Please help the people of Haiti
The Laudision connection to Haiti runs deep. The family has been involved in countless ways there for decades. The earthquake disaster is of unprecedented proportions, and all of our help is needed.
Reflections on Haiti
(Lucia Laudisio -2002)
Rain wasn't all of it but the rain made the mud and the mud covered everything. I dragged myself to the shower house, each step a slurping difficult mess of obstinate sticky black earth. In a cinder block room with a dirt floor I stood under a thin trickle of lukewarm water. I closed my eyes, giving up, too tired to care anymore, unable to see what difference any of it made. I was undone by need, vast numbers and a sense of helpless ineffectuality. Outside, in the rain, in the mud Haiti continued; hungry and desperate.
At the beginning it was mostly in my head; a buzz, a murmur or a hum. It grew gradually, in a way organic and ethereal, at once nowhere and everywhere until it was all around me. Somewhere a woman was singing. She sang strength into the water of my shower washing the dirt from my feet. Her voice reached between those dingy grey cinderblocks littered with cobwebs and held me up from where I stood hunched. I knew this song, so I joined her. Under my breath I added my quiet sighing voice. I tipped my head back and gave the song into the water falling clean on my face, singing into it. I forgot about the poverty and the fear, the hunger and the desperation, the sickness and the death. I forgot about my own exhaustion and I sang softly back to her. My voice hung low beneath the water, my English blended softly beneath the power of her Creole.
Walking out of the shower house I found her, singing mightily to me from the kitchen. She sang her comfort and her hope into the rice and beans she made to feed our tired group of doctors and film-makers, she sang sustenance into our dinner and grace into our fatigue. Riding on the currents of her harmony, tendrils of aromatic comfort wound their way to my nose. I breathed in clean, hearty breaths sparkling with spice. I joined the rest of them at the table, clean and refreshed from a shower that should never have been so satisfying and yet was. We were silent, grateful over the bowls of red beans and rice she had sung her soul into. We were content and satisfied, calmed and rejuvenated, nourished. I don't know that she knew what she had done for me, for my group, how her singing had lifted me, and her food had brought us back. I hugged her close all the same; a beautiful Haitian woman of strength, grace and red beans with rice.My father would later teach me to make that dish after we returned to the United States. Now, living in North Carolina, I sing in the kitchen; my layers of memories mixing with my song as I cook to nourish others.
You may know that Pat Laudisio has dedicated herself to helping the people of Haiti over the past 15 years. I turned to her to find where our relief is most needed, and where it would have the greatest effect. She provided me with several options, all instrumental in aiding the people of Haiti through this tragedy.
Please, look into one of the following organizations, and pledge your support in any way you can.
Episcopal Relief & Development is providing critical support in the aftermath of this disaster.
The Colorado Haiti Project (CHP) is a state-wide non-profit organization founded in 1989 to extend aid to the poorest of the poor in a rural area called Petit Trou de Nippes. Although this area was not as gravely hit by the quake, its effects are being felt all throughout
Partners In Health was founded in 1987 to deliver health care to the people of Haiti.
Doctors Without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.
"Sometimes I think I will never really be able to understand anything about Haiti ... it can be overwhelming...
What keeps me going back is being in a relationship with Haitian people and discovering more and more about a very "rich" culture ..
... the enthusiasm of my American friends who are also getting to know Haiti a little better helps .... spending time in Haiti helps ... but most of all, having Haitian friends makes it well worth the effort to stay involved."
Pat Laudisio
Colorado Haiti Project
December 1999
Thank you for your help and support.
