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The For Haiti With Love mission in Cap Haitien |
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Hatians at the airport in Cap Haitien move supplies from the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary's airplane to Don's Jeep so they can be transported to the For Haiti With Love mission, which is located across town on a mountainside. |
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Dunedin, Florida, City Commissioner Jack St. Arnold (now a Pinellas County Judge), City Manager John Lawrence, and this reporter, Patricia Lieb, crossed over South Florida, Alantic waters, and miles and miles of lands of the Bahama Islands before arriving in Cap Haitien, Haiti, on a hot November day. We were welcomed by anxious hands willing to unload food, medical supplies and Christmas gifts we had brought. (Story & photos by Patricia Lieb) |
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It was before dawn in late November that Don DeHart and I sat at a patio table on the varandah and talked about the For Haiti With Love Mission and the work he was doing for the people.
"I feel I'm on the hot bed of need. Nobody picks Haiti. Haiti picks you," he said soberly.
Don, who has been involved in helping the very poor people of Haiti for 30 years, is the founder and chairman of For Haiti With Love.
The Palm Harbor, Florida, resident spends most of his time at the mission, a former part of a pink hotel on a picturesque mountain side scattered with tiny huts and poor and sick people. Don leases the facility from the hotel owner.
"God said, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, provide healing for the sick and shelter for those who have nowhere to stay," said Don.
And Don does just that for as many people as his funds will allow. |
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These children posed for me during my tour of Cap Haitien. |
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Inside the mission there is a long room just off the tiny kitchen, used as a family or gathering room and a dining room, depending on whether guests are elbow to elbow at a kitchenette-sytled table over an evening meal prepared from left-over spaghetti sauce (as we were), or, just sitting around gabbing about the deplorable situation in this backward country or listening to the chants of a voodoo ceremony spiraling up the mountain from the primitive, filthy city below (as we did on Saturday evening).
Story is continued on next page. |
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Back to A Writer's Notebook |
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