Iowa missionaries serving in Haiti flee island to escape growing unrest
By Todd Magel
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DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) — An Iowa couple doing mission work in Haiti decided to escape last week before the violence on the island gets worse.
Christine and Craig Gabhart work for the nonprofit Many Hands for Haiti, which is based in Pella. They call the Caribbean nation a paradise — but one that needs a lot of help.
“It was a long, grueling ride,” said Christine Gabhart.
Gabhart says it took three hours to drive 35 miles from their home in Haiti to the Dominican Republic border gates to escape. They didn’t want to leave and return to Iowa, but they worried about their safety after escalating violence.
“Americans can, at times, be a little bit of a target just because it’s typically assumed that Americans are connected to money. So then that probably creates more of a dangerous situation,” Gabhart said.
The Gabharts have been working and living in Pignon, Haiti, for a decade. They manage 130 staffers at four locations of the Many Hands for Haiti program. It’s a nonprofit that provides Haitians help with things like nutrition, child development, education, agriculture skills and spiritual needs. Christine Gabhart loves the tropical country but says it’s often a tragic struggle for its people.
“We live in a paradise of poverty. The conditions that people live within each day, just surviving one day to the next,” she said.
Gabhart’s security team told them it was probably time to leave. She said their compound is about 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince — too far away to see the current violence. Now they watch it from their home in Spencer, heartbroken about the future.
“It’s a very, very difficult situation emotionally for us just to still be realizing that nothing has changed for the Haitian people other than it’s getting worse,” Gabhart said.
The Gabharts hope to return to Haiti as soon as possible, once the violence dies down.
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