Episcopal Mission Works 

 by  *Justin Mutter      Haiti

 “As I wrote in my last letter, my work here in the Central Plateau has brought me almost exclusively to Boucan Carré, a commune of about 50,000 people situated throughout 41 different localities. My work with the Nutrition Program has continued to expand: we currently have almost 200 children enrolled in the program, and we are involved in several funding opportunities that will hopefully enable us to expand the vision and concrete praxis of our everyday work in the community.

Thanks to the efforts of Louise Ivers, an Irish infectious disease doctor who began working here in Boucan Carré in October, the Nutrition Program currently awaits response from a Harvard grant in which we proposed a research/treatment project that would combine some of the resources of the existing nutrition program with Zanmi Lasanté’s HIV/AIDS treatment protocol, effectively seeking to assess and improve the nutritional status of the children of HIV positive patients in Boucan Carré (unfortunately, however, the possibilities that we will receive this grant are quite small).

Additionally, I have recently started working with the local Catholic priest, Father Jean-Louis Malherbe, as well as a local grassroots organization called Caritas, on a proposal to the ‘Lambi Fund,’ which supports small peasant initiatives all around Haiti, particularly with regard to agricultural development. We hope to have a project proposal in by the end of January with which the Boucan Carré Nutrition Program can hopefully be closely involved.

“Aside from these future notes, life during these last two months has itself been busy. From daily work in the clinic (due to our rising numbers, we now work with anywhere from 15-20 malnourished children each day), to domestic visits all over the commune, and to our ongoing interviews with each family in order to assess socioeconomic status and clean water access—I have not been bereft of things to do. Furthermore, I had the opportunity in early November to work with a clinical group from Chattanooga in the commune of Léogane in the south of Haiti. After a week of work there my father journeyed up to the Central Plateau to see the work of Zanmi Lasanté in both Cange and in Boucan Carré, all the while toting around his portable Echo machine so that we could work with cardiac patients at both sites. We had an excellent week and a half together.

“Early in my work here in Boucan Carré, demographic information regarding the children in the nutrition program brought me to the locality of Bouly, which lies a good six hour hike northwest of the locality of Hate-Letat, where Zanmi Lasante’s clinic resides. By the time of my first visit there in early October, we had already rushed two severely malnourished children to the hospital in Cange whose guardians had trudged with them from Bouly—through the rainy season mud—down to the clinic. It had already become clear that Bouly was to be the locality from which the greatest percentage of our malnourished patients came.

“For many families in Bouly, and certainly for all of the children from Bouly in the nutrition program, geographical struggles complement the already harsh agricultural conditions. Few have access to a horse or donkey that would enable them and their children to make the 14 hour, likely-overnight trip to the Clinic St. Michel. Nor do farmers have easy access to tools and other resources (one can only buy such tools in Mirebalais, a large town east of Bouly that would require at least a 10 hour walk, one-way). 

To put it lightly, the Zanmi Lasante ‘ajans sante’ (health worker) for Bouly, as a leader of the community, is always pressed to the limit of his capacities. Just this morning—as I write this newsletter now—I met with Jean-Sémelus Romelus, the health worker, only to learn that all the chickens in Bouly (another crucial source of protein) have begun to die off due to an unknown disease. The struggle seems unceasing.

“The story of Bouly is one that we have tried to begin to confront in the nutrition program. Our contacts and conversations with Romelus are constant, and further programmatic efforts are on the horizon. For myself, it has presented the most visceral challenge to my life and work here; it is an inescapable incarnation of what extreme poverty can do to a community.” http://www.dfms.org/1649_25637_ENG_Print.html

 *Justin Mutter is a 2003 graduate of the University of Virginia, was one of 32 named Rhodes Scholars for 2005.  He is

 member of The Church of the Good Shepherd in The Diocese of East Tennessee and is serving as an Episcopal

 Missionary in Haiti