicians speaking their minds and drawing inspiration from the chaos and violence that have long characterized life in their country. The outspoken Morse has endured threats and an assassination attempt. Other bands have had certain political songs banned by Haitian leaders.
And the latest tie between Louisiana and Haiti may be political: On April 15, the United States resumed deportations of Haitians who had committed crimes in the United States. The deportees are shipped into Louisiana before they are flown home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from an airport near Alexandria.
Deportations originally resumed in January but stopped after a deported man died of cholera in a primitive Haitian jail. As the United States prepared to resume its flights in April, Loyola Law School staffers interviewed Haitian detainees held in northern Louisiana facilities. They found that less than half had committed violent crimes and urged another suspension.
But ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said the agency must release a detained illegal immigrant within 180 days if he or she is not deported. "The U.S. government made the tough decision to restart the removals, with a focus on serious offenders, because they pose a threat to the American public," Gonzalez said.
Morse said the two governments are in negotiations, but in his view, it is a "difficult time" to be sending criminals to Haiti. "We don't have the infrastructure," he said. Consider what might have ensued, he mused, if all of the cities that took in the New Orleans diaspora after Hurricane Katrina had decided to send back criminals to the city while the city's jail was still in the Greyhound bus station.
Shared pain
Morse believes New Orleans has welcomed Haiti to Jazz Fest this year because of New Orleans feels a renewed kinship through disaster -- Katrina and the Haitian earthquake that he has dubbed "Samson, because he knocked all our buildings down."
"Haiti-New Orleans, twin sisters separated at birth," Morse posted to Twitter earlier this week from his home in Port-au-Prince.
In the early 1800s, Haitians fleeing the revolution doubled the size of New Orleans. Their legacy includes some of the city's key traditions: red beans, Creole cottages and shotgun houses, vodou ceremonies, signature drumming, dances and rhythms. Haitians also contributed to quintessential parts of New Orleans culture like Mardi Gras Indian tribes and second-line parades.
For Morse, it's simple. "In the beginning, they were one, in a sense," he said.
Incubator of N.O. culture
Before its independence, when Haiti was known as St. Domingue, it was the richest part of a French colony that also included New Orleans, Morse said.
Haiti and Louisiana were part of a larger cultural continuum that stretched to Brasil, a predominantly Catholic part of the world that Sublette calls "the saints and festivals belt."
When Haiti won its independence, two important boomerang effects changed New Orleans history.
In 1803, the French, suffering from its losses from the war in Haiti, sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States.
Within years, New Orleans had doubled in population because 90 percent of the families fleeing the revolution ended up here, either coming directly or through Cuba. "No aspect of New Orleans culture remain untouched by these whites, blacks and mulattoes," Sublette wrote in his book.
"The ties between New Orleans and Haiti are so profound that they extend all the way back to the early days of the city," Sublette said. "They enter into the music on deep levels and into the society on deep levels. And the best way to make that connection is through music."
And the musical connection is best felt, not theorized, Morse said. "It's not an exact science," he said. "But there's definitely a kinship, something about the vibe, a feeling that carries across."
And when he gets on stage, Morse shed his other roles and is strictly a musician seeking a responsive audience, he said.
"There's politics, culture, and history," Morse said. "But we like it when people dance. So move your bodies."
•••••••
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3396.
Updated: Friday, April 29, 2011, 8:20 AM
By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune
 |
| Ted Jackson, The Times-Picayune Marie-Jose Poux, one of the original Congo Square vendors, will share her culinary heritage. |
After kompa singer Michel Martelly was elected president this month, he named his cousin, Richard Morse, a presidential adviser. Morse, a featured performer at Jazz Fest, leads a prominent Haitian band called RAM that plays what he calls "vodou rock'n'roots" and what is known in Haiti as mizik rasin.
"It's a fascinating time for Haitian music," said Ned Sublette, author of "The World that Made New Orleans." "Haitians voted for the music ticket. You cannot deny the importance of communication through music in Haiti. And this is something New Orleanians know well."
The biting lyrics of Morse's band fit into a long tradition of Haitian musicians speaking their minds and drawing inspiration from the chaos and violence that have long characterized life in their country. The outspoken Morse has endured threats and an assassination attempt. Other bands have had certain political songs banned by Haitian leaders.
And the latest tie between Louisiana and Haiti may be political: On April 15, the United States resumed deportations of Haitians who had committed crimes in the United States. The deportees are shipped into Louisiana before they are flown home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from an airport near Alexandria.
Deportations originally resumed in January but stopped after a deported man died of cholera in a primitive Haitian jail. As the United States prepared to resume its flights in April, Loyola Law School staffers interviewed Haitian detainees held in northern Louisiana facilities. They found that less than half had committed violent crimes and urged another suspension.
But ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said the agency must release a detained illegal immigrant within 180 days if he or she is not deported. "The U.S. government made the tough decision to restart the removals, with a focus on serious offenders, because they pose a threat to the American public," Gonzalez said.
Morse said the two governments are in negotiations, but in his view, it is a "difficult time" to be sending criminals to Haiti. "We don't have the infrastructure," he said. Consider what might have ensued, he mused, if all of the cities that took in the New Orleans diaspora after Hurricane Katrina had decided to send back criminals to the city while the city's jail was still in the Greyhound bus station.
Shared pain
Morse believes New Orleans has welcomed Haiti to Jazz Fest this year because of New Orleans feels a renewed kinship through disaster -- Katrina and the Haitian earthquake that he has dubbed "Samson, because he knocked all our buildings down."
"Haiti-New Orleans, twin sisters separated at birth," Morse posted to Twitter earlier this week from his home in Port-au-Prince.
In the early 1800s, Haitians fleeing the revolution doubled the size of New Orleans. Their legacy includes some of the city's key traditions: red beans, Creole cottages and shotgun houses, vodou ceremonies, signature drumming, dances and rhythms. Haitians also contributed to quintessential parts of New Orleans culture like Mardi Gras Indian tribes and second-line parades.
For Morse, it's simple. "In the beginning, they were one, in a sense," he said.
Incubator of N.O. culture
Before its independence, when Haiti was known as St. Domingue, it was the richest part of a French colony that also included New Orleans, Morse said.
Haiti and Louisiana were part of a larger cultural continuum that stretched to Brasil, a predominantly Catholic part of the world that Sublette calls "the saints and festivals belt."
When Haiti won its independence, two important boomerang effects changed New Orleans history.
In 1803, the French, suffering from its losses from the war in Haiti, sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States.
Within years, New Orleans had doubled in population because 90 percent of the families fleeing the revolution ended up here, either coming directly or through Cuba. "No aspect of New Orleans culture remain untouched by these whites, blacks and mulattoes," Sublette wrote in his book.
"The ties between New Orleans and Haiti are so profound that they extend all the way back to the early days of the city," Sublette said. "They enter into the music on deep levels and into the society on deep levels. And the best way to make that connection is through music."
And the musical connection is best felt, not theorized, Morse said. "It's not an exact science," he said. "But there's definitely a kinship, something about the vibe, a feeling that carries across."
And when he gets on stage, Morse shed his other roles and is strictly a musician seeking a responsive audience, he said.
"There's politics, culture, and history," Morse said. "But we like it when people dance. So move your bodies."
•••••••
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3396.
Arizona group: $1 mil in supplies to be sent to Haiti
by Weston Phippen - May. 1, 2011 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic
The Haitian Disaster Relief of Arizona will announce Sundaythat it's sending $1 million in medical supplies to Haiti, while hosting a celebrity basketball game at US Airways Center this afternoon to help raise more money.
And the people of Haiti who benefit from the supplies, owe it, in part, to an unsightly trailer parked at a Mesa strip mall.
Hawk Delivery Service donated the trailer to nurse Christine Ellis, 48, who was born in Haiti and was spearheading a relief drive for her home country.
The trailer was packed to the hilt with medical supplies and clothes for Haiti. Free space was so tight that Ellis kept some donations behind her store, in the back alley, under a tarp. Then one day Ellis got a call from a property manager who worked for the owner of the shopping center, developer Michael Pollack. The manager said Pollack drives by the center almost every day and that the trailer had to be moved.
Later that day, Ellis found herself walking over the black and white marble floors in Pollack's palatial office building, with paintings on the ceilings and elaborate trim.
"My people are dying in Haiti, and I'm trying to help them," Ellis told Pollack. Pollack left the room and returned with an assistant and placed two shopping-center maps on the table. Pollack circled buildings No. 8 and No. 13, saying 13 is his favorite number. Ellis said it was her favorite, too.
"Because I am thinking there is one God and three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," Ellis said.
Ellis left with the keys to two of Pollack's buildings near Country Club Drive and Guadalupe Road in Mesa. They come to about 9,000 square feet in all. A large banner reading "Pollack Haitian Hope Center" now hangs above the door.
"We didn't know. We thought it'd just be temporary. We didn't know that we'd still be a major supporter a year and half later," Pollack said.
Ellis has been busy preparing for today's event. Her organization, along with the Robert Tate Dyslexia Foundation, is putting on a celebrity benefit basketball game at US Airways Center.
They hope to raise awareness and money.
