Fatima Orphanage
Fondwa, Haiti

by Meredith Barkley

Here in Haiti’s southern mountains, Jed could easily have been a sad statistic.

In this land where poverty and starvation are epidemic, kids like Jed die every day. He was lucky, though. The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, a Catholic order living and working among the very poor, got to him in time. They care for the sick and hungry in these rugged mountains. And when kids like Jed are in danger, the sisters find a place for them in Fatima House Orphanage. There, they feed these kids, clothe them, educate them, care for them, love them.

Jed’s story is all too familiar. He was born into poverty, his parents too sick to care for him. It wasn’t long before he was malnourished, too weak to move, near death.

The sisters-in-training, who regularly visit the poor, looked in on mother and baby from time to time and brought food. During a visit days before Christmas 2003, they realized time was running out for the baby.  “They saw ants starting to eat Jed’s eyes,” said Sister Carmelle, who founded the order a decade ago along with Sister Simone. “He was very small.”  The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi are reluctant to take children from parents. So they brought Jed to their center to clean him up, clothe him and feed him until he regained health.  He was two months old and weighed two pounds.

“God said to me: ‘If you send him back he will die quickly.’” Sister Carmelle said.

So with his parents’ consent, the sisters made a place for him. They named him Joseph Emanuel David – Jed for short. (Joseph was for Father Joseph who founded and heads APF, the Fondwa peasants association of which the nun’s center is part, Emanuel for Christmas and David for David Williamson, a former volunteer (missionary) with Family Health Ministries of Durham, NC who is much loved and admired in these mountains.)

Ten days after his arrival he weighed 8 pounds. In a month he was up to 12 pounds.  His mother died three months later. His father died after that.  Like other very young children, Jed stayed with the sisters at their center until he was two years old. He then moved to the orphanage down the hill. Today, he is one of 47 children, aged three to 27, living there. They attend the Saint Antoine School nearby, also operated by the sisters and funded primarily by Family Health Ministries and another American non-profit Partners in Progress.

Unlike Jed, most of the orphans still have parents. They turned their children over to the sisters because they were too poor to care for and feed them. Many were near death when brought to the sister’s health clinic.  At the orphanage the children live in concrete block dormitories, built in recent years by Family Health Ministries. Meals include such Haitian staples as beans and rice as well as macaroni and spaghetti. But the children also have meat occasionally, dumplings, fruit and vegetables. Some food is donated by Food for the Poor, a US organization. But some also comes from gardens the children tend. All the children have chores. Some plant and harvest the gardens and feed pigs and goats. Some do the laundry and the older girls are assigned younger children to care for.

Sister Simone, who lives at the orphanage and oversees it, is also the principle of the St Antoine School. So the children have an area with a blackboard to do homework. They also have regular religious studies.

Family Health Ministries, which has volunteers working with the sisters, provides some of the orphanage’s $1725 monthly operating expenses.   When FHM began working with Fatima House Orphanage in early 2000, 50 children where crammed into a damp one-bedroom wooden shack overrun with rats. They shared seven bunk beds. Nevertheless, the children were clean, clothed, loved.  The orphanage has since grown to the point each child has his or her own bed. The next phase planned, expected to cost $50,000, will include a cafeteria, new kitchen, chapel, bathrooms and electrical generator. FHM is trying to raise the money for that improvement. 

For the children, the orphanage offers a measure of hope in a world that once seemed hopeless. They can grow to adulthood with the tools to fight overwhelming poverty.  Ludson Lafontant, 26, was one of the first children to enter the orphanage when opened 14 years ago. He was starving when he arrived. His mother could not care for him. He grew up in the orphanage, graduated from the St Antoine School and is now studying agronomics abroad.  “He’s a good person,” Sister Carmelle said. The sisters hope they’ll be leaving their mark on many like him in the years to come.