Hearts in Haiti

By Tanya Connor

It was 7 p.m.

She’d been talking to people since 6 a.m. But now Emmanuel approached her.

“What do you want?” she yelled. “I’m tired.”

“I just want a hug good-night,” responded the 12-year-old.

She embraced him, apologizing profusely.

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll pray harder for you tonight.”

Linda Faford, a member of the Worcester Diocese who serves in Haiti with her husband, Deacon Peter Faford, told that story about the earthquake’s ongoing effect on her.

After that encounter with a boy they work with, she realized she needed to “come home and collect my thoughts, rejuvenate myself, get over my fear of the ground shaking,” she said. “You find yourself looking for the nearest exit … and then you sit near it,” even here.

Leaving trembling earth and constant requests for help wasn’t Mrs. Faford’s only reason for returning “home” Feb. 8-March 2. She said she came for a meeting about an upcoming benefit for the work she and her husband do.

He’s project manager and she’s guest house manager at Pwoje Espwa, Creole for Project Hope, which is outside the city of Les Cayes. The home for boys, with schools and clinic, also goes by Theo’s Work and freethekids.org. Father Marc Boisvert from Maine is the director, and there’s a Canadian bookkeeper and about 280 Haitian employees, she said.

Project Espwa has some girls who are earthquake evacuees, because the mission doesn’t want to split up families, Mrs. Faford said. The number, in the hundreds, keeps changing as children come and go. Help is welcome.

“We’re looking to build a new clinic,” with operating room and laboratory, Mrs. Faford said. “Our big dream is to get a small, portable, X-ray machine.” They’d also like new laptops for a computer lab.

“We would love sound equipment – speakers, microphone,” she said. “We don’t have anything. So when we have Mass, you’ve got to stand up there and yell. We would love musical instruments to start a music school.”

Mrs. Faford said she sponsors Easy Cross, a group of eight boys who write their own music and lyrics and get invited to sing at church festivals and village anniversaries. She said she hopes someday they’ll get paid for it.

Last summer she got sponsors from the Worcester Diocese to pay for them to make a CD, she said, and in a contest last fall, which she paid for them to enter, they came in second out of 50 groups.

Donations must work and be in good condition; receiving agencies have had to pay a tax on shipments, she said.

“Money is also helpful for food,” beds and salaries, she said. She said people can donate online at www.freethekids.org. Or checks can be made out to her and/or her husband and mailed to their daughter at 55 Flint Road, Charlton, MA 01507, for them to use for special projects. They can be contacted at faford2@yahoo.com and 508-434-5212.

Mrs. Faford said her Family to Family program, through which families here help families there and exchange photos and letters with them, now needs sponsors for families who lost everything in the earthquake. Families here have helped send Haitian children to school, one donated a boat for a fisherman and another paid for an addition to a family’s small house, she said.

Stuck on Steel plans to build Project Espwa earthquake-and-flood-resistant buildings free of charge, teach the trade to the young men who live there, and hire them to help with building around the country, Mrs. Faford said.

Currently she’d like engineers, auto mechanics, electricians and carpenters to come use their skills and teach them to the boys, she said. She said they have a big carpenters’ shop with tools, some of which the Haitians don’t know how to use. They make nice furniture now, but could improve on it and sell it there if they could learn how to do finishing work, she said.

She hopes to again take visitors without a specialty soon, she said. Awhile back two young men from the Faford’s home parish of St. Joseph in Charlton – Tony Cotrupi and Francis Camosse – came to paint a school, she said. She said it was very hot and they painted little, but that was O.K.

“They interacted with our boys and our boys felt special,” she said. They made CDs of music beats which the boys tried to sing to and brought a DVD player.

“Now every Friday night our boys get to see a movie, thanks to them,” Mrs. Faford said. “That’s a big treat for them.”

Henry Camosse, said the Life Teen small group he leads at St. Joseph’s raised $500 for the Fafords. At a youth’s suggestion, “we went out flocking,” he said. “Somebody would pay us to put (plastic) flamingos in someone else’s yard.” That person would then pay to have them removed – to yet another yard.

A parish-wide collection at St. Joseph’s netted $5,000 for Project Hope. Two checks were presented to Mrs. Faford at Sunday’s 5 p.m. Life Teen Mass; one from the parish and one from the teens.

Mrs. Faford said Haitians have been holding signs that say, “America, take us over,” and “Americans, go home.” They flip the latter over, revealing the message on the reverse: “And take us with you.”