Recently, Jean Leroy Dupervil spent eight days in Haiti.
He visited Miragoane, his hometown, and Port-Au-Prince, ground zero for the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 and left more than a million homeless, according to the BBC News Web site. Upon his return to Gwinnett, Dupervil shared stories about what he saw. Some tales are hard to fathom. Hard, even, to stomach. Like this one.
“When they found someone in the debris, they sometimes used a regular saw to remove damaged or trapped limbs to free them,” said the pastor of Fisherman Missionary Church in Norcross.
“Yes, my brother. To free them. These weren’t doctors. Just people. I saw people who still haven’t seen a doctor yet. It’s so sad.”
After the quake, Dupervil’s congregation teamed up with a loose-knit organization called the Gwinnett Haitian Community Center to raise supplies for survivors. He said they sent a container of items that sits idle in the Dominican Republic alongside other humanitarian aid waiting to cross the border.
This week, their relief efforts received good fortune. Organizers of a mercy flight that originated in Atlanta and flew directly to Haiti ferried 2,400 pounds of their supplies.
“That was a good thing, my brother,” Dupervil told me. “God blessed us Monday.”
On Wednesday, too.
The United States pledged $1.15 billion for Haiti’s long-term recovery and reconstruction. The money and other resources will help a government that was already implementing critical reforms to continue its quest to strengthen the country’s agriculture, energy, health, security and governance, according to BBC News.
In other words, out with the Old Haiti and in with a new solidly democratic republic. I know what you’re thinking. We’ve heard this one before. Maybe this time, though, in wake of the quake, sustainable change will come.
There seems to be a renewed call and sense of urgency for sufficient, long-term reform, not piecemeal, disjointed approaches. And the call for such reform has come not just from the United States and other global leaders, but from within the country itself.
Jean Paleme Mathurin, an economic adviser to the Haiti prime minister, wrote as much in an AJC column about the need to continue the U.S. Congress’s Haitian trade program.
“In the aftermath of this great tragedy, the Haitian people have shown their resilience and determination to work toward building a new Haiti, one that will provide hope and opportunity for all of our citizens,” he wrote in an op-ed.
On his visit, Dupervil said he experienced it firsthand. Along with the grim stories of pain and suffering, he also caught wind of something else. Optimism. Self-determination. A sense that social and political affairs can’t resort to old ways. That it’s time for a fresh start that will benefit all Haitians.
“The Haitian people are too dependable on someone else, that someone from the outside will take care of them,” Dupervil said. “We need to rethink things, be more independent. I am praying about that.”
Rick Badie, an Opinion columnist, is based in Gwinnett. Reach him at rbadie@ajc.com or 770-263-3875.
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