Helping One Haitian Family

Posted on: 2010-02-07 10:48:40

Robert Ettienne’s voice is soft, his demeanor shy. He speaks carefully, with introversion that nearly denies a lyrical Haitian-French accent. He has lived in Los Angeles for a decade and works at the Victor-Benes bakery in Marina del Rey. It is ten p.m. and his shift will start again tomorrow -- Sunday -- at 5 a.m. But he will speak tonight as long as it takes. He stands uncomfortably in my living room with his sister Jeanette. Both in their thirties, I had invited them to an intimate dinner fundraiser in their honor. Neither were accustomed to such fanfare. As a customer of the grocery store where Jeanette works, I learned that her family had lost everything in Haiti and were now barely surviving in a park in Port-au-Prince. I wanted to do what little I could. Robert lives the classic immigrant story. The eldest of five children, and the only son, family responsibility has exiled him thousands of miles away, while he takes portions of an already pithy paycheck and sends it to the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Three years ago, Jeannette joined him and works bagging groceries in Gelson’s Market, the grocery store that houses the bakery where Robert works. She makes $8.50 an hour and is only guaranteed 24 hours a week. Each week, she begs to take anyone else’s shift. Last night in my home, I queried the two before my group of friends and friends-of-friends. As we stuffed our bellies with pasta and wine and threw twenty dollar bills in a glass vase bearing the Ettienne family name, some horrific facts haunted the room. Start with this one: At the very moment that we communed in abundance, Robert and Jeannette’s three sisters and their fourteen children were under the same moon in a crowded, bug infested, public park with no tent, or food or water. With them is Robert’s sixteen-year-old son, who has now become quite ill. Robert’s only goal for this evening was to raise enough money to buy his son a tent so that he could escape the searing sun and virus-carrying insects while he worked through his flu. Sounds like a simple goal -- A run to an RIE camping store and a Fedex shipment right?-- until you remember that no infrastructure means chaos. If this were our family, it indeed would mean a quick run to Target for tents and sleeping bags and an overnight shipment. Not in earthquake devastated Haiti. Where deliveries are impossible because no one has an address. And the black-market for simple living necessities has driven $40 tents into the $300 dollar range. Where those with generators charge $25 just to charge one’s cell phone battery. And water and rice have become the currency that drives people to homicide...

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