EXPERIENCE Building homes in Haiti

Creating havens in Haiti


Westport residents June Kerins and David Ellis were among 300 volunteers who travelled to Haiti last October. Here, June tells Áine Ryan about her poignant experience in the impoverished Caribbean country.

WHAT David and I experienced first-hand was one of the saddest and happiest times of our lives. To see these people with so little and the conditions they are living in and enduring was overwhelming at times.
Poor David was a part of the roofing team, and the expression on his face said it all every day. Those poor lads worked in the direct sun with no power tools, it was just amazing. A bunch of lads went down to the local school and built a new classroom, basketball court and playground. What a great time we all had with the kids.
By the third day a good few people weren’t feeling the best due to the soaring temperatures – the hottest there in decades – so we started serving a re-hydration drink which was water, salt and sugar. Once the volunteers got that in to them within a few hours the headache reports had halved.
I was a part of the catering team – there were 15 in total – and we started work in the morning at 5am, to serve breakfast to 300 volunteers. We served four meals a day, which should have totalled to about 4,000 meals by the end of the week, but as more and more locals came to help with the build, we managed to serve a total of 8,000 meals in five days.
And with the help of broadcaster and rugby pundit George Hook – what a laugh he was – and John Brennan of the Park Hotel in Kenmare and the RTÉ series, At Your Service, supervising, all ran smoothly.
I have to say, though, the heat in the kitchen was very sickening and we used to go outside to cool down, which was a bit of a joke since it was 45°C out there! 
The catering team’s day ended at 8pm, and if we had any food left over, it was taken down to the local orphanage by armed security. The word orphanage does not describe what this was; it was simply a tent, made-up of plastic and fabric covering a frail wooden frame in a back alley.
The day we went to visit the homeless children was very sad, these children have lost their parents due to hurricanes and some were just abandoned by their parents because they had no food to feed them.
Some of them had never seen a camera before and when they saw us pointing at them they started to cry. The look on their faces when they saw themselves in the camera was so moving.
These children are being looked after by one very old woman. I worry about what will happen to these 400 children when she is no longer well enough.

House building
During our trip, there were 41 houses completed and a further 66 under construction from the foundations up.
The overall experience of teamwork was inspiring, with even the media and medics picking up tools and helping out when they were off-duty. We all lived on-site in the houses we were building. I woke-up one day with someone in my room painting. We really were on a mission to build homes and hope in Haiti.
The day we handed over the homes was very moving for us all, David and myself brought a piece of the Reek (Croagh Patrick) with us, and we had it embedded in the front wall of one of the houses, and a painter wrote ‘Westport to Haiti 2009’. They felt honoured to have a piece of the holiest mountain in Ireland in their house and viewed it as lucky for them.
We really would like to thank all the people of Westport and particularly those who helped us fundraise the €14,000. Westport has made a real difference to Haiti.

For further information on the Haven Partnership and its work, visit www.havenpartnership.com .