“From Haiti to Wyoming” |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2011 06:07 PM PST He spends most days waiting for customers amid the rubble and rotting garbage of the Champ de Mars. Port-au-Prince's main park transformed into a tent city after the earthquake, and thousands of people still live there in a dense mass of haphazard shelters. It's a hot, chaotic scene. Vendors sell food before a backdrop of countless blue tarps. Neighbors share conversation as roosters crow and radios play in the background. Fumes from charcoal cooking fires combine with the stench of garbage and vehicle exhaust to form a thick blanket that hangs over the area. It's there, in the shadow of the crumbling National Palace, where Macajou Eliacin works as a motorcycle taxi driver. The 35-year-old has few options. In a country with rampant unemployment, there are few jobs available, even for someone who holds a degree in economics and speaks four languages. Eliacin wants a job that takes advantage of his education and skills. A chance meeting with a Casper woman might finally provide him with that opportunity. Back in March, Eliacin worked as a driver for Jill Hendricks, director of Wyoming Haiti Relief. After hearing his story, she offered him a chance to attend school in Wyoming. He arrives today, hoping that an American education will lead to a better job and a chance to help his country. "Haiti is very poor," he said in a phone interview from Port-au-Prince before he left. "I would like to get jobs for the young people." *** Given the poverty that permeates the country, it's common for Haitian families to decide which children have the most academic potential and focus on their education. Eliacin and his sister, Josianne, were two of those children. He learned economics and language. She studied nursing. Jobs were scarce, so after obtaining his degree, he bought a motorcycle to use as a taxi. He considered the work more of a distraction that anything else, something to do when he wasn't studying English and Spanish. Eliacin was working as a taxi driver when the earthquake decimated Haiti nearly one year ago. The shaking reduced whole neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, to piles of rubble. It killed more than 200,000 people and left many more homeless. When the quake struck, Eliacin raced home on his motorcycle to check on his family. After he arrived, someone told him his sister, Josianne, needed him. He found her trapped under a pile of rubble. A wall had collapsed on her as she was walking home. "He got 20 people to help," said Hendricks, who's spoken with him about his experience during the quake. "They tried to dig her out. They couldn't. She kept saying to him, 'Macajou, I know you are so smart, I know you are so smart. You can get me out.' " They worked for six hours but couldn't free Josianne. She died under the rubble. "Life was hard before, but now life is so complicated," Eliacin said, reflecting on that day. "For all Haitian people there is sadness, for me and every Haitian who lost someone." *** Five days later, Eliacin met a French journalist who needed a driver. The two men stayed in contact, and when the journalist returned in March, he put Eliacin in touch with Hendricks, who was in Port-au-Prince for relief work. The two hit it off immediately. He was eager to share his story but was just as interested in getting to know the Americans who'd come to help. "He was really passionate about his desire to help Haitians by creating jobs for Haitians," Hendricks said. "He just kept putting that right up front all the time." One day, he invited Hendricks to his home. He drove her to a rough neighborhood near downtown. They parked the motorcycle, crossed a sewage ditch and walked along a path to a concrete house. Inside, at the bottom of the stairway, he paused outside a locked room. This, he explained, is where his sister Josianne had lived. Upstairs, Hendricks noticed the dishes were shattered and covered in dust from the earthquake. The shaking had knocked family photographs off the wall, but they'd been hung up again, despite the broken glass. "As I left after the trip, I just kept thinking, this guy has made it through so much," she said. "He has a bachelor's in economics. His family was able to get him through college. That is a huge achievement. and here he is ... on a motorcycle taxi." As director of a relief organization, Hendricks encourages "capacity building" projects. Instead of merely providing aid, she advocates programs that put Haitians in a position to help themselves. An opportunity to study in the United States would give Eliacin a chance to do something more with his life, she realized. "I just thought with his passion, that he just really had a lot to offer to Haiti," she said. "And that is what is going to transform Haiti." *** Eliacin had another opportunity to come to the United States. Last year, he was offered low-paying agricultural work in Florida. Hendricks convinced him he'd be better off in school. "She said that I am too smart," he recalled. "She doesn't want that way for me and she said she can give me the opportunity to study in the USA, 'cause I can help my family and my country with my knowledge." She offered her home as a place to live and went about raising money for his tuition at Casper College, where he will begin his studies later this month. Even a few semesters at an American college would provide him with the skills he needs for a job with a relief organization in Haiti, Hendricks said. Or he could continue on to graduate school. "He's is just somebody who needs to be thrown over the fence," she said. "He wants to create jobs for Haiti. That is what he thinks about, talks about, all of the time. All of these poor guys who are stuck in their tents playing dominos or cards all day. How sad is it that no one has a meaningful way to go about their day?" Eliacin has lived his entire life on Hispaniola -- the Caribbean island that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. Now, he'll be studying in an environment about as far removed as possible from Haiti. He knows little about his new home. Someone at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince told him it's a big state, with a small population and cold weather. The rest he'll learn as he goes. But he'll be teaching as well. It's easy for people to keep poverty at arm's length, Hendricks said. The relationships he makes in Casper will help them understand Haiti's struggle in a personal way. "Because Macajou is such a social person, he really enjoys meeting people and finding out their stories," she said. "By doing that here in Wyoming, Haiti will become more real." Reach reporter Joshua Wolfson at (307) 266-0582 or at josh.wolfson@trib.com. Visit http://trib.com/news/opinion/blogs/wolfjammies/ to read his blog. Follow him on Twitter @joshwolfson. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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