Saving Bayonnais

The little village of Bayonnais in Haiti’s mountains was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake, too. It wasn’t leveled, like much of Port-au-Prince, the capital. But when you have next to nothing to begin with, taking even that away is life-altering.

To the physical damage add the wildly escalating prices that Saint-Louis, who lives in Bayonnais, noted for rice and beans – almost their only foods. And worries that they can’t feed several thousand hungry refugees trickling in from Port-au-Prince and other demolished towns who’ve heard it’s relatively safe there.

Life is dire there every day, said Hugh Prather of Waxhaw and David Boyce of Wesley Chapel. They’re members of Mineral Springs United ­Methodist Church, one of 18 churches in the Organisation de la Force Chretienne de Bayonnais/U.S. Partnership Council of Churches that sponsors a mission for the 80,000 Haitians from the village and surrounding mountains, 100 miles from the capital.

Prather, 57, a Charles Schwab vice president and financial consultant in Charlotte, and Boyce, 46, a national sales rep for Builders FirstSource in Monroe, know the Bayonnais people. They worked there last November and sponsor children. But getting information since the earthquake and sending relief has been tough, the men said.

“There’s very little communication in and out,” Prather said. Though he said “there’s very little to fall down” in the village of mud and stone huts and a few cinderblock buildings, food was a bigger concern.

“For three days the children had no food at all,” Prather said. There was no way to get money in or out to buy food or fuel. Western Union couldn’t accept money transfers, so OFCB’s U.S. efforts were useless.

“Eighty to 90 percent of relief is going to Port-au-Prince. (The ­Bayonnais villagers) are alone. They have tremendous need,” he added.

Church members were ramping up to send volunteers in with $10,000 cash each when the impasse broke and they got $30,000 to the village to buy necessities, whose prices have skyrocketed, Prather said. “Rice was (up to) $60 a bag and beans were $85. Sam’s (Club) has them for $15 and $35, and we don’t know what the prices (in Haiti) are now.”

“Where they’re getting food from, I’m not sure,” Boyce added.

On Jan. 25, the churches shipped a retired Union County Public Schools bus to Bayonnais jam-packed with more than 12,000 pounds of rice and beans, clothes and 200 gallons of cooking oil donated by OFCB church members. Volunteers loaded it last weekend at the group’s original mission church since 1991, South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church, 8601 Bryant Farms Road. It’s the second old UCPS bus the ministry has sent.

“All funds now are going to the immediate need,” Prather said, noting that the group had been working on funding a medical clinic since the village has no doctor.

While OFCB reports the country’s average annual income is $400 per person, the Bayonnais people scrape by on as little as $100 to $200 a year. There are no jobs; people grow food, when they can, to survive, Prather said. An occasional goat or chicken is worth celebrating.

“They try to raise some little crops for themselves. That’s the only type of employment there is,” other than ­teaching at the school, Prather said. “They bathe in the river and cook over open fires.”

Roots in Charlotte

Haitian Actionnel Fleurisma came to Charlotte in 1985 sponsored by Helen Hunter, who had been in the country visitng her daughter who was there on a mission trip in nearby Gonaives. He attended Central Piedmont Community College and returned home to become a minister, starting the Bayonnais church and school in 1993 and creating OFCB, Prather explained.

The 105 school children first “met under a mango tree,” Prather said. Today, the school educates nearly 1,800 ­students, 1,000 in the elementary grades, in a two-story cinderblock school.

Prather first visited Bayonnais in 2006 with another church. He found one-room mud and stone huts with dirt floors where often six to eight family members sleep on mats. Food is kept in small outbuildings on stilts, to protect it from marauding animals. No ­electricity, no water. No help from the government.

When he joined Mineral Springs Methodist, Prather floated the mission idea to Pastor Bruce Gwyn. Talks in 2008 led to the church joining 18 ­others in Union, Mecklenburg and ­Gaston counties, as well as South ­Carolina, New York, Georgia and several other North Carolina towns. The Mineral Springs group made its first trip in November 2009.

