Catholic center members visit Haiti

Instead of watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, a group of seven students welcomed the new year at a midnight Catholic mass in a small town in Haiti.

For the first time, the St. Paul Catholic Center sent the group of students, along with two coordinators, on a mission trip to Saintard, Haiti, from Dec. 28 through Friday.

The purpose of the trip was for the church to cultivate a partnership with a parish in Saintard, which is two hours north of the capital of Port-au-Prince, in order to establish it as a sister church.

“The majority of what we did was build a relationship, figuring out where we can help, who we can send down and what skills we should be looking for,” junior Allen Graham said.

The group stayed in a compound of the parish and spent most of their time socializing with local orphans and children in poverty, and 80 percent of the town’s population consists of children, Graham said.

“It’s a lot of children walking around in groups raising each other,” Graham said.

Sophomore Julie Swihart, another member of the group, said this may be due  to the low life expectancy in Haiti.

Twenty-five percent of Haitians die before the age of 40 and only about 5 percent of Saintard residents are married, Swihart said.

“The kids there love everybody,” Swihart said. “They’d come up and grab our hands and would want to walk with us.”

Many of the children the group met with belonged to a new school in the town, a one-story school started six years ago by one Haitian priest.

“He didn’t have enough money to finish the second level,” Swihart said. “It’s going to cost $35,000 to finish.”

One of the group’s main projects was planning a Christmas celebration for the school’s students. Two hundred children attended the event, many of who attend the school, Swihart said.

“We didn’t turn away the street kids,” Swihart said. “Not everyone goes to school there. It’s a privilege, not a right.”

They were provided with food and small toys, which were donated largely from St. Paul parishioners in a toy drive prior to the trip.

“The best things we had were glow sticks,” Swihart said. “They loved those. They were still wearing them the next day.”

In addition to the Christmas party, the group presented the students with a hygiene seminar, teaching the children how to brush their teeth and reminding them not to eat food that has falls on the ground.

“They were things that in America would be basics but there might not be common knowledge,” Graham said.

On New Year’s Eve, it was the locals’ turn to provide the group with a new experience. In Haiti, Independence Day falls on Jan. 1, so for Haitians, it becomes a double holiday, Swihart said.

“On the 31st, everyone goes to midnight mass and on the first everyone has pumpkin soup,” Swihart said.

The pumpkin soup symbolizes a time when wealthy French citizens would eat pumpkin soup while the Haitians were enslaved, Swihart said.

By eating pumpkin soup, Haitians celebrate the transfer of power after their independence. The group from St. Paul’s had been fundraising and preparing for the trip since the beginning of the fall semester.

The group hopes to continue to send groups down to Saintard in order to provide medical, financial or structural support, Graham said. 

“We definitely want to do a medical mission trip,” he said. “There’s no doctor in the town and the closest doctor is in Port-au-Prince.”

Graham said the group would also like to support the local priest in finishing the construction of his school.

Swihart said she has considered starting a sponsorship program through St. Paul’s that will help pay for local children to get an education.

 She said the mission trip was an eye-opening experience completely different from previous trips she has taken within the United States.

“The little they have is shared with everyone,” Swihart said. “It definitely got me thinking about how to change my lifestyle at home.”

Graham said his time spent with the Haitians also brought him to a new realization about life in the United States.

 “Even though the Haitians have so little, they are easily happier than Americans,” Graham said. “They live day by day and take things one step a time.”