15572: Slavin: Honoring the Rev. Antoine Adrien (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: PSlavin@unicefusa.org

With Greg Chamberlain's post about the Rev. Antoine Adrien, I wanted to
post this excerpt from my UNICEF Haiti Web diary. Thanks to the urging of a
friend, I had the honor of visiting with Father Adrien in Port-au-Prince on
24 March. He was a giant.

Patrick

http://www.unicefusa.org/aids/report_6g.htmlPORTS FROM THE FIELD
NEWS RELEASES
Special Report: Haiti Field Diary

April 15, 2003, 1:10 p.m.
New York

Time to sign off. As I wrote earlier, eight delegation members left Haiti
on Saturday, March 22, and I flew back to New York on the 24th. On my way
to the airport, UNICEF Haiti granted my request to visit one of the
Haitians I admire most, the Rev. Antoine Adrien. Adrien was a hero of the
grassroots movement that campaigned against the Duvalier family
dictatorship ? and his work led François "Papa Doc" Duvalier to expel
Adrien and his Roman Catholic Holy Ghost order from Haiti in 1969. Adrien
went to Brooklyn, where he led ground-breaking human rights work on behalf
of Haitian refugees. Returning to Haiti after "Baby Doc" Duvalier fled to
exile in 1986, Adrien worked to bring majority rule, democracy, to Haiti.

I met Adrien in my first week in the country as a resident foreign
correspondent when he negotiated with the Haitian military to install a
provisional president, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot. President Trouillot, Haiti's
first and so far only female head of state, went on to hold the country's
first legitimate elections, won by Aristide, also a Catholic priest, in
1990. Several years ago, Adrien suffered a stroke, which robbed him of his
ability to speak.

When we drove into the Port-au-Prince slum of St. Martin, both the UNICEF
driver and myself got a little lost. "Ki kote rezidans Pe Adrien," I asked
local residents in my broken Creole. "Where is Father Adrien's home?" The
St. Martin residents took a quick, instinctive measurement of my
intentions. They were protective of this national hero. One answered,
"Dezole, Pe Adrien malad." ("Father Adrien is sick.") I explained I knew
that, and that I was an old friend paying respects. Within seconds, a
12-year-old boy named Jocelyn was designated by the crowd to jump into my
car and show us the way. We drove on for a few more minutes, and entered
Adrien's simple rectory, near a hospice run by Mother Theresa's Sisters of
Charity.

Adrien was much thinner than when I last saw him, and resting in a simple,
darkened bedroom. He is now 82. It clearly frustrated Adrien that he could
not speak; what an orator he was. "You foreign journalists are pests," he
once admonished me and David Adams of the St. Petersburg Times."But useful
pests. We need you."

When I mentioned to Adrien that a mutual friend would soon be returning to
Haiti, Adrien indicated that he really wanted to say something. "He's a
troublemaker," I said of our friend, "but a good troublemaker." Adrien
somehow uttered a resounding, "Oui," in that dark, rich voice of his.
Later, driving out of St. Martin for the airport, I thought of a sentence
that Alan Paton wrote in the introduction to "Cry, the Beloved Country."
"For no country is now an island, of itself entire."

Thanks for coming with us.

Patrick

Copyright © 2003 U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
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