Photograph courtesy of Marianne Murchison
Marianne Murchison knew her calling was in Haiti. And although last year’s 7.0 earthquake destroyed the country, it solidified Murchison’s determination to make a difference there. “Haiti is a very desperate place,” she says. “You come there from the United States and you see that it’s totally different. You can’t really describe the difference, you have to live the difference.”
She arrived in Pignon, Haiti, a dusty little farm town in the Central Plateau 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince, five days before the devastating earthquake that killed at least 250,000 people. Although Pignon managed to escape much of the destruction that had affected other towns such as Jacmel in the south and Cap-Haitien in the north, its central position along Route National 3 made it a premiere destination for survivors. Its population of 30,000 to 35,000 people swelled to 55,000 within a matter of weeks. The enormous influx of people almost overwhelmed Haiti Mercy Mission, the orphanage where Murchison worked, that operated on $3,000 a month. “It was like a whole new element to life in Haiti,” she says. “What do you do with this huge flood of humanity that is coming out of the capital? How is this going to work?”
Like other nonprofits throughout the country, Haiti Mercy Mission, which also runs a clinic and several schools and churches, received donations from abroad. The Mission leadership team budgeted the money for 12 months and then divided it among its four churches. After that, it was up to the Haitians to go to a pastor and ask for help. “We thought it was really important for the Haitian people to help themselves,” Murchison says. “It’s not the amazing Americans saving the day or anything like that. It’s really about empowering the community.” She didn’t see that captured by the media. “They obviously showed the desperation and the worst parts of it because it was really bad,” she says. “[But] they really missed how the Haitians themselves mobilized as communities to help their own people…and really fostering cooperation.”
Religion, too, united the community. Many who were Catholic or nonpracticing Christians converted to evangelicalism, Murchison says. “We had people standing up in church saying, ‘I cheated on my wife with three other people and I really feel bad about this now. I almost died in the earthquake, and this is why I’m confessing in front of you 50 people who I don’t know very well,’” she recalls. “My dad’s a pastor and I had never seen that before. I’ve never seen that many people adopting the faith.”
Murchison, who was then 22-years-old, left Haiti in March with plans to come back to eventually start a college or seminary because post-secondary education doesn’t exist in Pignon. Many have the intelligence to succeed but lack the money or family connections to attend school elsewhere in the country or the world, she says. Currently, she’s studying for her master’s in international relations at Webster University to better understand how world governments and international organizations function in order to prepare for her future in a country that some have deemed a republic of NGOs.
“You see [Haitians] having this hope that Haiti will get better, that there is hope for the future, that it’s not just all these bad things happening like the earthquake, the cholera, political violence,” she says. “These are like phases the country is going through, almost like growing pains or something before a better future is coming. It can be very discouraging looking at Haiti and looking at other places with severe problems, but it’s realizing that of course there are desperate people in Haiti and other places, but there’s also people who have hope in their own country and their own communities, and that’s what the international community should focus on—helping those people actually trying change their country.”
SLM staff writer Jeannette Cooperman, along with a team of local physicians, traveled to Haiti in December. Read Cooperman's feature on Haiti, based on her experiences, in the March issue of St. Louis Magazine, on newsstands February 25.
