The Story of Bon Samaritain Orphanage

Bon Samaritain Orphanage from outside the walls.

It is estimated that over 5 million children go to bed hungry each night in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Out of these, many are displaced.  They have lost their homes and even their families during the 2010 earthquake or the violence thereafter.  In the midst of this tragedy are overcrowded orphanages that do their best to help as many of these children as possible. Bon Samaritain is one of these orphanages.

Getting water from the well.

Deep in the heart of Port-au-Prince, the Bon Samaritain Orphanage seeks to shelter children in need.  The orphanage, with the leadership of Madame Paul, currently houses 102 orphans ranging from 0-18 years in age.  She seeks to provide them food, shelter, love and education.

Unfortunately right now all 4 of these essential needs are difficult to find.

The Bon Samaritain Orphanage is a fairly large building, but not large enough for 102 orphans.  The 5 bedrooms are cramped and not well ventilated.  Many of the children end up sleeping outside on the balcony.  The bathrooms, like in much of Haiti, are practically nonexistent.  The toilets don’t flush (nor is it likely that they will ever flush due to a lack of infrastructure in Haiti) and the children are left to go to the bathroom on concrete slabs (think shower stalls) and then wash the slab off afterward.

The Kitchen

The kitchen is a veranda with a rudimentary grill.  They buy charcoal and cook their food in pots over the fires.  As far as I am aware there is no refrigeration.  The water source is a well outside that is almost certainly unsafe to drink.  Unfortunately this isn’t even the most tragic part of the Bon Samaritain orphanage.  This week, Madame Paul told Stan Horrell (the coordinator for this particular Mission Discovery project) that there was no food for the orphans.  Stan went into the storehouse and found that the shelves were bare.  The only food that remained was about two handfuls of corn, hardly enough to feed 102 orphans.

In Haiti, most orphans are forced to leave the orphanage when they turn 18.  Without the necessary skills found through an education, many of these children will end up begging on the street, in a gang, or dead.  Education is essential for the future of these children. To meet this need there is a small school on the grounds of Bon Samaritain.  It’s basically a shack (that most Americans wouldn’t even trust to house their animals.  There is one teacher to try to teach all the orphans basic reading, writing and math skills.  There are better schools, but schools cost money in Haiti.  They are private and rely on tuition to pay the teachers.  Many of the orphans at Bon Samaritain are good, smart students but simply don’t have the money to receive specialized instruction.

The baren food shelves.

Finally, there is the story of Madame Paul.  Although she has a desire to spend every day with the children, Madame Paul spends most days lying on her bed in severe pain.  The sacrifices she has made has taken a severe toll on her body to the point where she doesn’t believe she will live much longer.  Most days she can’t even stand up.  She is afraid that when she dies there will be no one to take care of the orphans.  She prays for relief from her pain, but even more she prays that the orphanage will continue to run after she is gone.  The orphanage has enemies that want to take over the building and use it for their own purposes.  So far she has been able to keep the children safe but she doesn’t know what will happen when she dies.  As of this moment there is no one likely to take her place and she doesn’t know how much time she has left.

Making sandwiches for the children.

It’s a tragic environment, the worst orphanage that many of us on the Mission Discovery staff have ever seen. And so it was in this environment that we at Mission Discovery devoted much of our resources last week.  We sent in volunteers to address some of the basic needs of the orphanage.   First and foremost we brought food.  As soon as we saw that the children weren’t eating we put together funds to buy 2-3 weeks worth of meals for the 102 children.  We also purchased bread and peanut butter for sandwiches as a special treat.  The children were so thankful that many of them sat in the laps of the Americans and preferred that the teenage volunteers feed them the sandwich so that they could feel more love from the Americans.

The school at Bon Samaritain

This was perhaps the greatest gift that we had to give…love.  As soon as the high school students arrived in the orphanage the orphans began crawling on the Americans.  Most of them didn’t want to play.  They wanted to be held.  They weren’t asking for gifts. They were asking to be rocked to sleep.  I have never seen anything like it.  Instead of running around playing games the children wanted to lie in the lap of the Americans and rest.  Not a one of us could sit down without multiple children immediately finding an arm or a leg on which to rest their heads so they could nap.  They simply craved that touch.  We did other things at the orphanage. We gave the entire building a much-needed paint job. We taught VBS.  We read to the children, sang with them and played with them.  However, I believe that the most important thing we accomplished that week at the orphanage was simply letting them know that they are not forgotten.

Stan Horrell prays for Madame Paul.

We have plans for the orphanage. We would love to deliver more food. We would love to give the orphans new beds. We would love to give them clean water.  We would love to give them some sort of sanitation.  However, the situation in Port-au-Prince, and at this orphanage in particular, is very fragile.  There are a lot of external factors that affect this type of work.  For example, the enemies of the Bon Samaritain orphanage will do almost anything to see this place fail.  In addition, unless Madame Paul finds somebody to continue her work after she dies the orphanage will fail.  Simply moving the orphans to other orphanages isn’t a likely option either since every orphanage is already crowded.  There is simply no room.

Jentess falls asleep on my shoulders.

I believe that God was in the Bon Samaritain orphanage last week.  He led us to this place so that we would truly know what He means when he refers to the “least of these.”  By the end of the week, He had given 70 volunteers a passion for the place and for the children. He does not want the orphanage to fail.  So pray for the orphanage.  Pray for Madame Paul, for her health and that she find a strong leader to continue her work. Pray for the children that they might have the most basic of needs like food, shelter, sanitation, education and love.  Pray that the enemies will not win and that the children will stay safe from harm.  Pray for their future so that they will find a way to help Haiti end this cycle of poverty.  Situations like the one found at Bon Samaritain orphanage shouldn’t happen.  It’s time to find a way to make sure it doesn’t.

If you feel like you want to help, go to missiondiscovery.org and donate towards the Mission Discovery Haiti projects. Or better yet, sign up to volunteer your time and you can experience Haiti for yourself.

See more photos from the Bon Samaritain orphanage by clicking here!