The transient life of the news cycle has nearly altogether left Haiti. But there is still a lot of work to be done, Ellis said.
There were more than 380,000 orphans in the country before the earthquake, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. And now Ellis worries about their future and the thousands who became orphans after the quake.
"It's almost like we lost a fourth of our generation," Ellis said.
Her organization supports an orphanage that tends to 16 kids full time, and it watches over 74 more in the camps.
Ellis travels to Haiti several times a year. She'll be leaving with a group of nurses on May 9. Each time she goes, she feels nothing has changed. The people are still suffering, they have little food, clothes, medical supplies, nothing.
Last time she was there in December, her sister said, "No, there is something that has changed: The grass in front of the palace is taller."
But Ellis knows Haiti is not a place that can be changed in a year. Pollack still pays the rent for Ellis to use the buildings, and his company donates money to the organization. He said it was the pictures Ellis showed him of children in Haiti that got to him. They were barely clothed, aimlessly wandering around devastated streets.
The pictures that Ellis showed Pollack still hang in her building, 45 in all.
Small, dark faces and big, white eyes. The kids smile against backdrops of crumbling houses. One of the pictures is of 10 boys posing for what looks like a youth-sports photo. Six are standing and four kneel.
They hold up a sign that reads, "Nou se yon ekip," or "We are a team." In front they have a round sack the kids stuffed with paper to make a soccer ball. When she goes back to Haiti in May, Ellis will bring donated soccer balls.
"We went from being poor, to being beyond poor after the earthquake," she said.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html#ixzz1L6dOonSg
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html
The Haitian Disaster Relief of Arizona will announce Sundaythat it's sending $1 million in medical supplies to Haiti, while hosting a celebrity basketball game at US Airways Center this afternoon to help raise more money.
And the people of Haiti who benefit from the supplies, owe it, in part, to an unsightly trailer parked at a Mesa strip mall.
Hawk Delivery Service donated the trailer to nurse Christine Ellis, 48, who was born in Haiti and was spearheading a relief drive for her home country.
The trailer was packed to the hilt with medical supplies and clothes for Haiti. Free space was so tight that Ellis kept some donations behind her store, in the back alley, under a tarp. Then one day Ellis got a call from a property manager who worked for the owner of the shopping center, developer Michael Pollack. The manager said Pollack drives by the center almost every day and that the trailer had to be moved.
Later that day, Ellis found herself walking over the black and white marble floors in Pollack's palatial office building, with paintings on the ceilings and elaborate trim.
"My people are dying in Haiti, and I'm trying to help them," Ellis told Pollack. Pollack left the room and returned with an assistant and placed two shopping-center maps on the table. Pollack circled buildings No. 8 and No. 13, saying 13 is his favorite number. Ellis said it was her favorite, too.
"Because I am thinking there is one God and three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," Ellis said.
Ellis left with the keys to two of Pollack's buildings near Country Club Drive and Guadalupe Road in Mesa. They come to about 9,000 square feet in all. A large banner reading "Pollack Haitian Hope Center" now hangs above the door.
"We didn't know. We thought it'd just be temporary. We didn't know that we'd still be a major supporter a year and half later," Pollack said.
Ellis has been busy preparing for today's event. Her organization, along with the Robert Tate Dyslexia Foundation, is putting on a celebrity benefit basketball game at US Airways Center.
They hope to raise awareness and money.
The transient life of the news cycle has nearly altogether left Haiti. But there is still a lot of work to be done, Ellis said.
There were more than 380,000 orphans in the country before the earthquake, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. And now Ellis worries about their future and the thousands who became orphans after the quake.
"It's almost like we lost a fourth of our generation," Ellis said.
Her organization supports an orphanage that tends to 16 kids full time, and it watches over 74 more in the camps.
Ellis travels to Haiti several times a year. She'll be leaving with a group of nurses on May 9. Each time she goes, she feels nothing has changed. The people are still suffering, they have little food, clothes, medical supplies, nothing.
Last time she was there in December, her sister said, "No, there is something that has changed: The grass in front of the palace is taller."
But Ellis knows Haiti is not a place that can be changed in a year. Pollack still pays the rent for Ellis to use the buildings, and his company donates money to the organization. He said it was the pictures Ellis showed him of children in Haiti that got to him. They were barely clothed, aimlessly wandering around devastated streets.
The pictures that Ellis showed Pollack still hang in her building, 45 in all.
Small, dark faces and big, white eyes. The kids smile against backdrops of crumbling houses. One of the pictures is of 10 boys posing for what looks like a youth-sports photo. Six are standing and four kneel.
They hold up a sign that reads, "Nou se yon ekip," or "We are a team." In front they have a round sack the kids stuffed with paper to make a soccer ball. When she goes back to Haiti in May, Ellis will bring donated soccer balls.
"We went from being poor, to being beyond poor after the earthquake," she said.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html#ixzz1L6dOonSg
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html
samedi 30 avril 2011
Valley to prepare 1M meals
Charity: Thirteen local churches aim to reach goal Sunday to feed those in impoverished nations More than 200,000 packages of rice and other dried food were delivered this week to Real Life Church in Valencia. The reason: a valleywide effort to package 1 million meals to send to impoverished nations like Haiti, Malawi, Sierra Leone and the Dominican Republic.
This massive undertaking was first sparked by a similar effort on Labor Day 2010. Real Life Church organized the effort, partnering with Children of the Nations (www.cotni.org). This turned into a desire to help in an even larger way. On Sunday, Real Life Church and 12 other local churches will suspend Sunday morning church services to work together to reach the goal of packaging 1 million meals for starving children around the world. Why not 1 million?
Brandon Beard, executive pastor of Outreach at Real Life, said the idea for the Million Meals Marathon came after the church successfully completed the 100,000 meals.
“After we did 100,000, we knew we wanted to do more,” Beard said. “We thought, why not do 1 million?”
Real Life Church reached out to other churches across Santa Clarita and asked them to join the effort. Twelve churches responded, happy to be a part of it.
Real Life organized the event, planned for the supplies and the food with the help of Children of the Nations. Each church picked up its allotment of dried food from Real Life this past week and will package the meals at its own location.
The packages contain rice, lentils, chicken powder and spices. Thirty-six vacuum-sealed bags will be boxed together.
Children will be asked to decorate boxes, and draw pictures and write letters to the recipients.
The boxes are then loaded onto pallets and into one of four large shipping containers that will hold 250,000 meals each.
These containers will be taken to the shipping yard first thing Monday morning.
Saving lives
There will be more than 5,400 volunteers that will attend this event across the Santa Clarita Valley, said Bob Palocsay, a representative of Children of the Nations.
“Previously, 285,000 meals were packaged on one day,” Palocsay said. “The Million Meals Marathon is the largest food-packaging effort conducted all in one day that Children of the Nations has been involved with.”
Churches like Living Grace are thrilled to be a part of this global effort.
“This is a social issue that transcends our church,” said Rachel Edwards, the children’s pastor at Living Grace. “This is an opportunity for us to get out of our chairs and comfort zones and really do something.”
Brandon Beard is excited that the food will go to children he knows from those countries that are starving and living in poverty. Beard has taken several mission trips to countries like Haiti and Uganda with the church.
“It will go to kids like Mikeline in Haiti, who lost her arm and lives in a tent city with her mom,” Beard said. “To Sharon, in Uganda, or to Arnold, in Malawi.”
More than 925 million people in the world are malnourished or starving. The food that will be packaged and sent will feed 2,739 children every day for an entire year. It will help sustain families that may not have been able to survive otherwise.
“This is going to be an amazing day in Santa Clarita,” Beard said. “It will be something that people will never forget that they were a part of. All these churches and people are coming together to show God’s love in a practical way. This effort is really going to save lives.”
If you would like to volunteer and be a part of the Million Meals Marathon, you can either go to Real Life Church at 8:30, 10 or 11:30 a.m. Sunday morning or go to your nearest participating church Sunday morning to be a part of their effort.
 |
| Scott Hanson, top, Keanan Marble, left, and Pastor Brandon Beard hang a banner for the SCV Million Meal Marathon on the side of one of four food storage trailers in preparation for the Sunday event in the parking lot of the Real Life Church in Valencia on Friday. Santa Clarita Valley churches will be making 1 million meals for impoverished nations |
Brandon Beard, executive pastor of Outreach at Real Life, said the idea for the Million Meals Marathon came after the church successfully completed the 100,000 meals.
“After we did 100,000, we knew we wanted to do more,” Beard said. “We thought, why not do 1 million?”
Real Life Church reached out to other churches across Santa Clarita and asked them to join the effort. Twelve churches responded, happy to be a part of it.
Real Life organized the event, planned for the supplies and the food with the help of Children of the Nations. Each church picked up its allotment of dried food from Real Life this past week and will package the meals at its own location.
The packages contain rice, lentils, chicken powder and spices. Thirty-six vacuum-sealed bags will be boxed together.
Children will be asked to decorate boxes, and draw pictures and write letters to the recipients.
The boxes are then loaded onto pallets and into one of four large shipping containers that will hold 250,000 meals each.
These containers will be taken to the shipping yard first thing Monday morning.
