Madan Janba, a Haitian woman who could be "125" is at the threshold of the Guinness World Record

In the 8th section of Petit-Goâve, in the locality called Moyette, is an old lady who would have been born two decades before the American occupation of Haiti of 1915. Bernicia Souffrant is her maiden name. She is better known to her community as Madan Janba, and could be the world’s oldest person according to Guinness World Record, if research confirms that she is indeed 125 years old.

Several journalists met Bernicia Souffrant on Saturday September 8, following an initiative of the Rector of Quisqueya University (UNIQ), Jacky Lumarque. At this meeting, Lumarque unveiled some of his projects about the elder, including the submission of authentic documents to prove Souffrant’s age to be 125 years. Another project consisted of building a courtyard allowing students to stay with Madan Janba to learn about her story.

According to one of her grandsons, Rosier Laguerre, Madan Janba, who is his father’s mother, was married and had four children, three of whom were the product of her marriage to Jean-Baptiste Laguerre, hence the nickname Madan Janba.

In good health, both physically and mentally, “Madan janba” took her nutrition very seriously. She says she consumed very little rice in her entire life, and focuses her nutrition on fruit and vegetables. Questioned about what she did during her youth, she said she had a little business, and spent her entire life exercising generosity with those around her.

Jacky Lumarque says he recognizes the importance of confirming Souffrant’s age. He explained that the birth certificate of Madan Janba’s twin sister was found and an Anthropo-sociologist was hired to deepen the investigation to determine her actual age.

It should be noted that the dean of humanity is the oldest person on earth at a given time. At least, the person who is recognized as the oldest. Since the death of Chiyo Miyako on July 22, 2018, the current dean of humanity is Japanese Kane Tanaka, born on January 2, 1903 and aged 115. The proven record of longevity among women is currently held by the French Jeanne Calment, who lived until the age of 122 years and 164 days.

It remains to be seen whether the process begun by Jacky Lumarque and the scientific research will bear fruit and prove the 1500 months and more of existence of Madan Janba. Apart from her, persistent rumors speak of a Normina Louis, another lady born in Grand-Goâve who herself could be 150 years.

On the 216th Anniversary of Haiti’s Independence, 1200 Haitians were arrested in DR and expelled at the same time

The administration General of Migration continues its operations against illegal foreigners in the Dominican Republic and, during the celebration of the New Year, arrested 1,200 illegal Haitians and repatriated them immediately.

Rezonodwes.com –The Dominican newspaper El Nacional also revealed that other illegal nationals, including Venezuelans, Colombians, Chinese, and other nationalities who were engaged in various activities without a prolonged residence permit in the Dominican Republic, were placed in detention to be returned by air to their respective countries.

In a note sent Thursday to El Nacional, according to the media, the administration of the Migration Service stated that “It continues to receive all the support of the Army, the National Police and Cestur, in operations conducted in different parts of the country, in search of undocumented immigrants.”

The arrests, according to the newspaper, took place in the rural and urban areas of Santiago, Mao, National District and Santo Domingo Este. They were made on construction sites, or in the middle of the streets where, according to the DGM, illegal men and women of different ages were selling various items. Some were followed and arrested when they reached the uninhabited houses where they sought refuge.

Hope for Haiti gets major gift from GoDaddy founder ahead of earthquake anniversary

By Jacqueline Charles Miami Herald 774 words 31 December 2019 The Miami Herald MHLD

When Haiti's deadly earthquake hit on Jan. 12, 2010, Renee and Bob Parsons knew they wanted to help.

The couple had no connection to the devastated country, had never visited and did not have the slightest idea which charity they could support.

Then the Parsons came across Hope for Haiti, a small organization running an education and healthcare program in the southern area of the country. It was located in the city of Les Cayes, outside the earthquake zone, but its doctors, nurses and teachers were all Haitian, and more importantly, Renee Parsons said, most of the money it collected went into helping the communities it served.

"We felt that of all the organizations we had looked at and the research we had done, Hope for Haiti had the most significant impact; that the dollars could be leveraged for the people that they serve directly as opposed to administrative costs, advertising," she said.

