The mission of mercy began almost a year ago: Relocate dozens of abandoned, disabled children to safety in Jamaica from ravaging gang violence in Haiti. Some of them had died when blocked roads and armed threats kept them from getting medical care.
The story finally had a happy ending Thursday when 59 of the kids, along with 13 of their caregivers, docked in a port along Jamaica’s northeastern coast in Port Antonio after a 36-hour ocean voyage.
“I have been waiting in Jamaica for days in the event they arrive early,” said Susie Krabacher, a Colorado resident who led the months-long battle to get the children in the orphanage, which she founded 29 years ago, out of the country. “Nothing on earth will keep me and the kids from celebrating this victory, and we will pray before we set foot on Jamaican soil for the country that accepted children no other country would take.”
With the blessings of both the Jamaican and Haitian governments, the group of 72 will be housed at Mustard Seed Communities, an internationally renowned Catholic charity in Kingston, until they can return to a safer Haiti.
“This is a true mission of mercy. I have no doubt that blessings will follow everyone who has been a part of making it happen,” said Jamaica Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith.
Johnson Smith and Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness were first approached in June about taking the children in when Haitian political and civil society leaders flew to Kingston for negotiations with Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was also present. Johnson Smith was personally in communication with Mustard Seed’s founder, Catholic Monsignor Gregory Ramkissoon, about how the government could help, and helped shepherd, along with Holness, the granting of temporary legal status to the children and their caregivers.
On Thursday, Johnson Smith commended the priest and his board for what she described as their “tireless effort” in seeking support for the undertaking and making arrangements as soon as possible.
“I really pray for the well being of these very vulnerable Haitians and pray that Haiti itslef will turn the corner so that others in need who have no options can have the return to peace and normality,” Johnson Smith told the Herald.
It’s a fitting bookend to an endeavor that involved a former U.S. diplomat, a renowned Catholic priest and his charity, the American founders of a Haiti-based orphanage, HaitiChildren, and a cast of intermediaries who have spent months lobbying both governments to grant the kids the life-saving opportunity.
“What started as an attempt to help two separate groups of people to do a humanitarian thing turned into an obsessive labor of love and a full time job,” said Luis Moreno, the retired U.S. diplomat who spent months rallying people in both Haiti and Jamaica, where he once served as deputy chief of mission and U.S. ambassador.
He calls it “the most worthwhile endeavor since I retired from the foreign service.”
“Amazing, passionate people pulled off what initially was thought to be impossible under the utter chaos in Haiti. Remarkable,” Moreno said.
The Miami Herald first detailed the plight of HaitiChildren and its co-founders in a story on Sept. 10, 2023. At the time, there were 62 disabled children and adults at the orphanage, located about an hour’s drive north of gang-ridden Port-au-Prince, the capital.
While the trip to Jamaica itself was uneventful — everyone slept on cots and air mattresses and sat on the deck as their rescue boat traversed the Caribbean between the two countries — their extraction out of Haiti was a tight-lipped operation with multiple contingency plans in case something went array. And for a moment it appeared it had.
Neatly dressed in their Sunday’s best, the children, many of them in wheelchairs, were packed and ready to leave by the time their bus arrived shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday to take them to the boat before dark. But as the bus pulled out of the gates of the orphanage on Tuesday, it was immediately stopped by a group of armed men, said Krabacher, who was monitoring events from Jamaica while her husband, Joe, was following from their home in Colorado.
Panicked, Krabacher spent several hours on the phone with one of her Haiti staffers, working to get the bus freed. After several hours, the children were finally allowed to leave.
Krabacher, whom the kids call “mom,” talked to them on the phone during the trip to Jamaica.
“They are all smiles. They all kept talking over one another into the phone, ‘Mom, tell daddy we are not afraid! Mom, we are so happy. ‘Thank you, mom and daddy. You kept your promise! Will you be there, mom?’” Krabacher said, sharing photos with the Herald of the group on the boat.
David Silvera, Mustard Seed’s head of business development, told the Herald there would be no charge for taking care of the children.
Like many other Haitian cities, the rural town of Arcahaie, the site of the orphanage, had become overrun by armed gangs. Travel to and from the orphanage required crossing the territories of several heavily armed warring gangs. They had cut off safe passage, kidnapped staff and invaded the facility multiple times. During one invasion, they threatened to put the kids “out of their misery.”
Though Mustard Seed Communities and its founder, Ramkissoon, had agreed to take the children in, the head of Haiti’s child welfare agency, Arielle Jeanty Villedrouin resisted, saying at the time it was “inconceivable and legally inadmissible to transfer an orphanage from one country to another.”
At the root of her reluctance was Haiti’s disturbing history of children being whisked out of the country in times of crisis never to be seen or heard from again, a concern even now, when armed groups last week went into the child-welfare agency, the Institute for Social Welfare and Research, and looted and destroyed files.
Following the Herald’s coverage, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry finally relented. After meeting with Johnson Smith, the Jamaican foreign minister, during United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, he directed Villedrouin to work with Krabacher to take care of the children’s relocation.
But as Haiti became more chaotic by the day, the journey to Jamaica was delayed time and again. Legal documents needed to be signed, passports had to be produced and money needed to be raised for the trip and their care.
In the meantime, there were more deaths. Late Christmas night, one of the children waiting to leave for Jamaica, Paul Marie, died at an ill-equipped and understaffed hospital that Krabacher said, “reluctantly allowed our staff to enter.”
“Paul had been taken to 3 separate ‘hospitals’ during the last 4 weeks. None had medical staff or emergency equipment to treat him,” she wrote to the Institute for Social Welfare and Research, Haiti’s child-welfare agency. “As of this evening another child, Albert, was taken to the same hospital in which Paul Marie died due to the fact there were no other options.”
In January things stalled again. “This is a life and death situation,” Krabacher said at the time. “We buried another child today who could have been easily saved. I’m devastated and distraught.”
Last week after dipping into their retirement savings and sending a money transfer to Jamaica, the Krabachers tried again. A plan to fly the kids to Jamaica failed after a pilot was barred from taking off, and the children had to be moved by boat.
Krabacher says that with armed groups continuing to target key government installations, businesses and neighborhoods, it’s nothing short of a miracle the kids were able to get out.
“HaitiChildren was told no at every turn,” said Krabacher, who flew to Jamaica to await the group’s arrival. “We lost many of the children that could have lived and been taken with their brothers and sisters to Jamaica. They are buried in Haiti. We will celebrate landing safely in Jamaica, but they should have been with us.”
