Chapter 8 - Orphans with Parents and Other Scams that Bilk U.S. Churchgoers
"Just on the outskirts of the city (of Baie-de-Sol), rising up from the third world squalor is a neighborhood of splendid houses... (Amid these houses) but quarantined from direct contact by an eight-foot cement wall, rises The School of Jesus Christ of America, a monolithic, brightly painted, stucco, two-story, 20-room school surrounded by equally bright and well constructed apartments and houses, workshops, and administration buildings. A brilliant yellow 30,000-gallon steel water tank looms above the compound like a spaceship from the heavens.
The
School is a charitable operations, arguably the most successful in all
of Haiti's provinces and unarguably the top K thru 12 school in the
Province. Tuition costs are a nominal $1.50 (U.S.) per month, low
enough for even the poorest Haitian parents to afford. Every year some
20 U.S. Christians sign on as teachers. They have contracts. But
instead of getting paid a salary they pay the school. Each teacher
raises $15,000 (U.S.) per year in donations and then gives money to the
Missouri family (the Baxters) that administers the school. The money
goes into the over-all budget. The mission then covers the teacher's
living and travel expenses and provides each teacher with an allowance.
Besides the teachers, some 100-plus members of U.S. churches come
throughout the year to visit and help out. They come in teams of a
dozen or more. Some are doctors, pediatricians, bone specialists,
dentists, but most are working class people who have come to help
impoverished Haitians. They stay for several weeks. They build
classrooms, fix houses and vehicles, give free medical care, cap teeth,
hold fairs and field days and Christmas pageants for the children,
organize theatrical events and teach the children to paint, take
pictures and use computers.
Unlike so many other charities in Haiti where directors clearly embezzle most of the money meant for impoverished children - a trend that I will describe in greater detail shortly - this particular school has something to show for itself. School of Jesus Christ of America money is spent in Haiti and most of it is spent on Haitian children or on the teachers and other people who are providing the children with educations and maintaining the mission. Three 150-kilowatt power generators provide round-the-clock electricity. The monolithic school building, the administration offices, the houses, and the apartments are all air conditioned. Every classroom, house and apartment are all air conditioned. Every classroom, house and apartment has a television and a VCR. There is an impressive video library with all the latest children's films and a 10,000-book reading library. Every child in the school has a U.S. sponsor who donates $40 per month and some children have as many as four sponsors. Besides the monthly checks, the sponsors send their Haitian children gifts. Many of the children have gone on summer and Christmas vacations to visit their sponsors in the United States. Some sponsors have helped their Haitian children get into U.S. colleges, thrown graduation parties for them, helped them buy vehicles and get scholarships and given them jobs and allowances. It appears to most who have visited to be a heartwarming example of privileged U.S. citizens reaching out to underprivileged Haitians.
The secret of The School of Jesus Christ of America is the Missouri family that runs it. The leader of the flock is Reverend Richard Baxter followed by his wife Madame Reverend Richard Baxter and four of their six children, Kirk and Sharon, who were in their mid thirties when I knew them, and their two considerably younger siblings, Karin and Amethyst, who grew up in Haiti, speak fluent (Kreyà ²l)...
The
Reverend and his wife exemplify conservative American values. Married
at the ages of 17, they are still together more than 40 years later.
Having grown up on a Missouri farm and worked 20 years for a U.S.
electric company, Reverend Baxter can fix or, if necessary, created
just about anything mechanical or electrical or that has to do with a
house or building. He personally constructed and maintains the school
and the faculty houses. He runs and maintains the 150-kilowatt
generators and the complex electrical systems that spread energy
throughout the mission compound.
Madame Reverend Baxter was the
daughter of an impoverished Missouri sharecropper. Today she is the
able pre-school teacher and director of the family compound (in Haiti).
She orchestrates the activities of the 28 maids and cooks who she
herself trained, an endeavor that is celebrated every afternoon at 2:00
when the family and some 20 to 30 American school teachers and visitors
gather for a buffet lunch typically including fresh cinnamon rolls,
homemade bread, pizza and roast beef. And then, not to be forgotten,
there are Madame Reverend Baxter's exquisite candlelight dinners of
imported steaks or chicken, potatoes, and fresh salads.
