Four weeks of quaked earth tragedies

Dear family and friends,

The last weekly update I sent was a strong attempt on my part to find a silver lining in many dark clouds,

I had hardly pushed the "send" button when another thunderhead roared at us, and threw lightening in all directions.

Marie Ange was kidnapped from our NPFS home for children called St Anne, the community made up of both disabled children and very small fully abled children.

Gunmen came over the wall, made their way across the roof of the pigpen (where we raise the pre Duvalier era Creole pig, to try to reintroduce it to the peasant farmers), and without effort, climbed down the ladder used for reaching the cisterns where we reuse water from our Tilapia farm to irrigate the fields.

It was 3 am.

They broke into the house with guns and "covid" masks (there eyes and upper faces were plainly visible), they terrorized the staff and children, and left with the pregnant Marie Ange- she also climbing up the same ladder at gunpoint, her feet like drumbeats on the roof over the heads of the pigs, and then down the wall.

This is how bad things have gotten.

We sat together in the pre-dawn hours trying to bring some consolation to everyone who was reeling, especially the children who were witnesses, and our dialogue was a pouring over the questions of how this could happen, how was it planned, who was involved, how will we save Marie Ange, and what will we do next for these children.

Maybe you have had the experience that sometimes helping suffering people (like earthquake victims), is an excellent distraction from your own problems.

Somehow the chemistry of what you are personally dealing with changes, when you lend a hand to someone else in need. This ancient practice of compassion for others from your own base of suffering brings both distance and healing.

And so we mobilized our next trip to the earthquake victims, staying tied together by phone and whatsapp, re-igniting our public protests and mobilizing again very high level actors to help Marie Ange.

We regrouped after every call from the kidnappers- but we did not forget the mountain people, who were spending miserable nights in cold rains.

As I have said before, numerous St Luke team are quite engaged daily in the south for the victims: the healthcare teams are expanded, and outreach is in progress to all affected families at the St Luke schools that we have along the fault line, with a lot of material help.

In the mountains above Petite Riviere de Nippes there are people who cannot be reached except on foot or mule.

We had a rendez-vous with a number of these people, and their mules, in Petite Riviere.

It was a long trip for them on mountain paths, and a long drive for us requiring, once again, the crossing of Martissant.

We had a number of tents for the people of the mountain. We have been avoiding tents and tarps, but it is not easy tying 12 foot aluminum sheets (which become guillotines if you lose control of them) onto mule backs, and harder still to tie 16 foot lengths of 2x4' lumber.

Each tent is comprised of three large, heavy boxes.

We also had blankets, soap, and some clothing.
Quite a load for a mule.

Our meeting point was the police station at Petite Riviere, to try to have a non-chaotic distribution, and the police were very nervous that bandits would appear at any moment and outnumber them.

It would have been easy to outnumber them: the police numbered two.

We had begun loading the mules, while at the same time we started our underground strategies to release Marie Ange (the public strategies were well in motion, including high level advice and important contacts from the US Embassy and good cooperation from the Haitian Judicial police.)

The ransom was very high at US $100,000. We are, of course, known to have international funding sources.

Without being free to reveal too much, the underground strategies included involving a local vodou hougan of high rank, where some of the gang members attend ceremonies and dances, and so were known to him. He offered to include in the dances that night (in honor of a vodou "loa"), an order for liberation. Most of the vodou feasts parallel Catholic feasts, in this case, the September 8 celebration of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.

We have a number of staff, even key staff, who grew up in the ghettos but never adopted the criminal behavior young people are forced into. They know all the language, the mentality, and and they have the tools of ghetto survival- so they can walk straight into it all, but with a different heart.

"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. So be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves." (Mt 10:16)

Raphael is a total pro at this. He somehow managed to have a speaker phone meeting with the hierarchy of the kidnappers. They are a large, fierce, heavily armed gang called 400 Mawozo,

After a lot of twists and turns in the dialogue, (Kenson was introduced by Raphael into this unpleasant reality - so much so that Kenson later referred himself as the 401st mawozo, the one who would fight for the right among them), and by hooking what is left of their humanity, they agreed to release Marie Ange the next day, Feast of the Nativity of Mary, for no ransom. And they did.

Not only that, but Raphael and Kenson went into their territory to get her, as I waited on the dark and deserted road at the Tabarre bridge. Marie Ange was led out blind folded, and cried mightily when her mask was removed and she was in Kenson's embrace. They gave Raphael the phones they had stolen from NPFS staff, and the guns and phones they had stolen from the NPFS security. They told Raphael they will give him the phone numbers of the contacts of the insiders who were the so called "antennas" that enabled this kidnapping. All of this highly unusual. These are important inroads for us.

