Grocer Was Ready To Help Haiti

There won’t be Haitian mangoes in the aisle of Edge of the Woods this year. There will be ample rice, beans, and medical supplies at two spots in Port-au-Prince, thanks to Edge owner Peter Dodge and his customers.

Last week’s earthquake galvanized many New Haveners for the first time to send help to Haiti. Dodge (at right in photo) has been at it for years.

So he was able to swing into action shortly after the earthquake struck, and there’s more financial, medical, and food help on the way.

Dodge is a longtime devotee of Ananda Marga, an international spiritual and social change movement derived from Hinduism and established in the 1950s.

“Ananda Marga” means path of bliss,” he explained during an interview Monday afternoon on the second floor of his Whalley Avenue natural foods store.

A related group, Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMRUT), is a worldwide relief organization that operates two schools in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. It also runs reforestation and water improvement projects in the Haitian countryside. Dodge, a board member, has been to Haiti 10 times. Edge of the Woods has served as the headquarters of AMRUT fundraisers for more than a decade.

The two schools are in the Bourdon and Delmas sections of the Haitian capital, the latter near the slum area of Cite Aux Cayes.

According to Dodge, the schools’ designer ​“used enough rebar so the schools withstood the [earthquake] stress.” None of the combined 650 kids was hurt. A third school, in Ansepe, on the Dominican Repubic border, was untouched.

In the days after the quake, Dodge still wanted to go to them. But given the scale of the disaster, he decided it was foolish. ​“I didn’t want to be another mouth to feed,” he said.

Instead, he helped orchestrate his organization’s trucking 8,000 pounds of rice, 2,000 pounds of beans, and medical supplies to the two schools from the Dominican Republic. Now the two schools are feeding and medical centers for 250 people a day, and rising.

Dodge’s friend Dada Karma (at left in top photo) is an Ananda Marga monk. He served as director of the school in Delmas from 2000 to 2007. Monday, he was manning a table collecting donations for AMRUT at the store’s doorway. ​“You can’t serve God if you don’t serve its creations,” he said.

Last month before the quake, Dodge sent $12,000 to AMRUT in Haiti. That was one of many distributions over a decade.

More than money is needed there today, he said. As of yesterday, the schools’ vehicles had fuel for two more days.

“Every night, I’m on the phone 9 to 11” with fellow board members strategizing what to do next, Dodge said. That includes putting together another big shipment of supplies to truck to Miami, fly to the Dominican Republic, and truck into Port-au-Prince.

“I’m up at 4 o’clock in the morning making a list” of the most needed supplies, he said.

He ruled out water because it weighs too much. High on the list are medical supplies, tents, chairs and cots. ​“Refugee camps are coming. People are not going to be returning to their homes.”

Dodge said he received a call from the countrywide director of AMRUT on Monday. ​“He said he didn’t see a [relief] flight at all for the whole day. He described Port-au-Prince as an ant hill and you see ants leaving.”

Dodge said he wants to do a ​“roll off” to be created in the first slot of the store’s parking lot near Whalley Avenue. It would be a collection point for such items to pull together contributions towards the shipment. But he needs local people to both make contributions and to staff the drop-off.

Enter Nazorine Paglia (pictured), a Haitian-born New Havener, U.S. citizen, and mother of three.

While most of her family has survived the earthquake, a half sister is still unaccounted for, she said.

Paglia credited Dodge with helping her reconnect to the country of her birth. When she emigrated to Stamford with her family in 1985, she said the African-American kids told her Haitians smelled. She wanted only to assimilate. She has relatives who refuse to return to Haiti.

Over the years Paglia met Dee Dee Giva Prema, an Ananda nun who runs two of the schools. Every December she comes to the store to set up a boutique; a fundraising dinner follows. She and Dodge met and hit it off.

But Paglia kept her distance. ​“He [Dodge] spent two years pampering me. This Caucasian man was educating me about my home country. It took me a while to make peace with that.”

She made a trip to Haiti in the summer of 2009, trying to find Prema’s school. It ended badly, with supplies she gathered waylaid by a street gang after an accident.

Back in New Haven, people at Yale and at the Calvin Hill Day Care Center, where her kids go, are offering to give donations, financial and material. She didn’t want to accept them until she could guarantee they will get to where they are needed. Now she’s found the place.

She and Peter Dodge are joining forces. They agreed to meet again Tuesday afternoon to plan a shipment. The shipment is tentatively scheduled for two weeks from now; Dodge said he will accompany it and personally distribute medicines and supplies. Look for the roll-off point at Edge of the Woods entryway within days.

For those eager to contribute money, tents, medicines, or their time to staff the drop off, the contact is the store: 203 – 787-1055. Just ask for Peter Dodge or for Haitian relief.

Oh, the reason there will be no mango crop at Edge this year: The FDA requires all mangoes from Haiti be treated in hot water baths before export. The earthquake destroyed all the baths.