Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2010 / Local man returns to hel in Haiti
Local man returns to help in Haiti
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published January 29, 2010
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Photo courtesy of Paddy Lynch
Paddy Lynch is surrounded by children during his three-month stint in Haiti in 2006. |
DETROIT — On Paddy Lynch's previous trip to Haiti several years ago, "it was like nothing I'd ever seen in my entire life," he said.
He found the capital city so poor, and so overpopulated, not to mention hot. "Haitians struggle on a daily basis to get clean water and survive," he said. "Children die there every day. For being a country literally in the shadow of the U.S. and the poorest country in the western hemisphere, it's just remarkable."
Lynch, 26, a funeral director at Lynch and Sons and director of youth ministry at Holy Name Parish, Birmingham, was part of a group that left for Haiti last Saturday, to arrive there last Sunday via the Dominican Republic. Lynch played football at Boston College with Detroit Lion Gosder Cherilus, a native of Haiti, before Cherilus was drafted into the NFL. Cherilus sponsored the trip: "Gosder was ready and willing to fund and sponsor any type of relief team that could be sent," Lynch said.
As he hadn't been back since his first visit, he was expecting it to be both "really moving and difficult in many ways," he said. For example, in a school community he spent time at, every single one of their buildings collapsed.
"To go back will be difficult, but I'm also very grateful able to go back with such a team," he said.
That team came together when Lynch started asking around for medical professionals to go, while Cherilus got in touch with the Haiti Outreach Mission, based out of Troy and run by Roger Matthews and his wife, Dr. Dominique Monde-Matthews. (Cherilus also founded the Gosder Cherilus Foundation last year to provide relief services to Haiti, among other projects.) Through family and friend connections, as well as through the HOM, nearly two dozen health professionals were heading down.
"I think a lot of the physicians out there who have been interested in helping have been experiencing the red tape, and I think it's sort of overwhelming them," Lynch said. "Through Gosder and the Haiti Outreach Mission's connections, it was pretty quick and pretty grassroots.
"It seems to me that when things like this happen, people are doing the right thing — doing the selfless thing," Lynch continued.
At Boston College, after finishing his undergraduate degree and starting work on his masters, Lynch eventually decided to take time off to move to Haiti to volunteer. He lived there for about three months in 2006, working with orphans and teaching English and computers, and also in a home run by the Missionaries of Charity for the sick and dying.
The group was to provide immediate relief and return to the United States Thursday. He said with limited water and food supply, and probably very little sleep and lots of work, the volunteers wouldn't be able to stay much longer anyway.
Haiti blog
Fr. Thomas Moore, OSFS, formerly of the Archdiocese of Detroit, now serves in Haiti and writes a blog at http://tommosfs.blogspot.com/ |
"The greatest concern, more than anything else, is being in such an unstable country," he said, especially with unpredictable resources. "There is a great concern, but there is a group of people willing to brave the unknown in order to do what they think is necessary."
They were planning on driving toward the capital and stopping as they started to reach people who needed medical assistance, whether it was in the smaller cities or the HOM's clinic in Mirebalais.
"It's an incredibly persistent and faithful people — the fact that they continue to survive despite their circumstances," he said. "That's something that most Americans can't even comprehend."
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