Jenise’s Blog
My name is Jenise. It’s like Denise, but with a “J”. This is my blog. I’m originally from Orange County, but kept moving north in California, then to Europe, followed by Africa and eventually found myself right back where I started in the OC. Go figure. I never thought I’d be back, but I have a heart for the poor and was so inspired by the work at GCHope that I just had to stay.
I’m the one in charge of fundraising. By the way, I hate asking people for money. God has such a funny sense of humor. However, what I do love to do is to tell the stories about unsung heroes around the world on the front lines of poverty, injustice and the church and participating in their story involves us to give of our time, treasure and talent.
This blog will give you a behind the scenes look at life in an international non-governmental organization (NGO). It is my introspective thoughts and questions as I keep learning about God, life and culture. Sometimes I’m filled with great sadness learning about pain in communities. Sometimes with great hope as we work together to do what God asks of us. Often I am humbled that He allows me to be a part of making a difference in so many communities around the world. I hope you’ll be inspired by the projects you see on the site and decide to partner with us to be a part of something bigger than yourself. And I hope that you’ll read this blog and come with me on the journey of living the questions that the Christian life calls us to walk into. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Guest Blog by Paramedic Jason Friesen
Many of you read about the little baby that GCHope Haiti Relief team member Jason Friesen from Trek Medics took to the hospital. I am happy to report that Jason received an email that the baby did in fact survive. I’m also happy to have Jason as a guest blogger on the GCHope site. He recently wrote an article about his trip for his church, The Rock and has allowed us to share that article on our site. Here are Jason’s experiences:
Two walls used to surround the grounds of Grace International in Carrefour, Haiti, only a few miles west of the capitol, Port-au-Prince. The exterior wall once enclosed the ten-acre Grace Village compound, which includes a small medical clinic, a large open-air church, a school and the unfinished, two-story Grace Haiti Children’s Hospital. The inner wall, situated in the southwest corner of the compound, surrounds the Girls’ Orphanage, which is home to 54 girls, ages 3 to 26. But since the 7.0 earthquake shook the country on January 12, 2010, only the inner wall is still standing. Little else looks the same.
What was once the spacious, green lawn of the compound has become home to a dusty, teeming Tent City of close to 20,000 internally displaced Haitians. There’s little likelihood that they’ll be able to return home any time soon either, since many have no home to return to, and those who do were warned by the government to keep out of them for fear of aftershocks.
The term “Tent City,” is a bit of misnomer itself, as the tents are made from little more than whatever cloth big enough to create a barrier could be found: bed sheets, blankets, table cloths, rugs, tarps and even flags are strung up and pinned to sticks or poles or rebar that was pulled from the piles of concrete that once constituted their walls. “Refugee Camp” would be a more suitable term, though there’s little refuge found in a make-shift tent.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
For all intents and purposes, these tents are now the official and permanent residences for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, filled whatever material possessions they could salvage from the ruins. TVs, radios, toaster ovens and other home appliances are stacked inside the tents, some intact and some not, though perhaps able to be sold for scrap or parts. Beside the appliances lay mattresses, make-shift grills, wash basins and dusty piles of clothes. Outside the tents, along the narrow, trash-strewn corridors that wind through the camp, other signs of a small city have popped up, with vendors selling food and goods. Some sell deep-fried vegetables or chicken or soup, while others sell candy or produce or MREs that they’ve gotten from the US Army. Still others have set up small stands with power strips connected to car batteries so you can charge your cell phone or iPod, two essential items for the long, purposeless days if you have them. Like any black market, everything is for sale at an ever-increasing fee.
And while the tent walls are hung in hopes of finding some privacy, and to protect their possessions from would-be thieves, nothing escapes the elements. No matter how well built the tent is, the heat still wears you down, the humidity makes everyone feel crowded and closer, and the dust leaves nothing untouched.
It’s a unique type of dust, though, not comprised only of the kicked-up dirt from the beaten, dry grounds, but also from the ashes of the burning trash piles, and from the still unsettled rubble of what was once a seaside neighborhood. The rubble is probably the biggest contributor to this dust, and it creates a thick white-gray film that layers everything, as though someone had taken all the schoolhouse erasers in the world and beaten them together at once over all the city.
