Published: Wednesday, 18th August, 2010 5:00pm

Mixed emotions for Gregory as he visits Haiti

Gregory Grene brings some joy to a little boy in Bidonville in Haiti.

Gregory Grene and Tim Perutz recently visited Haiti on a week-long fact finding mission as part of research for the Andrew Grene Foundation. Gregory's twin brother Andrew, a United National official, tragically lost his life in January during the Haiti earthquake and the foundation was established in his memory.

The trip for Gregory and Tim was bittersweet. The country is struggling against incredible odds, they say, and yet the people's dignity and resilience are humbling. While the destruction in Port-au-Prince is the bitterest reminder of loss, Gregory and Tim found that Andrew had left behind him an extraordinary legacy of love and achievement that continues to stretch throughout the city and beyond.

It was on January 12 of this year that the world changed for Gregory Grene, when his much admired brother Andrew lost his life in the natural disaster.

Six months later Gregory summoned the courage to return to Port-au-Prince, where he had visited with his twin, Andrew in 2009, with a mutual friend of his and Andrew's, Tim Perutz.

Tim and Gregory have established a charity, the Andrew Grene Foundation, to provide educational assistance to Haitian youth who would otherwise not be able to afford school, and to assist in microfinance credit for tiny businesses that can provide the difference between life and death for a family.

"We were welcomed so warmly by the United Nations mission (MINUSTAH)," says Gregory, who grew up on a small farm near Belturbet with his late brother Andrew.

"This mission continues to work around the clock to try to keep up with what is effectively an ongoing state of emergency. And yet all the staff there - the head of the mission, the chief of staff, the UNICEF team, the humanitarian team - simply could not have been more helpful in guiding and assisting us to learn as much as we could in the time we had there; and their kindness and generosity reflected the regard in which they held my twin."

Gregory and Tim's research extended throughout the city, including the areas that are now confronting the greatest challenges: the tent cities that sprang up after January 12; the historically-impoverished bidonvilles (shanty towns) of Cité Soleil and Fort Dimanche; and the areas directly impacted by the terrible loss inflicted by the earthquake.

They also travelled deep into the countryside, as far as the roads would take them and beyond, to understand firsthand the conditions that affect the remote rural areas.

"One of the things that struck us most about the countryside was the contrast between the incredible physical beauty of the landscape, and the fierce issues that the people there have to contend with," said Gregory.

"On the plus side, when the seasons favour them, they may have slightly better access to food, however basic, and they do not face the same intense and unsanitary over-crowding as the city-dwellers. On the negative side, these areas are so remote that children may need to walk for an hour and a half to get to school when there is a school to go to," added Gregory.

"There is no guarantee of any access to a teacher, nor for that matter to medical care. Teachers and doctors depend on numbers for their survival and when people are as spread out as they are in the country, it can be impossible for those professions to work there."

Given the terrible statistics throughout city and country - the 85% unemployment, the hundreds of thousands of people lost in the earthquake, the dire and ubiquitous poverty - was there any uplifting element?

"There are two lights in the darkness," says Gregory. The first is the heroism of those, both Haitian and foreign, who are working to make things better. I have been amazed by all we have seen this trip and I am so proud of what my beloved brother was doing before. I had no idea how widely his passion for Haiti had travelled and how deeply it had resonated. One of the memories I will cherish is arriving this time in the heart of the country, down dirt roads that are all but impassable, and finding that the centre of communications in a tiny village had been named the Andrew Room. In this kind of community radio is a vital link, and the inaugural radio broadcast, which was transmitted from that room while we were there, included a prayer for my brother.

"The second light in the darkness comes from the qualities of the Haitian people themselves. There is nowhere in the world more impoverished than the areas we visited, yet in all our time there, not one hand was lifted against us, nor one voice raised in anger. I do not think we would have had the same experience in equivalent situations in our own homelands. And in a country where vast numbers of people get by on $2 a day, folk spend 45% of their income on their children's education. That kind of determination and hope is humbling," says Gregory

Do Gregory and Tim feel they achieved their aims in the visit?

They set out to gather as much knowledge as possible and had 27 meetings in one week, so as to make considered decisions about how best to commit the foundation's funds. They both now have a pretty clear idea of exactly what they want to do.

The first thing is microcredit, which enables the most impoverished rural sector to get on their feet. "It literally changes their lives - it is more emotional than we could have imagined," says Gregory.

"And as for the second half of our mandate, education, we initially thought of building a school; but in the current situation, where building regulations are still in flux, we will achieve more by creating an Andrew Grene Scholarship. This will be granted to four recipients, two for high school, two for university. And instead of bricks and mortar, we hope to enable a living legacy, a legacy of hope and dreams that would not have been possible otherwise," concluded Gregory.