Heith, apparently oblivious to the irony, says matter-a-factly, "Most are back with their parents." Then looking, befuddled he says, "Did you know that Madame Slimette has a niece, a nephew and some cousins there?"
"Did they kick them out?" I ask.
Heith smirks at me as if I am teasing him.
"I did not realize it," he goes on, "but some of those kids are from wealthy families. Several are from Port-au-Prince."
Heith clucks his tongue and tells us about two brothers who were kicked out and have already rented the house across the street, one of the more expensive houses in the neighborhood, the most opulent neighborhood in a city of 100,000. Their parents who live in Miami, are paying the rent.
"Some of the orphans have two and three sponsors," Heith continues, and then, shaking his head: "You know what Harry said when I asked him why he was kicking the orphans out? He said that he couldn't sell them anymore. They are too old. People don't want to sponsor them. Can you believe that, "he can't sell them anymore."
As I
was to learn in the coming days, what Madame Slimette and Heith had
done was inadvertently peel back the first layer of a system that
benefited almost everyone involved except poor, destitute and
parentless children foreign sponsors intended to help when they licked
the stamp and put their checks in envelopes and mailed them off to the
orphan foundations. The operators of orphanages and nearby or
affiliated schools were, in every case I came across, spending only a
fraction of the money they raised for the children and pocketing the
rest. Orphanages in the area were a business.
*
...The next morning I headed for Jean Makout. My first stop is my American missionary friends Goliath, a man built like a professional linebacker, and his wife Rose Ann, a woman who looks and behaves like a pioneer on the American West...
Sitting in their kitchen the next morning, Goliath and I are talking about a man named Henry Humperdickel who supports hundreds of children in the area.
Goliath says he knows that Humperdickel gets $20 per child from U.S. sponsors and he knows for a fact that at a school across the street there are eight children sponsored through Humperdickel.
He adds that the money is donated in U. S. dollars, but spent in Haitian dollars.
"(But...)" I say, "Haitian dollars are worth only one-third of U.S. dollars."
"I
know that, Tim...I asked Henry about it one time. He said he was using
the difference for travel expenses. He said there was always so such to
spend it on."
...Henry Humperdickel is a large U.S. Southerner
with an amicable baby face and a sharp mind. ...Henry has a story much
like that of Harry Wothem....
*
In Gonaives I finally encourter true orphans...(p. 141)
*
