Mission spurs 13 years of work in poverty-stricken country
PUBLISHED: February 14, 2008
WRITTEN BY: Jill Callison
PHOTO BY: Elisha Page / Argus Leader
Mike and Pam Plasier talk about their experiences doing mission work in Haiti.
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It's family legend, the time I ate mud pies, a concoction of dirt and water spread on lilac leaves.
I did it (poor me) because I wanted to play with my big sisters and that was the price they exacted.
That story came to mind when I heard about the people of Haiti who eat cookies made of dried yellow dirt to ease hunger pangs.
What happened to me once, in a childish game, is something Haitians - children and adults alike - must do on a daily basis to survive.
According to an Associated Press story, the cookies, at 5 cents apiece, are a bargain compared to food staples: two cups of rice for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago.
Beans, condensed milk and fruit also have gone up in price, and this in a country where about 80 percent live on less than $2 a day.
Mike and Pam Plasier have seen Haitians eating the dirt cookies.
"Some Haitians claim they're addictive," Pam says. "They're not good for you, though. They say there's some calcium in there, ... but they'll coat your arteries, and they'll kill you. It's not an answer."
Pam, who has visited Haiti more than 35 times since 1995, has never tried one of the cookies.
According to the AP story, a reporter who did try one found it sucked all the moisture from his mouth. What was described as "an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered" for hours.
The dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, one reason why Pam has never tried the dirt cookies.
But when it comes to helping the Haitians, Pam and her husband, Mike, are fearless in all other aspects.
The Plasiers, married for 17 years, found their lives changed when Pam volunteered to go to Haiti on a church mission 13 years ago.
A missionary came to speak in the North Dakota church they attended at that time and asked for volunteers willing to assist the residents of Ti Rivière, an extremely poor village.
Pam, who at the time had a 2-year-old son at home, can't really answer the "why" behind her decision to volunteer.
"Now I'm older and wiser, I count it as ignorance," she says. "It sounded like what I should do at the time."
What she is emphatic about is the impact that first visit had on her.
"I didn't want to leave," she says.
She did have to leave, but nothing prevented her from returning. Her husband, Mike, now also shares her passion for helping the Haitians of Ti Rivière. His passport shows 14 stamps.
Today, the Plasier family includes Craig, 14, Andrew, 12, and 18-year-old Jasmine, adopted from Haiti.
The Plasiers lived in Haiti for eight months in 1999. It was shortly after that when they decided to return more than once a year, and in 2003 they started taking teams to Haiti.
"If it's a medical team, we'll do some medical clinics," Pam says. "We do a lot of (Vacation Bible School) style training."
The village of 15,000 people spread out over 25 square miles now has three schools, an orphanage, one church built by the Plasiers and two they have sponsored.
A former Sioux Falls resident, Sue Houck, retired as a registered nurse at North Central Heart and moved to Ti Rivière to run the orphanage.
Several children in the village have serious deformities. A Sioux Falls physician has agreed to examine their X-rays to see if they can be treated.
"These kids will never have surgery in Haiti," Pam says. "It just won't happen. So at some point they're going to end up crawling the rest of their lives."
Currently, the Plasiers are working to establish partnerships. They take no administrative salary for their work, so partnerships are essential for their Mission Haiti program to succeed.
A nonprofit from Minneapolis, Feed My Starving Children, packages rice and soy, making it available to missions such as the Plasiers.
Mike, who is considering working full time with Mission Haiti, also is looking for a partnership to ship necessary supplies to Haiti.
Their next trip to Haiti will be in May.
"We're trying to put together a medical team for that time," Mike says. "If we can get doctors together, we'll stay for a week and do clinics."
A Haitian doctor has plans to build a hospital. It would cost $170,000 for the building; Mike hopes to find a partnership to help with the cost and furnishings.
The Plasiers are seeing rewards from their efforts. The schools they founded have 400 students enrolled; some of the students from a decade ago serve as teachers.
But the economy of this island nation, one known for nothing but its poverty, means the work must continue long after the Plasiers can no longer do it.
For now, they have a reminder of the hunger that drives a country to live on dirt cookies. Their daughter, Jasmine, relied on the dirt cookies for her meals for a long time.
"Even now, to this day," says Mike, "we'll still catch her once in a while when she walks behind the car, and there's dirt on the car, and she'll just ..." He pauses and mimics swiping a finger on a surface and bringing it to his mouth.
