By Jim Coggins

"IN 30 YEARS of disaster relief, it is one of the worst crises I've ever seen," said World Vision (WV) Canada president Dave Toycen.

The pictures of the "massive destruction" in Haiti are "true and accurate," concurred his colleague, WV Canada's church relations director Willard Metzger. Both emphasized, however, that the faith of Haitians is the outstanding factor in this grim situation. This phenomenon has also been noted by secular news media.

Toycen noted a common assertion, that Haiti is 10 percent evangelical Protestant, 90 percent Catholic and 100 percent voodoo. The majority of the Haitian people are descendants of African slaves brought there by Europeans. There is no doubt that voodoo, a derivative of African animist religions, has played a significant role in the country's history.

World Vision Canada president Dave Toycen (right) consults with Haitians about their needs

Its practitioners claim there are 60,000 voodoo priests in the country, and there is no doubt that many Haitians mix voodoo cultural practices in with their Christianity. However, this is not true of all Haitians, and Canadians should not doubt the genuine Christian faith of many of the people.

Toycen found many Haitians "praising God in the worst circumstances in the world." They "found strength in their faith," and many of those rescued "talked of the power of prayer and a sense of God being with them."

Metzger remembers going for a walk in the middle of the first night after the quake. It seemed to him that the wailing which occurred frequently had become more organized. He asked what the noise was.

Someone responded, "They're crying." Then a voice from the back of a pickup truck said, "No, they're praying."

Both Toycen and Metzger talked of impromptu prayer meetings breaking out all over the city, all through the night.

By Wednesday, Metzger said he was hearing people chanting, "God forgive us," and the response, "God, we forgive you."

Toycen said there is "some sense of God's judgment" among some Haitians. Other news media reported Haitians saying that this judgment was particularly for the corruption in government.

Metzger remembers struggling with the question of why he and his team survived (they had at first wanted to stay in a different hotel, which collapsed). It was obviously God's protection; but why had they been protected when so many Haitians had died?

In that light, Metzger was challenged by what he saw among the Haitians: "the deep, abiding faith among a people accustomed to suffering."

He added that, as a North American Christian, "It was a lesson to me -- with our expectations that God will protect us, and we will have no suffering. They know life is cruel and unfair. Yet even if they lose their life or what little they have, they still have faith that God is their only hope."

Metzger arrived in Haiti with a group of volunteers just hours before the earthquake. The Villa Creole Hotel in Petionville, where the team were staying, was damaged but not destroyed. After the shaking stopped, as Metzger went to gather up the team, he heard "an intense and massive wailing." It was a clue to how extensive the damage really was. An estimated 200,000 died in the quake, and hundreds of thousands more are now homeless.

Toycen said the death toll and destruction were similar to those of the 2004 tsunami. However, there are factors that make this disaster worse. For one thing, the Haiti earthquake struck a tightly packed urban population who were already poor and often unemployed.

For another, the 2004 tsunami carried out to sea most of the debris it had created. In Haiti, the debris is still on the ground, choking the streets and making it more difficult to bring in aid.

"There is a grey dust on everything," Toycen said. Most buildings were made of cement because the country has been largely denuded of trees. Metzger noted that his hotel cracked, but was held together with rebar metal embedded in the concrete; many other buildings weren't built that well.

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Like many Haitians after the quake, Metzger and other people in the hotel thought it safer to go out into the streets to sleep for the night. What they hadn't expected was the flow of injured people coming to the hotel for help.

People from the hotel did the best they could with a first aid kit, iodine and splints made from torn bedsheets and baseboards ripped from the hotel walls.

A "sullen moment" occurred at 2 am, when the first body was placed in a makeshift morgue. The next morning, instead of hope, first light brought more throngs of injured people. Without medical training, Metzger and the team were evacuated within a couple of days to "get out of the way" of the relief effort.

Toycen, on the other hand, arrived shortly after the quake to assess the damage. One of the first things he saw was a large hospital moved outdoors, with one doctor, one nurse -- and a teacher who was given a quick lesson in first aid -- trying to help hundreds of patients lying on doors, rags and rusty beds.

Virtually everybody in Haiti has been traumatized, Toycen said, but he praised WV staff for continuing to help in spite of their own pain. "I've been a helper most of my life," one staff member said. "Now I'm a helper and a victim, and that changes everything."

Relief was not getting in as fast as it should at first, Toycen said, due to a lack of drivers, trucks, fuel and security.

WV was in a somewhat better position because it has its own warehouses and trucks. It also distributes much of its aid through churches, which is a less public and more controlled process. Without controls, there is a danger young men will take most of the relief supplies.

Thievery and violence are always a concern in relief situations, but Toycen said his staff on the ground are saying the security situation is not much different than it was before the quake. Most World Vision aid was reaching people who needed it, within a day or two of arriving in the country.

Fortunately, there was little rain in the first two weeks after the quake. Given the lack of sanitation in makeshift refugee camps holding tens of thousands of people, rain could easily spread contagion and kill thousands more through disease.

Within two weeks of the Haiti earthquake, WV Canada had raised about a third of the $30 million or so it raised for the 2004 tsunami. Toycen said WV has a 90-day plan to provide basic relief supplies such as food, water, temporary shelter and medical aid. But that is only the beginning.

"If we get Haiti back to where it was," before the earthquake, "our mission will not be a success," Toycen said.

As there was in Asia after the tsunami, there will likely be a building boom over the next few years as the country is rebuilt. This will benefit Haitians especially if they are hired to do the work rather than bringing in teams of foreign volunteers and workers.

It is what happens after the building boom that will determine Haiti's long-term future. Metzger said he was hopeful the disaster could be "a positive tipping point," and that Haiti "could finally get the resources it needs."

Toycen noted that World Vision has been in Haiti for more than 30 years, and in that time has achieved some tangible success. Many children are in school, and numerous micro-enterprises (small businesses run by individual Haitians or groups of Haitians) have been established, many of which are still operating.

Even before the quake, donor countries were already talking about a more coordinated approach. Individual aid agencies had successful projects, but the country's infrastructure was dysfunctional. What is needed is a coordinated effort to establish medical, educational, legal, water and sanitation systems.

Also needed are long-term jobs. Fishing is still a possibility. So is agriculture, but this will require irrigation in the central highlands; the land has been so denuded that it has changed the climate -- and there is less rain. Tourism is also a possibility, although that is now shut down.

There was even some productive light industry, making everything from clothing to baseballs; however, some industries have left due to social instability over the last four years or so. Many educated Haitians leave the country, and many uneducated Haitians would like to.

Toycen remembers asking Haitians what they wanted. One woman replied, "Take my child to Canada. She has no future here."

Toycen said the goal will be to reach a place where Haitians will want to keep their children there.

January 27/2010