Haiti - The Turmoil Continues

Veterans of 25 years of involvement with International Aid initiatives, Rene and Marianne Lako spent the better part of 2010 in Haiti spearheading efforts to provide much-needed relief for the country's earthquake victims. Currently on a sabbatical, Rene joined the recent deployment to Haiti January 12 - 19 as a Hope Force Reservist. Following is his perspective on this unique undertaking:

My one-week trip with Jack Minton of Hope Force International and David O'Connor was very fruitful with good meetings and progress made in the "project village" of Sous Savanne -- a village near Leogane, sometimes a slow two-hour drive from Port-au-Prince. We arrived January 12, exactly one year after the devastating earthquake.

We were able to be a part of HFI's second food distribution in Sous Savanne. Food wasn?t the only thing we were privileged to deliver. We also got to deliver pictures of the sponsored children to their parents. This will be the only picture many of these parents will ever have of their child. Letters, translated into Kriol, to some of the children from their sponsors were also on our delivery list. The families responded in kind by writing back to their sponsors. Translations of the letters will soon be sent to the sponsors of each child.

According to the Hope Force program description, the Child Sponsorship Program seeks to match families with small children to donors who will help provide for their needs, specifically through food distribution. Families are qualified if they have four to five children or if they have an infant or small child. The program has already provided anti-bacterial soap, a cholera awareness campaign and mosquito net distribution as the second major program component -- healthcare. Medical assessment teams are scheduled to be in Sous Savanne this month to scope future interventions.

Many estimate that 90% of all rubble is yet to be cleared. Over one million people are still in camps either in tents or under tarps. Many transitional and permanent shelters are still needed. That is where HFI's partner agency, World Relief comes in. They will rebuild a school/church as well as 15 semi-permanent shelters in Sous Savanne.

The cholera epidemic has claimed over 3,800 lives and although in most parts the situation seems to improve there are still new cases and deaths every day. HFI has partnered in the cholera response with Medical Teams International in the northwest region of Haiti. The last few days in Haiti we stayed in Port-au-Prince at their team house. One of the great advantages of this trip was that we were able to have face to face meetings with both MTI and World Relief.

Unfortunately we had to end our trip a day early when things heated up politically. Former dictator J.C. "Baby Doc" Duvalier unexpectedly returned from 25 years of exile. This was particularly bad timing as people are still waiting for the hotly contested election results. On the night of his surprise arrival, Sunday January 16, 2011 we had to stop our car to let his motorcade with armed police escort race by. He is now being investigated for human rights abuses and corruption; "never a dull moment in Haiti" is true once again.

My wife (Marianne) and I hope that we will be able to return to Haiti together to continue serving and working in this nation. In the natural there is little to "like" about Haiti, in the aftermath of the earthquake, hurricane and cholera not to mention recent political unrest. None-the-less we feel a strong attachment to the Haitian people and this is the nation we want to serve. We trust God to lead us back there.