Haiti
"Journey
of Spirit: Images of Haiti"
Photographs by Kathryn Whitney Lucey "At
first you see poverty, hopelessness, despair and then you experience love, and
see people filled with The Spirit-see them as Sons and Daughters of the Creator.
Take from it happiness, beauty, love and show this of Haiti--that will change
the consciousness."
--Susan Burns
For Haitians, everyday is a fight
for survival. But in one city, Dr. Jeremiah Lowney has created an "Oasis of Hope"
in a country that struggles against all odds.
When he first went to the
slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on a missionary trip with his church in 1981,
Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, a Connecticut orthodontist pulled patient's teeth in makeshift
alley clinics. Twenty-three years later, after a chance meeting with Mother Teresa,
fateful acquaintances with missionary nuns and an expelled Haitian land owner,
Dr. Lowney treats Haitian patients in a three-story fortressed, 27,000 square-foot
outpatient clinic in a city called Jeremie.
I first went to Haiti in April
of 1990. I was then a staff photographer for The Newport Daily News and met Gail
Lowney Alofsin who invited me to meet her father in hopes he would allow me to
travel with the next group to document the work at the Haitian Health Foundation.
On that first trip, I was struck by the poverty--because it was pervasive, everywhere
I looked. I was overwhelmed by images of life that were so unlike my own existence.
I wanted to capture these first impressions along with the compassion and work
of the group of volunteers with whom I traveled.
Over the past 12 years,
I have joined four groups led by Dr. Lowney. Each group of volunteers has been
unique, and each trip was different. Some went to pull decayed teeth at outreach
clinics in the mountains, or treat endless lines of patients with eye disease.
Some spent their time building a latrine or installing a new generator. Each person
in the group had her/his own talents and reasons for making "the pilgrimage" as
Dr. Lowney calls them, and each person came away a little richer.
I found
myself returning for reasons beyond photography. With each trip I was changed.
I was especially touched by the humanity of the amazing women, the nuns who live
everyday at the clinic helping the most unfortunate. The work they do is tireless.
These women are nurses and social workers-they oversee construction sites to expand
the aid they can give. They pay school tuitions, buy uniforms and books for children
on HHF's Save-a-Family program and help to secure adequate housing. They attend
the funerals of the children who die. They live their faith everyday with compassion
and strength--without fear.
I found myself returning to continue to document
the ever-growing outreach program that the Haitian Health Foundation offers, but
I was also drawn to continue to photograph the survivalist spirit of the beautiful
people of Jeremie. What these people lack are the basics: food, clean water, adequate
shelter, basic medicine and a simple education. However, what they do have is
priceless-a spirit to prevail despite the odds, a determination to survive. They
smile when tears are so much easier. They smile because life is hard, but life
is all there is, and it must be preserved at all costs.
I now try to see
not what the people do not have, but all that they do possess. I see the beautiful
children and the proud and loving mothers and fathers. I see children who want
to go to school, who want to learn, who want to play and laugh and sing. I hear
the voodoo drums in the distance, the roosters crowing and smell the charcoal
fires burning. I hear the women's voices lifted in songs of prayer, thanks and
praise. And, as my friend Gail Alofsin says, "Once you've been there, you never
truly leave."
My hope is that these images show not only the poverty but
the spirit. Whether it's a defiant spirit, an angry one, a pensive one. Spirit
is worn on the face--we see in a person's eyes the quest for hope, comfort, and
survival. Look into their eyes and see the beauty of the people of Haiti.
Kathryn Whitney Lucey
May 2003 | 
