As a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) agricultural missionary, Mark works as a member of the technical team of Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Farmer’s Movement of Papay or MPP), a movement of farmers led by Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the director and founder of the organization. The goal of MPP is to work for a society where every person in Haiti can live with dignity. Mark would tell you part of that goal is accomplished when families can produce food for their tables, every day of the year.
Haiti is one of the hungriest countries in the world and MPP has been addressing hunger there for more than 30 years. MPP has grown from just a few members to thousands of community groups and 20 farming cooperatives.
MPP is a success story, but weather can wreak havoc with the work of feeding people. Four recent hurricanes — Fay,Gustav, Hanna, and Ike — took an unprecedented toll on sustaining life in Haiti. The United Nations estimates 800,000 poor Haitians have been left in even more desperate
need.
“In our area, after Hurricane Ike, the Guayamuque River was 45 feet above normal as it passed through the town of Hinche,” Mark Hare said. “Many families lost their clothing, furniture, pots, and pans. Weeks of rain damaged their fields. And bananas, particularly important as a food staple during the dry season, can take at least a year to recover. People will be without food next January, February, and March. It seems impossible that anyone will ever be able to make a full accounting of the loss of life and property.”
Recovering from the effects of hurricane destruction is a daunting task for any country, but in a poor country like Haiti, recovery moves past daunting to overwhelming. Weak government, inadequate communication, primitive roads and non-existent social services are the reality of life on a good day in central Haiti. After a hurricane occurs, the resulting increased isolation is a formidable enemy for hope.
Mark’s concern for feeding the hungry in the aftermath of the hurricanes is compounded by food riots that erupted over rising prices in April of 2008. “In one of the projects of MPP’s technical team, a project called The Road to Life Yard, the crew prepares food and shares two meals a day,” he said.
“We produce all the vegetables for these meals ourselves,but costs for the items we can’t produce — corn, rice, coffee, and oil — rose dramatically. We paid $100 a month in April, and over $175 in September. Over half our population earns less than $1.00 a day,” he added, wondering, “How many people who survived the hurricanes will finally give in to ongoing deprivation, due to mounting prices?”
Commitment to Haiti in the aftermath of the food riots prompted two men to visit Mark to see MPP’s work firsthand. Art Ross, pastor of White Memorial Church in Raleigh, N.C., and Raleigh lawyer Andy Whiteman found a thriving model for community sustenance.
“MPP is making a difference. In particular, The Road to Life Yard project is a diversified mix of goats, red worms, chickens and tilapia production, as well as raised vegetable gardens and fast-growing Moringa trees that offer highly nutritious, edible leaves to stave off malnutrition. And everything is integrated,” Whiteman reported.
Mark Hare explains further: “Goats provide manure which becomes food for the worms. Red worms become food for chickens and their manure becomes fertilizer for vegetables. Leftover Moringa branches from the forage for the goats become part of the system for controlling soil erosion. Water from the showers is filtered and stored in open cisterns where tilapia fish grow. The fish eat the mosquitoes and people eat the fish. And the water stored in the cisterns becomes our source for all the production during the six month dry season.”
“Mark took us to visit some farms,” Ross recalled. “We stopped by the home of Fanahèm, a Haitian farmer with a wife and four children. Fanahèm spoke in Creole and Mark translated. He loved working the soil.”
Fanahèm told Ross and Whiteman he was grateful for the improved agricultural methods he had learned. “I was born to a poor family, but through hard work I have acquired a home for my family. My goal was to have a farm and four cows. Now I have a farm and three cows,” Fanahèm told the
Raleigh visitors.
MPP’s Road to Life Yard survived the hurricanes and Fanahèm’s home and farm survived, too.
But for Mark and Jenny Hare and MPP, enormous work lies ahead to rebuild many other farms in central Haiti.
“Haitians have a marvelous way of dealing with difficult situations that I have come to respect,” Mark Hare said. “They sing, they laugh, they joke and suddenly, the load lightens and the way forward opens up again. They are patient with unjust conditions. But there are limits. The suffering from the food crisis was nearly intolerable before the hurricanes. If there is not a rapid, reliable and comprehensive response to the current situation, there will almost surely be massive unrest.”
Still, on Sept. 8, the day after Hurricane Ike, Mark and Jenny Hare reported passing through an area just north of the nearby city of Mirbelais, where the farmers have access to irrigation. There they saw farmers transplanting, hoeing, and irrigating rice.
“Those fields were already moving from devastation to abundance, farmers moving from being victims to being the agents of their own resurrection. I do believe in a God who makes a way where there is no way,” Mark Hare said.
“Our God who sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross, not only to demonstrate God’s profound solidarity with people,but also to completely and finally put an end to despair. Because we are Christ followers, we hope, and there is nothing that can separate us from that hope. What a
miracle. What a God.”
Those wishing to contribute to Haiti’s resurrection through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance [www.pcusa.org/pda](PDA)may do so through regular church channels, by phone by calling PresbyTel at 800-872-3283, or by mailing individual gifts to Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Please note “Account # DR-000064 Haiti Emergency” on all contributions.
GWEN WHITEMAN is director of Young Children’s Ministry at White Memorial Church in Raleigh, NC. She is a frequent traveler to Haiti.
