Sonoma County Haitians worry for homeland’s future after crises

He didn’t have a television and access to radio was scarce, but for Pierre Salomon, his upbringing in the coastal town of Dame Marie in west Haiti was a simple and happy time.

It wasn’t until 1968, when he turned 16 and moved to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, that his horizons began to expand. The move opened his eyes to the social classes that existed beyond his hometown, Salomon said.

“This is a poor country, that starts becoming more aware to you,” said Salomon, a Santa Rosa resident who moved to the U.S. more than 40 years ago.

While Haiti has long been regarded as one of the poorest countries in the world― a state of affairs in part related to international interventions and a series of natural disasters that have struck the island ―back-to-back crises this summer have created a newly dire situation for many Haitians and has stirred worry among their relatives abroad, Salomon and other Sonoma County Haitians say.

The July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse left the country in a power vacuum and has forced the postponement of Haiti’s general elections to Nov. 7. They had already been rescheduled from Oct. 2019 to September of this year.

Then followed a magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Aug. 14 that struck southwest Haiti. As of late last month accounted for the death of at least 2,200 people, injuring roughly 12,300 and damaging nearly 53,000 homes. A tropical storm that battered the country days later complicated search and rescue efforts.

The disasters, several Sonoma County Haitians said, have compounded already mounting problems within the country, such as gang violence, political unrest and growing wealth disparity.

“Most of the people living there now, they have nothing, but now they also don’t have hope,” Salomon, who last visited the country in 2017, said. “Hope seems to be fading.”

While he’s heard about people wanting to flee the country, Petaluma resident Frantz Felix has his eyes set on rebuilding Haiti, where he lived until relocating to California in 2000.

Felix, who owns a Caribbean restaurant in San Rafael, said last month’s major earthquake has damaged part of a Haitian school and church near the coastal town of Les Cayes that he and his relatives helped build through their charitable organization, Lord’s Angel Ministry Corp.

Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 hurricane that swept through the country in 2016, forced them to rebuild both structures once before, he added.

Felix said he and his relatives are hearing from friends and family in Haiti that medical supplies, as well as, tents are significant needs for people whose homes were damaged by the earthquake.

The closest medical facility is about 90 minutes from the town, and plans to build a community clinic in the town through his family’s charity have not yet been realized, Felix said.

Felix said the charity hopes to send money to people with the nonprofit who live in Haiti as shipping supplies to the country from the U.S. could take weeks. The process of delivering goods is complicated by gangs who control many of the area’s major thoroughfares, he added.

“You have a bunch of people who are living without a leader or a guide, and the one thing that they have as their guide is God,” Felix said. “People are very desperate.”

Juliana Destine, 32, of Santa Rosa said she was relieved to hear none of her aunts and uncles in Haiti were affected by the earthquake.

Still, the assassination of the country’s president in July has left her rattled. She said she doesn’t see herself visiting the country, where she lived until she was 11, anytime soon.

It was a sentiment shared by Salomon and Felix, who both said reports of kidnapping-for-ransom schemes of tourists, as well as Haitians, will likely keep them away.

“It’s really sad,” said Destine, who grew up in Gonaïves, a town in northern Haiti. “I have children and I want to be able to take them back and show them where I was born and raised. But every time I want to do so, something happens. I don’t want to take my kids to a country where it’s always hot, politically.”

Salomon, a former broadcaster for Haiti’s national radio station who now owns a Caribbean food truck business, said he believed Haitians need to band together to seek broad social and political changes within the country.

He said he realized the need for such change during his visit to the country four years ago. He said the widening wealth gap there was also apparent.

He said he saw families who selling gallons of gasoline along the side of the roads in order to make a living, albeit a small one, he said. Haiti’s richest neighborhoods, however, looked more akin to the neighborhoods that line the San Francisco hills.

“To me, the future of Haiti in five years, 10 years, is not going to be good until people want to make a change,” Salomon said. “It’s not a matter of sending $100 to someone in Haiti, because this is just a Band-Aid over a big cut. It’s what can be done to change the concept of life for people in Haiti?’“

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.