14310: Lemieux: Wash Post: Couple Helps Haitians Orphans (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

The Givers; With the Impoverished Orphans of Haiti, a
Couple Found Their Calling
The Washington Post; Washington, D.C.; Dec 1, 2002; Phil
McCombs;
Copyright The Washington Post Company Dec 1, 2002

Although his fate was very strange, he lived.

-- Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables"

It was bad, real bad. He knew instantly, on that first trip
four years ago, that something must be done.

Something had to happen.

The kids' mattresses were crawling with insects. They were
on a meager diet in that old orphanage, rice and beans --
though it was better than what they'd had before.

Before, on their own and unprotected, the Haitian orphans
played in cesspools, chased garbage trucks for food. One
little boy used to lick their tires for a snack.

Now Charles brings goodies to the kids in the sparkling new
orphanage he's built -- and this boy keeps a little bottle
for his M&Ms, to ration them.

One or two a day.

Charles Le-Morzellec never set out to be a saint. That
wasn't his plan -- though he's battling poverty and disease
to bring some stability and happiness to the lives of some
kids.

They are the poorest of the poor, but Le-Morzellec is no
Mother Teresa -- he's got a big white beard and an edgy,
tough-guy demeanor. He needs it; nothing is easy in Haiti.

Four years ago, he'd flown down to check on a young
missionary his family knew. She was all right, but he was
stunned at the poverty.

"What I found," he said later, "made me ill and gave me
sleepless nights."

After that, he could not turn his eyes away.

"Haiti found me," he told a friend.

He's the last person you'd pick for a role like this: Now a
roofer, once a pet store owner and earlier a New York
restaurateur, captain at Washington's Sans Souci and
banquet manager at the Kennedy Center.

Now he dreams of a little bakery at the orphanage to raise
money.

>From KenCen banquet manager to baker in the slums of
Montrouis:

Now that's a twist of fate.

Le-Morzellec's wife, Gigi, had a small role in the 1958
movie by that name as a teenager in Paris. A beautician,
she came to the States in 1970 and eventually opened a
shop, Gigi Salon Parisienne, in Falls Church.

"I didn't want to go to Haiti and open an orphanage," she
admits. "When I tell my family I have an orphanage, they
say, 'Are you nuts?' "

But, like her husband, it seemed she was led.

Charles, 58, a native of Brittany, immigrated to New York
before Gigi to work at his brothers' restaurant. He served
in the Army, later drifted to Washington. He'd always been
good with animals, and after he and Gigi fell in love he
opened a shop near hers, Sophisticated Pet.

In the early '80s they built a house in Warrenton and,
since both had been married a few times, were content just
to live together.

Gigi sums up that old life like this: "Beauty. Money. Wine.
Marijuana. Good food. Nice Cadillac. Clothes. Travel."

It didn't work. They began sliding downhill. Business was
bad. "Charles lost his pet shop. I was losing my shop." One
night before Christmas 1985, on the Beltway, a drunk hit
their car.

Gigi was in such pain she could hardly work.

"Sometimes you have so many problems that it's good -- so I
look up from the depths, and something happened. God."

A customer took her to church. Charles soon followed and,
though the Kingdom comes with no such warranty, their
circumstances began improving.

"Something fell off me," Gigi says. "It was like a miracle.
All of a sudden, you change. And that was the beginning --
what God did with us."

Gigi sold her shop for a good price. Charles, by now in the
roofing business, did well. He was also raising and selling
exotic birds, one of his passions, from their home (and in
1996 testified against exotic bird expert Tony Silva, who
went to prison for smuggling endangered species).

In 1986, Charles and Gigi married, and things hummed along
nicely for them and Cosette, their poodle named after Jean
Valjean's adopted daughter in "Les Miserables."

Then, spring 1998:

A friend, Anne-Marie Baron, went to work at an orphanage in
Port- au-Prince. She'd been a student at Hartland College
in Rapidan, Va., a missionary training outfit run by lay
Seventh-Day Adventists. The Le-Morzellecs, who are
Adventists, often visited the campus.

Baron, a musician, took her harp to Haiti. Charles had
built a big wood crate for it, which also served as her
closet there.

Then he went down to check on her welfare.

"I'll never forget," he recalls of that first visit. "It
was a rainy day, getting dark. We passed so many
impoverished people. I thought of the 'court of miracles'
in 'Les Miserables,' where all the poor people stayed."

He found Baron in "fine shape, but the conditions she was
forced to work in -- the vermin, filth, lack of basic
sanitation -- were appalling.

"Here were 30 Haitian orphans living in a dirty, ramshackle
building without electricity. . . . Rats were everywhere."

The man running it was in his mid-seventies and had cancer.

He asked Charles to take over.

It was a choice, of course.

"You go to Haiti," he says in his straightforward way, "and
you come back a changed person."

He didn't hesitate.

"Why not get involved? Haiti is a few hundred miles from
our coast, a nation that is dying, and we sit on our big
fat butts!"

Later, people would say why not help poor kids right here
in the States?

And Charles would say, "Because I speak French!" It's a
huge advantage there, which not all missionaries have.

Immediately, on that trip, he looked for better facilities
-- and found a house on a hill in Port-au-Prince, removed
from the surrounding squalor. Back in the States, he spoke
to church and other groups to raise money, returning to
Haiti in September to rent the house.

"We needed everything -- food, equipment, electricity." He
bought a broken-down mule to cart water up the hill. Able
to stay only a few weeks, he returned in January 1999 with
more money, clothing and essentials -- and Gigi.

They bought new mattresses for the kids, burning the old.

"My wife got sick. She was in shock, crying all the time."
To give her some relief, he took her to a resort in
Montrouis, 50 miles northwest of the capital. They brought
some of the kids there to swim.

"They loved it," Charles says. "They live on an island, but
it was the first time they'd ever been to the beach!"

"I felt so terrible," Gigi recalls. "After all I'd seen,
here I was in a beautiful hotel. I felt guilty. I couldn't
understand why I have so much and those people have
nothing."

Then, an idea:

Why not move the orphanage to Montrouis, on the sea?

On his next trip, Charles found a "beautiful" beach house,
and moved the children. It was March 1999.

The children's lives improved. Baron, with a staff of
Haitian nationals, managed the orphanage while Charles and
Gigi did the fundraising in the States and visited every
few months.

At the same time he continued his roofing work in Virginia.
The Le-Morzellecs take none of the donations for
themselves.

Though they kept the orphanage population to about 20 kids
ages 5 to 13 to preserve a homey atmosphere, new "street
kids" arrived from time to time.

"One child," Charles recalls, "was a walking skeleton."

Still, they needed to move again. The landlord kept jacking
up the rent to more than $1,000 a month.

Gigi had a brainstorm:

She was visiting alone, without Charles, having come to
enjoy her difficult new life -- "God gave me love for these
people. I don't understand it. I cry for them, I always
give them everything from my suitcase."

She was talking to the pastor of the Montrouis Adventist
church - - a roofless structure, scarcely more than four
walls in a field -- when she realized they could make a
deal: They'd finish building the church in exchange for a
lease to build a new orphanage on its four acres.

Done.

Today, Eden Garden Orphanage is a clean, bright cluster of
buildings in a secure, walled compound. There are separate
dorms for boys and girls, a kitchen and dining area, an eye
clinic.

The kids walk 200 yards to the beach. There's a generator,
a garden with thousands of tomato plants, a well providing
safe water for the kids and showers and drinking water for
1,000 people in the community.

"It's an oasis in a barren place," says Emanuel Baek, a
religion professor at Hartland who visited early this year.
"The bathrooms are good even by Western standards. The kids
are getting the kind of care and love we'd expect parents
here in the States to give."

Fred Douville, a Florida electrical contractor who visited
last month to make sure contributions from his church were
being properly used, was impressed by "the happiness of the
kids, their diet, the security they live in."

His daughter, who wants to be a baker, hopes to work there.

Something else struck Betsy Mayer, Hartland's choral
director, when she visited in March with her choir:

"Charles and Gigi are so kindhearted, they even take care
of the dogs, the mangy curs in the area. They teach the
orphans, 'This is a pet.' It's the sacredness of life."

Supporter Roger W. Miller of Chevy Chase notes that
"Charles and Gigi aren't Bible-thumpers. I'm a nonbeliever,
but I believe enough in what they're doing to be an annual
contributor."

"Haiti has been good for Charles and Gigi," Baek muses. The
horrendous conditions "can bring out the best in people --
compassion, caring, sharing and love. I see them doing
that, trying to help people.

"That's what they live for."

Last October, the Le-Morzellecs' Warrenton house burned
down.

Gigi lost her lovely clothes, furniture, jewelry, artwork
-- everything. The room full of shoes, bedding, books,
clothing and toys for the orphans -- though spared by the
flames -- was mistakenly trashed by a cleanup crew.

A total loss.

Gigi is philosophical. "I had all these things, and in two
hours' time I had nothing left.

"But all that stuff is like an idol, you make it your god.
Now I have no house, I feel more free. If you don't have
anything to tie you down, you're free to go and help
people."

Now they live in a friend's basement apartment.

The other day, they had lunch there with Jacqueline, 8, a
former Eden Garden orphan adopted early this year by Andrea
and Ed Cross of Front Royal, and Annie, 7, a girl the
Crosses just adopted from Washington state.

The girls are giggling together.

Jacqueline had been emaciated and speechless when she
arrived at the orphanage a few years ago.

"Now she has such a big mouth," Andrea Cross chuckles. "I
have to ask her, 'Can you be quiet for 10 seconds?' "

"Look at her," Gigi says. "Oh, isn't she beautiful!"

The adults turn to discussing plans for Eden Garden. With
Christmas approaching, Charles has a wish list.

"If I just had $25,000," he says, "I could build a six-room
school for the orphans and 100 kids in the community --
that's all it would take!"

And $28,000 to expand the clinic, $20,000 to finish the
church as promised, $1,500 a month in operating expenses
they're always struggling to raise, and --

"Hey, why not do something for me?" Gigi quips.

"I do," Charles shoots back. "I send you to Haiti every two
months!"

Actually, he explains, every time they go, "it's rewarding.
I guess I'm selfish, and I want the reward:

"The good feeling of helping those kids."

For more information, visit www.edenchildren.org


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