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Kerline, in Haiti with the First Relief Team

By Dana Forsythe, GateHouse News Service
View article here: WickedLocal.com – Hanover

When an earthquake hit the Caribbean nation of Haiti last month, Kerline Tofuri was days away from visiting the impoverished country with her service organization Jou Nouvo and their parent group Partners In Development.

But, when the earthquake hit on Jan. 16, Tofuri, a Hanover resident and a native of Haiti, changed her plan from bringing educational supplies to the country, to collecting medical supplies and readying a trip to assess the damage to her home country and hometown of Bon Repos.

The earthquake and the carnage it has wrought has killed an estimated 212,000 people and left approximately 1 million people homeless and living on the streets.

On Jan. 23, Tofuri left Hanover and spent the next full day traveling to Haiti through neighboring Dominican Republic to deliver much needed medical supplies. Spending a week in Bon Repos and its surrounding areas, Tofuri helped to set up a makeshift clinic in her family’s home and visit the people Jou Nouvo has helped in the past year.

In 2008, Tofuri started an organization called Jou Nouvo (“New Day”), to offer an adult literacy class to 10 women in Bon Repos, Haiti, a community that’s 12 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital.

Last year, Jou Nouvo teamed up with Partners in Development Inc. to broaden her program while promoting literacy, offering small loans and addressing the demands for basic health care in Haiti. At the Alexandre Dumas School, an elementary and middle school in Bon-Repos, Tofuri’s group has been providing two-hour long evening classes three days a week to develop the literacy skills of participating members.

Assessing The Situation

“Bon Repos is about 10 miles away from Port Au Prince,” Tofuri said in an interview on Monday. “Although the devastation wasn’t as bad as the capital city, Bon Repos was still very much affected and full of people that needed and still need help.”

While Tofuri said she – like millions of people around the world – saw the devastation on television and read reports coming from the country, she was unaware of the scale of the destruction until she arrived in Haiti.

“I really didn’t expect it to be so bad in my area,” she said. Tofuri’s family – brother Jean Kesney Auguste and father Jean Armony Auguste – had arrived in Haiti one day before the quake and were reporting back to her about the quake the day after it happened.

“My family was trying to tell me that walls were down and some houses had been flattened, but oh my God, it was so bad,” she said. Tofuri said that although there wasn’t as much damage as compared to Port Au Prince, many people were injured and some lost their lives in Bon Repos and its neighboring towns.

“The thing that they haven’t really been showing are the tent cities that have been popping up around the country,” she said. Tofuri added that in Bon Repos, many people – even if their house is still standing – have opted to sleep in tents outside.

“People are sleeping in the street and in open fields,” she said. “I heard stories about what it was like before I got here, but once I arrived it was just more than I could have imagined. It was just awful.”

Tofuri said the scale of the devastation didn’t hit her until she ventured to nearby Blanchard to the Dumas school and then onto Port Au Prince.

“The director of the school had told me it was in bad shape, but when I got there it looked terrible,” she said. According to Tofuri, the top level of the school had caved in.

“I thought it would be something we could just maybe clean up but the building is done,” she said. “It needs to be completely rebuilt.”

For Tofuri, the earthquake’s affect has made the very difficult problem of providing education in Haiti that much harder. In Bon-Repos, Tofuri said there are many private schools, churches, small shops and open markets. Access to health clinics and free public schools, however, are limited she said.

“To just get back to where we were is going to take so much work,” she added. “Seeing the school was emotionally so very hard to deal with. To see all the work we’ve done gone, and to face starting over again, it’s tough.”

In the nation’s capital, Tofuri said she was shocked to see the national palace reduced to rubble.

“On TV, it looked like there was still a little bit of it standing,” she said. “But, not really. It was flattened. Just to see everything in pieces all around you was overwhelming.”

Help At Home

In Bon Repos, where Tofuri spent most of her time, Partners In Development set up a makeshift clinic at Tofuri’s family home, which doubled as sleeping quarters for about eight volunteers.

“The house was greatly needed so my family was happy to help any way they could,” she said.

Along with one doctor, two nurses and volunteers from Partners in Development, the clinic saw about 250 people a day while Tofuri was there, helping those they could and referring others to bigger clinics.

“We weren’t the first official medical team, those teams have now been visiting the country every week since the earthquake, but we still felt the need to provide assistance,” she said.

On her first day back in Bon Repos, Tofuri said she witnessed people lining up from the early morning to the late evening for treatment. Working with limited supplies, volunteers were forced to run back and forth between a clinic in neighboring Blanchard throughout the day.

“It was just scary,” she said. “We had people coming up that were in dire situations, some that had gotten previous treatments and some that hadn’t seen anyone yet.”

Tofuri said one man was taken to another clinic because he had a gangrene-infected hand and couldn’t be helped at their location.

“I thought it was going to be chaos but people were waiting patiently,” she said. “We also took stock of the people who needed the most immediate care first, but we had people coming for help with small things like asthma.”

Prior to her arrival, Tofuri’s family had already started taking stock of area residents who needed medical assistance.

Along with several disaster relief workers, other volunteer organizations like Fuel Relief Fund helped in Bon Repos providing much needed supplies to those affected.

Working with Tofuri’s brother and father, Fuel Relief Fund – an organization created to provide a basic fuel source for victims immediately following the devastation of a natural disaster – started working and donating diesel fuel to run generators within days of arriving in Haiti.

Since the whole county was without electricity, the donated fuel was needed to run generators. Generators were crucial in the aftermath of the earthquake to run lights, cooling systems, water purification systems, and medical equipment.

Tofuri’s brother, Kesney Auguste owns a number of businesses in Haiti along with his father. As luck would have it, Tofuri said Kesney was in the process of opening another business, selling and delivering vegetable oil and had a new truck available to use.

