Neena Satija Photo
Gerda Genece and other volunteers had a short and simple message for shoppers outside C‑Town: “Haiti! Help Haiti! Dollars, pesos, medai-pesos!” But Genece had a longer story to tell, a painful, personal tale, that helped explain why she was there.
Genace (pictured) told that longer story Saturday in between raising money for victims of the earthquake, as one of 30 volunteers at four locations around town organized by State Rep. Juan Candelaria for a day of fund-raising.
Her tale starts on Jan. 13 with an early-morning phone call from her brother.
“Turn on the TV,” he told her. “Haiti’s gone.”
Genece was born in Port-au-Prince and moved to the United States at the age of 16. Much of her extended family remains in and around the capital.
It was two days before she got word from her cousin in Carrefour, a neighborhood just west of Port-au-Prince’s center, and found out that his wife was killed.
“He told me, ‘my wife was dead, and they picked up her body and dumped it in the garbage,’” she said.
New Haven Friends for Haiti formed soon after the earthquake devastated the country, an outgrowth of meetings organized by State Rep. Candelaria. Members of the group plan to travel to Haiti with supplies and money collected from this and future efforts, including a concert in March.
“The response has been overwhelming,” Candelaria said Saturday as he held up a water cooler that was already half-full of bills and change.
Volunteer Maria Quinones.
Since the earthquake hit, Genece has spent much of her time making sure the needs of her cousin and his seven children are met. It has been a struggle.
“All the help you see, they’re not getting that help,” she said of international relief efforts. Packages are still stuck in transit, with the airport in Port-au-Prince opening only recently and with much of the area’s transportation infrastructure destroyed.
Whatever aid is able to get through is concentrated mostly on Port-au-Prince and not on its equally devastated outskirts, including neighborhoods such as Carrefour. Hungry and desperate people roam the streets, robbing abandoned buildings and molesting women. Those who offer to help by excavating dead bodies often only do so for a hefty fee.
Areas farther from the capital are suffering, too, if not from physical earthquake damage, then from lack of essential goods and services that used to come from the capital.
“[Port-au-Prince] is where all the resources are,” said Jennifer Belfort, before correcting herself: “Or that’s where they were.” Belfort, whose parents were born in Haiti, has several family members who live about 30 miles from Port-au-Prince. She is in touch with them weekly and they’re getting by, but that’s only “right now,” she emphasized. “For how long, we’re not really sure.”
As for Genece’s cousin, he now lives with one of his sons in a makeshift hut in the yard of his community’s destroyed church. About 300 others share the space. Genece arranged for his younger son and five daughters to stay with their aunts in Croix de Bouquet, where she felt they would be safer. “They’re not feeding the men in Carrefour,” she explained, citing her cousin’s stories of relief agencies letting the women and children line up for food but spraying the men with mace if they came near. Relief workers were afraid of men becoming violent, she said. “They’re violent,” she said, “because they’re hungry.”
Her cousin’s children in Croix de Bouquets may be safer, but medical assistance is still lacking. One of her cousin’s daughters has been urinating blood, said Genece. But every time she goes to the clinic in the area they say her condition isn’t serious enough for treatment
“The only thing that’s keeping me going is knowing that we’re making a difference here,” she said. She has sent her cousin money weekly. Now that the airport is back open she hopes to get packages through. She called the UN upon hearing that 60 orphans, now living under sheets atop the rubble of their former orphanage, were surrounded by dead and rotting bodies and were drinking the water underground and contracting malaria. She pulled out a letter she said was sent to the president, listing specific neglected locations around Port-au-Prince. She plans to send a fax to Bill Clinton as well.
“I feel helpless, but we’re not helpless,” said Genece. “This is America, we can make a phone call.”