Raphael handed them an envelope. Even though they asked no ransom, Raphael thought it was advisable to give them some money, a "gesture", for reasons I can explain at a better and safer time. To avoid involving the two institutions in this (St Luke Foundation and NPH), I gave this money from earnings made by selling home made chocolate, hand roasted coffee, fresh milled sugar cane juice, tilapia, and honey from our hives.

Back for a moment to the distraction of being good neighbors.

When we loaded all the mules and they headed clumsily up the mountain, and we finished distributing to other people proposed by the local leaders, we went to Grande Ravine to see the Curé of the Catholic Parish, who I have known for many years since he was once the Curé of Kencoff where our "St Helene" childrens home is located. He showed us his fallen school and cracked Church, and told us about the 18 who died, members of his mountain chapels, as rolling boulders and sliding earth swallowed them alive while hard at work in their gardens.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

One of our next planned tasks now is to try to set up a temporary parish school in Grande Ravine so the kids can get back to school by the end of September.

When Raphael, Kenson and Marie Ange reached the Tabarre bridge, and I embraced Marie Ange, I could feel the the contradiction inherent in a moment of "freedom". The body is free but has rigidly encoded the experience of bondage, the heart and soul are not yet free, and this freedom will be hard won. The release is hardly the 'happily ever after" part of the story. The tougher part is just beginning, for everyone involved.

These updates would be easier if I just reported that in the 4 weeks since the earthquake we invested over a quarter of a million dollars (of your money!) to help our suffering neighbors, through attention to their medical needs, provisions for daily living, and in getting a roof over their heads. This is all thanks to you.

But I see a lot of importance in sharing with you these life lessons also, and not just present power point summaries.
It is important to witness to the power of faith, and to share the strategies that both free those in literal human bondage, as well as to lift up those who have been crushed by tragedy yet again.

The field of neuroscience is crossing a whole new threshold of fascinating discoveries, altering tremendously our understanding of the brain, the mind, and thereby offering new cures for the traumatized brain.

We had been taught forever that the brain is fully developed at the end of puberty and could not change, except for a downward degeneration (accident, illness, age).

Now it is very evident that the brain changes often. Very often. Science can show this. And you and I show it.
The reactions to life events, both agonies and ecstasies, provoke first chemical changes, then structural changes, then functional changes in the brain that tremendously impact our thinking, feeling and behavior.

The bad news is that the brain is physically, negatively changed by trauma and tragedy, by substance abuse, by physical abuse, verbal abuse, abuse of authority and bullying.

The "mind" is changed as well.

Continual stress (even from watching the news) causes real changes of "your mind." The area of your brain that induces a healthy fear becomes hyper stimulated first chemically, then physically, then functionally
until you live with dread.

At the same time, the part of your brain that analyzes what provokes your fear, helps you to stay focused, judges correctly, and helps you learn how to adapt, becomes dulled atrophied, to the detriment of these abilities.
Over time, your brain literally shrinks.

Like yourselves with you many personal, national and global issues, the people here in Haiti, including our leaders, are brought low by the constant threats to life, and the enormous stress of each blow.

Fear becomes highly energized, takes on its own life, feeds on your dreams, and has its untoward affects on the brain, the mind.

As if it weren't bad enough to be confronting bad things during waking hours, more and more staff are reporting nightmares: the daily reality breaks into their nightly imaginings and disturbs any hope for a good rest.

I mentioned that neuroscience is proposing new therapies.

But let's not forget the old ones.

There is ancient human wisdom to draw on at these times, from religious and secular realms.

What helps?

Prayer, fasting, caring for your neighbor by sacrificing something of yourself (like half your sandwich).

What helps?

Seeking out beauty every day- in children, in nature, in music, in treasured friends, in creating something from nothing.
Do this deliberately.

What helps?

Thinking good things, speaking good things, doing good things
even to your enemy, even to yourself (for most of us, we are our worse enemy).

What helps?

Seeking silence, breathing deeply, cultivating gratitude, cultivating grateful, mindful awareness of everything within you and around you.

What helps believers?

Doing all these while staying centered in God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Stress will not be going away soon, if at all. There are ways to offset it.

St Paul calls the way "metanoia", literally meaning, "change your mind."

With right living, right thinking, right praying, here is the promise from the Psalms:

"He (she) is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
And all that he (she) does shall prosper." (Ps 1:1-6)

Thanks for you continued support, and continued prayers. Count on ours for you, too, in the face of your many challenges.

Fr Rick Frechette CP,DO
Port au Prince
September 13, 2021