February 12, 2010
By Mary Frances Schjonberg

Amidst the ruins of their diocese and their nation, Haitian Episcopalians have found ongoing hope in their music and art.

"Some things are too difficult to express in words," said Jeanne Pocius, a trumpet professor at the Diocese of Haiti's now-destroyed Holy Trinity Music School in Port-au-Prince, paraphrasing Victor Hugo. "You see people being absolutely stoic and when the music begins, the tears begin to flow. It's healing, it's a great medication. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit."

A few hours earlier, she had joined members of the Holy Trinity Philharmonic Orchestra, Haiti's unofficial state symphony, and the school's renowned Les Petits Chanteurs men and boys choir to participate in one of the capital's many memorial services held to commemorate the one-month anniversary of the magnitude-7 earthquake that hit just outside of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12.

Haitian President René Préval spoke during the service, Pocius said, as did Protestant, Roman Catholic and Voodoo ministers and priests, as well as Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti.

"Music is the great hope for Haitians. It unites them, it inspires them, it strengthens them, it connects them with the almighty," Pocius told Episcopal News Service Feb. 12 in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince.

The contribution of the two Holy Trinity music groups was their second appearance since the earthquake. They played and sang Feb. 5 in the Bel Air section of Port-au-Prince. The orchestra and chorus, both of which lost members in the quake, will perform again Feb. 13 on the grounds of the diocese's destroyed Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral).

The Feb. 5 concert was titled "For Renewal and Hope of Haiti," and Pocius said she sees hope for Haiti's future in "the basic resilience of the Haitian people, their deep faith in God, their willingness to help one another. You don't see a lot of selfishness down here."

During the Bel Air concert, orchestra conductor the Rev. David Cesar told a National Public Radio reporter that he wanted to bring the orchestra to the gang-controlled neighborhood after the quake "to let them know that Haiti will rise again."

His message struck home with Fordron Jacques, who told NPR that on hearing the music, she "started thinking that the country will survive."

(An audio version of the NPR story with sound clips from the concert is available at http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=123439508&m=123439492, online.)

Meanwhile, on the cathedral grounds where the Feb. 13 concert will be held, members of the cathedral congregation have been sifting through the building's rubble, looking to salvage pieces of the world-famous frescoes that had adorned the walls. The paintings, done in 1950-51, portrayed biblical stories in Haitian motifs. Portions of only a few of the frescoes are still standing among the ruins, including the baptism of Christ and possibly the Last Supper.

Alain Godonou, director of UNESCO's Division of Cultural Objects and Intangible Heritage, told ENS Feb. 12 via telephone from his office in Paris that a conference next week in Haiti will bring together a variety of groups to take stock of and develop a plan for preserving Haiti's museums, monuments, libraries, archives, religious art and intangible heritage.

"We will decide on priorities … come out with a concrete plan," he said, adding that the plan will cover not just public institutions but also churches and cathedrals.

Until then, UNESCO workers have been helping Haitians inventory and secure such art and cultural artifacts, Godonou said. The effort includes contributing to salvage efforts at Holy Trinity Cathedral.

Part of the challenge, Godonou added, is that Haiti is still responding to people's basic needs, and decisions about rebuilding such things as libraries and cathedrals are not possible at the moment. In addition, he said, it is a struggle to find structurally sound buildings in which to store artifacts until rebuilding decisions are made. The oncoming rainy season makes the effort imperative, Godonou said.

In late January UNESCO launched a campaign to prevent pillaging of what it called Haiti's "moveable heritage."

"It is important to prevent treasure hunters from rifling through the rubble of the numerous cultural landmarks that collapsed in the earthquake," the organization said in a news release.

Music teacher tells tale of escape from quake

Pocius has a harrowing story to tell of escaping from the rubble of the Salle Ste. Cecile concert hall in the music school complex adjacent to the cathedral during the earthquake. On the hall's stage, she had just risen from her piano bench to distribute sheet music to members of a jazz ensemble when she heard a "deep rumble." Her first thought, she said, was that nearby construction had caused the elementary school to collapse.

"Then the floor began bucking like an ocean in a hurricane," she recalled.

"I remember shouting to the students to run," she said. "I sort of spun around in a circle, got down on my knees in the middle of the stage, put my head down and said, ‘OK, Lord, this is it. I am OK with that. You can take me home, thy will be done,' and I felt absolutely no fear."

As she tried to get out of the building, gathering up and comforting scared students, she heard people walking on the roof of the auditorium and discovered orchestra conductor Cesar leading his staff to safety via the roof from their now-collapsed fifth floor offices.

Pocius said she and four other people lifted a chunk of concrete so that a father could pull his young daughter, a member of the junior orchestra, from the ruins of her school. She was alive, Pocius said, because she had been cushioned by the body of Dominique Lyons, a school employee.

"I didn't lose control until I got outside the gates and saw that the cathedral had collapsed," she said, adding that during her escape she thought if she could get to the cathedral "everything would be OK, but it wasn't OK. Nothing was OK."

Although injured, Pocius said she set up a makeshift field hospital at the cathedral using scavenged first-aid supplies and over-the-counter pain killers. Close to 300 people eventually got help at the site, many with "absolutely heartbreaking injuries," she said, including lacerations, "virtual amputations," scalping injuries, and loss of layers of skin.

At one point, Pocius said, she fashioned bandages out of fresh sanitary napkins and torn sheets in an effort to simply get people's wounds covered.

In recent days, the trumpeter's attention has shifted to the children among the estimated 3,000 survivors living in a camp near College Ste. Pierre, a destroyed diocesan school in Port-au-Prince. It is one of 20 across the country in which the diocese is caring for nearly 25,000 displaced people.

After word went around the camp that Pocius was offering a school, children trickled in a few more each day until she had about 100 students. They have about 25 square feet in which to gather. "It's been a little cacophonous," she said.

In the first days they simply sang songs, she said. Then she found paper, pencils, pens and crayons and encouraged the students to make small books in which to record the stories of their lives and their survival, "trying to get it external, to get it out of them … to give them a little distance," she said.

One boy, Samuel, wrote that he hopes his little brother, killed when his family's house collapsed, was watching him from heaven, she said. Another boy, typical of many children, wrote that he hopes that his family is looking for him, but he doesn't know if they are alive.

"I am so proud of my students," Pocius said of seminarians from the diocese's theology school and the older music school students. "I have seen these young kids become adults overnight – some of them went out to collect cavaders, they're helping clean the camp, they're helping me with the school."

Pocius said that the work she has seen since the quake has typified her belief in Episcopalians' tendency to "roll up our sleeves and get down to business."

"It's practical Christianity," said Pocius, a member of Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church of Greater Boston in Cambridge, Massachsetts. "They're living their faith."

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service and Episcopal News Monthly editor.