By Kenneth J. Souza
Anchor Staff
BUZZARDS BAY, Mass. — It’s difficult for Sister Marie Verlaine Cadet to smile.
Even within the safe confines of St. Margaret’s Church where she’s meeting with longtime supporters and friends of the Fish Farm for Haiti Project, a non-profit offshoot of the Little Children of Mary based on Martha’s Vineyard, there’s a palpable sense of sadness weighing her down as she obligingly poses for a photograph alongside fellow Daughter of Mary Queen Immaculate Sister Marie France Syldor.
Sister Cadet has witnessed too much suffering over the past few weeks to even feign joy. Her order’s motherhouse, located just on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in Canapé Vert, was hit and decimated during the January 12 earthquake.
The earthquake also claimed the lives of several close friends and students.
“All of our houses in Canapé Vert have been destroyed,” Sister Cadet said. “We lost two nuns and our driver, Richard Charles, with his two little girls — one 12, one six. And we lost eight girls from our training school. We still have five bodies buried in the rubble.”
Sister Cadet and Sister Syldor temporarily left their pressing mission there along with 44 other members of their congregation in order to seek immediate aid and relief in attempting to rebuild the good work they started in Haiti — a once-vibrant network of 10 schools and one health center they staff and operate in and around Port-au-Prince.
Now more than a month after the devastating earthquake, Sister Cadet has yet to receive any semblance of relief or assistance, even though their main compound is barely four miles from the capital city.
In the absence of aid from high-profile groups like the American Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services, Sister Cadet decided to turn to her friends here in Massachusetts for some immediate help.
“She came here because she knew she had to get out to help her people,” said Margaret Penicaud, one of the driving forces behind the Fish Farm for Haiti Project. “There’s so little that’s reaching them and they need so much.”
Penicaud, a parishioner at St. Augustine’s Parish in Vineyard Haven, first met Sister Cadet in 1998 when she traveled to Haiti to begin the Fish Farm for Haiti Project — a self-preservation effort that resulted in the creation of five freshwater ponds on property owned by the congregation in which the local people could propagate and harvest tilapia for nourishment.
Penicaud learned about the nuns’ work in Haiti when the order’s founder, the late Mother Monique, came to Martha’s Vineyard to recuperate with a friend after eye surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Our motto is ‘Give a person a fish, feed them for a day; teach a person to fish, feed them for a lifetime,’ so education is key to our whole project,” Penicaud said. “The first thing we did was put a well in and then constructed five fish ponds.”
Through the volunteer and fund-raising efforts of her non-profit group in the last 12 years, Penicaud said they were able to not only construct and stock the five fish ponds, but also help the nuns plant and cultivate a garden filled with corn, eggplant, beans, sweet potatoes, tapioca, spinach and other produce.
They even helped build one of the order’s schools on the same site as the fish ponds.
“These schools are primary and elementary schools and they also have training schools to teach the girls cooking and sewing to give them a means to make a living,” Penicaud said. “The mission of the Sisters is Christian education of women and girls. They believe that the women and girls have the greatest impact on the children and the future of Haiti.”
But all that came to an abrupt halt on January 12.
“When the earthquake hit, they were just in the process of putting on a second-story at the motherhouse so when people came to visit, the Sisters wouldn’t have to give up their beds,” Penicaud said.
What’s worse is people from Port-au-Prince are steadily migrating to the outskirts of the city to get away from the epicenter of the tragedy.
Sister Cadet estimated that more than 250 displaced and homeless families are now living on their property at Canapé Vert in makeshift huts and tents.
“They’ve been collecting materials from the houses that were destroyed — like sheets of metal — and using them to build little huts, but the rainy season is coming and I just don’t know what’s going to happen to these families,” Penicaud said.
“The rainy season will happen very soon — by May we typically have a lot of rain, I know,” Sister Cadet agreed. “I know we won’t be able to rebuild the buildings we had, but hopefully we can put up something that will be better for us.”
With the fish and produce supply from their once-thriving ponds and gardens exhausted and no safe shelter to speak of, Sister Cadet said they are all living outside, exposed to the elements and in need of food.
“The children cannot go inside the schools until they are repaired,” Sister Cadet said.
“They’re all afraid to go back into the buildings because of the aftershocks,” added Margaret Penicaud. “The highest priority now is getting relief to these people who have nothing — they’ve lost everything.”
While donations have been streaming into charitable organizations since the January 12 tragedy, Sister Cadet said they haven’t received any food, supplies or relief.
When The Anchor inquired with Catholic Relief Services as to why Sister Cadet and her congregation have yet to receive any aid, John Rivera, acting director of communications for CRS, replied via email: “Have these folks requested aid from CRS?”
Sister Cadet’s eyes well up with tears as she glances at a photograph of her late friend and driver in the latest Fish Farm for Haiti Project newsletter. She says his wife is now staying with her since she lost her entire family in the earthquake.
Tomorrow she will travel with Sister Syldor and Penicaud to Boston to plea for help from local charitable agencies.
Then she will pack as many donated supplies and provisions as two pieces of carry-on luggage will allow and fly back to Haiti to rejoin her fellow nuns.
“As you know, we don’t have any international connection, so it will be difficult for us to start again,” Sister Cadet said. “The economy is going down, people aren’t working. We know we aren’t going to receive anything — we are going to have to struggle by ourselves. It was difficult before for us to get our daily bread, now it will be worse. Right now we’re hoping to start rebuilding the school at Lalue.”
Lalue, the largest school staffed by the nuns in Port-au-Prince, half collapsed in the tragedy. Fortunately, none of the 1,000 students enrolled there were inside at the time.
Other than monetary donations, the priority items needed now include tents of all sizes and/or tarps and rope to provide adequate shelter.
Sister Cadet sees another photo with two of her nuns standing alongside a monstrance and points, speaking to Penicaud in French.
“They also need small monstrances for the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament,” Penicaud said. “That’s what keeps them going over there: our blessed Lord.”
Those wishing to help Sister Cadet can find a list of needed supplies via her Fish Farm for Haiti Project non-profit organization website at www.fishfarmhaiti.org where there is also a PayPal link set up for donations. Donors can also send checks to Earthquake Relief, c/o MV Fish Farm for Haiti Project, P.O. Box 1803, Vineyard Haven, Mass., 02568.