So Renee, who was working as the community outreach person for GoDaddy, the internet domain registrar and web hosting company that her husband founded, wrote her first grant. It was for $500,000.

Now almost 10 years later, Parsons and her husband are multiplying that gift through their own charity, The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation, and are gifting Hope for Haiti $3 million over the next five years to help support its mobile clinics and other healthcare initiatives.

"They are boots on the ground, they're in the communities that they serve and very much invested in them," said Renee Parsons, who has since visited Haiti three times since the quake to see first hand the work the organization is doing.

She describes the visits as life changing.

"It really is rewarding, it's emotional. For us, we really were filled with hope that things could improve there, we really could make a difference and that we wanted to keep investing in the communities that we were serving. That's why we are sitting here 10 years later and still involved with a fresh new grant," she said.

Hope for Haiti CEO Skyler Badenoch said the Parsons grant will make a huge difference, especially in its outreach to provide medical care and medications to underserved rural communities in southwest Haiti that otherwise would not have access to health care.

"We are beyond grateful that they trust us, they are our partner," he said. "I can't state how important multi-year funding is because it really allows you to take a longer-term approach than just having funding for a year."

h4h_Day3-3592 (1).jpgHope for Haiti, which provides healthcare in southern Haiti, recently received a $3 million gift from The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation. Bob Parsons is co-founder of GoDaddy.

Recently the charity launched the Haitian Solidarity campaign to raise $10 million. The Qatar Haiti Fund gave $2 million in October and the Kellogg Foundation also provided funding. The Parsons' donation, Badenoch said, will bring the fund to about $6 million.

"The whole idea of it was to raise money in solidarity with the Haitian people but also to use it to tell this story that is counter to the narrative on the 12th, all of this money flowed into Haiti and nothing happened," Badenoch said.

"We know that's partially true. We can go on and on about what went wrong, but I think it does a disservice to say that nothing happened to the 53 staff members who have been working really hard on our team over the last 10 years. And if we say nothing happened, what are we saying about their work?"

The Parsons' grant, he said, shows that there are organizations and individuals who still remain committed to the country years after the earthquake.

"It gave us a shot in the arm and it empowered us, and reminded us there is still a lot of good work to do," Badenoch said.

And while Hope for Haiti is not the only organization that employs an almost-all-Haitian staff, Badenoch said he considers it one of the organization's greatest assets.

"We fund-raise in the United States and we raise awareness in the United States, but all of our team in Haiti is Haitian. That's how we believe it should be, Haitian doctors, Haitian nurses, Haitian educators, technical staff," he said. "They were truly the first responders to the earthquake, before the international community came in, before anybody sent a dollar of aid, the first real responders were people who were there."

hit on Jan. 12, 2010, Renee and Bob Parsons knew they wanted to help.

The couple had no connection to the devastated country, had never visited and did not have the slightest idea which charity they could support.

So Renee, who was working as the community outreach person for GoDaddy, the internet domain registrar and web hosting company that her husband founded, wrote her first grant. It was for $500,000.

She describes the visits as life changing.

h4h_Day3-3592 (1).jpgHope for Haiti, which provides healthcare in southern Haiti, recently received a $3 million gift from The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation. Bob Parsons is co-founder of GoDaddy.

The Parsons' grant, he said, shows that there are organizations and individuals who still remain committed to the country years after the earthquake.

"It gave us a shot in the arm and it empowered us, and reminded us there is still a lot of good work to do," Badenoch said.

And while Hope for Haiti is not the only organization that employs an almost-all-Haitian staff, Badenoch said he considers it one of the organization's greatest assets.

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Don’t abbreviate 2020 when signing documents, police warn. It can be used against you

It’s easy to accidentally write the incorrect date right after New Year’s but experts warn that abbreviating 2020 could lead to something more serious: fraud.

The East Millinocket Police Department wrote in a Facebook post that writing “20” instead of the year 2020 could result in fraud because dates could be manipulated. For example, “March 3rd, 2020 being written as 3/3/20 could be modified to 3/3/2017 or 3/3/2018.”

“This is very sound advice and should be considered when signing any legal or professional document,” the police department posted. “It could potentially save you some trouble down the road.”