Saving lives
There will be more than 5,400 volunteers that will attend this event across the Santa Clarita Valley, said Bob Palocsay, a representative of Children of the Nations.
“Previously, 285,000 meals were packaged on one day,” Palocsay said. “The Million Meals Marathon is the largest food-packaging effort conducted all in one day that Children of the Nations has been involved with.”
Churches like Living Grace are thrilled to be a part of this global effort.
“This is a social issue that transcends our church,” said Rachel Edwards, the children’s pastor at Living Grace. “This is an opportunity for us to get out of our chairs and comfort zones and really do something.”
Brandon Beard is excited that the food will go to children he knows from those countries that are starving and living in poverty. Beard has taken several mission trips to countries like Haiti and Uganda with the church.
“It will go to kids like Mikeline in Haiti, who lost her arm and lives in a tent city with her mom,” Beard said. “To Sharon, in Uganda, or to Arnold, in Malawi.”
More than 925 million people in the world are malnourished or starving. The food that will be packaged and sent will feed 2,739 children every day for an entire year. It will help sustain families that may not have been able to survive otherwise.
“This is going to be an amazing day in Santa Clarita,” Beard said. “It will be something that people will never forget that they were a part of. All these churches and people are coming together to show God’s love in a practical way. This effort is really going to save lives.”
If you would like to volunteer and be a part of the Million Meals Marathon, you can either go to Real Life Church at 8:30, 10 or 11:30 a.m. Sunday morning or go to your nearest participating church Sunday morning to be a part of their effort.
Physician says helping Haiti is 'real, practical application of our faith'
By Karin Crompton
Publication: The Day
In the midst of describing a speech he will give on Sunday about Haiti, Dr. Anthony Alessi had to take a phone call. The Norwich neurologist and medical director of the William W. Backus Hospital was gone for several minutes before clicking back in to a telephone interview.
"That was a perfect example," he said.
Haiti, Alessi had been saying a few minutes earlier, has become "a real, practical application of our faith." His speech, scheduled for a post-Mass brunch at the Cathedral of St. Patrick and titled, "Haiti: Time for Change," will include anecdotes and slides on the change that Haiti has produced in the people who have been working there.
The call he received was from a volunteer who would be traveling to Haiti on Saturday. It represented the end of a series of emails and phone calls through which Alessi had sought the means to procure an expensive drug, unavailable in Haiti, that would treat a 15-month-old with a life-threatening inflammatory condition.
Through a network of volunteers, Alessi had found a wholesaler to supply the medicine, people who would pay for the drug and the volunteer who would take it to Haiti.
"We're gonna save a 15-month-old's life," Alessi said during a phone interview Friday. "Those are the things that happen among volunteers."
And despite accolades that they receive, he said, "I get much more out of every minute I spend there than I put in."
Although he has gained immeasurable perspective on his life, faith and career, Alessi nonetheless said one of the conclusions he has reached is that, "I don't think everyone should go to Haiti - but there are people throughout the world and even in the community who have become disconnected.
"We have people in downtown Norwich who need to be reconnected with. We have mentally ill patients and citizens, we have people who have become disenfranchised."
Haiti is simply Alessi's passion. And to those who question why some help Haiti when so much needs to be done here, Alessi has a question.
"What I say to those folks is, what have they done? … If they have reached out and done something good, then I would do whatever I can to support those people," he said. "By the same token, this (Haiti) has been an opportunity for me. Everyone has a different call to action. All I'm trying to say is, let's take some action."
Sunday's service is the annual White Mass, the Norwich Diocese's celebration of caregivers. It begins at 9 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. Patrick at 213 Broadway in Norwich.
"This one is fascinating," diocesan communications director Michael Strammiello said of the White Mass. "There's something about seeing a church full of medical practitioners of all faiths, in prayer … recognizing that medicine has its limitations. Above those limitations, there are just other spiritual factors that play into making people well. It's fascinating to watch. … Then to gather together for lunch, to hear one of their own speak on a subject as important as Haiti, it's a very good day."
For more information, visit the diocese website at norwichdiocese.org or call (860) 887-3933.
k.crompton@theday.com
http://www.theday.com/article/20110430/NWS01/304309925/1044
Publication: The Day
In the midst of describing a speech he will give on Sunday about Haiti, Dr. Anthony Alessi had to take a phone call. The Norwich neurologist and medical director of the William W. Backus Hospital was gone for several minutes before clicking back in to a telephone interview.
"That was a perfect example," he said.
Haiti, Alessi had been saying a few minutes earlier, has become "a real, practical application of our faith." His speech, scheduled for a post-Mass brunch at the Cathedral of St. Patrick and titled, "Haiti: Time for Change," will include anecdotes and slides on the change that Haiti has produced in the people who have been working there.
The call he received was from a volunteer who would be traveling to Haiti on Saturday. It represented the end of a series of emails and phone calls through which Alessi had sought the means to procure an expensive drug, unavailable in Haiti, that would treat a 15-month-old with a life-threatening inflammatory condition.
Through a network of volunteers, Alessi had found a wholesaler to supply the medicine, people who would pay for the drug and the volunteer who would take it to Haiti.
"We're gonna save a 15-month-old's life," Alessi said during a phone interview Friday. "Those are the things that happen among volunteers."
And despite accolades that they receive, he said, "I get much more out of every minute I spend there than I put in."
Although he has gained immeasurable perspective on his life, faith and career, Alessi nonetheless said one of the conclusions he has reached is that, "I don't think everyone should go to Haiti - but there are people throughout the world and even in the community who have become disconnected.
"We have people in downtown Norwich who need to be reconnected with. We have mentally ill patients and citizens, we have people who have become disenfranchised."
Haiti is simply Alessi's passion. And to those who question why some help Haiti when so much needs to be done here, Alessi has a question.
"What I say to those folks is, what have they done? … If they have reached out and done something good, then I would do whatever I can to support those people," he said. "By the same token, this (Haiti) has been an opportunity for me. Everyone has a different call to action. All I'm trying to say is, let's take some action."
Sunday's service is the annual White Mass, the Norwich Diocese's celebration of caregivers. It begins at 9 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. Patrick at 213 Broadway in Norwich.
"This one is fascinating," diocesan communications director Michael Strammiello said of the White Mass. "There's something about seeing a church full of medical practitioners of all faiths, in prayer … recognizing that medicine has its limitations. Above those limitations, there are just other spiritual factors that play into making people well. It's fascinating to watch. … Then to gather together for lunch, to hear one of their own speak on a subject as important as Haiti, it's a very good day."
For more information, visit the diocese website at norwichdiocese.org or call (860) 887-3933.
k.crompton@theday.com
http://www.theday.com/article/20110430/NWS01/304309925/1044
Festivities planned for Haitian Heritage Month
Written by STAFF REPORT
The planning committee of the Palm Beach County Haitian Heritage Month celebration announced that the kick-off event will take place at Gilou Restaurant on Sunday.
It will be followed by a series of cultural and academic activities at different dates and locations throughout the county.
The celebration recognizes the contributions made by Haitians to the history of the United States and the world.
It is a celebration of Haitian history and culture and an opportunity to share this culture with the wider community.
The high point will be a Haitian flag-raising ceremony at the Belle Glade and Boynton Beach city halls on May 18.
Other highlights will include an art exhibit at the Clay, Glass, Metal and Stone Gallery in Lake Worth; cultural and educational events at Palm Beach County Library branches; a student essay contest; sports events; an art exhibit featuring Haitians in Palm Beach County at the Palm Beach International Airport.
Also, a day-long cultural festival in Belle Glade; a Haitian-American forum at Barton Elementary School; and an art exhibit of the works of the children of Jacmel, Ayiti Cheri, created from the debris of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010.
Haitian and Haitian-American students represent the largest ethnic minority group from a single country in the School District of Palm Beach County, numbering more than 14,000.
According to community activists, Palm Beach County is home to more than 90,000 Haitians.
Advisory Board members supporting the celebration include Marcia Andrews, School Board member; Mackenson Bernard, state representative, 84th district; Richard Champagne, president, Haitian Lawyers Association; Father Roland Desormeaux, Our Lady Of Perpetual Help Church; C. B. Hanif, Muslim activist.
Also, Jacques Lafontant, president, Haitian American Democratic Club; Sophia Lafontant, OXFAM; Woodie McDuffie, mayor of the City of Delray Beach; Dr. Immacula Michel, Support the Children and Families; Veronique F. Pluviose - Red Cross America.
Also, Rene Varela, mayor of Lake Worth; Jose Rodriguez, mayor of Boynton Beach: Maria L. Sachs, state senator, 30th district; and Rabbi Barry Silver, Temple L’Dor Va Dor.
Admission to all Haitian Heritage Month events is free and open to the public. For more information, visit http://www.palmbeachschools.org/pao/creole/MwaEritajAyisyen2010.asp
http://www.sfltimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6968&Itemid=1
The planning committee of the Palm Beach County Haitian Heritage Month celebration announced that the kick-off event will take place at Gilou Restaurant on Sunday.
It will be followed by a series of cultural and academic activities at different dates and locations throughout the county.
The celebration recognizes the contributions made by Haitians to the history of the United States and the world.
