Bill Bruin stands with a U.S. Navy sailor at the port of Port-au-Prince where relief supplies were being unloaded for earthquake survivors one month after the quake. A U.S. Senate report said June 21 that Haiti has made little progress in rebuilding because of an absence of leadership, disagreements among donors and general disorganization. PHOTO COURTESY OF BILL BRUIN

By Gerald Korson
Voice correspondent

Bill Bruin knows a thing or two about the construction of waterfronts and wharfs. A marine engineer by profession, he was highly qualified to serve on a team of experts who traveled to Haiti after its devastating January earthquake to study the damages it had caused to harbor structures at Port-au-Prince.

But there was something else he saw there for which no amount of education or engineering experience could steel him: The appalling poverty that marks the everyday lives of most Haitians, who arguably are among the least of our sisters and brothers.

“From my limited travels, the hardships of the Haitian people were amazing,” said Bruin, principal engineer for Halcrow, a diverse infrastructure planning and design firm with offices in Oakland. “It was very difficult to watch, very difficult to see that extreme poverty. I was not prepared for that.”

He described the scene as chaotic. There, in an island nation fewer than 600 miles from the southern tip of Florida, he saw one heart-rending scene after another, from vast tent cities of displaced families to hungry children wandering the streets.

“There were places where there was no water system and no wastewater system,” Bruin said of Port-au-Prince and its neighboring districts. “It’s a very dense city of about 3 million people, and women are cleaning their babies in water that is essentially raw sewage. But that’s all they have — it’s all they can do.”

Haitian children wait for a snack distribution at a Salesian-run camp for earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 4. Prior to the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Salesians sponsored of the largest network of Catholic education in the country. CNS PHOTO/TOM TRACY Salesians desperate for funds to aid Haiti quake victims “Funds are still desperately needed” to help with recovery in Haiti, says Hannah Brazee Gregory, a communications agent for the Salesians. “It will be a long road to recovery.” People who are concerned for those suffering in the quake’s aftermath can provide the most help by contributing money to the Salesian Missions, she advised. Donated funds will be used to purchase and distribute many of the supplies needed immediately to help those hardest hit, including bottled water, food, tents, clothing, medical items, and satellite telephones for re-establishing communications and coordination of aid. A donation of $40 will provide one of the many emergency relief kits needed to help survivors. “It is important for people to realize this is the very best thing they can do,” Gregory said. “If they want to give of their time, they can organize their own fundraising event.” In the Diocese of Oakland, Sal-esians are active in ministry at Salesian High School in Richmond, the Salesian Girls and Boys Club in Richmond, and St. Ambrose Parish in Berkeley. To contribute to the Salesians’ recovery efforts in Haiti, visit www.findyourmission.org or call toll-free 1-888-608-2327.

Corruption that exists “high in government” contributes to the lack of civic development in Haiti and its limited ability to respond to the disaster, he indicated. “All the infrastructures that we have in the Western world are simply not there, at least not for the masses,” he said. “The corruption is prevalent, powerful, and having this tragedy on top of it has not helped.”

The Jan. 12 quake killed 200,000 people, injured countless others, and left millions homeless or displaced. Thousands of homes, businesses, churches, schools and even the presidential palace were toppled or collapsed, burying victims amid the rubble.

Although the main purpose for his week-long visit to Haiti in late February was to perform “quick reconnaissance” on the port facilities, Bruin, who with his wife Moiré and three children, is a member of Corpus Christi Parish in Piedmont, was invited by some architect friends to help evaluate the structural integrity of several institutions operated by the Salesian Missions that suffered extensive losses in the temblor.

Eighty-five percent of Salesian buildings in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, and a number of others were badly damaged. Worst of all, some 500 Salesian students and staff were killed, including three Salesian Brothers and several lay missioners.
One facility he visited was the St. Don Bosco Institute, which included a primary school, a technical school, a youth center, and a kitchen that fed some 25,000 children each day through the Salesians’ “little school” outreach.

Situated in the notorious Port-au-Prince slum of Cité Soleil, the campus included the National School of Arts and Trades (ENAM), a Salesian institution that taught young people vocational and technical skills so as to equip them to work their way out of poverty. The earthquake caused the ENAM building to crumble to the ground, crushing hundreds of students inside. Most were young teenaged women who were preparing for careers as schoolteachers. Other victims were training for carpentry and other skilled trades.

In a country with little or no governmental infrastructure, the Salesians and other Catholic institutions are the infrastructure, Bruin said. They provide the majority of the education and social services available to the poor and needy. The lack of an official infrastructure makes relief and recovery efforts far more difficult.

Bruin said he was concerned that the outpouring of aid in some instances was displacing the limited local commerce that normally provided subsistence for some and that some services and resources were not reaching enough of those who needed them the most.

“Charities were coming in, and the energy was very invigorating, but there was no coordination,” he said. “I think one thing the Salesians have is that they are there, they understand the system. The infrastructure was not as strong as you’d like to handle this catastrophe, but they are in a better position to provide aid.”

He emphasized that the extreme poverty of the Haitian people was there even before the earthquake. For some, living in a tent is an improvement over the improvised shacks they lived in before — if they even had that much of a shelter. Those who had no access to clean water to begin with aren’t really affected if the water system shuts down. “For a mother who bathes her child in the sewage, the sewage isn’t any worse than it was before,” Bruin said.

He suggested that in that sense, the disaster perhaps has a silver lining: The grim realities in Haiti are finally entering the consciousness — and the conscience — of the American people and the global community. Emergency aid is valuable, but the very civic and economic foundation of Haiti needs to be reformed and fortified from top to bottom.

“Haiti is a country that needs our prayers as well as a long-term solution to its poverty,” Bruin said. “The Salesians are doing a good job of stretching their dollars as far as they can. They are equipping young businessmen and businesswomen to go out and rebuild the economy on a micro-level. They have been there since the 1930s and have been continually expanding their services.”

Despite having to deal with its own tragedies, the Salesians have been providing vigorous and extensive aid to tens of thousands of quake victims. They have distributed thousands of tents to the homeless and hundreds of thousands of meals; they have brought water trucks to neighborhoods without clean water and medical supplies to makeshift clinics. Some of their schools have reopened, with class conducted in large tents and temporary classrooms instead of the weakened or flattened buildings.

“The Haitian people are amazingly resilient,” Bruin said. “This is a country with a long history of trouble, challenges and horrible situations. Yet people were smiling and being generous beyond belief.”

Salesian Father Mark Hyde, director of Salesian Missions in New Rochelle, N.Y., would agree. He had rushed to Haiti soon after the quake and spent weeks assisting in the Salesian relief and recovery efforts. He told The Catholic Voice that he was most inspired by “the faith of the Haitian people, their deep-rooted belief and trust in God, and their courage in the face of difficulties.”

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