January 12, 2011

Dear fellow citizens,

Those residing in Haiti and in all corners  of the earth, faithful friends and supporters of HCCNH (Haitian Community Center of NH), tradition require that we feel happy to speak at this period marking the festivities welcoming the New Year. In truth, the heart is not there, because we cannot celebrate when we consider that we are commemorating the one-year anniversary since our beloved country has been devastated by a cruel earthquake that virtually destroyed almost everything we had accomplished during the last two centuries. The heart is not content when we consider that over 300,000 of our brothers and sisters have lost their lives in this disaster unparalleled. The heart is not happy when we consider that we could not, despite our respect for our dead, offer funeral ceremonies worthy of our beloved.

The heart is not really in a festive mood when we consider that, similarly to the deadly earthquake that destroyed our cities and decimated much of our population, other disasters such as Hurricane Thomas and the Cholera, a very serious epidemic have continued during the past year and has imposed material losses and significant loss of lives to our people who had already suffered greatly. Despite the traditional vows and wishes that society demands during this time of festivities at year-end and the New Year, we cannot feel good in our skin when we consider that almost a year after the famous earthquake, our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces; sadly our fellow citizens still continue to live in tents, to be deprived of everything and even the bare necessities to live despite the fact that at the aftermath of this disaster considerable efforts ,we believe, have been undertaken both by the international community and by Haitians living abroad, as did the HCCNH, trying to help our brothers over there who are languishing in poverty and deprivation.

Oh no! we cannot celebrate when we consider that all or almost all resources whether human, material or financial that may help our country come out of this mess, come from others. Not only that, those ressources cannot reach the people in needs. The Haitians and foreign officials are in disagreement over who should have control of the country, and the ressources while the peoples are perishing, we wonder if there is not something that does not work in our brains, us Haitians.

As we said, this is a not lack of resources. Haiti in general gets many help from its friends and even those who would not be considered as friends at this era of hardships known to it. However, until now, our brothers continue to suffer distress under their tents. We can try to explain the problem, according to our own knowledge, the fact that we have a culture that would have us wait for others to do things to us. It is true we get help from other countries, yet we would like them to come and do more.

We can illustrate this as someone who is hungry, he finds and individual who authorize him into his garden where there is a beautiful ripe mango tree ready to be eaten to satisfy his hunger. He sits under the mango tree, he waits for the owner of the garden to come and get him a mango to eat. When we consider all this, we truly cannot rejoice. The reason for this small parable to our Haitian brothers and sisters, who live in Haiti or in the Diaspora, is but for you to be reminded, we have a responsibility toward our country. It is not the foreigners who will or should make it work for us, they have done much. We need to set aside all winds of division, to learn to manage what we have in our hands, that we may rebuild our country.

We have our beautiful country that was blown to an end, it hurts. Let us therefore unite and remove it from the gulf where it finds itself. Give Haiti a hand and get it out of the quagmire in which it sinks more and more each day.


                                                          Thank you,


                                              HCCNH President

Board Members:

Samson Duclair

President

Rubin Lacombe

Treasurer

Magalie Felix

Board Member

Enock Jeantinor