Love and Haiti

Two Ben Avon sisters are devoting their lives to saving the lives of Haitian orphans.

 

By Jonathan Wander
Photography by Laura Petrilla

WEB EXTRA: Photos by Laura Petrilla

When Lawrenceville photographer Laura Petrilla visited her friends Jamie and Ali McMutrie at the Brebis de Saint-Michel de L'Attalaye (BRESMA) orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last May, the owner and director of the orphanage, Margarette Saint Fleur, asked her if she had ever been to her homeland before. "No, this is my first time," Petrilla said. "Welcome to Hell" was Saint Fleur's starkly casual response.

But in the midst of this "hell" -- the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, an island battered by political upheavals, violence and a sequence of ferocious hurricanes -- you will find a sanctuary for Haiti's youngest, most vulnerable citizens: its orphaned children. To meet the two young women who devote their lives to these children, to hear from the parents who have adopted children from the orphanage, it is difficult to avoid the cliché of calling BRESMA a touch of heaven, and Jamie and Ali McMutrie angels for what they do.

Ben Avon natives Jamie, 29, and Ali, 20, are sisters. They live most of the year at the orphanage, which is divided into three houses -- the "Big Kids' House" for ages 4 and older, the "Baby House" for toddlers, and "Jamie and Ali's House" for the babies and children who are the most frail. They run the day-to-day operations of the orphanage, and they do so without pay, strictly as volunteers, eating what the children eat, surviving, as the orphanage does, on donations and the fees for child care paid by adoptive parents. "It's a Third World country," Jamie says of Haiti. "But I expect First World results." Theirs is a story of tireless dedication, mountain rescues, battling bureaucracy, crying with joy over a baby's first temper tantrum, high expectations, higher standards and, most of all, happy endings.

HOW DOES A NICE PITTSBURGH GIRL WIND UP IN A PLACE LIKE THIS?
Jamie McMutrie always has found her greatest joy in children, caring for them, nurturing the kids who needed it most. While at Avonworth High School she worked and volunteered at an after-school day-care center and later, after graduating, ran a program on the North Side for teenage mothers. But when she was young, after hearing stories that Pittsburgh used to have orphanages, she became fascinated and knew, early on, that she wanted to work in an orphanage one day. While attending Toccoa Falls College and Community College of Allegheny County for social work, McMutrie began researching orphanages online, putting out feelers for those who needed help.

But it was a chance encounter while waitressing part-time at the Monroeville Denny's that led her to Haiti. She struck up a conversation with a customer, sharing her dream to work in an orphanage. The customer had heard about a need for help in Haiti and a woman, Margarette, trying to start an orphanage there.

In December 2002, McMutrie flew to Haiti to meet Margarette Saint Fleur. "The first trip was eye-opening," McMutrie says. "A guy heard what we were doing and told us about three kids who needed help. We drove three hours, then walked up a mountain for another three hours and found these kids who were alone in a house, no parents at home, severely malnourished, near death."

McMutrie and Saint Fleur waited for the mother, Miracia, to return. She was gone each day, working from dawn to dusk carrying water to people's houses. She willingly let McMutrie and Saint Fleur take the children -- to save them. There was no orphanage home yet, so the children, ages 8, 6 and 3, lived in Saint Fleur's house. "That's what made me realize -- I can't leave here now that I know what these kids are going through alone, just lying there, with nothing. I had never seen anyone in that condition before," says McMutrie. The area was called Cabaret, a deceptively glamorous name for a decidedly squalid place.

The children had no father. "The dad was abusive and left for another woman. Usually that's how we get orphans, the fathers leave," says McMutrie. "Sometimes the parents die or are too sick. But usually it's because the fathers leave and want nothing to do with the kids anymore."

A sad story. With a happy ending. Those three children -- ill, starving, alone for hours each day, are now 14, 11 and 9, thriving as part of a loving family in South Dakota. There is a growing list of more than 450 other happy endings, all part of Jamie and Ali McMutrie's 100 percent adoption-success rate.

A SENSE OF BELONGING
Jamie McMutrie's first trip to Haiti lasted four days, and she was amazed at how attached she became. "Within 12 hours I knew it was where I belonged," she says. McMutrie returned in March 2003 for a six-month stay, helping Saint Fleur set up the first house, hiring nannies and staff, and, as she says, "making sure things were done the way I wanted them to be done." Ten children were brought into the orphanage, and BRESMA was established.

Saint Fleur, as a Haitian, is the owner of BRESMA. Any business in Haiti must be owned by Haitians, and an orphanage is officially considered a business, Jamie explains. Saint Fleur handles much of the paperwork and is quite adept at it, which is the reason BRESMA is known for having the fastest adoption process of any Haitian orphanage. Even with Saint Fleur's skill, adoptions currently take a frustrating 12 to 18 months, though many are working hard to shorten the process.

One of Saint Fleur's most important roles, though, especially early on, was getting the nannies at the orphanage to follow Jamie's orders. "Kids come in extremely malnourished, and in Haiti many women have ideas of how to fix it -- whether it's waving a branch over a child or feeding a baby nothing but lemon juice for four days. Then, when these methods don't work and the baby dies, the women blame the devil. So it takes a lot of training and trying to change cultural views," McMutrie says. "We have to be there because the nannies can easily go back to their old ways. They don't believe in formula, only breast-feeding. But if there's no mother, or the mother's extremely malnourished, we have no choice. We have to constantly convince our nannies, and sometimes there's a lot of resistance."

ALI JOINS HER SISTER
Ali McMutrie and their mother, Diane, accompanied Jamie on her trip in March 2003, and Ali, 15 at the time, felt the same immediate sense of belonging that Jamie did. "Once you go, you either know you're never going back or always will. I just knew I was supposed to be there," Ali says. Like her sister, Ali had always loved working with children, frequently babysitting and helping with child care at church. She was unable to return until she was 17 -- "the hardest two years of my life," she remembers -- because of her parents' concerns for her safety. During that time, she watched as Jamie traveled to Haiti every three months, each stay lasting two weeks.

Ali returned briefly in 2005, and it was in this year that Haiti changed, and so did Jamie and Ali's involvement with BRESMA. During a time of political upheaval, after Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile, Jamie says it had become impossible to communicate from the States. "The Internet and cell phones hadn't really come yet, and we were going crazy wondering what was going on. There was rioting every day. Corrupt police. That's when we decided someone had to be there full-time."

They stayed for the month of June 2006 and returned in the fall. At this point there were 80 children in two houses, but some of the infants weren't doing well. "The babies are born malnourished because the mothers are," Jamie says. In January 2007 they purchased a third house, where they would live and take care of newborns and the most fragile kids, with the help of nannies and a live-in nurse.

Now Jamie and Ali have their routine well-established, with the two of them staying in Haiti most of the time, each one occasionally returning to Pittsburgh, and, rarely, both of them making the trip together.

 

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