Several agencies of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite sent a letter to the North American congregations requesting a day of prayer for Haiti in Sunday, September 10. Here are a few facts about the situation in that country.

Haiti’s borders are porous. Just a glance at the horseshoe shape of Haiti on a map should tell us that even in the best of times it would be an overwhelming challenge to patrol its 1,771 kilometres of coastline and a 392-kilometre mountainous land border with the Dominican Republic. These are not the best of times.

Those porous borders, a location not far from Florida, and a government that was minimally functional, constituted an invitation to drug cartels to make Haiti the main transit point for cocaine from Colombia and cannabis from Jamaica on their way to the USA. Smaller amounts of cocaine and cannabis move from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos, largely to supply tourist demand. Most of the cocaine is flown from Colombia to clandestine landing strips in Haiti. In the summer of 2021 President Jovenel Moïse ordered the destruction of those clandestine landing strips. A week later (July 7) he was assassinated. Since then, rival drug trafficking gangs have seized control of most parts of Port-au-Prince and rule by terror, murder and kidnapping.

The Haitian government has never established much influence in rural areas. Those areas have adapted to the lack of order from the central government by establishing a working order in their communities that has served them well, most of the time. They have been largely self-sufficient but lacked opportunity to market goods and produce outside their communities, or their country. Two hundred years ago Haiti was the world’s largest coffee producer. A series of foreign invasions and other upheavals has greatly reduced coffee production, yet Haitian coffee is still available and has the reputation of being among the best in the world, full-flavoured with no bitterness.

One of the greatest hindrances to the economic development of Haiti has been the misguided benevolence of foreign aid from other countries. The main beneficiaries of the US Food Aid program are US farmers. Sending surplus rice to Haiti nearly 20 years ago wiped out Haitian rice farmers and its rice processing industry.

Haitian people are resourceful, resilient and religious. Quebec has the lowest rate of church attendance of any state or province in North America. When we lived in Montreal thirty years ago, there appeared to be as many black people heading to church on a Sunday morning as white people. They weren’t all Haitians, but there were a couple dozen Haitian churches in the city: Baptist; Wesleyan; Alliance; Pentecostal and others. Half the cab drivers in the city were Haitian. There were also Haitian nurses, teachers, small business owners, doctors, etc.

Is there a solution to the woes of Haiti? We could pray that the gang members in Port-au-Prince would repent, turn to Jesus Christ and to more constructive wa ys of making a living, and that drug users in the USA would repent and develop an aversion to cocaine and cannabis. That may sound like fantasy, yet God can do fantastic things and we certainly should include those people in our prayers. We should pray for the government of Haiti and that any international intervention would tend toward the establishment of order in a way that could be continued and maintained by Haitians. We should pray for the poor and hungry in Haiti, and for those who are fleeing Haiti.

Haiti is in a crisis situation right now, yet if we feel moved to offer material aid, let’s make sure it will be done by agencies that are able to ensure it gets into the hands of those who need it and not into the hands of the gangs. The long term goal should be to support economic development in Haiti. To support things that will allow Haitians to become self-sufficient and to prosper. That might include things like buying Haitian coffee.

Above all, let’s pray for the Christians in Haiti, that they could maintain faith, hope and charity through this crisis and be living witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ.