Survivor calls on Belmont, nation to aid Haiti in quake’s aftermath

Trey Flowers and the rest of his church group were running late to a 4:45 dinner. They just got in the van parked outside the grocery store when it started shaking. He barely had time to think. His body went into “survival mode.” Maybe someone was after them, trying to turn over the van. He heard screaming. Someone said, “Earthquake! Get out of the van!” Flowers quickly climbed out the back window into a giant cloud of dust.

When the cloud began to clear, he saw a woman covered in blood. She crawled out of the rubble, then raised her hands and sang to Jezi, Haitian Creole for “Jesus.”

“These people taught us what it meant to have faith in the middle of a crisis,” he said after returning from Haiti, where more than 200,000 people died in the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12.

Flowers went to Haiti with members of Woodmont Christian Church. Belmont’s Office of Spiritual Development asked Flowers to talk to students about his experience in Haiti, before, during, and after the earthquake. When he began speaking on Feb. 3, he emphasized not the destruction of the natural disaster, but instead the manner of the Haitian people.

“These are people who love one another, who want to help one another, but who don’t have the resources to do it,” Flowers told students in Neely Dining Hall. “But these are things that we have … the power to give them.”

Even before the earthquake hit, Haiti faced a different kind of disaster, one that was constant. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

“The average income before the earthquake was $700 a year for an entire family,” Flowers said. “Less than $2 a day for an entire family.”

During their stay before the earthquake, the church group visited children in orphanages. In one of the orphanages, 40 children stayed in a three-bedroom house with no mattresses and no kitchen.

Instead they had “a corner with nothing in it but a bag of grits about this big,” Flowers said, placing his hands about two feet apart. “It was two-thirds empty, and that was all the food that they had.”

After the earthquake the country needed and still needs even more aid.

Belmont is making efforts to help Haiti. Donations can be made and put into boxes all around campus.

Student Josh Thompson planned a benefit concert Feb. 19 at Curb Café that included Belmont musicians Brinley Addington, Chase Foster, Jason Nix, Josh Thompson, Kelsey Noffsinger, Lyndsey Highlander, Sydney Hutchko and Tucker Perry.

Thompson wanted to use “the music side of Belmont” to raise awareness, he said.

The students have a partnership with the Hope for Haiti Foundation, so all donations will go straight to the organization.

For alternative ways to help, both Flowers and Micah Weedman, director of outreach with University Ministries, recommend donating money to an organization in Haiti. Weedman suggested students financially support locally led organizations in Haiti rather than send care packages.

“Even before the earthquake happened, the mail service was a joke,” Flowers said. “Of course no one’s over there trying to deliver mail right now. So any supplies that get there will take months if not years to get there.”

There are several organizations in Haiti helping accepting donations which go straight to Haiti.

A quick and easy way to give money is by texting “Haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross, an effort supported by the U.S. State Department. All funds will support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.