“He had already bought a small 850-gallon tank truck to deliver this oil, but had not used it yet,” Tofuri said. With a donation of fuel by Raphael Mateo, the owner of a tank manufacturing company in Haiti, Fuel Relief Fund was in business delivering fuel within three days of arriving in Haiti.

A Nation’s Future

While Tofuri said she and Partners In Development are still committed to creating a better Haiti through funding education projects, generating small business loans for families and providing medical supplies, the ongoing relief effort in their communities has taken precedent.

“It was bad before, but now it’s just very hard to even thinking about starting from scratch,” she said.

Tofuri said Partners In Development and Jou Nouvo would now be focusing their efforts in Bon Repos, Blanchard and neighboring areas including Blanchard, Ka Fort, and Leogane – an area south of Port Au Prince that has also been severely damaged.

“Of course we need to think about our goals of providing for the impoverished in Haiti,” she said. “But, in the meantime we’re faced with dealing with daily struggles to just survive and put the country back together.”

Tofuri said talks for future programming and rebuilding haven’t even started yet.

“Right now we’re just dealing with the immediate needs of people,” she said. Tofuri said she plans on returning to Haiti with supplies in March and April. “People need food, water and shelter.”

Since her visit to Haiti in January, Partners in Development has been sending medical relief teams weekly to the area. In the meantime, Tofuri said she’s focusing on the long-term assistance that Haiti will require.

“People have been asking a lot about what they can do,” she said. “People in Hanover have been so generous already. The schools, St. Andrew’s Church, and many individuals have given supplies, money and just voiced their support.”

“But, I would like to ask if people can think about Haiti in the long-term,” she added. “Even if someone gave me a dollar for assistance, I want them to keep asking me about how I spent their money. If I spent $20 to feed this family, I want to show them where their money is going.”

Interested parties can visit http://pidonline.org to apply or pidonline.org for more information.
For the relief efforts, Tofuri said she’s asking for donations of gauze, bandages, antibiotics, and pain relief medications. She said she would start collecting clothing items and tents to bring on her next trips.

People who would like to donate can e-mail Tofuri (kerline@pidonline.org), call (at 781-826-9164) or drop off medical supplies at her house (168 Grove Street, Hanover).

Partners In Development has also set up an emergency relief fund for the earthquake victims in Haiti. Donations can be made by on the website www.pidonline.org or they can send a check payable to PID/Jou Nouvo, PO Box 9, Ipswich, MA, 01938.

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Kerline & Family, Packing for her Upcoming Relief Trip

By Dana Forsythe, GateHouse News Service
View article here: WickedLocal.com – Hanover

In the wake of last week’s earthquake in Haiti, South Shore residents with ties to the country have been scrambling to get in touch with their loved ones and offer whatever aid they can to the ailing nation.

In Hanover, Kerline Tofuri and her family have started collecting medical supplies and donations to bring to the country in the coming weeks.

In 2008, Tofuri started an organization called Jou Nouvo (“New Day”), to offer an adult literacy class to 10 women in Bon Repos, Haiti, a community that’s 12 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. Last year, Jou Nouvo teamed up with Partners in Development Inc. to broaden her program while promoting literacy, offering small loans and addressing the demands for basic health care in Haiti.

Partners In Development has been serving the very poor in Haiti since 1990 and currently serves more than 3,000 people in Port au Prince.

When the earthquake hit last Tuesday (Jan. 12), Tofuri was already preparing to take suitcases, full of school supplies, reading glasses and toys, down to Bon Repos. Since that day, she’s been collecting medical supplies including gauze, bandages, antibiotics, and pain relief medications which she plans to bring down to the needy population in Haiti.

“On Sunday, before everything fell apart, a woman, Nadia Gay from Brockton, dropped off a bunch of toys,” Tofuri said. “Nadia is a resident of Brockton, very active at her church and her community at large. She was happy to collect the toys, and was excited to deliver them to me (with money for shipping) for Haiti.”

Before the quake, Tofuri had already been planning to leave for Haiti last Thursday (Jan. 14) to bring the supplies.

While Tofuri said her immediate family is safe – her father Jean Kensey August and brother Jean Armony August arrived in Bon Repos, Haiti just one day before the quake – communication lines have been strained and she is still waiting on word from her partners in Bon Repos and elsewhere in the country.

“I am planning to go down with Partners In Development’s medical team and a group of Haitian organizers in Somerville to assess the situation down there,” Tofuri said. She added that Partners In Development is working out the mission and the team could be leaving as soon as next week.

“It’s still very hard to get in touch with people down there,” she said. “Luckily, we heard from my brother and father on Wednesday after the quake.”

Tofuri said that through her family in Haiti she’s been receiving updates on the people in Bon Repos, and what assistance is needed.

“There are so many people waiting on medical care down there,” she said. “So, we’ll hopefully be traveling to Bon Repos and coordinating to get medical teams down in the area as soon as possible.”

Along with Partners In Development, Tofuri has been collecting medical supplies and looking for nurses and doctors for an upcoming assistance-based trip to Haiti.

As of Friday of last week, Partners In Development founder Gale Hull said many of the families the organization serves in the Haitian town of Blanchard, are okay and the medical clinic they work out of in Port Au Prince is still standing while people gather there for service.

Tofuri said the earthquake in Haiti comes at a very difficult time for the country’s people. When Tofuri came to the United States from Haiti in 1985, she left a country struggling with basic needs such as proper schooling for children and adults.

Up until the late 1970s, Bon-Repos was known for its vast open space and its rich soil which was ideal for agricultural production. Today, though, Tofuri said Bon-Repos is a poor suburb which is overpopulated with minimal land available for farming.