Cedar Rapids native says cash best way to help in Haiti

While former Haitians in Eastern Iowa received scant, sad news from the earhquake-devastated country, a Cedar Rapids native there offered advice on how to help: Send cash.

“Everything I used to know, everywhere I used to go, even the supermarket I used to go to, is gone,” University of Iowa graduate student Doucette Alvarez, 24, who lived in Haiti from age 3 to 15, said Wednesday.

Cornell College junior and Haitian native Annie Rouza got word that one of her baby cousins died in the massive earthquake that struck the Caribbean nation.

Rouza, 20, came to the United States three years ago to attend college but still has relatives in her hometown of Port-au-Prince, the capital city.

“I contacted a friend who told me my little cousin died, but then I cannot reach anybody else to get more details,” Rouza said from Mount Vernon. “You can't get through on the phones and it's very hard.”

Rouza and Alvarez relied on messages passed through second- and third-hand sources to get word about family and friends.

Alvarez had no luck contacting her brother or an aunt who live in Port-au-Prince. Her parents also live there, but are in the United States for a medical appointment.

“My uncle's house, I've been told, is nonexistent,” said Alvarez said, who was last in Haita in July 2008 for her brother's wedding. “We're trying to find people to get help to him and bring him to my parents house, which somebody told me is still standing.”

Renee Dietrich, 40, a 1987 Cedar Rapids LaSalle High School graduate living and working in Fermathe and Petionville, Haiti, said cash donations to specific organizations will be the best way to help right now.

It is “hard to get material donations here,” said Dietrich, who has worked at the St. Joseph's Home for Boys and Wings of Hope missions since 2002. “We will need a lot of cash to survive and rebuild. It will take years.”

Dietrich, who grew up in Cedar Rapids, said buildings at the two missions were either seriously damaged or destroyed. The residents at St. Joseph's are all living in the front of the building because of the dangers that still exist.

“My room and the rest of the house is too dangerous,” Dietrich said in an e-mail to The Gazette.

She said there is enough food and water for the residents to last “a while,” but staff members aren't sure how long. .

Dietrich was able to call her mother, Lucy Dietrich of Cedar Rapids, shortly after the initial quake on Tuesday but phone lines have since gone out. There is no Internet or electricity at the missions, but Dietrich has been able to go to a neighbor's and use the Internet.

Rouza, the Cornell student, fears what this means for the future of her homeland.

“It is devastating. It's already a really poor country,” she said. “I'm just thinking we're never going to recover.”