It is a celebration of Haitian history and culture and an opportunity to share this culture with the wider community.
The high point will be a Haitian flag-raising ceremony at the Belle Glade and Boynton Beach city halls on May 18.
Other highlights will include an art exhibit at the Clay, Glass, Metal and Stone Gallery in Lake Worth; cultural and educational events at Palm Beach County Library branches; a student essay contest; sports events; an art exhibit featuring Haitians in Palm Beach County at the Palm Beach International Airport.
Also, a day-long cultural festival in Belle Glade; a Haitian-American forum at Barton Elementary School; and an art exhibit of the works of the children of Jacmel, Ayiti Cheri, created from the debris of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010.
Haitian and Haitian-American students represent the largest ethnic minority group from a single country in the School District of Palm Beach County, numbering more than 14,000.
According to community activists, Palm Beach County is home to more than 90,000 Haitians.
Advisory Board members supporting the celebration include Marcia Andrews, School Board member; Mackenson Bernard, state representative, 84th district; Richard Champagne, president, Haitian Lawyers Association; Father Roland Desormeaux, Our Lady Of Perpetual Help Church; C. B. Hanif, Muslim activist.
Also, Jacques Lafontant, president, Haitian American Democratic Club; Sophia Lafontant, OXFAM; Woodie McDuffie, mayor of the City of Delray Beach; Dr. Immacula Michel, Support the Children and Families; Veronique F. Pluviose - Red Cross America.
Also, Rene Varela, mayor of Lake Worth; Jose Rodriguez, mayor of Boynton Beach: Maria L. Sachs, state senator, 30th district; and Rabbi Barry Silver, Temple L’Dor Va Dor.
Admission to all Haitian Heritage Month events is free and open to the public. For more information, visit http://www.palmbeachschools.org/pao/creole/MwaEritajAyisyen2010.asp
http://www.sfltimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6968&Itemid=1
Dominican Republic, Haiti join force against cholera 14:25, April 30, 2011
The Dominican Republic and Haiti have agreed to jointly fight the cholera epidemic, which has killed thousands of people in Haiti and spread to neighboring Dominican Republic. Among other agreements reached at a meeting of health officials from both countries here on Thursday, a permanent bilateral discussion mechanism will be set up to jointly monitor the situation of cholera, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and the dengue fever.
Bautista Rojas Gomez, health minister of the Dominican Republic, said the two sides also decided to articulate the important initiatives to be developed by non-governmental organizations.
Since its outbreak in mid-October, the cholera epidemic has killed some 5,000 people in Haiti, while leaving 12 dead and almost 1,000 infected in the Dominican Republic. Dominican authorities have stepped up border controls and health checks to stop the disease from spreading from Haiti.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7366340.html
Bautista Rojas Gomez, health minister of the Dominican Republic, said the two sides also decided to articulate the important initiatives to be developed by non-governmental organizations.
Since its outbreak in mid-October, the cholera epidemic has killed some 5,000 people in Haiti, while leaving 12 dead and almost 1,000 infected in the Dominican Republic. Dominican authorities have stepped up border controls and health checks to stop the disease from spreading from Haiti.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7366340.html
A Prolific Father of Haitian Letters, Busier Than Ever
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: April 29, 2011
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Allison Shelley for The New York Times
"I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life. What I don't like is the mismanagement of chaos." Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters.
Frankétienne has had prophecies of death (his own) and destruction (Haiti’s).
The earthquake that wrecked this country in January 2010? It was foreseen, said Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters, in his play “The Trap.” It was written two months before the disaster and depicts two men in a postapocalyptic landscape, now a familiar sight in his Delmas neighborhood here.
“The voice of God spoke to me,” said Frankétienne, 75, later noting he had also long dwelt on the ecological ruin he believes the planet is hurtling toward. As for his death, that will come in nine years, in 2020, he says, at age 84. He is not sick, he says, but he has learned to “listen to the divine music in all of us.”
And so the prolific novelist, poet and painter — often all three in a single work — hears his coda. He is vowing to complete a multivolume memoir “before I leave, physically,” while keeping up an increasingly busy schedule of exhibitions and conferences.
“I am going to talk about everything I have seen from age 5 or 6,” he said recently at his house-cum-museum and gallery. “And stuff that hasn’t happened yet because I am a prophet.”
Eccentric. Abstract. A “spiralist,” who rejects realism and embraces disorder. Frankétienne — he combined his first and last names years ago — embraces chaos as a style he believes befits a country with a long, tumultuous history birthed in a slave revolt more than 200 years ago and scarred by a cascade of natural and man-made disasters.
In chaos he finds order.
“I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life,” he said, his baritone voice rising as it does when he gets worked up over a point. “What I don’t like is nonmanagement of chaos. The reason why Haiti looks more chaotic is because of nonmanagement. In other countries it is managed better. Haiti, they should take as reference for what could happen in the rest of world.”
Scholars widely view Frankétienne as Haiti’s most important writer. He wrote what many consider the first modern novel entirely in Haitian Creole, “Dezafi,” in 1975, and a play well known here that challenged political oppression, “Pelin Tet.” It is a biting work from 1978 that is aimed, not so subtly, at Jean-Claude Duvalier, the son of the dictator François Duvalier and himself a former dictator known as Baby Doc, who returned here from exile in January.
Although not well known in the English-speaking world, Frankétienne has star status in French- and Creole-speaking countries and was rumored to be on the short list for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009.
After the quake, his works gained more international attention, particularly in Canada and France. “The Trap” debuted in March 2010 at a Unesco forum in Paris that named him an artist for peace; galleries in New York have organized shows featuring his artwork. Still, he also holds informal Sunday workshops with young artists in Haiti to talk about and critique their work.
“He is not only a major Haitian writer, he is probably the major Haitian writer, forever,” said Jean Jonassaint, a Haitian literature scholar at Syracuse University.
Frankétienne’s output, about 40 written works and, by his count, 2,000 paintings and sketches, comprises dense, baroque affairs. He invents new words, blending French and Haitian Creole. Long digressions are de rigueur. His paintings, which he says are selling particularly well these days, blur swirling blacks, blues and reds, often covered with poems.
He admires James Joyce, and it shows. “ ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ was like a crazy book, just like I write crazy books,” he said.
Still, the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat said Frankétienne remained popular among Haitians, in part because some of his plays had been videotaped and passed around in Haiti and in immigrant communities in the United States.
“Pelin Tet,” in which the grim life of two Haitian immigrants in New York deliberately echoes the oppression of the Duvalier era on the island, is a touchstone for many Haitians, said Ms. Danticat, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Frankétienne and was, in part, inspired to write by his rise to the top.
“His work can speak to the most intellectual person in the society as well as the most humble,” she said. “It’s a very generous kind of genius he has, one I can’t imagine Haitian literature ever existing without.”
Frankétienne was born as Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936, and raised in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, the son of a Haitian farmworker and an American businessman, who later abandoned her.
Frankétienne’s mother worked as a street vendor — selling cigarettes, charcoal, candies, moonshine — while raising eight children.
“Since I was 5 or 6 I was smoking or drinking, but my mother never knew,” he recalled. He was the oldest, and she strove to send him to school (he, in turn, tutored his younger siblings, leading him to establish his own school).
The school he attended was French-speaking. Frankétienne initially did not know a word of French, but angered at being teased by other students, he set about mastering the language and developing an affinity for words and artistic expression.
His best-known works came in the 1960s and ’70s, and he ranks his novel “Dezafi” as one of his most cherished. Set in a rural Haitian village, it weaves cockfighting, zombification, the history of slavery and other themes into an allegory of the country’s pain and suffering.
“It is the challenge of finding the light to liberate everyone,” he said. He wrote it in Creole, he said, because that was the voice of the characters he imagined.
But Frankétienne also felt a need to assert his Haitian identity, as people often look at his fair skin, blue eyes and white hair and doubt he is from this predominantly black country.
“They might think I am white or mulatto or whatever, but I am not,” he said. “I have black features, Negro features. My mother was an illiterate peasant and she had me when she was 16. She was taken in by an American, a very rich American. The American was 63 and my mother was 16 at the time.”
Switching from Creole to English, which he is usually too timid to speak, he added, “You understand who I am now?”
After completing “Dezafi,” he was frustrated that so few of his compatriots could read it, with nearly half the adult population illiterate. He switched to plays, even if that meant irritating the dictatorship.
“Dictators are mean but not necessarily stupid, so they knew I didn’t have any readers,” Frankétienne said. “What really gave them a problem was when I started with plays.”
Other writers and artists left Haiti during the dictatorship, but he stayed as his reputation grew outside the country and human rights groups closely followed him, providing, he believes, some cover from Mr. Duvalier.
Later, he joined other intellectuals in denouncing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected president after Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown. Mr. Aristide, he said, became fixated on power and tolerated corruption and thuggery in his administration.
“He is a ghost, too,” Frankétienne said of Mr. Aristide’s return in March after seven years in exile.
His only regret, he said, is that his work is not widely translated and better known. If he knew Chinese, Japanese, Italian or other languages, he said, he would put them in his works.
