Peculiar Missionaries Swoop Down on Port-au-Prince

Reporting – Several American Christian fundamentalist groups have flocked en masse to the Haitian capital to “come to the rescue” of the disaster victims.

On the tarmac of the Port-au-Prince airport, Rose waits on a folding chair. The snappy retiree from Florida arrived in Haiti a week ago “to help” because “the Lord told us to show compassion towards the poor.” But like all of her six travel companions, including her pastor husband, who were sent by his evangelist church in Tampa, Florida, Rose hasn’t left the boundaries of the airport. “It’s poorly organized. They don’t tell us where to go. Never mind we’ve already spent $10,000 to charter an airplane,” she protests.

Port-au-Prince has hundreds of Roses these days. American Christian fundamentalist groups have flocked en masse to Haiti, a Catholic island considered missionary territory. In front of a hastily erected little clinic, Justin Boland, from the NGO Act of Mercy, also introduces himself as the communication director of Antioch Community Church, an “independent” church based in Waco, Texas. The fifteen doctors the organization claims to support in different clinics in the capital are invisible.

Act of Mercy, like most of the Christian fundamentalist groups, concentrates on the numerous orphanages that lack everything. The 135 residents of one of these establishments, the House of the Children of God, are camping around their cracked building. A dozen American missionaries, mostly teenagers, camp by their sides, loaded down with heavy baggage. The assistant director of the House, Alexis Pierre-Delet, doesn’t know the origins or the mission of these “Blancs”: “They promised to help us but they haven’t given anything. I think that they want to repatriate the children to the United States.”

Scientologists in the Hospital Crridors

Tim Morris, a nurse with the group Open Hands, found himself turned away from the town’s big health centers by the United Nations. The reputation of the association, which claims to be able to treat AIDS through nutrition, preceded him. In the halls of the university hospital, it’s the Scientology believers who lean over the ill. One disciple lays hands on the head of a patient with a broken leg. “We’re liberating the energies that got stuck during the shock,” explains the young woman.

The proliferation of these alternative medicines exasperates the big NGOs. “These people monopolize resources that could be more useful for more efficient organizations,” explains an upper-level U.N. official. The American army put an end to the flurry of little “Christian” planes that cluttered the already overloaded Port-au-Prince airport. “We don’t know what these groups are doing or who they are. We must take an inventory before they do any harm,” rages Veronique Ductan, a Haitian doctor.

In the Delmas neighborhood, the Quisequeya Christian School (QCS) serves as a stronghold for the different groups. The very expensive school, which claims to be “100 percent Christian,” welcomes in particular Crisis Response International (CRI), which presents itself as an “army for the end of days.” But the heavy metal door of the establishment remains closed: “We are not receiving the press.” On its website, CRI stated on Tuesday that is was hosting a part of the American command in Haiti.