HAITIAN LEADERS TELL THEIR STORIES
Two Baptist leaders from Haiti visited the offices of the
Baptist World Alliance and told the story of the devastating earthquake that struck their country on
January 12.
Eugene Gedeon, vice president of the Baptist Convention of Haiti (BCH), and Edrice Romelus,
superintendent for evangelism and former general secretary of the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM), were
part of a roundtable meeting called by Baptist World Aid to work out details of assistance that BWAid
and Baptists, mainly in North America, will provide to the Caribbean country.
“People are trying to lead a normal life, but they do not have homes,” said Gedeon in an interview
following the conclusion of the roundtable meeting. “People are living under tents. People are sad. I
can see the sadness in their faces,” said the pastor.
Romelus recounted the events of the first few days. “I was in my office when the earthquake
struck. I saw the building swaying. Things started falling, such as the printer. Other employees inside
the building fled outside,” he recalled.
“I did not know how grave the earthquake was,” Romelus continued. “We have a hospital on the
same compound as our headquarters, and vehicles started arriving with the injured. In a short time,
the hospital was filled up. There was no place to put people. People came from all over. We even put
them in the dining room of the hospital. I did not know that this thing was so big.”
The next day, Romelus, whose offices are in an area close to Port-au-Prince, attempted to go
downtown to the shattered city. “We had to stop, we could not continue. Houses had fallen. People
were in the streets suffering. We felt lots of emotions. We saw a four year old boy and a nine year old
girl wandering. We did not know what to do. We took them to the hospital, even though it was already
full.”
Romelus and his team made another trip into the beleaguered capital a few days later where “we
saw the scale of the destruction. There were huge amounts of dead people lying around, even at the
university and the state house,” Romelus recalled. “There was a foul smell. Things got worse day by
day.”
Gedeon, whose church headquarters are close to Cap-Haïtien, the second largest city in Haiti, did
not feel much of the quake.
PHOTOS:
Edrice Romelus, Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM)
Scenes of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti as captured by Baptist World Aid Rescue24

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