All day long Haitians are in an endless fight with the elements, trying to keep the sun off their brows and out of their eyes, the dust from their lungs and the wind from their parched, thirsty lips. But the elements are as relentless as the despair, continually dragging them down as though a constant reminder of everything they’ve lost.
Fighting for Food, for Hope
Yet the elements aren’t the only thing the Haitians are fighting – they’re fighting each other, too, though not always violently: for food to eat and water to drink, for space to live, and for dignity to preserve. They fight the constant threat of infection and sickness from each other’s trash and excrement, and they fight with the dead, with the depression and sadness of having lost their loved ones. Many fight against the hopelessness of having nowhere to go and of having no way to help themselves, and the whole country, once proud for having fought off the foreigners who enslaved them, must now fight the humiliation of having to turn their country back over to foreigners, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.
There are many, too, who are now fighting to provide for new mouths in their family – the thousands of orphans left behind, whether they are the neighbor’s children, or a child they found just roaming the streets. Children are proving to be one of their most difficult fights, too, as it is the children who are most vulnerable to sickness, dehydration, starvation and abduction.
Though it is only a few miles from the capitol, the Tent City in Carrefour has been slow to find any relief or assistance. Most of the supplies are used up by the people who are closest to the airport where they come in. But help has been increasing. Deemed safe by relief workers because of its steel beams and aluminum roof, the open-air church has been turned into a temporary clinic, with its benches and pews used for supplies and examinations, and its wooden tables used for beds, or even operating tables if necessity demands.
The medical workers who come in are only as good as their supplies and creativity allow them. Sometimes they are able to do the miraculous, like perform an emergency C-section; while other times they are only able to sit and watch, as when an elderly woman had a stroke for lack of blood pressure medications. “Take her back to the tent and let her lie in peace – she won’t live much longer.” Assuredly, very few people remembered to grab their medications before they ran out the collapsing house.
And still other times the medical workers are reduced to the archaic, using vodka for sterilization, and even for anaesthesia.
Dusk to Dawn
At night the Tent City becomes another place, and the relief workers remain behind the inner walls of the Girls’ Home, though they can still hear what is going on outside the walls, and are often woken by those sounds in the night. Each evening there will be some type of worship service coming from somewhere near the church, and it’s common to hear the people in the camp break out in spontaneous worship, singing songs in both French and Creole, both soft and desperate. Other times, the sounds are of a different kind of adulation: one night it is the raucous cheers coming from a nearby tent which has hooked up a TV to watch the Arsenal soccer match, while another night it’s a loud dance party that a different tent has set up.
Still other nights the sounds are less uplifting: from time to time there is the deep rumbling of an aftershock which may shake you right out of bed, and will leave the camp in an eerie silence for many hours after, interrupted only by hushed sobs and children’s cries coming from distant corners. Other times, the relief workers may be woken by a desperate pounding upon the orphanage gates. And when the gates are opened it is a young man carrying the limp, cold body of his newlywed wife, screaming and begging the doctor to tell him it isn’t so, and twenty minutes later it is the sound of the gate closing behind him, sending him back to his dusty, stench-ridden tent alone forever. But as the night grows deeper, the sounds might become still more sinister: the gunshots from an ill-equipped community patrol trying to stop an abduction, and the squealing tires of the getaway car; or the tortured, possessed screams from a voodoo séance.
But behind the walls the girls in the orphanage are safe, yet never let outside, and each morning at six, the girls and their caretakers gather the relief workers in a circle to sing songs of worship and give thanks to God, and to pray for grace, international.
Thoughts From the Field in Haiti
I returned about 24 hours ago from Haiti. I’m trying to sum up my trip…but so many thoughts race through my head. Haiti looks like a war zone, yet the people are trying to be resilient and hopeful. More aid is in dire need and I struggle with the fact that it takes a large disaster to draw attention to the poverty that no person should ever have to live in.
Nothing about the trip went easy. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The logistics on the ground are confusing – for everyone. Communication is almost non-existent and it was much easier for me to contact the USA than to contact someone else in Haiti. Transportation was difficult and gas has reached $45 USD per gallon.