“Everything is interconnected,” he said. “We are connected to everything, everyone.”
Frankétienne added, “The only thing not chaotic is death.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/world/americas/30haiti.html?pagewanted=1
"I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life. What I don't like is the mismanagement of chaos." Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters.
Published: April 29, 2011
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Allison Shelley for The New York Times
"I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life. What I don't like is the mismanagement of chaos." Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters.
Frankétienne has had prophecies of death (his own) and destruction (Haiti’s).
The earthquake that wrecked this country in January 2010? It was foreseen, said Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters, in his play “The Trap.” It was written two months before the disaster and depicts two men in a postapocalyptic landscape, now a familiar sight in his Delmas neighborhood here.
“The voice of God spoke to me,” said Frankétienne, 75, later noting he had also long dwelt on the ecological ruin he believes the planet is hurtling toward. As for his death, that will come in nine years, in 2020, he says, at age 84. He is not sick, he says, but he has learned to “listen to the divine music in all of us.”
And so the prolific novelist, poet and painter — often all three in a single work — hears his coda. He is vowing to complete a multivolume memoir “before I leave, physically,” while keeping up an increasingly busy schedule of exhibitions and conferences.
“I am going to talk about everything I have seen from age 5 or 6,” he said recently at his house-cum-museum and gallery. “And stuff that hasn’t happened yet because I am a prophet.”
Eccentric. Abstract. A “spiralist,” who rejects realism and embraces disorder. Frankétienne — he combined his first and last names years ago — embraces chaos as a style he believes befits a country with a long, tumultuous history birthed in a slave revolt more than 200 years ago and scarred by a cascade of natural and man-made disasters.
In chaos he finds order.
“I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life,” he said, his baritone voice rising as it does when he gets worked up over a point. “What I don’t like is nonmanagement of chaos. The reason why Haiti looks more chaotic is because of nonmanagement. In other countries it is managed better. Haiti, they should take as reference for what could happen in the rest of world.”
Scholars widely view Frankétienne as Haiti’s most important writer. He wrote what many consider the first modern novel entirely in Haitian Creole, “Dezafi,” in 1975, and a play well known here that challenged political oppression, “Pelin Tet.” It is a biting work from 1978 that is aimed, not so subtly, at Jean-Claude Duvalier, the son of the dictator François Duvalier and himself a former dictator known as Baby Doc, who returned here from exile in January.
Although not well known in the English-speaking world, Frankétienne has star status in French- and Creole-speaking countries and was rumored to be on the short list for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009.
After the quake, his works gained more international attention, particularly in Canada and France. “The Trap” debuted in March 2010 at a Unesco forum in Paris that named him an artist for peace; galleries in New York have organized shows featuring his artwork. Still, he also holds informal Sunday workshops with young artists in Haiti to talk about and critique their work.
“He is not only a major Haitian writer, he is probably the major Haitian writer, forever,” said Jean Jonassaint, a Haitian literature scholar at Syracuse University.
Frankétienne’s output, about 40 written works and, by his count, 2,000 paintings and sketches, comprises dense, baroque affairs. He invents new words, blending French and Haitian Creole. Long digressions are de rigueur. His paintings, which he says are selling particularly well these days, blur swirling blacks, blues and reds, often covered with poems.
He admires James Joyce, and it shows. “ ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ was like a crazy book, just like I write crazy books,” he said.
Still, the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat said Frankétienne remained popular among Haitians, in part because some of his plays had been videotaped and passed around in Haiti and in immigrant communities in the United States.
“Pelin Tet,” in which the grim life of two Haitian immigrants in New York deliberately echoes the oppression of the Duvalier era on the island, is a touchstone for many Haitians, said Ms. Danticat, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Frankétienne and was, in part, inspired to write by his rise to the top.
“His work can speak to the most intellectual person in the society as well as the most humble,” she said. “It’s a very generous kind of genius he has, one I can’t imagine Haitian literature ever existing without.”
Frankétienne was born as Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936, and raised in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, the son of a Haitian farmworker and an American businessman, who later abandoned her.
Frankétienne’s mother worked as a street vendor — selling cigarettes, charcoal, candies, moonshine — while raising eight children.
“Since I was 5 or 6 I was smoking or drinking, but my mother never knew,” he recalled. He was the oldest, and she strove to send him to school (he, in turn, tutored his younger siblings, leading him to establish his own school).
The school he attended was French-speaking. Frankétienne initially did not know a word of French, but angered at being teased by other students, he set about mastering the language and developing an affinity for words and artistic expression.
His best-known works came in the 1960s and ’70s, and he ranks his novel “Dezafi” as one of his most cherished. Set in a rural Haitian village, it weaves cockfighting, zombification, the history of slavery and other themes into an allegory of the country’s pain and suffering.
“It is the challenge of finding the light to liberate everyone,” he said. He wrote it in Creole, he said, because that was the voice of the characters he imagined.
But Frankétienne also felt a need to assert his Haitian identity, as people often look at his fair skin, blue eyes and white hair and doubt he is from this predominantly black country.
“They might think I am white or mulatto or whatever, but I am not,” he said. “I have black features, Negro features. My mother was an illiterate peasant and she had me when she was 16. She was taken in by an American, a very rich American. The American was 63 and my mother was 16 at the time.”
Switching from Creole to English, which he is usually too timid to speak, he added, “You understand who I am now?”
After completing “Dezafi,” he was frustrated that so few of his compatriots could read it, with nearly half the adult population illiterate. He switched to plays, even if that meant irritating the dictatorship.
“Dictators are mean but not necessarily stupid, so they knew I didn’t have any readers,” Frankétienne said. “What really gave them a problem was when I started with plays.”
Other writers and artists left Haiti during the dictatorship, but he stayed as his reputation grew outside the country and human rights groups closely followed him, providing, he believes, some cover from Mr. Duvalier.
Later, he joined other intellectuals in denouncing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected president after Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown. Mr. Aristide, he said, became fixated on power and tolerated corruption and thuggery in his administration.
“He is a ghost, too,” Frankétienne said of Mr. Aristide’s return in March after seven years in exile.
His only regret, he said, is that his work is not widely translated and better known. If he knew Chinese, Japanese, Italian or other languages, he said, he would put them in his works.
“Everything is interconnected,” he said. “We are connected to everything, everyone.”
Frankétienne added, “The only thing not chaotic is death.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/world/americas/30haiti.html?pagewanted=1
"I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life. What I don't like is the mismanagement of chaos." Frankétienne, the man known as the father of Haitian letters.
Day 1 of New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival: We N.O.
Posted: 04/30/11 03:19 AM ET React Amazing Day One of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival kicked off with weather so beautiful, it was almost sarcastic. Between the mango freeze ice cream headaches and cochon de lait po-boys, there was wall to wall music. Jeff Beck, Mumford & Sons, the subdudes, Red Stick Ramblers, Germaine Bazzle, Justin Towes Earle, Robert Plant and dozens more rocked their respective stages.
Haiti - New Orleans ties are being highlighted at the festival this year, with everyone from Wyclef Jean to my new favorite band Ti-Cocoa and Wanga Neges. New Orleans benefits for Haiti have been offering relief since the Haitian earthquake, including photographers donating their work to Images Without Borders gallery shows.
Jazz Fest Contemporary Craft artist Jimmy Descant is also focused on international assistance. His "We N.O." piece for Japan in the shape of Louisiana has already sold, and he's giving away stencils of the piece as well as encouraging donations to Mercy Corps for its humanitarian aid in Japan.
For Saturday, Big Freeda and Sissy Nobby; Irma Thomas; and Bon Jovi sans Ritchie Sambora are in the lineup. It won't be dull.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-daltonbeninato/day-1-of-new-orleans-jazz_b_855826.html#s271903
Haiti - New Orleans ties are being highlighted at the festival this year, with everyone from Wyclef Jean to my new favorite band Ti-Cocoa and Wanga Neges. New Orleans benefits for Haiti have been offering relief since the Haitian earthquake, including photographers donating their work to Images Without Borders gallery shows.
Jazz Fest Contemporary Craft artist Jimmy Descant is also focused on international assistance. His "We N.O." piece for Japan in the shape of Louisiana has already sold, and he's giving away stencils of the piece as well as encouraging donations to Mercy Corps for its humanitarian aid in Japan.
For Saturday, Big Freeda and Sissy Nobby; Irma Thomas; and Bon Jovi sans Ritchie Sambora are in the lineup. It won't be dull.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-daltonbeninato/day-1-of-new-orleans-jazz_b_855826.html#s271903
Sean Penn says he'd welcome Sheen's help in Haiti
"I think his energies, intelligence and passion could be both of service and servicing to him, as it is to all who are touched by the struggle of the Haitian people," Penn said in a statement Friday.
"Charlie is one of the very few public people who cannot be accused of using the media to his own benefit. I would very much like to show my old friend the world of needs on the ground in Haiti, and introduce him and his tremendous wit to our hard working Haitian staff."
Penn's message of support came hours after Sheen told "Access Hollywood" that he and Penn were planning a trip to the Caribbean nation, although no date for their travel has been announced.
"If he chooses to give support, I'll trust it," the Academy Award winner said.