“When writing the date in 2020, write the year in its entirety,” he wrote. “It could possibly protect you and prevent legal issues on paperwork. Example: If you just write 1/1/20, one could easily change it to 1/1/2017 (for instance) and now your signature is on an incorrect document.”

Others agree that the threat of fraud is real.

Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates told USA Today that scammers could backdate a document in order to cash in an older check or even try to establish that debt is unpaid.

“Say you agreed to make payments beginning on 1/15/20. The bad guy could theoretically establish that you began owing your obligation on 1/15/2019, and try to collect additional $$$,” Rheingold wrote to USA Today.

Post-dating documents could also be a potential issue.

A check dated “1/1/20” could be labeled “1/1/2021,” making it active, Rheingold wrote.

An easy solution? When in doubt, write out the full date. That means write January 02, 2020, not 01/02/20.

Millions in Haiti face hunger in 2020

(CNN) — In a single week, eight of Rob Freishtat's tiny patients died of hunger.

In his photos, the children already seem to be vanishing, dwarfed by diapers three times their girth and the thick gloved hands of medical staff. Small comforts on their hospital beds, like the rolls of baby blankets printed with cheerful ducklings make them look even tinier.

All were under 2 years old when they died.

"Over the years, I've seen plenty of kids in Haiti with malnutrition get sick with infections or something else and die. Sad but not unusual. This is the first time that I have seen them literally starve to death," Freishtat told CNN after returning from a week at Sacre Coeur private hospital in the northern Haitian city of Milot, in early December.

Freishtat is the chief of emergency medicine at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, and he has volunteered his pediatric skills in Haiti every year for the past decade, ever since a devastating earthquake hit the Caribbean nation on January 12, 2010.

Now, just days ahead of the 10-year anniversary of that disaster, Haiti's population appears little prepared to face the next major shock, with millions threatened by hunger in 2020 due to a spiraling economic and political crisis.

Official mortality statistics for 2019 have not yet been made public, but doctors and medical staff working across the country tell CNN that unusually high levels of malnourishment are already claiming the country's most fragile lives -- and that more deaths are expected in the coming months.

Food insecurity headed for 'emergency levels'

Haiti has been on a rollercoaster of good intentions since the 2010 earthquake. Attention and donations from the rest of the world spiked in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake -- and then dropped. A deal with Venezuela known as PetroCaribe temporarily provided the country's government with cheap fuel, but then foundered and became linked to a scandal over the alleged mismanagement of the resulting funds.

Basic public services like hospitals and food access are supported by international aid organizations (which come with their own set of problems), but more and more Haitians simply cannot afford the food they need. According to the UN disaster relief organization OCHA, the cost of the most basic, joyless kitchen essentials in Haiti -- rice, wheat flour, maize, beans, sugar and vegetable oil -- jumped 34% this year alone.

"Marasmus (the medical term for starvation) was uncommon in Haiti since most families previously could afford rice or sugary drinks. That is no longer the case," said Freishtat.

In the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, a 25 kilogram bag of rice costs about $23 -- a steep increase over 2017 and 2018. (Though inflation can vary wildly level across different regions.)

"The under-2 group of kids is particularly vulnerable because formula is exorbitantly expensive there. Breastfeeding would be great, but the moms are starving too, so their milk dries up," he adds.

According to a new report by OCHA, things will only get worse. Forty percent of Haitians will face food insecurity by March, the agency predicts. For least 1 in 10, food insecurity will reach "emergency levels."

A national lockdown

Since 2018, Haitian protestors have been calling for change, their fury over the country's economic path fueled by official reports alleging massive corruption. But the resulting clashes have sometimes taken a toll on fellow citizens.

This fall, Haitian protesters demanding President Jovenel Moise's resignation pulled a desperate lever: peyi lock, a countrywide lockdown. Barricades were erected on roads across the country, some with as little as a kilometer between them, some manned by armed men. But the strategy failed to pressure Moise out of office, and further choked the country's flailing economy and emergency services.

Between fuel shortages and blocked roads, medical workers struggled to send supplies to rural areas, including vital flows of blood and oxygen to hospitals. Outbreaks of violence, including reported gang attacks, forced many schools to close down -- cutting off essential distribution points of food aid for kids.

