Allan Appel Photo
Claude Menelas was in Port-au-Prince when the Jan. 12 earthquake struck. For the 35 seconds of shaking, he thought Haiti would vanish from the face of the earth. Now that he’s home in New Haven, the vastness of the destruction and the aftermath have only strengthened his faith.
Menelas (pictured) and the other members of the city’s only Haitian church L’eglise Baptise D’expression Francaise appealed not only to God but formally to Mayor John DeStefano for help last week for their connections in Haiti.
According to the church’s secretary Yolaine Gaillard, about half the 100 parishioners lost family members. There are approximately 1,500 Haitians in the Greater New Haven area.
On an optimistically bright, sunlit Sunday morning, the mayor came to the Legion Avenue church with his response.
After sitting through a half hour of a rousing evangelical-style service with cries of “Le nom de Jesus est si doux,” the mayor was introduced by the Rev. Leonce Alexis.
“I see the holy spirit is alive and well. I feel it,” DeStefano declared.
The specific concerns Rev. Leonce Alexis had brought to the city were adoption and housing. Since the city doesn’t handle adoptions, the mayor said his staff directed Alexis and his congregants to Jewish Family Services and Catholic Charities.
As to housing, “We determined we cannot jump the HUD [public housing] list,” said the mayor. So for those questions, his staff directed the Haitians to IRIS, a local refugee support group.
“We’re just trying to help manage the relationships for them,” he said.
The mayor appointed two staffers to help expedite that: Rick Fontana, the director of emergency services, and Barbara Lamb of cultural affairs.
Although far from rich, the church is reaching out to its countrymen as best it can as well. On March 19 Yolaine Gaillard and four others are traveling to Haiti with supplies of clothing and medications. They’re headed for the town of Tabarre. From there they will distribute relief to about 30 orphans from the Beauvais Orphanage in Petion-Ville, which it has adopted.
Menelas will not be going with the group but returning himself on a personal mission.
A graduate of Norwalk Community College in business administration, Menelas left his job as a CVS Pharmacy store manager a year ago to pursue a calling in religious studies in his native Haiti.
He said he could always return to retail but wanted to seize the moment when he sensed a spiritual religious calling.
On Jan. 12 he was driving a friend to a doctor’s appointment, he recalled. The doctor had said he couldn’t stay beyond5, so they rushed to get to the office, about a mile from the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. They were there by 4:50, he said. The official time of the quake’s strike was 4:53.
“You panic, but I have God in my heart 24/7. We did cry out for help and thought it was the end of the world.”
He said in the immediate aftermath there was a period of national thanksgiving. Eeveryone helped everyone to the extent possible. In Menelas’s description, it sounded like the sense of human solidarity, however evanescent, that prevailed in Manhattan on Sept. 12, 2001.
After the earthquake, the churches, or the outdoor versions of them, all filled up. People did not curse their fate but praised their god. In the initial days after the quake, he said, people who had never been to church came.
When he returned to the French-speaking church in the Hill, he noticed that here too the intensity of prayer had increased. Attendance was way up.
He has no doubt that the prayers offered are today far less individualized than usual and more for the country and its suffering people as well. “If you are still alive, you praise God,” he said.
He intends to return next week to continue his studies — with as much Tylenol and other medical supplies that he can fit into his suitcase.
“I feel I have to be there,” he said.