‘I Think the Aftermath Will Be Horrible’

Hanover — As Bise Wood Saint Eugene sat in his office in Dartmouth College’s classics department on Friday afternoon, his mind was in Haiti, where hundreds are dead and tens of thousands are homeless because of Hurricane Matthew.

“I feel powerless here,” the 37-year-old administrative assistant said, his hand just inches from the smartphone he had been using since Tuesday to monitor a never-ending stream of information from news sites, from Facebook postings, and from Skype sessions with his parents, who live in Port Au Prince.

Saint Eugene said his parents are safe, as are cousins and aunts in the southern parts of the country, where the death toll hit 842 and rising late Friday afternoon, according to Reuters, as rescue workers and cholera outbreaks both spread throughout the region.

The relief of knowing his family survived the storm’s savage onslaught is tempered by worry about their future. Like many in the area, his cousins derived much of their food and income from livestock and crops of plantains, an estimated 80 percent of which have been wiped out by the storm.

“I think the aftermath will be horrible,” he said. “The whole population relies on those crops for food.”

Saint Eugene came to the United States two years ago when the humanitarian work of Odevich Haiti, a nongovernmental organization he founded, put him on a collision course with local gangsters.

He said his organization worked to disrupt the flow of young children from Haiti’s rural areas into the cities, where promises of caring foster homes turn out to be scams perpetrated by those who wish to exploit them for child labor.

Saint Eugene said he was forced to flee the country after he became the subject of a campaign of violence, including a community meeting that was disrupted by roughly a dozen men who demanded he pay them $100,000 and physically threatened him, firing their guns into the air as they left.

He and his wife now rent an apartment in Lebanon, and are seeking a legal status that will allow them to stay.

Saint Eugene entered the United States with the help of state Rep. George Sykes, D-Lebanon, when both were involved with projects in Haiti by the American Red Cross.

Sykes said he, too, has been anxiously talking with his Haitian contacts via social media sides.

“I have been in contact with 30 or 40 friends,” he said. “They’ve all reported to me that they’re fine, and that’s a relief.”

Others in the Upper Valley are mobilizing to help those who have been affected in Haiti.

Peter Wright, professor of pediatrics in the Division of International Medicine and Infectious Disease at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, has been part of an ongoing Dartmouth Haiti Partnership that has carried out several humanitarian missions in the country since it experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010.

The group met on Friday morning to see whether the hurricane would affect Wright’s plans to travel to Port Au Prince later this month to promote a maternal health program.

“People have been unable to get to a large area that was affected by the hurricane,” he said. “I don’t know what the final death toll will be, but I expect it to rise.”

Wright echoed Saint Eugene’s concerns about the lost crops and livestock, which he said could cause famine.

“Everybody suffers in a situation like this. No one is immune,” he said. “Certainly, they’re not having enough, or enough of the right kinds of food to eat.”

Wright said that a definite response from the partnership has not been defined, but that he expected it would consist of raising money to support the efforts of groups that they’ve found to be reputable and working in the affected areas, such as St. Boniface Hospital.

Lloyd Ziel, a spokesman for the New Hampshire and Vermont region of the American Red Cross, said in an email on Friday that three teams deployed to Haiti in anticipation of the hurricane currently are distributing cooking and cholera prevention kits.

“The American Red Cross is working closely with the Haitian Red Cross to assess the extent of damage from Hurricane Matthew and get much-needed supplies to people in need,” Ziel wrote.

“Additional relief supplies, such as water purification products, shelter kits, and mosquito nets are being procured locally and internationally,” according to Ziel.

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com.