A NEW HOME FOR ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CYVADIER, JACMEL
The present rented room for services, ample when we took it a little
over two years ago, is now filled to capacity for readers’ services
every Sunday… and when the Divine Liturgy is served, a dozen or more
people are often compelled to stand around outside.
The generous
response to our appeal in January for help in purchasing a suitable
piece of ground for the future needs of St. Augustine’s made possible
the purchase of two (contiguous) tracts, ideally situated for the
parish’s needs: the property lies within a few minutes’ walk of the
present chapel, of the homes of nearly all the parishioners, of the
Hôtel Cyvadier, and the Cyvadier beach. It fronts on a paved, dead-end
road, with a (legal!) power line alongside.
The property is
L-shaped, approximately 100 meters long on each leg of the L (the upper
leg will allow for a sizeable eastward-oriented church building), and
about 25 meters wide on each leg. About 30 coconut trees, a half-dozen
“citroniers” (a delicious relative of the key lime), and a few oak
trees grace the property. A healthy crop of beans was harvested in
April, corn and bananiers (a long-term lucrative crop) are on the way.
The crops are being tended by parishioners, under the guidance of our
skilled gardener, Guillaume, with useful input from our university
agronomy student, Nicolas.
The transactions were concluded, all
notary’s fees and taxes (considerable!) paid during the April 2004
trip. How long will it take for the whole matter to wend its way
through the bureaucracy and yield a final title? Unknown. May be a
few months, maybe a year or more.
Next? The first order of
business must be the construction of a fence around the property (posts
and wire for the present), sufficient to protect it from wandering
grazers (four- or two-legged); then, a “depot” — a simple secure block
building for storage of tools and supplies, with installation of
electrical power to service the property in the future. Next: a
sanitary toilet installation and deep well (which in this region will
yield potable water even without treatment).
These necessary
(and unfortunately expensive) preliminaries taken care of, we hope to
find the resources to build a simple good-sized open-air shelter
(roofed but open on the sides), with a fully enclosed room at its
eastern end. This building should be able to serve as a chapel for a
number of years, pending the possibility of building a “real” church —
which, if it is of sufficient height, will be readily visible both from
the main highway (perhaps two hundred yards to the north) and from far
out at sea (the coast is less than 50 yards from the southern end of
the property).
To accomplish this will of course require a great
deal of assistance from those of us fortunate enough to live in more
affluent societies — it is a rare Sunday when the offerings of the
impoverished faithful of St. Augustine’s reaches so much as one dollar
total. There are some wealthy Haitians — but they are not Orthodox.
ORDINATIONS
For the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, His Grace Bishop Michael, and Fr.
Deacon Matthew, risked a second trip into the troubled land of Haiti,
to help meet the growing needs of the community of the faithful.
Happily, their visit was untroubled by the surrounding difficulties,
apart from the usual complications of difficult communications and
transport.
Bishop Michael ordained an additional reader,
Augustin Gesnel, for service in the parish of St. Augustine, on the
south coast near the city of Jacmel. There, the community has rapidly
outgrown its rented chapel space. Fr. Grégoire Legouté is able to
serve there approximately once a month — and on all other Saturdays and
Sundays and feasts heavily-attended readers’ services are conducted.
In
the district of LaPlaine, on the northern edge of Port-au-Prince, the
community, which now forms the backbone of the parish of the Nativity
of the Theotokos, continues to grow, despite frequent serious
difficulties in reaching the parish church. On numerous occasions,
heavy rains have prevented the chartered transport from operation —
once leaving the dozen and a half present for Saturday vigil to spend
the night in the church… a good way to assure timely arrival for
liturgy! For several weeks, political disturbances made it
unreasonably dangerous for all but two or three intrepid men to make
their way to the church for services. These circumstances obviously
call for a more immediate presence in the area.
To help meet
this need, as well as provide needed assistance for services at
Nativity (Fr. Jean and Fr. Grégoire are absent at least one Sunday a
month each for service in Jacmel and Cap-Haïtien), Bishop Michael
ordained Amboise Noël (whom he himself had ordained reader on his
previous visit) to the sacred diaconate. It is our hope that in the
near future a “chapel of need” may be erected at LaPlaine, at the Foyer
de Ste-Marie d’Egypte, recently acquired upon Bishop Michael’s
insistence, where readers’ services might be conducted with dignity on
those occasions when it is unreasonably difficult or impossible to
reach the parish church.
