Garbage bags filled with donated clothes and shoes are piled upon pellets of rice, beans and medical supplies in three rooms of Maggie Doerrer’s house. Doerrer is a citizen of Haiti and America.
Watercolors by Haitian artists hang along the walls. Haitian music sings from her living room. Right now, she is sifting through boxes and bags of donated goods, packing some into other boxes to leave for Haiti and tossing others into a pile to be washed and then rushed off to the country.
“People are just so eager to give right now,” Doerrer said. “They just give and sometimes don’t wash their clothes, but we take anything we can get.”
Doerrer and Cecelia Westman, Doerrer’s surrogate daughter, recently organized a food and clothing drive called “Fill the Bus/ Haiti or Bust” on Jan. 23 for Haitian relief. Specifically, the goods donated would be going to a town just north of Port-au-Prince called Cabaret, where Doerrer lives part of the year. A celebration of Haitian music and dance occurred while the UNM shuttle bus was being filled with goods. Doerrer will drive the bus to Miami and onto a ferry to Haiti.
“Saturday was overwhelming in a wonderful way because I didn’t know what to expect,” Westman said. “I thought ‘Are people really going to take this seriously? Are they going to come?’ Before I knew it, there were so many people there. People ready and willing for this bus to go. I think people want to actually feel like they are doing something. They are really contributing. And everyone is asking ‘What can I do, what can I do?’”
Organizers received more than three busloads of goods.
“Everybody has problems,” Doerrer said. “I know we can’t help everybody, but we could make a difference. We’re not doing it for us, we are doing it for the people.”
The bus, a mid-sized Ford Econoline, sits in their front yard. The “UNM Carrier Shuttle” tag on the side is peeling off with age and the seats are nicked with holes, but Westman said it should be able to handle the load. She worries about the weight on the bus’ axles, and her conversation is punctuated with quick glances out to the yard to watch over her son.
She often stops packing goods and launches into animated tales about the plight of the Haiti crisis.
She lingers on the fact that Haiti has always needed help, and it’s during these parts of conversation that she lowers her voice and tells stories about her hometown.
After the quake, Westman came up with the idea to send the bus filled with food to the Haitian countryside.
“Then the earthquake happened, and everyone is in shock,” Westman said. “We’re watching the news and we’re seeing horrible, horrible stuff on the news, and I just mobilized in my mind. It was almost like an epiphany. I was getting ready to head out, and it just popped into my head. And it worked out. We’re not finished.”
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Now Westman spends her days prepping the bus for its departure, gathering more donations, and planning the bus’ route across America and through Haiti. While she’s at Doerrer’s house, she sifts through the piles of clothing, food and medical supplies.
Of course, this is in addition to all of Westman’s normal activities. Before the quake, she was just another transfer student working on finishing school and raising her son. Even today, she still wakes up at 6 a.m., prepares her son for school and then heads to her classes at UNM for the rest of the morning. By 3 p.m. she’s back at the Doerrer’s house and working on getting the bus operating and ready to go. She’s up until two or three in the morning, and then begins the process again.
“Every extra minute, every in-between minute I have, is spent working on this project,” she said.
However, in the last week she’s already missed three classes, and figures she’ll probably miss more, and she’s even considering dropping out for this semester.
“I’m sure I have some professors that are already pretty upset with me because I have not been there,” she said. “I haven’t been sleeping. And all of us have been paying for it, but we have got to do it. We have got to do it. This a big thing. It made me really think about if I even really want to stay in school this semester because I can’t let everything slip right now. But at the same time, I feel like I am doing a really good thing.”
Her dedication has inspired her family’s work ethic.
“We all work,” Doerrer said. “But Cecelia works hard because she’s the one putting her brain out to call to this, to call here, to call that. She’s the one putting the word out, talking to people and telling them what we are about here.”
For those looking to donate more, Westman and Doerrer said they need more food and organic seeds for the Haitian people to plant. To donate to Haiti email Cecelia Westman at conscioustlinget1@hotmail.com.
