Haitian-born Vanessa Alix \u201910 was visiting Dallas when the massive earthquake rumbled through her native land on Jan. 12. She saw a CNN news flash, but the vast scale of the disaster wasn\u2019t immediately evident.<\/p>\n
Once it was, Alix \u2014 a Mather House psychology concentrator \u2014 spent the night trying to get through, by cell phone and Skype, to Jacmel, a coastal town in southern Haiti where her parents run three linked school orphanages, for boys, girls, and toddlers.<\/p>\n
Marlaine and Daniel Alix, Vanessa\u2019s parents, made the same worried calls from their home in Port St. Lucie, Fla. (The family moved in 2001 after a kidnapping attempt, though the parents travel back and forth often.) The family, which has long been involved in Haitian assistance, opened its first school there in 1989, created the Faith & Love in Action Foundation in 1996, and founded Aid International in 2000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of panic, a lot of fear,\u201d said Alix of those first fearful hours, when they didn\u2019t know how bad conditions were.<\/p>\n
Finally the callers got through. All 72 orphans in Jacmel were safe. Still, the family runs another orphanage compound in Carrefour, the epicenter of the quake. There is no word from there yet. \u201cWe tried all the numbers we have,\u201d said Alix.<\/p>\n
The Faith & Love compound, three miles from Jacmel\u2019s center, was nearly untouched by the 7.0-magnitude quake. But the small city itself is another story.<\/p>\n
Once gracious, safe, and historic, Jacmel was 90 percent destroyed, said Alix, who is in touch with an aunt there. Jacmel had been a sunny enclave redolent of colonial France, with stacked balconies, tile roofs, and turreted homes in pastel tones.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou went there, and you could actually see what Haiti used to be like,\u201d said Alix, who lived in Haiti for 12 years, and still summers at Jacmel, her mother\u2019s hometown. Alix\u2019s aunt said almost all is now in ruins.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said there is no Jacmel anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
The orphans in Jacmel are mostly 7 to 9 years old, with the youngest 11 months and the oldest 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids are there as long as they need to be,\u201d said Alix, repeating a family rule. \u201cWe provide all their education, and all their needs, and they leave whenever they are ready to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the number of orphans has grown since the earthquake, said Alix, and local residents \u2014 hungry and sleeping out under the stars \u2014are showing up for food, water, and medical care.<\/p>\n
Marlaine Alix is headed to Jacmel today (Jan. 22), hitching a ride on a Dominican navy gunboat on an aid trip arranged by Sebastian Velez<\/a>, a Harvard doctoral student in biology who runs a nongovernmental organization in Pedernales, in the Dominican Republic just across Haiti\u2019s eastern border.<\/p>\n With assistance from four Harvard undergraduates and using funds donated by the American Humanist Association<\/a>, Velez earlier this week delivered the first outside aid to Jacmel, including food, water, medicine, and tools. Supplies for the Faith & Love compound were included.<\/p>\n Alix\u2019s mother does not plan to remain in Jacmel, but will return when transportation is normalized. Meanwhile, her father is working in Florida to collect donations from area churches.<\/p>\n The orphanage\u2019s immediate needs are basic, said Alix, involving food and tents. \u201cThe kids have been catching cold,\u201d she said. Water is available, since every Faith & Love compound has its own well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe kids are fine,\u201d said Alix, who has stayed in touch by cell phone and Skype. \u201cThey\u2019re singing, and they\u2019re praying.\u201d<\/p>\n In other developments touching on Harvard and Haitian relief efforts:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u25a0 Partners In Health<\/a> (PIH) reported today (Jan. 22) that Wednesday\u2019s strong aftershock temporarily shut down PIH operations at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital, as well as at several PIH medical sites outside it. But the 12 operating rooms are back up and running 24 hours a day. Across Haiti, the Harvard-affiliated PIH has 20 operating rooms. Its medical facilities are supported by 144 volunteers, who arrived by plane. They supplement the 4,500 PIH health care providers already in Haiti. Additional medical supplies are needed to save patients threatened by infections in wounds now nearly two weeks old. For the next six to eight weeks, PIH said, full medical teams will be needed to manage dressings, skin grafts, and other postoperative care.<\/p>\n \u25a0 S. Allen Counter<\/a>, Harvard clinical professor of neurology and director of the Harvard Foundation, flew to Haiti by helicopter on Jan. 18 from Santo Domingo, accompanied by four doctors and two medical assistants. On the team were Harvard Medical School\u2019s Bruce Price<\/a>, Timothy Benson<\/a>, and Michael Jenike<\/a>. The group brought medical supplies and helped to deliver tents and water. The visitors flew back to Boston from Santo Domingo Jan. 20. \u201cI will continue to travel to Haiti with more tents for the homeless,\u201d said Counter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Haitian-born Vanessa Alix \u201910 was visiting Dallas when the massive earthquake rumbled through her native land on Jan. 12. She saw a CNN news flash, but the vast scale of the disaster wasn\u2019t immediately evident. Once it was, Alix \u2014 a Mather House psychology concentrator \u2014 spent the night trying to get through, by cell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}