Cange

The story of Cange can best be described as an oasis in the middle of one of the poorest areas on earth. The story began when the Haitian Government built a large dam in teh central plateau and displaced a large number of peasant farmers. The peasants became squatters and moved to the hillsides above the lake. In this environment Father LaEnfante started an episcopal church.

In the late 70's the Bishop of Haiti hooked up with the Bishop of the Upstate Episcopal Diocese. The Diocese established a clinic to provide medical services to the squatters. They called the area surrounding the Clinic Cange. For many years, physicians from Greenville flew medical missions to Cange.

Paul Farmer came to Cange, first as an Anthropology student and then as a medical student. He would collect his books at the first of the semester, fly to Haiti, then return for exams.

Farmer and Ophelia Dahl formed Partners in Health (PIH) to rasie money for the clinics. The story has been well documented in the book "Mountains Beyond Mountains." Today, there are 14 PIH Clinics in the rural areas of Haiti. The largest and Best equipped is in the walled compound of Cange. The Clinics surround Father LaEnfante's Episcopal church.

Al Steele and I shared a 12 x 12 room that basically consisted of two beds with mosquito netting and two places to stack clothes. There was a common bathroom and shower (no hot water) for four rooms. When you consider that families of six were living outside the walls in houses this size, the accomodations seemed pretty nice.

Church service on Sunday was a production. 130 performers in three choirs, a ten piece band which included keyboard, drums, trumpet, trombone, bass guitar, lead guitar and a clarinet. The service including communion took 2.5 hours. Father LaEnfante (a young 84) presided. There was a 60 person children's choir, all dressed in white and red choir robes and lined up by size from 5 yr olds to 18 6 ft 8in teenagers. It was quite a show.

We toured schools, hospitals and the various parts of the Warne's Partners in Agriculture. At one hospital, we picked up a four hour old baby that looked to weigh 3 pounds or less. We carried her and her teenage Aunt to the main hospital in Cange where they have incubators. This gave the drivers even more of an excuse to speed on the gravel roads.

Gravel road is too nice of a term. The roads are bulldozed routes where drivers have to navigate coffin sized potholes, children carrying water jugs, trucks carrying 10 or more people to work, goats and dogs, all on rocks ranging from gravel to boulders. They drivers seem to compete to see who can negotiate these hazards the fastest.

Haiti is beautifully green this time of year, as it is the end of the rainy season. The lake is spectacular and American developers would hang million dollar homes off of its steep hillsides. However, by the end of the dry season, the hillsides turn brown. A limestone dust cloud hangs over the roads, which people have to breathe. The dust will turn vegetation on either side of the road white until the cleansing rains return next spring.

The UN, however, is gradually paving these roads, and building drainage ditches and walkways on either side. Where the roads have been completed, living conditions improve and economic development can proceed.

I would like to talk about the schools and Partners in Agriculture in a later post.