BWAID DIRECTOR VISITS HAITI
Paul Montacute, Director of Baptist World Aid, visited the island of Haiti from April 20‑24, 2010, to assess the damage
and to meet with Baptists in the country. Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding areas were devastated by a 7.0
magnitude quake on January 12.
“As we drove around the city (Port-au-Prince), some parts seemed untouched by the quake, whereas in other parts it was
so difficult to move around,” Montacute reported. “The area around the Presidential Palace was a huge mess,” he said,
with tents and portable toilets all around.
Montacute visited a plot of land that was donated to the Baptists by the mayor of Port-au-Prince. The land, which was
donated some time before the earthquake, is to be used to build a complex consisting of a school, an orphanage, a
cafeteria and a chapel. The project is to be undertaken as a joint venture between Haitian Baptists, Baptist World Aid,
Hungarian Baptist Aid, and the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
A meeting was held with 12 pastors from the Baptist Convention of Haiti, and a trip was made to the compound of Baptist
Haiti Mission, two member bodies of the BWA.
Baptists from around the world donated more than US$1.2 million to Baptist World Aid for Haitian earthquake relief.
PHOTOS: A displaced persons camp for victims of the January 12 earthquake in Port-au-Prince; Children at an
orphanage in Gressier, a small town near Port-au-Prince
DRIVING THROUGH PORT-AU-PRINCE
by Francisco Martínez Sarita
It is as if all things concerning the earthquake, the catastrophe, the dead, and so on, has been forgotten. As if nothing had
ever occurred, as if it was false news, a dream that has vanished.
Nothing has changed among Haitians, nothing is better, nothing is worse, everything continues unchanged. That is my
perception of the situation three months after the quake.
I looked over the main commercial street in Port-au-Prince. I observed the number of people, the level of informal
commerce, the numbers of people buying and selling, the great deal of movement. As it was before the earthquake, so it
is again.
As I pondered the situation through the window of my slow moving car, I asked myself: Is it true that there was an
earthquake here? Do these people remember all the things that happened? Worse, do these people care about all the
things that happened here just three months ago?
I have no way to catalogue what I saw and felt in my last trip to Haiti. I can only say that I was depressed and saddened
by what I saw and felt.
On one side it might look satisfactory to observe a population that almost does not sleep trying to survive each day, to
witness a high volume of movement from the early hours of the morning to the wee hours of the night.
(Continued on next page)

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