Sheen, who has been on a media blitz since Monday, says he would like to bring the attention of the world back to Haiti, where Penn has been a fixture since a January 2010 earthquake destroyed more than 500,000 homes.
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/C4/20110305/ENT07/110305012/Sean-Penn-says-he-d-welcome-Sheen-s-help-Haiti?odyssey=nav%7Chead
'Changing Haiti' hasn't forgotten distressed country's need
* The group will raise funds to deliver to Haitians in July as part of a mission trip.
By BRETT NUCKLES
Published: Saturday, April 30, 2011 8:07 AM EDT Changing Haiti mission group members from the Franklin Church in New Albany include (from left) Mary Eller, members Amber Klotz, Emily Pittenger and the Rev. Mike Brown, pastor of Franklin Church. Not pictured: mission group members Steve and Jane Onspaugh.
Ohio State University junior Mary Eller hasn't forgotten the story of one young girl who was pulled from the rubble in Port-au-Prince nine days after the tragic January 2009 earthquake that rattled Haiti.
After her rescue, the girl told reporters she wanted to become a doctor like those who nursed her back to health.
"Everyone was interested in talking to her then," Eller said. "But no one is there talking to her now."
That girl's story represents one in a long list of broken promises to the Haitian people, and the children most of all, Eller said.
"Everyone in Haiti is hurting, but the children are the ones who truly cannot help themselves," she said.
Changing Haiti, an ongoing fundraising effort, has been her response. The multi-church project, spearheaded by Eller with help from her friends and pastor at Franklin Church in New Albany, aims to raise $10,000 for Lovelink, a residence for orphaned and abandoned children in Port-au-Prince.
The project will culminate in a mission trip July 13-19, when Eller, the Rev. Mike Brown and 10 other church members will personally deliver the money to Lovelink.
Proceeds will go to help repair dormitories and an activity center damaged during the earthquake.
Several other Central Ohio churches have joined in on the effort, including Northpointe Community Church in Lewis Center, Christ Fellowship Church in Westerville, and First Love Church in Reynoldsburg.
The churches will be keeping donation jars and working on their own fundraising efforts, Eller said. The jars also will go out to area businesses in the coming weeks.
Franklin Church members will do their part with a bake sale planned for May 3, and a spaghetti dinner May 6.
A summertime bash is in the works, tentatively planned for June 10, to raise money and celebrate the first day of summer vacation for New Albany students. The event is still in the planning stages, but likely will feature games and an outdoor movie.
The "Kids Helping Kids" student talent show rounds out current plans on June 18. Talented children from the community will show off their skills and all proceeds will go to Changing Haiti.
All churches involved also are accepting direct donations.
Questions can be directed to Franklin Church, 7171 Central College Road in New Albany.
Members of the mission trip also are working to raise money to cover their travel expenses -- an extra $10,000 cost.
More than a year after the disaster, the group just wants to do its part to help in the ongoing recovery, Brown said.
"All the news (on Haiti) has kind of gone away, but the need is greater than ever," he said.
http://www.snponline.com/articles/2011/04/30/multiple_papers/news/allnahaiti_20110429_0508pm_1.txt
By BRETT NUCKLES
 |
| Changing Haiti mission group members from the Franklin Church in New Albany include (from left) Mary Eller, members |
Ohio State University junior Mary Eller hasn't forgotten the story of one young girl who was pulled from the rubble in Port-au-Prince nine days after the tragic January 2009 earthquake that rattled Haiti.
After her rescue, the girl told reporters she wanted to become a doctor like those who nursed her back to health.
"Everyone was interested in talking to her then," Eller said. "But no one is there talking to her now."
That girl's story represents one in a long list of broken promises to the Haitian people, and the children most of all, Eller said.
"Everyone in Haiti is hurting, but the children are the ones who truly cannot help themselves," she said.
Changing Haiti, an ongoing fundraising effort, has been her response. The multi-church project, spearheaded by Eller with help from her friends and pastor at Franklin Church in New Albany, aims to raise $10,000 for Lovelink, a residence for orphaned and abandoned children in Port-au-Prince.
The project will culminate in a mission trip July 13-19, when Eller, the Rev. Mike Brown and 10 other church members will personally deliver the money to Lovelink.
Proceeds will go to help repair dormitories and an activity center damaged during the earthquake.
Several other Central Ohio churches have joined in on the effort, including Northpointe Community Church in Lewis Center, Christ Fellowship Church in Westerville, and First Love Church in Reynoldsburg.
The churches will be keeping donation jars and working on their own fundraising efforts, Eller said. The jars also will go out to area businesses in the coming weeks.
Franklin Church members will do their part with a bake sale planned for May 3, and a spaghetti dinner May 6.
A summertime bash is in the works, tentatively planned for June 10, to raise money and celebrate the first day of summer vacation for New Albany students. The event is still in the planning stages, but likely will feature games and an outdoor movie.
The "Kids Helping Kids" student talent show rounds out current plans on June 18. Talented children from the community will show off their skills and all proceeds will go to Changing Haiti.
All churches involved also are accepting direct donations.
Questions can be directed to Franklin Church, 7171 Central College Road in New Albany.
Members of the mission trip also are working to raise money to cover their travel expenses -- an extra $10,000 cost.
More than a year after the disaster, the group just wants to do its part to help in the ongoing recovery, Brown said.
"All the news (on Haiti) has kind of gone away, but the need is greater than ever," he said.
http://www.snponline.com/articles/2011/04/30/multiple_papers/news/allnahaiti_20110429_0508pm_1.txt
New Orleans Jazz Fest find its Haitian roots as Emeline Michel ignites local improvisors
Published: Friday, April 29, 2011, 8:24 PM Updated: Saturday, April 30, 2011, 8:22 AM By Chris Waddington NOLA.com
At the New Orleans Jazz Fest, the measure of a great closing act is if you never want the performance to end. That's what happened at the Economy Hall Tent on Friday as Haitian vocal star Emeline Michel joined clarinetist Dr. Michael White, his well-drilled traditional jazz band, and a string orchestra hand-picked by Loyola University professor Jean Montes.
To judge by Michel's incandescent performance, her next appearance (3:35 p.m. Saturday at Congo Square) should be one of the highlights of the festival.
Tomorrow's show will feature Michel's own band from Haiti, but she hardly sounded out of place among so many New Orleanians on Friday. In fact, this smartly programmed concert of rhumba-inflected jazz, Haitian rah-rah and folk material gave tangible, often danceable evidence of the profound connections between the Caribbean nation and the Crescent City.
You heard those connections when the crowd -- and the regal Michel -- joined trumpeter Wendell Brunious in a lively account of "Eh La Bas." You also heard it when Loyola vocal student Riva Precil wrapped her classically trained mezzo voice around Michel's soaring contralto. Their arching unison lines and haunting harmonies unlocked the deep emotion in a series of Haitian songs.
This fertile cultural interchange got a further boost from the brilliant arrangements crafted by alto saxophonist Godwin Louis -- a Haitian native who has lived here for two years as a student at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. His Institute colleague, drummer Nicholas Falk, offered sensitive support -- a tough job when the music ranges from roaring brass to passages that set a banjo amid a mass of plucked string instruments.
White's band had many strong soloists, including trombonist Ronell Johnson, and Brunious on trumpet. White himself showed why he's a first-call sideman with stars like Wynton Marsalis. In his solos, he ranged across the full range of the clarinet, dipping into it's burbling depths and rising to stars. It was a night of triumphs.
http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2011/04/post_9.html
At the New Orleans Jazz Fest, the measure of a great closing act is if you never want the performance to end. That's what happened at the Economy Hall Tent on Friday as Haitian vocal star Emeline Michel joined clarinetist Dr. Michael White, his well-drilled traditional jazz band, and a string orchestra hand-picked by Loyola University professor Jean Montes.
To judge by Michel's incandescent performance, her next appearance (3:35 p.m. Saturday at Congo Square) should be one of the highlights of the festival.
Tomorrow's show will feature Michel's own band from Haiti, but she hardly sounded out of place among so many New Orleanians on Friday. In fact, this smartly programmed concert of rhumba-inflected jazz, Haitian rah-rah and folk material gave tangible, often danceable evidence of the profound connections between the Caribbean nation and the Crescent City.
You heard those connections when the crowd -- and the regal Michel -- joined trumpeter Wendell Brunious in a lively account of "Eh La Bas." You also heard it when Loyola vocal student Riva Precil wrapped her classically trained mezzo voice around Michel's soaring contralto. Their arching unison lines and haunting harmonies unlocked the deep emotion in a series of Haitian songs.
This fertile cultural interchange got a further boost from the brilliant arrangements crafted by alto saxophonist Godwin Louis -- a Haitian native who has lived here for two years as a student at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. His Institute colleague, drummer Nicholas Falk, offered sensitive support -- a tough job when the music ranges from roaring brass to passages that set a banjo amid a mass of plucked string instruments.
