Pere Cico & Afe Neg Combite:
Pennington, M Basil
IMPOVERISHED HAITIANS STRUGGLE FOR DIGNITY Pere Cico & the Afe Neg Combite M. BASIL PENNINGTON PERE Cico. I heard the name even before I passed through passport control. Three college men from...
...I had been looking forward to seeing Port-au-Prince and the surrounding mountains as we came in...
...We helped one elderly woman lower the enormous bundle from off her head (that is the way they carried produce...
...The scene was reminiscent of India: the crowded streets, people scantily clad, roadside shops, outside cooking, crowded little houses with dingy lights, the heat and humidity...
...they want to help each other help themselves...
...no guardrails stood between us and the sharp descent...
...He earned degrees in sociology and anthropology...
...All I could sense at that moment was that behind that very special smile there was a very special person...
...There was little difference between these two buildings: long, narrow cement slabs with a tin roof overhead and slated or adobed walls...
...Nourishment is one of the keys to the future...
...Then back up into the hills for more work, to gather another bundle and come down again on Thursday...
...Now all was dark...
...His compassionate concern, his intent, wholly hospitable listening, his earnestness are all there...
...But the little ones did not gather round, and grasp my fingers, hands, and arms as they did in the schools...
...Stunted, weakened bodies can do little truly productive work, no matter how willing the spirit might be...
...an unmarked place to sleep on the floor...
...Pere Cico will be a part of that change, of that we can be sure...
...There were some soldiers about, a few trucks, and many, many women, not a few with children in tow...
...Our plane had been three hours late-some mechanical difficulty...
...and a breakfast that repeated the supper...
...There is the dispensary, the orphanage, the stores-co-ops and outlets for the craft work of the people-a library, a study hall, a hostel for the poor children from the hills allowing them to attend the primary school in the town, the canteen where Pere seeks to provide a nourishing meal each day for some three hundred people...
...Many of the women had walked as much as eight hours, some twelve...
...I was told Afe Neg Combite is Creole and means ' 'negroes' togetherness for their problems" -black persons working together to meet their own needs and develop a self-supporting society, a gret ideal in a country where unemployment borders on the universal and capital is almost totally lacking...
...Yet it doesn't take long to realize that the lively eyes are also very shrewd and miss little of what is going on around them...
...The Reverend Occide Cico Jean is a very special person...
...At 6'4" I stood as a great white giant in their midst...
...The Afe Neg Combite center embraces many things all clustered around Saint Nicolas church, still in construction...
...One cannot hear God nor man when an empty stomach is growling loudly...
...As we climbed, the air cooled and became even chill...
...For one of the concessions Jean-Claude Duvalier, the president-for-life, granted was to return to the pope the freedom to name the men of his own choice to the seven bishoprics of Haiti...
...We started up into the hills in Father's battered old van...
...It was the woman's lot, twice a week, to make the day-long trek to Kenscoff to sell the produce at the market...
...At first he was harassed, feared as a Communist, but his simplicity and openness, his love and self-gift, have succeeded in disarming most suspicions...
...I imtnedilately liked this energetic young Haitian...
...For the moment they depend greatly on outside help, especially from the United States...
...they go to bed soon after the sun...
...Three or four dollars, if she were lucky and a good bargainer...
...As the agent fumbled with my passport, I could see beyond the barrier a smile that I had not yet identified with the priest who has become almost a legend...
...Their contact here is Food for the Poor (1301 Copans Road, Pompano Beach, Florida 33064...
...Before Pere Cico came to Kenscoff three years ago, these merchants, as many as eight hundred of them, would spend the night in the village square, huddling together against the chill, grateful it was not raining...
...It weighed all of sixty pounds, more than half her own weight...
...The nourishment relieved the fatigues of one day's journey and made the return journey possible...
...After theological studies and ordination ten years ago, he spent seven years at the university...
...Women of all ages, many with little ones clinging to their skirts or huddled near them, thumb in mouth, wide-eyed...
...When he told the women we were his and their friends, there to help them, they smiled and clapped...
...Time will tell...
...Now, a priest of the people like the popular and gifted Pere Cico can be called forth to lead them...
...And for the moment Pere Cico is their young and effective father...
...The men had stayed at home to tend the gardens with the older children...
...Welcoming lights shone out from the canteen and the music of the Caribbean made the cool night seem warmer...
...Still, it is amazing what the determined spirit, grasping for the very necessities of life, can push the body to do...
...For the last three years he has been animating his people to new collaborative efforts...
...The women huddled together for warmth as the temperature dropped to fifty...
...When three or four hundred boarders, their children, bundles of vegetables and chickens had filled the floor of the "dormitory," the music and dancing in the canteen stopped and it too became a dormitory...
...Now there was Afe Neg Combite's "dormitory" and when that got full, their canteen...
...But they do not want to build a dependent organization...
...There is little electricity and no money for oil for lamps...
...Starting from virtually nothing they have made some progress materially, much more spiritually, achieving a new sense of human and Christian dignity...
...We passed through several villages, but there was little sign of life, though it was only ten o'clock...
...The road was narrow and winding...
...And perhaps a very great part of it...
...Will it produce any lasting change...
...There was no shelter if it were, and the market would be poor...
...Pere Cico, as everyone calls him, is thirty-six, a fact his boyish grin belies-broad, infectious, warm-a smile that lights up every bit of that dark face...
...We had come to see the "merchants"-mostly, almost exclusively, women...
...When they saw Pere Cico they became suffused with joy...
...Fifteen cents (they could afford no more) bought the patrons a supper of rice, cornmeal, or wheat, with beans...
...He is well-prepared...
...This was the center of Afe Neg Combite, an organization founded by Pere Cico and his people...
...I was disappointed...
...Everyone does...
...The people function quietly but effectively to raise themselves from the borders of starvation and to make it possible for at least some of the more promising to begin getting some education...
...As we moved among the women, great curious eyes looked up...
...Their little bodies were too tired from the long day's walk...
...As we entered Kenscoff we found the first real signs of life...
...We had flown little more than an hour, but had gone back decades...
...At the end of the canteen were some primitive facilities, at the end of the "dormitory" a more primitive kitchen...
...So far, Afe Neg Combite takes no political positions...
...The van soon broke down and a jeep had to come to the rescue...
...The poor have little night life...
...Three college men from Tennessee, volunteering their spring break, spoke excitedly of him...
...His whole heart is in his face...
...No child can attend to lessons when dazed with hunger...
...It shook the nation to its depths," was his reply...
...We had come to the mountains that Monday night to see the merchants, to get acquainted with Afe Neg Combite, to hear the heart of Pere Cico-the heart of the reviving church of Haiti John Paul II had been there the week before I asked Pere Cico if the pope's visit had had much impact...
...I inquired how much she might hope to get for it in the morrow's market...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 20