Three of the children, Kirk, Karin and Amethyst teach school ... Sharon Baxer...made it possible for me to help Bokor Ram's daughter Albeit and Arnaud's cousin Tobe escape their miserable lives. Tobe from the beatings and cruelty of Arnaud and Albeit from the tragic death of her mother and father. I took both girls out of Jean Makout and brought them to Baie-de-Sol where I rented an apartment for them and with Sharon's support they attended The School of Jesus Christ of America.
At the time I worked for CARE, Sharon was 37 years old, attractive, with sandy blond hair and a body toned by rigorous daily calisthenics and 10-mile runs through the mountains above Baie-de-Sol. She was my closest friend in Haiti, my confidant, the person whom I turned to when I could no longer deal with the people of Jean Makout...All you have to do is ride through the city with Sharon to sense the appreciation the people of Baie-de-Sol have for her. Wherever she goes someone is calling out after her, "Miss Sharon, Miss Sharon." It was Sharon, as I said, who gave me the means to rescue Albeit and Tobe, and who was helping to care for them and feed them. Indeed, had it not been for Sharon I could never have brought them to the city where I put them in a house with a nanny and where they went to The School of Jesus Christ of America.
And it was there at Sharon's that I began my research into orphanages.
*
Sharon has a second-floor apartment in the compound adjoining her parent's house. It is a refreshing break from the dusty poverty outside the walls, like stepping into a suburban condominium in the States. The central air is blasting. There is a long iron-framed plate-glass dining table, an over-sized refrigerator stocked full of Hershey's Kisses, Mound's Almond Bars, M&Ms, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, packs upon packs of licorice, Gold Fish crackers, goat cheese. In the freezer are pre-packaged steaks, de-boned chicken breasts, and gourmet sausages.
Sharon
is sitting behind her desk, located in the middle of the apartment, her
large-screen computer connected to the World Wide Web through satellite
is open in frown of her. I pop down on the sofa, pick a selection of
chocolates from a bowl on the coffee table in front of me and pop one
into my mouth. I tell her about how CARE wants me to investigate
orphanages. "Tim," she says, her interest sparked. "You have to visit
the orphanage across the street."
*
Across the street from The School is one of the largest orphanages in the Province. The owner is an American named Harry Wothem. Harry spends most of his time in the United States, collecting money for his Haitian charities. But if there is a contemporary Pied Piper of Protestant charity in Baie-de-Sol, it is Harry. Almost all the evangelical missions in the area, including the School of Jesus Christ of America, began in association with him.
Harry is a charismatic bulldog of a man. A Vietnam veteran and a terrific public speaker whose sense of humor causes frequent eruptions of laughter among his audiences. Besides the orphanage, he has a clinic and a mission. Several times a year he brings in teams of over 100 church members from the U.S. Midwest, people who have come to see Haitian poverty and to do something about it. They build clinics and churches, hand out clothes and witness for the Lord. Each visitor pays Harry US$800 for the week-long trip. Harry charters a plane, and when the teams arrive he beds them down on the floor and in cots, feeds them rice and beans, and gives them what they have paid for: A taste of poverty. When they are not working building clinics and churches he packs the teams into the back of a dump truck and drives them through the dusty dirt streets of greater Baie-de-Sol area to tour the squalor.
As Harry drives along with the back of his dump truck full of awestruck middle Americans, he usually disregards the small niceties of Haitian life. Harry rolls his truck through river beds, past peasant woman scrubbing the family laundry, over their drying clothes, up out of the river and over the coffee beans that peasants set out to dry on the edge of the street. In the city, with apparently no awareness of the damage he is causing, Harry crashes through private electric lines and fences. Once I just missed an episode where he drove his dump truck down the road that passes between his orphanage and The School of Jesus Christ of America, swung around a turn-around, passed a man and several of his helpers making cement blocks and, in Harry's typical way, drove right over the blocks, crushing a half dozen or so and kept right on going. The men making the blocks ran screaming after him...
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