Longer-range plans at LaPlaine include
hope for the acquisition of a substantial piece of property (50
centièmes, about 1.25 acres) which we have been offered at a reasonable
price… situated directly on a highway under construction which will
inevitably, when political conditions stabilize, be the principal
highway from center city to the north. Bishop Michael inspected the
property, which lies a stone’s throw from the new home of Katherine’s
family (see previous issue), and encourages its acquisition. Even if
seen only as an investment, the property is of immense value, without
reckoning the desirability of placing a church in Port-au-Prince in a
highly visible and easily reached (in the future!) location.
The
evening after the ordinations, a long-time friend, proprietor of the OK
Corral Restau-Ranch (temporarily closed due to the political situation)
hosted a festal ordination dinner. Highly recommended to potential
visitors!
To the newly-ordained Deacon Amboise, and newly-ordained reader Augustin, Many Years! Axios!
Under Fire: Return to Haiti April 2004
What
to expect? A beloved country after months of turmoil, the
resignation and/or kidnapping of its president, the arrival of
occupation (“peacekeeping”) forces. News images of burning
buildings, charred bodies, horrors of every sort floating in my
head. But it was time to go back. Information from our
people there indicated that while conditions were drastically more
difficult than before (difficult to imagine), they were reasonably
secure.
First day or two on the streets I saw nothing unusual,
though I had no reason to leave the relatively tranquil area around the
airport, the church, and the Mission House. Then a column of
obviously very uneasy young men trotting down the thoroughfare leading
from Mission House to the airport area, heavy weapons at the
ready. Leaving to go to Jacmel, one of the most serious traffic
jams I’ve ever experienced ultimately decorated by a lengthy column of
armored vehicles (including rubber-tired bulldozers… certainly useful
for clearing barricades), each with a soldier atop with a machine-gun
at the ready. Not the kind of stuff to make one feel terribly
secure… at least not me.
I never had reason to enter the areas
where I knew the damage had been most severe, but saw signs here and
there of the lawlessness which had rendered the country all but
immobile for weeks. No one could get to church except those who
were close enough to walk… in daylight only. All schools had been
closed for several weeks, and had just re-opened when I arrived, though
with only a fraction of the students in attendance. No one had
been able to work for weeks. Prices on consumer goods were up
40-60%, in some cases much more. But astonishingly, the value of
the dollar against the gourde had dropped about 15% in the wake of the
occupation, apparently the work of international currency
speculators. Electrical power was all but entirely absent in
Port-au-Prince, with the result that even those with cellphones found
it difficult to impossible to keep them charged. I was amongst
the privileged few… our host at MM has a private generator, and the
house is equipped with a battery bank and inverter — enough power to
keep cellphone, computer and, from time to time, a fan operational.
Travel
to Jacmel was peaceful enough, once out of the city, and the visit
there, to celebrate liturgy and wrap up the land purchase, pleasant and
productive. As we often do, Fr. Grégoire and I planned to meet at
a road junction west of Port-au-Prince for a visit to Les Cayes, to
celebrate vespers (in yet another borrowed location) and continue the
search for a suitable building for services there. In the course
of looking at several thoroughly unsuitable places (most of them far
too expensive), a glance down the street revealed the “perfect”
building — almost certainly unthinkable, but one is allowed to dream
and pray. Situated squarely at the end of the main downtown
street of the city, on the waterfront, within view of the RC cathedral
and the city plaza, the house is unoccupied, the ownership shared by
several heirs. No word yet as to any possible price, either for
rental or purchase. Prayers are in order!
A late start for
the return trip to Port-au-Prince brought us to Petit-Goâve at just the
wrong moment. A large truck slewed across the road ahead with no
room to get around it on either side brought us to a halt… in the
middle of a gun battle. It was entirely unclear what was
happening at first, who was shooting at whom or why, but at least one
of the gunmen was within a few yards of the car. Presently two
Suburban-loads of uniformed personnel (whom Fr. Grégoire identified as
Haitian security police) with others firing as they ran alongside
roared past us (and, thanks to 4-wheel drive, around the truck), and
the center of gunfire moved on down the road. People began
popping out of houses trying to see what was happening, wandering
around more or less unconcerned. Not so us! Prayer and
keeping a low profile had preserved us (and the car) from any injury,
but we still needed to get out of there (and home). As we were
debating what course to take, an inter-city tap-tap (battered US
schoolbus) drew up behind us and, without hesitation, plunged into a
little dirt lane leaving the highway. We spun around and followed
in hot pursuit. A half-hour or so of travel on badly rutted
and frequently deeply mudded roads brought us to the center of the
town, and back out onto somewhat normal roads… with the prayer that we
wouldn’t catch up with the battle on the other side of town. We
didn’t. The experience made for a somewhat more than ordinarily
nervous return to the Mission House across pitch-black after-dark
Port-au-Prince, without further incident. The Lord preserves!
Such is life in Haiti today… much worse for those who must contend with it every hour of every day.