White's band had many strong soloists, including trombonist Ronell Johnson, and Brunious on trumpet. White himself showed why he's a first-call sideman with stars like Wynton Marsalis. In his solos, he ranged across the full range of the clarinet, dipping into it's burbling depths and rising to stars. It was a night of triumphs.
http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2011/04/post_9.html
Un euro par Belge pour les victimes du séisme en Haïti
Projet original en collaboration avec Caritas International ROME, Vendredi 29 avril 2011 (ZENIT.org) - « Un euro par Belge pour Haïti » : tel est le nom d'un projet/collecte de fonds lancé par un couple belge pour sensibiliser les citoyens à venir en aide aux victimes du tremblement de terre meurtrier qui, en janvier 2010, a ravagé une grande partie du territoire Haïtien.
Le week-end du 30 avril/1er mai, Caritas International et « Un euro par Belge pour Haïti » seront présents au Festival Dranouter sur Mer, petit village de Flandre, situé entre Lille et Tournai, au cours duquel ils tenteront de récolter des fonds.
« Si chaque Belge offre un euro à cette cause, les 10 millions d'euros seront rapidement atteints », souligne Caritas International qui a décidé d'appuyer l'initiative de ce couple, Steven Vanriest et Leen Dommecent, de simples citoyens, enseignants, vivant en Flandre-occidentale, qui, après avoir vu des images poignantes sur les conséquences dramatiques du séisme, ont décidé, il y a six mois, « de mettre les Belges au défi » en montant ce projet.
Dans un premier temps, celui-ci a utilisé uniquement les réseaux sociaux en ligne pour sensibiliser les citoyens. Aujourd'hui, il s'agit d'une grande offensive au cours de la saison des festivals en Belgique.
Avec l'argent récolté, et en collaboration avec Caritas International, le couple veut reconstruire des maisons et redonner à la population haïtienne un toit pour vivre. Plus d'un an après le séisme, la situation reste toujours catastrophique.
« Prouvons que les habitants d'un petit pays sont en mesure de changer le monde. L'union fait la force! » est le slogan d'« un euro par Belge pour Haïti ».
Pour plus d'informations : www.10000000.be
http://www.zenit.org/article-27746?l=french
Le week-end du 30 avril/1er mai, Caritas International et « Un euro par Belge pour Haïti » seront présents au Festival Dranouter sur Mer, petit village de Flandre, situé entre Lille et Tournai, au cours duquel ils tenteront de récolter des fonds.
« Si chaque Belge offre un euro à cette cause, les 10 millions d'euros seront rapidement atteints », souligne Caritas International qui a décidé d'appuyer l'initiative de ce couple, Steven Vanriest et Leen Dommecent, de simples citoyens, enseignants, vivant en Flandre-occidentale, qui, après avoir vu des images poignantes sur les conséquences dramatiques du séisme, ont décidé, il y a six mois, « de mettre les Belges au défi » en montant ce projet.
Dans un premier temps, celui-ci a utilisé uniquement les réseaux sociaux en ligne pour sensibiliser les citoyens. Aujourd'hui, il s'agit d'une grande offensive au cours de la saison des festivals en Belgique.
Avec l'argent récolté, et en collaboration avec Caritas International, le couple veut reconstruire des maisons et redonner à la population haïtienne un toit pour vivre. Plus d'un an après le séisme, la situation reste toujours catastrophique.
« Prouvons que les habitants d'un petit pays sont en mesure de changer le monde. L'union fait la force! » est le slogan d'« un euro par Belge pour Haïti ».
Pour plus d'informations : www.10000000.be
http://www.zenit.org/article-27746?l=french
Haïti-Musique : Un documentaire sur les 60 ans de parcours du Septentrional
En tournée au Etats-Unis l’orchestre prépare un nouvel album
P-au-P, 29 avril 2011 [AlterPresse] --- Le célèbre orchestre haïtien de musique compas Septentrional, poursuit actuellement une tournée aux Etats-Unis, marquée par la première d’un documentaire retraçant son histoire, intitulé « When the drum is beating ».
La première de ce film a eu lieu le 25 avril écoulé à New York, dans le cadre du Tribeca Film Festival, créé en 2002 par l’acteur Robert de Niro. Ce festival se déroule en 2011 du 20 avril au 1er mai.
« When the drum is beating » est un documentaire réalisé par Whitney Dow en collaboration avec la journaliste américaine Jane Regan et le photojournaliste haïtien Daniel Morel.
Le film fait un aller-retour entre le parcours du Septentrional, qui a 63 ans, et l’histoire d’Haïti. Il entremêle passé et présent et offre une image du groupe a travers les principaux événements ayant marqué l’existence de la nation haïtienne.
« When the drum is beating » permet au spectateur de voir, de sentir et d’entendre la passion, l’engagement et la joie des musiciens du Septentrional, et à travers eux, l’âme unique de l’haïtien », affirment les producteurs.
Le documentaire sera aussi présenté en compétition au festival « Hot Docs » au Canada.
En attendant l’orchestre prépare son prochain album avec 13 titres et qui devrait être disponible en juin.[kft gp apr 29/04/2011 06:00]
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article10969
P-au-P, 29 avril 2011 [AlterPresse] --- Le célèbre orchestre haïtien de musique compas Septentrional, poursuit actuellement une tournée aux Etats-Unis, marquée par la première d’un documentaire retraçant son histoire, intitulé « When the drum is beating ».
La première de ce film a eu lieu le 25 avril écoulé à New York, dans le cadre du Tribeca Film Festival, créé en 2002 par l’acteur Robert de Niro. Ce festival se déroule en 2011 du 20 avril au 1er mai.
« When the drum is beating » est un documentaire réalisé par Whitney Dow en collaboration avec la journaliste américaine Jane Regan et le photojournaliste haïtien Daniel Morel.
Le film fait un aller-retour entre le parcours du Septentrional, qui a 63 ans, et l’histoire d’Haïti. Il entremêle passé et présent et offre une image du groupe a travers les principaux événements ayant marqué l’existence de la nation haïtienne.
« When the drum is beating » permet au spectateur de voir, de sentir et d’entendre la passion, l’engagement et la joie des musiciens du Septentrional, et à travers eux, l’âme unique de l’haïtien », affirment les producteurs.
Le documentaire sera aussi présenté en compétition au festival « Hot Docs » au Canada.
En attendant l’orchestre prépare son prochain album avec 13 titres et qui devrait être disponible en juin.[kft gp apr 29/04/2011 06:00]
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article10969
Patrick Leahy réclame l'annulation des visas des officiels haïtiens
Un influent sénateur américain, Patrick Leahy, exhorte le département d'Etat adopté des sanctions contre les officiels haïtiens impliqués dans les fraudes électorales. M. Leahy, président de la sous commissions des opérations étrangères et du département d'état, estime que le gouvernement américain doit annuler les visas et le statut de résident permanent aux Etats-Unis pour plusieurs membres du gouvernement et du Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) auteurs des revirements d'élection en faveur du parti au pouvoir lors des législatives. Selon M. Leahy ces revirements inexpliqués apportés par les conseillers électoraux dans les résultats préliminaires sont alarmants. Si les Etats-Unis doivent effectivement aider Haïti à se reconstruire, nous devons avoir confiance que le gouvernement haïtien jouit de la confiance et du support de son peuple, insiste le sénateur du Vermont dans une correspondance à la secrétaire d'Etat Hillary Clinton.
Le gouvernement haïtien est l'un des plus importants bailleurs de fonds pour l'organisation des élections présidentielles et législatives. Il est essentiel que l'issue du processus électoral soit reconnu libre et juste par la communauté internationale et, plus particulièrement, par le peuple haïtien conclu le sénateur Leahy.
LLM / radio Métropole Haïti
http://www.metropolehaiti.com/metropole/full_une_fr.php?id=19064
Commentaires:
Il faut croire que la green card et le permis d'entrée en territoire américain est un très précieux sesame pour une grande partie des fonctionnaires haïtiens. La première des sanctions brandies par l'administration américaine contre un fonctionnaire haïtien coupable d'un méfait quelconque reste l'annulation de son visa.
C'est d'un côté ridicule pouisque l'onpeut bien vivre sans les USA. Ils sont des millions qui voudraient y rentrer et qui n'y arrivent pas.
Le gouvernement haïtien est l'un des plus importants bailleurs de fonds pour l'organisation des élections présidentielles et législatives. Il est essentiel que l'issue du processus électoral soit reconnu libre et juste par la communauté internationale et, plus particulièrement, par le peuple haïtien conclu le sénateur Leahy.
LLM / radio Métropole Haïti
http://www.metropolehaiti.com/metropole/full_une_fr.php?id=19064
Commentaires:
Il faut croire que la green card et le permis d'entrée en territoire américain est un très précieux sesame pour une grande partie des fonctionnaires haïtiens. La première des sanctions brandies par l'administration américaine contre un fonctionnaire haïtien coupable d'un méfait quelconque reste l'annulation de son visa.
C'est d'un côté ridicule pouisque l'onpeut bien vivre sans les USA. Ils sont des millions qui voudraient y rentrer et qui n'y arrivent pas.
Haiti's president-elect vows to work with opposition lawmakers
14:28, April 30, 2011 Email
Haiti's president-elect Michel Martelly on Friday said he is ready to collaborate with the lawmakers of the ruling party in congress and outgoing President Rene Preval's Unity Party (Inite) which won a majority of seats in both chambers according to preliminary legislative results.
