Phil Haslanger: Feeding Haiti's hungry one step at a time

Phil Haslanger  —  9/24/2008 5:33 am

Margaret Trost was on her second visit to Haiti when the relationship between public policies and personal catastrophes became crystal clear to her.

Trost, 45, earned her master's in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked in production at WHA-TV. She first went to Haiti in early 2000 to try to find some meaning in her life after the sudden death of her husband from an asthma attack at their Cottage Grove home in September 1997.

While there, she discovered an opportunity to help a priest in Port-au-Prince start a lunch program for the very hungry children who inhabit this poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. A few months later, she was back trying to learn more.

She went to the farmers' market on a Saturday in July with a woman who was gathering food for the Sunday meal they would serve to some 500 children the next day. While there, Trost paused for a few moments, sitting on a rice sack.

Rice is one of the staple foods in Haiti. It also was one of the main crops in Haiti. So Trost assumed that the rice they were buying would be from Haiti. She was surprised to see all the rice sacks around her were stamped with "USA."

What she learned was that in the 1980s, the international agencies that provide loans to impoverished countries like Haiti required them to reduce tariff protections for their own rice, opening up the country to competition from other nations. U.S. rice quickly undersold Haitian rice and the farmers there went out of business, migrating to the cities in the almost hopeless quest of finding other work.

Trost tells this story in her new book, "On That Day, Everybody Ate: One Woman's Story of Hope and Possibility in Haiti." It's a remarkable tale of personal discovery, trying to reconcile the extreme poverty of the people she gets to know with the abundance of her rather ordinary life in the U.S.

It is more than a personal story, though. She weaves through the book an awareness of how international pressures, local corruption and the indifference of the public in more prosperous lands all come crashing down on the youngest citizens of the country.

It's not as though Trost herself was particularly aware of the conditions in Haiti before her first journey there in early 2000. She had been active in a variety of social justice causes in Madison during the 1990s -- the Madison-area Urban Ministry, outreach efforts at Lake Edge United Church of Christ -- but Haiti was never on her radar screen.

When a Madison minister and musician, Bryan Sirchio, invited her to join one of his trips to Haiti to work in a hospice as an antidote to her disorientation after her husband's death, she discovered the basic economic and political story of Haiti by reading a book while on the flight there. She was stunned, and worried about how she would be received.

It did not take long, though, for the people of Haiti to capture her heart. The pastor at St. Clare's Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince, a charismatic man named the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, shared his dream of a food program for the children.

"Every week, the children come to me," he told the group Trost was with. He was talking about the scene at his church on Sunday mornings. "They point to their bellies and then their lips. 'My Father, do you have any food in your cupboard for me to eat?' I give them what I can, but it is not close to enough."

When Trost got back to the states, she told her parents about wanting to help Jean-Juste achieve his dream. Her father, the Rev. Frederick Trost, at the time was the leader of the United Church of Christ congregations in Wisconsin. He came up with $5,000 to help get the food program going. Soon other donations were coming in.

By the time Trost went back to Haiti in July, the program was up and running. Trost set up a foundation to provide financial support. Over the years, the program has grown, now serving meals five times a week to some 1,500 children at each meal.

The meal program has been the centerpiece of her work with Haiti, but along the way, Trost has been drawn into the political and natural currents that swirl around that land only 650 or so miles from Florida. There have been abrupt changes in governments there, two politically motivated arrests of Jean-Juste (Amnesty International listed him as a prisoner of conscience both times); a season of kidnappings (one of which nearly snared her friend Sirchio); and most recently, the repeated battering of Haiti by Hurricanes Gustav, Hannah and Ike.

In her book, Trost brings alive the remarkable stories of people like Mammi Det, a woman, now 80, who treated Margaret like her own daughter and who guided the food program through its initial years. Or people like Jean-Juste, whose faith and optimism seemed able to overcome any obstacle.

"Piti piti na rive," he told Trost, speaking in Creole. "Little by little we will arrive." And then he offered an explanation that could well be adopted by anyone facing seemingly insurmountable odds:

"One step at a time, Margaret," he said as he was taking her to the airport after one of her visits. "In Haiti, sometimes they are very, very small steps. Sometimes we go backward. But it's important to keep taking steps, even though they are small. Never lose hope. Never give up. One day, maybe not during my lifetime, but one day, we will get there."

Trost's work over the last eight years and the stories she tells in her book reflect that spirit of working against the obstacles and letting hope sustain her through all the moments of doubt.

Phil Haslanger is a minister in the United Church of Christ. He has known Margaret Trost for a number of years.  

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Margaret Trost will be making several local presentations about her work in Haiti:

Wednesday, Oct. 1, 7 p.m., at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Ave., with music provided by Bryan Sirchio.

Thursday, Oct. 2, 10 a.m., an informal conversation at Memorial United Church of Christ, 5705 Lacy Road, Fitchburg.

Thursday, Oct. 2, 7 p.m., at Lake Edge United Church of Christ, 4200 Buckeye Road, with music provided by Bryan Sirchio.

Her Web site is www.whatiffoundation.org.

Phil Haslanger  —  9/24/2008 5:33 am