Found God-daughter and Muncheez Restaurant are Good News out of Haiti

Last Saturday I received an ecstatic phone message from my mother. After trying for 11 days to reach her god-daughter Ann-Marie Dorville – finally success! They finally connected via cellphone. Ann-Marie is alive and well and so are her two children. Her home isn’t, though. It was completely destroyed during the quake along with the rest of the homes in the neighborhood. Right now she’s living on the street. We’re trying to connect her with some of our other distant relatives to find her a place to stay.

Haitian Restaurant Gives Free Food to Displaced

Children eat a free spaghetti meal at Muncheez restaurant in Petionville, Haiti, outside Port-au-Prince. The restaurant has been giving away free food to Haitians since the earthquake. Courtesy Tamara Keith/NPR

I was also heartened by this story reported on NPR about a Haitian restaurant in Petion-Ville that is serving free food to the displaced.  It’s called Muncheez. It’s a pizzeria and sub shop that survived the quake. Rather than letting their food go bad, they decided to cook it and give it away for free. When the eatery ran out of food, they asked nearby businesses to contribute food and ingredients.

What I find even more remarkable about this story is that the resourceful restaurant owners put on their “geek” hats and put out information on their website on how people can give to the restaurant to keep it going.  They now have a paypal account: send donations to Gilbert Bailly at gbailly@yahoo.com. You can also connect with them on Facebook.

Other Ways to Help Haiti

Have You Seen Her?: Still searching for Ann-Marie Dorville of Delmas, Haiti. My mother's god-daughter.

A few days ago my mom received some welcome news. Cousins from my father’s side who we were also concerned about were confirmed alive and well in a town outside of Port au Prince. Shortly after, we spoke to my mother’s relatives in Boston who reported that her younger sister is doing fine. She is in Carrefour, Haiti in a neighborhood that was not affected. She is staying longer until she can figure out how to return home.

We haven’t confirmed through contacts the whereabouts of my mother’s goddaughter yet, though another contact had mentioned that the neighborhood she lives in really wasn’t touched. It’s highly likely that she’s okay too. We continue to remain hopeful.

We thank everyone who has prayed for us, passed along photos and information.

The Work is Not Over

Just because we have received good news about our Haitian relatives, doesn’t mean that we are checking out of contributing to the relief and rebuilding efforts. We  donated multiple times to relief organizations and plan to make that sacrifice to donate the rest of the year.   I urge you not to check out either even if you’ve donated money already.

I’ve provided a short  list of other ways to help Haiti through donating materials, sky miles, medical kits and your time.

Other Ways to Help:

Haitian Alliance – (Atlanta area) collecting water, food, clothing etc

International Rescue Committee – make online gifts of medical supplies, ready to eat meals, survival kits

Daily Travel & Deal Blog - Donate frequent flier miles to relief organizations

Mercy Corps - Build a fundraising page to accept group donations.

Donate your computer savvy – if you are computer savvy, offer to help people who aren’t by setting up profile pages on cnn.com’s looking for the missing section, Google’s people finder or set up a Facebook page and send out Tweets on their behalf.

Get the rest of the story!

I also encourage you to watch and read news reports from other countries to get another view of what is going on . While the American cameras tend to show the drama: “scenes of looting, reporters rescuing people from crowds or performing medical wonders” – there are other perspectives that they’re not showing. Make sure you get a different point of view.

View good piece from 20/20 on history of Haiti.