30677: Perroz (reply) Re: The Haitian Community in Pittsburgh, PA (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

from adollarperroz4@yahoo.fr

  I have seen the E-mail regarding getting in contact or making contact with 
Haitians and the Haitian community in New Orleans.   I am in a similar 
situation in Pittsburgh, PA.  Pittsburgh is a mid-size American city and 
belongs to the pre-sprawling & more public transportation oriented group of 
cities that is common to the cities of the Northeast, unlike its sister cities 
of the Midwest, West and South.  In other words, Pittsburgh goes up instead of 
out and is rather compact and people commute more in buses and intermingle more 
on the sidewalks of the city streets than the cities farther west and south. I 
would say that Pittsburgh is more like New York City or Philadelphia or Boston 
or San Francisco than cities like Los Angeles or Atlanta or St. Louis or 
Columbus, Ohio or Memphis, Tennessee, etc.   AND Pittsburgh's various ethnic 
communities are usually pretty well-informed of their various members and 
pretty well-organized.

  I keep in contact with the Pittsburgh Haiti Solidarity Committee here and 
this is also the city from which the (both now deceased) Mellon scion Dr. 
William Larimer Mellon and his wife, Gwen Grant Mellon of New York City began 
l'Hopital Albert Schweitzer back in 1956 northwest of Port-au-Prince in a 
village called Deschapelles in the Artibonite River valley and dedicated their 
lives to its establishment and growth.  There is a trust and an organization 
here to gather funds, medicine, and support for the hospital work back in 
Haiti.   So I figured that the various persons, both Haitian and blanc, that I 
knew or came in contact with, were pretty much the only Haitians in the city of 
Pittsburgh.

  But, I have since realized that the organization and community knowledge 
common to the other ethnic communities in Pittsburgh does not exist for the 
Haitian community here.  There are Haitians living here who are perhaps 
students or involved as teachers or are in industrial or government work who do 
not know of other Haitians in the city outside of their immediate family 
situation.  I know this for a fact after running into a Haitian student living 
here with his family and some Haitian restaurant workers on the bus.  None of 
these persons knew of, or were aware of, the other Haitian persons and other 
organizationsworking in Haiti, etc.

  I would like to ask you to post this E-mail so that Haitians and others in 
Pittsburgh area who may have an interest in Haiti and the Haitian community in 
Pittsburgh specifically, and the U.S. in general, might get in contact with me 
so that we may be able to establish a Haitian interest group here in 
Pittsburgh, PA.   A group for the Haitians living here in Pittsburgh to get to 
know and support one another and not to feel alone or isolated, etc.

  Thanks,
  Gary-Eugene


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