My team of six landed into Haiti on Thursday. Unfortunately the plane was delayed about 6 hours from the Opa Laka airport and it was dark when we arrived. We were headed to the Carfour area which, while only 10 miles away, was about 2 hours away. The narrow roads fill with people sleeping in them in the night so we were unable to leave the Port-Au-Prince airport. This meant sleeping on the tarmac with non-stop jets. We decided not to spend much time in the building as it was in bad shape, parts filled with water, and smelled bad. A good shake could have knocked it down. Our favorite part of inhaling jet fuel all night was when the Cuban plane turned around and revved its engines covering us with dirt. And while disaster relief is a challenging industry – we must do whatever is necessary to get our goods to the communities that need them.
The next morning we arrived at Grace International. This community holds a boys home, a girls home, a church, a school, and a hospital under construction. It’s about 10 acres that had outer walls and inner walls. The outer walls collapsed in the quake leaving the only open space in the area and the directors of the program quickly began to run a 17,000 person refugee camp.
My experiences in the camp are some I will probably never forgot. When you walk around and see such a large population that lost everything…its hard to bear. Particularly difficult are seeing the babies in this situation as well as the elderly. Most of these families simply have the same pair of clothes on their back and a sheet over their head. Dignity is stripped and desperation is setting in.
Not everything about the trip was heart-wrenching. Certainly the young girls of the orphanage who were behind the inner walls with us were a real joy. I saw little kids in the camp who had empty water bottles on a string as a toy. The resilience of kids to make the best of a bad situation is amazing.
There were certainly heroic moments of the trip. Our paramedic Jason bagged a little baby for 3 ½ hours refusing to give up until he found a hospital that would take this little one. It took him 5 cars (many which broke down) before he finally got to the Comfort, the hospital ship off-shore. Jason did everything to get this baby help and we still hope to hear if he survived.
Some of the more chilling and difficult moments of the trip included hearing gun shots one night from just over the walls and then people screaming. There were moments I thought maybe the people were going to revolt and jump the inner walls into where we were staying. When I inquired in the daylight about what happened I learned about the people going around stealing babies from the camps at night. They are either stealing them for trafficking, to eat and I even heard reports of stealing babies for human sacrifice. The kids in these camps are so very vulnerable.
That same night a man was beating on the gate yelling for a doctor. I was staying in a tent with Dr. Lyons-Jones who quickly got out of the tent to see what was needed. A man carried in a young woman and said she hadn’t moved in some time. Unfortunately, this woman had already died. She was seen in the clinic just two days earlier and it is still unknown why exactly she passed. Since the quake this small community has lost 420 people.
I came to find out this man was her husband and they were married just one month. His wailing is still haunting me and several of us took turns just sitting next to him with our arms around him. There are simply no words. I cried realizing that this man, who lost everything, now lost his wife and now could only go back to the comfort of a dirt floor and sheet around him. I felt sick at how inhumane it seemed that any people should endure such suffering.
I had the opportunity to do some wonderful other things like deliver medical supplies to small communities and partake in a food distribution. We distributed the food at night so as to not create any riots with individuals walking back into their communities with food. It is dire that more food reaches the camp soon in order to avoid major problems.
We had a God moment when we bumped into Medical Teams International who was working at Ford Hospital. They had supplies there that weren’t needed for their community, but were desperately needed in ours. They also had doctors not working as they didn’t have enough patients. When I left it looked as if they were going to come and set up camp at Grace. They looked through our supplies and saw crutches and burst into shouts of joy. They had been amputating legs and people were unable to leave the hospital without crutches. They took several with them so they could get people ambulatory again.
There are so many things I could probably write about. But I was struck by a conversation I had with one young man named Matthew. Matthew was just 22 years old and knew it was my first time to Haiti. He asked what I thought of his country. I told him how nice the people were but how sad I was for the devastation I saw around me. As I talked about the images I saw I began to tear up. Matthew looked at me with a smile and said, “don’t be sad, just pray for us. That’s what you can do, you can pray for us.” Such faith and hope from such a young man.
So I leave you with this thought – pray for Haiti. And as you pray listen to what God might be telling you to do to respond. It’s not about what GCHope can do in Haiti – remember, we can’t do this without YOU. YOU are the ones that must choose to do something or to believe it is someone else’s responsibility to do something. What part is God calling you to play in providing hope to Haiti?