"The lawmakers of Inite and my government must be united in order to face the many challenges we have," Martelly said, according to reports reached here.
Martelly, who will be inaugurated on May 14, said this collaboration will start with a round of bi-party talks and consultations with the presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies in order to reach a joint decision on the appointment of Haitian prime minister.
"The next chief of government must be conciliatory and a good manager,"
Martelly told the local Metropole Radio station.
Earlier this month Preval offered to collaborate with Martelly to ensure an "efficient cooperation" between the different powers of the state.
Based on the preliminary results released by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) earlier this month the Unity Party won a majority 17 seats in the Senate out of the total of 26, while in the Chamber of Deputies (Congress) the party won 46 while only 3 seats went to Martelly's Farmers' Response Party.
The CEP earlier this week, however, announced it will postpone the release of the final results in the vote of 19 members to parliament pending investigations of allegations of irregularities, while the election observer team of the Organization of American States has called on the CEP to cancel the results in 17 districts.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7366342.html
Haiti's president-elect Michel Martelly on Friday said he is ready to collaborate with the lawmakers of the ruling party in congress and outgoing President Rene Preval's Unity Party (Inite) which won a majority of seats in both chambers according to preliminary legislative results.
"The lawmakers of Inite and my government must be united in order to face the many challenges we have," Martelly said, according to reports reached here.
Martelly, who will be inaugurated on May 14, said this collaboration will start with a round of bi-party talks and consultations with the presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies in order to reach a joint decision on the appointment of Haitian prime minister.
"The next chief of government must be conciliatory and a good manager,"
Martelly told the local Metropole Radio station.
Earlier this month Preval offered to collaborate with Martelly to ensure an "efficient cooperation" between the different powers of the state.
Based on the preliminary results released by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) earlier this month the Unity Party won a majority 17 seats in the Senate out of the total of 26, while in the Chamber of Deputies (Congress) the party won 46 while only 3 seats went to Martelly's Farmers' Response Party.
The CEP earlier this week, however, announced it will postpone the release of the final results in the vote of 19 members to parliament pending investigations of allegations of irregularities, while the election observer team of the Organization of American States has called on the CEP to cancel the results in 17 districts.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7366342.html
Haiti's new leader taking the job seriously
By Lee Hockstader Published 12:00 a.m., Saturday, April 30, 2011
Haiti's president-elect, Michel Martelly, known to his countrymen as "Sweet Micky," is -- let's be delicate about this -- a new kind of political figure.
Wildly popular during his two-decade career as a singer, he was notorious for wearing a diaper during performances, for mooning his audiences and for gleefully leading his fans in obscene chants and taunts. Given that stage persona, Haitians barely batted an eye at revelations during this year's presidential campaign that Martelly used to snort cocaine and that several homes he owned in Florida were foreclosed on.
But the "Sweet Micky" of yore was gone last week when he arrived in Washington for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and international aid organizations. In his place was a spruced up president-elect, escorted by an entourage of thin-skinned advisers who bristled at questions about his past.
Martelly wants to be taken seriously. And thank goodness.
"Sometimes I feel like people don't give me credit -- I didn't win the Lotto. There were 19 candidates, and I debated them and I beat them all," he said during a visit to The Washington Post.
If ever a country needed no-nonsense leadership, it's Haiti right now. And if ever a country has suffered from an onslaught of political calamity combined with cataclysmic disasters, it's Haiti for the last, well, pick your time period.
The earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in January 2010, on the heels of devastating back-to-back hurricanes, crippled the hemisphere's poorest nation. No amount of media marveling at the resilience of the Haitian people or the full-court press of international relief efforts could change the facts: hundreds of thousands of kids orphaned and out of school, a million people left homeless, a capital city carpeted in rubble and an economy on life support.
Haiti was further ravaged last fall by one of the world's worst recent outbreaks of cholera, an epidemic that has killed 5,000 people, infected a quarter-million and is still not finished claiming victims.
Haiti's already weak government, which lost at least a third of its senior civil servants when the ministry buildings collapsed, was rendered almost irrelevant. The listless President Rene Preval all but disappeared.
That sets the bar low for Martelly, who promises a new start when he is inaugurated next month. He is busy fleshing out his mostly vague campaign promises, stressing the rule of law, free public education, jobs and new homes for the throngs still living in tent cities, and help for poor farmers.
"I must admit that my popularity {as an entertainer} has helped me," he said. "But the election was not about my popularity. It was about my character traits -- honesty, determination, combativeness and preparation."
It was also about being a fresh, vital force on the political scene, bringing with him energy and a new (mostly untested) crop of advisers, unbeholden to any recent political establishment.
The president-elect has a troubling reputation for having pals that include some of the worst thugs and coup-plotters from Haiti's dark recent decades. But in person, many of his instincts seem spot-on.
Martelly was quizzed about his plans to resurrect the army, an infamously cruel, corrupt and repressive institution abolished by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994. At that, his advisers got their backs up, especially at the suggestion that a reconstituted army would be used, as in the past, as muscle to enforce the president's personal will. They insisted that this time around, the army would fight smugglers and stay clear of politics -- with the added benefit of providing jobs. But it is not clear that money exists for an army, and foreign donors are not likely to pay for one.
Questioned about his future as an entertainer, or his one-time pledge to perform naked on the palace roof if he were elected president, Martelly demurred, presidentially. "After three or four years, if I see everyone in school and people with jobs and progress," he said, "I'll be happy enough to sing a song."
Fully dressed, one suspects.
Lee Hockstader writes for The Washington Post.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Haiti-s-new-leader-taking-the-job-seriously-1359510.php#ixzz1KzvRDeYQ
http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Haiti-s-new-leader-taking-the-job-seriously-1359510.php
Haiti's president-elect, Michel Martelly, known to his countrymen as "Sweet Micky," is -- let's be delicate about this -- a new kind of political figure.
Wildly popular during his two-decade career as a singer, he was notorious for wearing a diaper during performances, for mooning his audiences and for gleefully leading his fans in obscene chants and taunts. Given that stage persona, Haitians barely batted an eye at revelations during this year's presidential campaign that Martelly used to snort cocaine and that several homes he owned in Florida were foreclosed on.
But the "Sweet Micky" of yore was gone last week when he arrived in Washington for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and international aid organizations. In his place was a spruced up president-elect, escorted by an entourage of thin-skinned advisers who bristled at questions about his past.
Martelly wants to be taken seriously. And thank goodness.
"Sometimes I feel like people don't give me credit -- I didn't win the Lotto. There were 19 candidates, and I debated them and I beat them all," he said during a visit to The Washington Post.
If ever a country needed no-nonsense leadership, it's Haiti right now. And if ever a country has suffered from an onslaught of political calamity combined with cataclysmic disasters, it's Haiti for the last, well, pick your time period.
The earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in January 2010, on the heels of devastating back-to-back hurricanes, crippled the hemisphere's poorest nation. No amount of media marveling at the resilience of the Haitian people or the full-court press of international relief efforts could change the facts: hundreds of thousands of kids orphaned and out of school, a million people left homeless, a capital city carpeted in rubble and an economy on life support.
Haiti was further ravaged last fall by one of the world's worst recent outbreaks of cholera, an epidemic that has killed 5,000 people, infected a quarter-million and is still not finished claiming victims.
Haiti's already weak government, which lost at least a third of its senior civil servants when the ministry buildings collapsed, was rendered almost irrelevant. The listless President Rene Preval all but disappeared.
That sets the bar low for Martelly, who promises a new start when he is inaugurated next month. He is busy fleshing out his mostly vague campaign promises, stressing the rule of law, free public education, jobs and new homes for the throngs still living in tent cities, and help for poor farmers.
"I must admit that my popularity {as an entertainer} has helped me," he said. "But the election was not about my popularity. It was about my character traits -- honesty, determination, combativeness and preparation."
It was also about being a fresh, vital force on the political scene, bringing with him energy and a new (mostly untested) crop of advisers, unbeholden to any recent political establishment.
The president-elect has a troubling reputation for having pals that include some of the worst thugs and coup-plotters from Haiti's dark recent decades. But in person, many of his instincts seem spot-on.
Martelly was quizzed about his plans to resurrect the army, an infamously cruel, corrupt and repressive institution abolished by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994. At that, his advisers got their backs up, especially at the suggestion that a reconstituted army would be used, as in the past, as muscle to enforce the president's personal will. They insisted that this time around, the army would fight smugglers and stay clear of politics -- with the added benefit of providing jobs. But it is not clear that money exists for an army, and foreign donors are not likely to pay for one.
Questioned about his future as an entertainer, or his one-time pledge to perform naked on the palace roof if he were elected president, Martelly demurred, presidentially. "After three or four years, if I see everyone in school and people with jobs and progress," he said, "I'll be happy enough to sing a song."
Fully dressed, one suspects.
Lee Hockstader writes for The Washington Post.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Haiti-s-new-leader-taking-the-job-seriously-1359510.php#ixzz1KzvRDeYQ
http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Haiti-s-new-leader-taking-the-job-seriously-1359510.php
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