Prather, Boyce and 11 others ranging in age from 17 to 82 went to build benches and tables, but said they ­created much more. “It was more about ­fellowship with the children and the congregation of the church,” Prather said. ““They’re very kind and gentle people, very religious.”

“These people have nothing, but they come (to church) dressed in their best,” Prather said. Their worship is often spontaneous, he added, singing ­emanating from the church many days as early as 3 or 4 a.m. when construction workers arrive.

Boyce took his wife, Tammy, and 17-year-old daughter, Cody. The group stayed dormitory style in the concrete guest house. “I think I tried to talk myself out of (the trip),” Boyce admitted. “You hear horror stories about the crime and murders. I finally said what the heck.”
Instead, they found “children (who) are always smiling. They don’t know what they don’t have,” Prather said of life without TVs or radio.

What they do have, Boyce said, is ­creativity and generosity. The kids scooped wood blocks from the dirt and put on a show for volunteers, he recalled, banging the blocks ­rhythmically for hours on end. “They had a world of fun.”

Coveting a pair of Crocs shoes Boyce wore, a young boy took them as a gift and promptly gave them to his sister. He then came back to eye Boyce’s ­replacement shoes.

“You come home with just the clothes on your back,” he said, laughing.

Both families now sponsor Bayonnais children through WorldofGod.org; $35 per month goes toward their education and community projects. Prather and his wife, Peggy, sponsor a 15-year-old girl, Manika. Boyce and Tammy began sponsoring Bensito, a 5-year-old boy, a few months ago.

Hope in a hopeless world

The people yearn for a better life, Boyce said. They know sending their children to the village school can lead to a brighter future, so the students stream in from the surrounding mountains, some walking five miles to get there at 7:30 a.m. for elementary school.

“(One day) there were 50 to 60 kids … elbow to elbow (in class) and they were so attentive,” Boyce recalled.

But some parents can’t afford even $1 a year for tuition to demonstrate their family commitment, which ­Fleurisma requires, Prather said.

Students who go on to college agree to work in the village for 10 to 15 years when they graduate. One student is in medical school, two in nursing school and some are in agricultural school, Boyce said.

A bowl of rice and beans is often the the students’ only meal all day, Prather said. The mission began adult classes in October 2009, fueled by the adults’ desire to have a meal too, he added.

The village’s highly prized kitchen may look like a cinderblock bunker, but it has relieved villagers from having to prepare more than 1,800 meals daily for students and faculty in black, hanging pots over open fires in the dirt, Prather said. The ministry helped villagers build it and provided the precious burners that bear no resemblance even to our cheapest stoves.

Despite the work still to be done, Prather said Mineral Springs church members have no plans to return until 2011, unless conditions improve ­dramatically. But the men agree, ­Bayonnais and its people are in their hearts.

“If we got a call today,” Boyce admitted, “I know 13 of us would get there as quick as we could.”

Want to help?

Mineral Springs United ­Methodist Church is taking donations at the church or by mail, 5915 Old Monroe-Waxhaw Road, Monroe, NC 28112.

In April, the Western Union County Coalition of 10 Churches, including Mineral Springs, needs 500 volunteers and $170,000 – it’s asking people to give 17 cents per person, per day during Lent, Feb.7-April 3 – to buy and pack 1 million Meals Ready to Eat to send to Haiti. A packing date will be announced. For more information on church fundraising, call 704-843-5905.

For more information on OFCB, visit www.ofcbministries.org. To sponsor a child through World of God, visit www.worldofgod.org.

“My dear friend, God has saved my life during that time. If not so, I have already been dead.

“I went out of home … when I got back home, in the road the earthquake hit me. I see walls, houses and others came in front of me. I fall down to tell you when God wants to save the life of someone, we don’t need to be worried. … I stayed lying down, there was wind came, it took me in a street that I have never known before and I was still lying down.

“The situation is too bad for me. I cannot explain you everything right. Life is expensive here now, beans, rice, oil and everything.

“Every night I sleep, I see everything which passed around me.”

– Miselet Saint-Louis, Port-au-Prince, to Waxhaw’s Hugh Prather after the Jan. 12 earthquake