One November evening during peyi lock, a young woman in labor with twins arrived at a small maternity hospital in the south, recounts Sandra Lamarque, the head of the Belgian mission of Doctors without Borders in Haiti. She urgently needed specialized obstetric care.

The facility did not have a specialist on hand, so it contacted a nearby general hospital, which refused to accept her. A second hospital said it no longer had a gynecologist, and a third said that because it had been looted and vandalized twice in October, it no longer saw patients after 6 p.m., Lamarque recounts, speaking from the southern coastal city of Port à Piment where the maternity hospital is located.

A fourth facility, a private clinic, finally agreed to see the woman, but wanted payment of $400 -- in a country where half the population lives on less than $2 per day. "The patient was taken care of and this is a happy ending, but if MSF had not made the transportation, contact with all hospitals -- and paid -- she would have died," said Lamarque.

Lamarque worries that, as inflation rises, even the medicines and services to save Haiti's hungry and injured will go up in price. According to local media, inflation drove up the cost of drugs and hospital services by about a third in 2019.

The number of mothers dying in childbirth was "extremely high" this year, she adds -- and that's only counting women who made it to hospitals to begin with. At least 45 women died in Haiti's southern region in 2019, Lamarque said -- more than anywhere else in the country, and a 35% increase over last year.

2019's long tail

By December, protester' barricades had been lifted, but the deadly aftereffects of the year's troubles are expected to extend into the new year. Ominously, there's no sign of political resolution on the horizon.

The children being hospitalized now are in a sense the country's canaries, the earliest victims of a danger to which the state can offer little response.

"There's always a delay between the nutritional state and the crisis ... so a rising death toll is expected," said Cédric Piriou, Haiti director of NGO Action Against Hunger, speaking to CNN from the capital Port au Prince.

Institutions that should nurse Haiti back to relative health in periods of calm have been crippled, with some hospitals remaining closed or understaffed. And while health services in the country are more developed and wider spread than they were before the 2010 earthquake, Piriou and other medical staff interviewed by CNN emphasize that the country is in no condition to deal with another major disaster.

"There isn't blood or oxygen in hospitals. It's been worse in these past three months," Piriou said, adding that other services like orphanages and prisons are also faltering. Haiti's Ministry of Public Health did not respond to multiple requests from CNN for comment.

Piriou, a Bréton who has worked in the country for two decades, has been personally touched by the crisis -- his wife's cousin, he said, had to go to two Haitian hospitals when she gave birth because the first one had no blood. Her child died within 24 hours.

Even without another major disaster, Haiti's hospitals could soon see a new wave of children suffering from the accumulated effects and complications of months of hunger, predicts Freishtat, the pediatrician.

"First you see the little babies, then you're going to start to see the bigger kids," he said.

In Haiti, Local Artists Spread The Christmas Spirit During Lull In Protests

Carrie Kahn, NPR - December 23, 2019

A lull in the demonstrations that have rocked Haiti for the last several months has given residents a break from the violence and a chance to get into the Christmas spirit — especially artists.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

After weeks of unrest, the streets of Haiti are back to their usual busy, traffic-clogged state just in time for Christmas. Anti-government protesters who had put up barricades and burned tires are taking a holiday break. It's allowed businesses to reopen and local artists to spread the Haitian Christmas spirit. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Port-au-Prince.

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Francisco Silva (ph) shakes a can of bright red spray paint before he adds the final touches to the large red face that is the centerpiece of his latest mural. It's covering the wall in front of the National Bureau of Ethnology that showcases Haiti's Vodou culture.

FRANCISCO SILVA: (Speaking Creole).

KAHN: This is Makaya, a Vodou spirit which we celebrate the same time of year as Christmas, he says. Makaya embodies the winter season.

SILVA: (Speaking Creole).

KAHN: "And the colors are the same as Christmas, red and green," says Silva. Green is for the Earth and red is for life. Artist Gary Francois (ph) is adding dozens of green leaves to the mural all around Makaya's red face. The eyes remain white, he says, to emphasize the spirit inside. Francois is studying at the ethnology school. It's located just across the street from the site of the former National Palace, which still hasn't been rebuilt since Haiti's devastating earthquake nearly 10 years ago.