Leaving for Haiti
Giving Children Hope has been conducting disaster relief for 16+ years now – but this is my first time traveling to a disaster area.
I’ve been asked so many questions and honestly, I’m not sure of all of my thoughts. I can say that the logistics fell into place and a team will be going along with one of the shipments we have been sending. I feel pretty peaceful about the trip.
Any news I can report from the field will be posted at www.aidtohaiti.org. We need people to post this on their blogs and spread it to their friends. We need to raise the finances to cover the expenses of the relief taking place.
As much as we can we show you photos of the actual communities we serve. With international aid having such a bad reputation, the more we can show you (and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to show soon) the more trust people have in us.
Currently we are working with trusted field partners to equip them with the supplies, medicines and food that is needed. We have confirmation that prior shipments are already in the field.
More than anything I covet your prayers on this trip. And please pray for the people of Haiti. The situation is still desperate and providing aid gives hope. We pray that Jesus would be glorified through all of these efforts.
Does Aid Really Get Into Haiti
With the recent earthquake and the press stating that aid isn’t getting in, I wanted to take a moment and tell you a little bit about how disasters work and how aid gets in.
Very rarely can you begin administering aid in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. It takes a few days to know the infrastructure. And because I don’t like to criticize other efforts, I will not comment on government efforts or the Red Cross as I am often asked to do. Rather, I will tell you what we do and why this works.
While I did not live in the country during Katrina, I do know that relief efforts were largely criticized. What worked was getting aid to large churches who made it available to small churches who got it to the people. Why? All of these people were connected to the community already and wanted to help those in their neighborhood. Neighbors helping neighbors, the Church being the Church as Jesus calls it to be.
The first thing Giving Children Hope is able to do is to send in hand-carried aid with small teams traveling to do rescue. We know that this aid reaches the people as it is being hand-carried.
As in any disaster the key is to already have relationships on the ground with a network that understands the situation and can really get out to the people. So when NGOs and churches get together and discuss who we have worked with in the past in Haiti and then ask those organizations on the ground how we can best help, well, it works. We listen to them – the experts on the area. We offer our experience from past disasters, but we always listen to their first hand knowledge and we respond in that manner.
Of course, first we pray. We pray for the right partners. We pray for the volunteers. We pray for the supplies. We pray for the money. We pray for the transport. We pray and pray and pray because even the most planned and equipped responses fail in disasters and we know that only through divine intervention will a relief effort be successful.
I was on a conference call late last night with several of us involved in today’s air shipment of aid which will go to the small orphanages in Haiti. I am convinced that as it states in scripture, we all have our role and not one of us organizations had all of the pieces. This is so that we do not become proud. But as the physical body is to work together, the legs, the feet, the eyes, the ears, so it is with the Body of the Church. When we come together and put everything aside to help the people, each of us doing our part, aid gets to the people who need it most. Aid gets to the networks of orphanages and churches that already exists and they get it to the people – the Church is doing what is it supposed to do, caring for the people. All of these things honor God.
So in the end we take the steps in front of us, but it really comes down to Jesus making it happen. And I am so glad because I wouldn’t have it any other way!
2010 Earthquake to Haiti – Providing Emergency Aid
When you work for Giving Children Hope you understand that disaster relief just comes with the job. It’s what we do. But some disasters are more difficult than others. The earthquake in Haiti is one of the more difficult ones.
Reports are ranging anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 people have been killed. The photos are horrific. My heart aches and I can’t fight the tears. Why? There are never answers to why. I feel fortunate that I work in an environment that is poised to help however we can.
I was thankful to hear this morning that our friends from Mission Viejo Christian Church who just left to go work in the orphanages are safe. They are thrown into relief mode as they work to care for those trapped and in pain.
GCHope began our efforts to put together medicines and supplies to immediately get to disaster areas. We are shipping everything from penicillin to water purification tablets.
If you’d like to help Haiti you can. The most important thing you can do is to pray for those on the ground. The needs are great. If you’d like to make a financial contribution to relief efforts you can do so here You can also come to our offices and volunteer.
In times like these it’s important to focus on what we can do to serve those in need.
