Several Needham religious congregations focus their international outreach efforts on the Caribbean and Central America. St. Joseph’s Parish has a connection with Milot, Haiti. The Congregational Church has a longstanding partnership with the village of Santa María Tzejá in Guatemala that includes a yearly delegation of volunteers. And over the past two decades, parishioners of Christ Church in Needham have forged strong connections with the rural village of Lazil, Haiti, a village of a few thousand people in the mountains southwest of Port-au-Prince.
The church’s efforts in Lazil have included establishing a medical clinic and a goat husbandry program, which now operate independently. Since 2007, Christ Church has funded the village’s primary school out of its parish budget. The village’s music program is funded through donations and charitable events like the jazz concert that will take place in the church’s sanctuary Saturday, Oct. 18.
Concert organizer and parishioner Michael Niden said that the concert will feature top-notch jazz talent: The George Russell Quintet will be joined by jazz and soul singer Lydia “The Lovely Singer” Harrell and Donna McElroy.
Russell is the chair of the Harmony and Jazz Composition Department at the Berklee College of Music. He has toured the world as a musician and played with an array of jazz stars including Stanley Clarke, George Duke and Needham’s own Tiger Okoshi.
Russell said that about half of the music the quintet has selected for this concert has its roots in spiritual music. “I took my favorite hymns and spirituals and reimagined them through the lens of a jazz musician,” he said. “The other half will be traditional jazz tunes.” Proceeds of the concert will provide instruments, instrument repair and music lessons for the adults and children of Lazil. Russell said that he was delighted to learn that his quintet’s jazz will help to foster the development of jazz talent in rural Haiti.
Margaret Pantridge, a longtime participant in the Haiti Partnership, said “The partnership began in 2006. It came out of the UN Millennial Goals of 2000.”
The lofty goals set by the UN more than a quarter century ago included eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and providing a universal primary education. The church’s efforts in Lazil have attempted to fulfill these goals in one village.
It began with a medical mission in 2006 led by Dr. Emilie Hitron of Needham, now a resident of Atlanta. Hitron tried mobile medical clinics in the mountains southwest of the capital, but there was no continuity of care.
“We wanted to make a long-term commitment in one place and that’s what we did,” she said. She estimates that she was part of about 20 church missions to Lazil, usually staying seven-10 days.
“I had to sew new pages into my passport.”
Hitron said that she saw many of the same medical problems that she dealt with as an internist in Massachusetts, but there was more hypertension and strokes.
“There were a lot more GI issues because people only ate once a day at night,” she said. “Also, we dealt with a lot of childhood malnutrition — something that I did not see in Massachusetts.”
Hitron said that the music program was, in a way, an outgrowth of the medical mission. “The people in the village wanted a band because it’s very respectful to accompany the body to the gravesite with music.”
Within a year of the inception of the music program, Hitron said that the band sounded good. “It was really fun to walk through the hills and hear some kid practicing clarinet.”
A particularly challenging time in Haiti was after the earthquake in 2010. Hitron said that even though the town suffered no casualties, the church, the clinic and many homes collapsed. According to Hitron, after that disaster, Christ Church representatives made longer and more frequent trips to Lazil.
“We had to enter Haiti through the Dominican Republic and hire a driver,” Hitron said. “We brought our own tents and our own food. We got MRE’s from the military.”
Getting to Lazil is not for the faint of heart. The last part of the trip is over mountain trails holding on to a driver from the back of a motorbike, or hiking from the main road.
Although Lazil is safe, passage from the airport through Port-au-Prince is dangerous.
“There were one or two trips when the church insisted that we hire protection,” Hitron said. “We made it clear that if it was only money or things at risk, we weren’t going to shoot anybody.”
Hitron said that although she was opposed to hiring armed guards, there were some dicey moments driving through Port-au-Prince when she was thankful to have security.
Hitron said each morning at about 5 a.m. she heard people from Lazil and from the surrounding hills lining up at the clinic, hoping to be seen that day.
In an effort to make medical care in the village self-sustaining, Hitron and two colleagues paid for a villager to go to the capital and receive training as an RN.
“In Haiti, nurses do primary care,” Hitron said.
Despite the dangerous travel, Pantridge said that Lazil’s remoteness has shielded it from most of the violence that has frequently wracked Haiti and has become endemic again after the assassination of their prime minister in 2021.
“There’s hope in Lazil,” Pantridge said.
Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. They are available at ccneedham.org/jazz-in-the-sanctuary or at the door.
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