GARY FRANCOIS: (Speaking Creole).

KAHN: He says most of his work reflects the political crisis engulfing Haiti right now. Until just a few weeks ago, he and his partner Silva couldn't have been out here so close to the scene of many street battles between police and demonstrators. Opponents of current President Jovenel Moise want him to resign. They accuse the president of massive corruption and theft - a claim Moise denies. Artist Gary Francois shows me a picture of a political mural just blocks from here, one he and Silva painted at the height of the opposition marches and riots this fall.

FRANCOIS: (Speaking Creole).

KAHN: In it, he depicts lawmakers as pigs, the president as a cat, the prime minister as a goat and the Haitian elites as sharks.

So it seems like there's a zoo in charge.

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Speaking Creole).

FRANCOIS: (Speaking Creole).

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: So, yes, many animals manage the country.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KAHN: On the other side of the mural, the national Vodou dance company called 21 Nations is practicing for an upcoming New Year's Day performance. Erol Josue, director of the company and the National Bureau of Ethnology, says, sadly, this Christmas in Haiti is not joyous for many. The months of relentless protests, which claimed more than 40 lives, have taken a toll on everyone.

EROL JOSUE: It's hard. It's hard. But we working on it. We have hope.

KAHN: New Year's Day is also Haitian Independence Day, a sense of pride, he says, for everyone. It's also the day the opposition has called for protesters to return to the streets. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Port-au-Prince.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRACEY CHATTAWAY'S "STARLIGHTS")

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Two Haitian photographers in 2019 soar in France and the USA

Photojournalists Dieu-Nalio Chérry and Jean Marc Hervé Abérlard have each seen one of their photographs ranked among the best for the year 2019 in the United States and in France. The French newspaper “20 Minutes” ranked one of Abérlard’s photos in the top 13. While Time magazine considers one of Chérry’s photographs to be the top 100 in the world.

The photo of Jean Marc Hervé Abérlard ranked among the best of the year in France was taken in Port-Au-Prince, November 10, 2019. In this shot, the photojournalist of the daily newspaper “Le Nouvelliste” and the Spanish Agency Efe, shows a motorcycle riding in the middle of burning tires during a protest the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse. This photo was selected as of the 13 best photos of 2019 by the French newspaper “20 Minutes.” In a retrospective of last year, it shows images that describe the waves of protest that have exploded around the world, especially in Haiti. See photo below.

On the other hand, Dieu-Nalio Chéry, a collaborator at the Associated Press (AP) agency, saw one of his photos ranked among the top 100 of the American magazine «TIME» for the year 2019. The selected image was taken on September 23, 2019, on the court of the Senate of the Republic, when the Senator of the North, Jean Marie Ralph Féthière opened fire against a group of opposition activists who had stormed the space. During the heat-up, the photojournalist himself was shot in the face. Below is the moment in question, immortalized by a click of Chéry.

The two (2) Haitian photojournalists did not hide their satisfactions following this classification. I am really happy to have been selected among all these talented photographers! Thanks to Time’s», wrote Dieu-Nalio Chery on his Facebook page. For his part, Jean Marc Hervé Abelard is happy. «Yon lòt fwa ankò, foto m pami 13 pi bèl foto nan SIPA, pou lane 2019 lan», he was delighted, renewing his determination to maintain the torch of professionalism in Haiti in 2020.

The photos taken by Chery and Abélard, it should be noted, are used to being among the best, within their respective agencies in 2019, and by other international institutions evolving in the field of journalistic image. Let us also remember that Dieu-Nalio Chéry and Jean Marc Hervé Abélard are both (2) co-winners of the 2019 Philippe Chaffanjon Prize. They won this prestigious award in France, in collaboration with our reporter Luckson Saint-Vil, following a multimedia survey carried out last year in Cité Soleil. «Cité Soleil: les dessous d'une paix fragile», a journalistic work that highlighted the relationship between armed gangs, politicians and businessmen in Haiti’s largest slum.

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Millions in Haiti face hunger in 2020