Fountain of Life Church's Mission to Haiti
Rediscovering community
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 1 of 2

    It’s a funny thing about the charitable concept of giving. Sometimes
while your intention is to truly give something that you have — whether it is
a material good or something within yourself — you end up receiving so
much more in return, oftentimes a greater understanding of yourself and the
world around you. The act of giving itself is oftentimes a personal journey
that takes one clear around the world and then back home again.
Take Hugues Bastien, for example. He was born and raised in uanaminthe,
Haiti, which is located just over the border from the Dominican Republic.
“He left when he was eight years old and lived in New York,” said Gloria
Zeller, the missions director for Fountain of Life Church. “He was trained
and went to New York. He’s a civil engineer. Then after so many years, he
went back to Haiti for a family matter and realized the poverty was so great.
He felt compelled to go back to his community. That’s why he is there
today.” Bastien founded Institution Univers, a school that now has 1,400
students in grades k-11 on a well-kept, sprawling campus set in the midst of
Haiti’s poverty.
Zeller met Bastien by chance — or by fate — about 12 years ago when
Bastien was just forming Institution Univers. “I was down in the Dominican
Republic doing a medical mission about 12 years ago,” Zeller recalled.
“Then Hugues, the director of this school came over and was doing
interpreting for us in the hospital in the Dominican Republic for the Haitian
people. I was friends with him for two years before I went over to Haiti. Then
at one point, I said ‘I want to see where you live.’ So I went across the
border — it’s about five minutes over the border — and the rest is history.”
With another stroke of fate, Zeller joined Fountain of Life Church about
three years ago. When the couple who had been in charge of Fountain of
Life’s mission program left, Zeller was designated the missions director and
the church had its first missions trip to Haiti with four members participating in March 2007. The second trip was in December 2007 – January 2008 and
seven members went. Two of those members were Shantelle James and Deborah Farlow.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean. Its per capita income is $440. 80 percent of its rural population lives in poverty and its average life expectancy
is 52 years. The differences between Haiti and the U.S. are startling. “There is no electricity or sewage system or paved roads,” James recalled, who was a
member of both missions trips. “To me, it’s what community is. I think here, we have an idea of what community is. It’s actually as community. You have the
children who are running freely throughout the streets, whether they are clothed or not clothed. People don’t have a lot of things that keep them inside and
that’s what forms community. Since you don’t have the preoccupation inside the house, you go out into the community. You have someone sitting out
getting their hair done. There are people fixing meals. Everything happens on the outside of the home, which forms the community. My all-time favorite
sight is motorcycles running up and down the street with chickens on them.”
    Zeller also has observed that sense of community that is fueled, in part, by the need to band together in the midst of poverty. “Water isn’t in front of your
house, so you always have to be walking somewhere,” Zeller said. “I was sharing with people yesterday that the two things that stick out to me are the
amount of walking people do and whenever they want something to eat, they have to walk several miles to buy food. They have to walk to the market and
walk back to home. When they go to church, they walk a mile to church. People are never alone. They are always walking in little bunches. You never see
any overweight Haitians. And in the process, it becomes community because when you are walking, you are always seeing someone and stopping by and
talking. Even when we walked back and forth from school, we talked to people or at least said ‘Hi.’ People would want to greet you because everyone is
outside. The only reason people go inside their houses is to sleep. They don’t go in there to cook. Everything is done outside except to sleep. The houses are
dark because there is no electricity. There is no plumbing. All the plumbing is outside the house. There are 5-6 houses that might have one outhouse.”
Farlow relished the sense of community, a sense of community that she remembers from rural Georgia where her family is from. “I think the things that
struck me the most about the whole thing is that despite this situation; there was a real sense of community,” Farlow said. “Everyone looked out for each other
from what I saw. There wasn’t this hankering for something more than what they knew they could have. They weren’t like us. ‘I have a Ford. I want a Cadillac.’
There was a sense of contentment. I taught career development and career goals. The students have a real sense of where they want to go and how they
want to get there. They have it down almost to a plan, but it’s just the matter of them having the help to do that. I think we live in a country of entitlement.
‘I’m entitled to go to college. I’m entitled to have things.’ But these young people didn’t appear that way. They thought this was an honor to be able to do
certain things. That’s what I saw a lot of times. That was really amazing. My favorite experience was when we went to Julie’s house. And they have a hand
pump to pump water. But it’s available to the rest of the community. Even though it’s their private pump, they share it with the community. It’s on the
outside.”
    Zeller also fondly recalled an incident of people sharing clean water, a valuable commodity in Haiti. “Hugues is one of the few people who have water at
their house,” Zeller said. “He stores it in his well that is downstairs. But the only way that it gets to the shower is for him to pump it up to the roof and by gravity,
it comes through the showers. Because there were seven of us staying at the house, he had to pump the water up to the top of the roof. The only way he
knows the reservoir on the top is full is when the water starts running down off the side of the roof. What happened this time is something I had never seen
before. When the water started running off the roof, it is his call to shut off the water. There was one time when he wasn’t around and the water ran off that
roof for probably a half hour. The neighbors came with every single pail and bucket that they had in their house and stick it under there to collect the water. I
thought they must be the happiest campers around that they don’t have to walk down to the water pump. Hugues didn’t chase them away because that
water would have eventually run through the street. The kids came with their little buckets. It was so interesting to see. It just warmed my heart.”
Some of the Haitians Zeller encountered had a limited exposure to the outside world. “I can remember the first couple of times I went down there walking
through the streets and having them see an American,” Zeller said. “We were walking through the streets and a kid came around the corner and came face to
face with a couple of us. He went screaming down the road, probably because he had never seen a White person before.” It got more complicated when
Zeller came with three African Americans from Fountain of Life. “It was a shock to them,” Zeller said. “They thought everyone in America was White. It was
very hard to explain to them. They felt I had brought the Black people from Africa. We had a conversation with someone and they said ‘You must be from
Africa.’ They said ‘No.’ Then the Haitians said ‘Well then, you must be White.’”