ServeHaiti: ‘Mission Possible’

By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger

DAVENPORT — Five years ago, longtime ServeHaiti volunteer Dave Schumacher of St. Joseph Parish in DeWitt was preparing for another trip to Grand-Bois, Haiti. One day before departure, he had to cancel because turmoil in the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince, 40 miles away, made travel there unsafe.

Violence and chaos in Port-au-Prince have escalated in the intervening years, preventing the return of ServeHaiti volunteers, including Catholics from parishes in the Davenport Diocese, to Grand-Bois where they have forged friendships and collaborative enterprises. “It hurts me that I can’t go down there,” says Schumacher, a member of ServeHaiti’s board of directors.

Despite the physical disconnect, the bond between the Haitians of Grand-Bois and ServeHaiti volunteers remains steadfast. They meet monthly by Zoom and are planning this year’s fundraising event, “Mission Possible,” on Sept. 20 at the Redstone Room in downtown Davenport, Schumacher said.

Drs. Leopold Florent Bourgouin and Marie Ange Ulysse, the medical director and assistant medical director, respectively, of ServeHaiti, serve a growing number of patients at St. Vincent de Paul Health Center in Grand-Bois. “The Haitian situation for the last 5 years is a multi-crisis. With people fleeing the metropolitan areas because of gangs, violence and kidnapping, we have a higher influx of patients coming for treatment of all sorts,” Dr. Bourgouin told The Catholic Messenger in an email. “Sometimes it is difficult to avoid medicines’ shortage as many places like medicine agencies were vandalized.”

“We no longer receive volunteers from ServeHaiti who used to come at least twice a year or sometimes more often with a large amount of medicines, materials and goods,” he said. The Zoom meetings are helpful and ServeHaiti continues to “take care of everything we need. We do feel something is missing, but we understand.”

“Now, as we can’t go to Port-au-Prince through our usual road, we have to order meds and goods online and contract with drivers” through another, much longer route on a rough and muddy road, Dr. Bourgouin said. Shortages in all essential products and inflation make everything more expensive.

The nonprofit ServeHaiti, which began in 2001, is committed to providing the resources necessary “to empower the people of Grand-Bois to build and sustain a healthy and economically viable community for themselves.” The partnership focuses on healthcare, education, economic opportunities, clean water and nutritious food (servehaiti.org).

Dr. Bourgouin has collaborated with ServeHaiti from the start, initially seeing patients for a couple of weeks each month in the back of St. Pierre Church in Grand-Bois, before construction of the healthcare clinic in 2005.

“Sometimes I consider meeting with ServeHaiti’s volunteers in 2001 as a win-win relationship. It was for me a turning point. Like when you send a rock into the air, it will make a curve and return to the ground. I never imagined such a useful life and a wonderful career with people I love and respect,” Dr. Bourgouin said.

Schumacher said he made his first trip to Grand-Bois in 2006, inspired by longtime ServeHaiti volunteer Liz McDermott, a member of Our Lady of the River Parish in LeClaire. Schumacher made numerous return trips, providing his expertise in the electrical field. His wife, Jan, a nurse, and their daughter Kate Trowbridge and her son, Joey Trowbridge, also volunteered with ServeHaiti. “It’s a life-changer. It changes your whole outlook,” Schumacher said.

His family’s commitment to ServeHaiti inspired a poignant contribution. One year ago in September, Joey Trowbridge died in a car accident. The $6,000 in memorials went to ServeHaiti, which used the money to create a rolling cart mini lab for the health center.

McDermott, invited to go to Haiti in 2002, said, “My experience there was life changing. It helped ease the grief I had been dealing with after losing my mom and my mother-in-law within two months of each other in 1999.”

“The people I have met and come to love, both Haitians and volunteers from the U.S., have impacted my life beyond measure, bringing joy and, sorrow. My children and husband have been there with me, and so have my siblings and my best friend. The experiences we have shared have been some of the most consequential in my life. They have helped form who I am and my worldview and I will be forever grateful,” she said.

The last volunteer trip for ServeHaiti was in September 2019. “We haven’t been able to get the large amounts of medications and supplies there that we have brought in the past. We have also all missed out terribly on the inability to work together physically, whether it be with nurses, doctors, dentists, optometrists, physical therapists, teachers or volunteers with other skills outside of the medical field. We ALWAYS learned something from each other by being there.”

However, McDermott sees something positive emerging. “When we started looking long term into a brick and mortar clinic building and full-time Haitian staff, the goal was always for them to be able to stand on their own two feet, at least as far as providing services. They have done that beautifully throughout the last five years, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, another cholera surge and refugee influx from the violence in Port-au-Prince. We are so in awe of all of them working so hard and trying to remain joyful and supportive of each other in spite of their own personal challenges.”

If you go

What: ServeHaiti fundraiser to support a brighter future and collaboration with the people of Grand-Bois, Haiti.

When: Sept. 20 at the Redstone Room, 129 Main St., Davenport. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Details: Live auction, silent auction, Haitian artisan market, music, food and drinks.

Cost: Tickets are $50 per person.

Register: servehaiti.ejoinme.org/MissionPossible-IA

Information: Call Liz McDermott – 563-343-1310