Exodus Trekkers: From Ireland to St. James ; Now Our Man in Haiti

By Robert R. Schwarz

Waiting to board for Port au Prince are (from left)

Kathy McGourty, Christine Westerkamp,

Lucas Sykes, Kim Lamberty (Director of Just Haiti project),

Niall McShane.

Niall McShane and five other St. James members are lighting a candle in the darkness of Haiti. This 48-year-old native Irishman and his group returned in early January with a success story about, well, it's all about coffee.

The group's mission was to make friends with a few hundred coffee growers in a remote region of Haiti , giving them moral and spiritual support in securing fair prices for their crop of coffee beans. For McShane, a member of his church's Peace and Justice committee, the mission was a success and a soul-changing experience .

Speaking impassionedly in an interview about his week-long trek to this Caribbean island, McShane began by quoting a coffee grower there: "Before this project started we had no hope," the man told him. The words moved McShane to tears.

In the town of Baradères, an all-day drive over mountain roads, McShane and his group met with the coffee grower association, Kafé Devlopman Baradè. In social interactions with the townspeople, the group learned how getting a fair price for their coffee beans has dramatically changed Haitian lives. People in Baradères related how they can now provide health care for their families and put their children through school and properly feed and clothe them. But McShane emphasized that his group's efforts went "way beyond charity." He explained: "Charity can breed dependency, and this project is all about sustainability. It's allowing these people to live in poverty with dignity. In the eyes of God, they have as much dignity as you or I or Bill Gates."

As we talked in his downtown Arlington Heights condo, the blue-eyed McShane became increasingly animated as he looked at his laptop PC at some of the several hundred images he captured on the trip. "The world defines Haiti and the Haitian people by their poverty, but we're all so much more than our circumstances, so much more than our possessions," he intoned with an Irish , baritone brogue that recalled to mind a college professor possessing disciplined diction. "We're so much more than where we live and what we do for a living." To flesh out his point, McShane, who is employed by a Chicago company as a computer software engineer, related a scene he saw at the Miami airport security walk-through: The scanner detected a wristwatch on a man. "The man didn't say, ' Oh, my watch !' He said, ' Oh, my Rolex ! ' "

Why Are So Many Haitians Poor ?

Having grown up in small Irish country town blighted with thirty per cent unemployment, Niall is no stranger to the poor. I asked for his opinion about the causes of widespread Haitian poverty. I mentioned past media reports about the country's cult of voodoo and other religious superstitions being blamed for keeping Haiti poor. "That's b--- s---," he said firmly. "We [ his group ] discussed this topic extensively and concluded that the Haitian poverty is caused by the hundreds of years of exploitation, such as the massive reparations inflicted by France when Haiti won its independence from that country in 1804. It was not paid off until the 1950s. Since then, as McShane explained , Haiti has been used as a pawn by great powers and has been exploited--such as the deforestation of its mahogany trees--by corporate and political interests, including those of the United States. "For things to change in Haiti, there has to be a change in the attitudes in countries like the United States so that they are working for the bests interests of the people," he said.

Haitian poverty also has domestic causes, McShane admitted. According to sources cited by Wikipedia.Org, Haiti has suffered 32 government coups in its 200-year history and has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world, where seven out of ten Haitians live on less than $2 a day. And the country has yet to recover from the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12 , 2010, in which a reported 220,000 Haitians died, leaving in this wake another high death toll from diseases such as cholera. United States aid organizations have donated more than $2 billion to Haiti.

We talked about the Catholic church in Haiti. "From what I can see, the Catholic church is one of society's pillars there," McShane said. "Everything that we saw was being driven by the Catholic church…The pastors in parishes in Haiti are truly the leaders of their communities. They're not only maintaining their parishes and schools but also building the economy of their parishes and their regions. "

The group, consisted of Pierre and Nerlande Herard, Lucas Sykes, Christine Westerkamp, and Kathy Mc Gourty [ see her website Exodus Trekker story of Oct. 14 2011], who started St. James' Peace and Justice committee and has been an active supporter of Fair Trade Coffee since 2009 . It gathered every evening after dinner to reflect on the day's events, especially how God had been involved. "We asked God," McShane said, " 'where did we see You in the people we met? ' But to be honest, I think it's going to take months to fully process our experience. This was an immersion in a culture so different from our own."

Niall McShane and coffee growers pause
a discussion for the camera.

The group often was up early each day, thanks to the 4:30 a.m. wake up call of roosters. The six traveled to other villages, including the city Les Cayes, where they met the diocese bishop, Msgr. Chibly Langlois, president of the Haitian Council of Bishops. A group member counted 23 hours of driving their vehicle through mountainous terrain, often on dirt roads. "It's not for the faint-hearted," mused McShane, who keeps trim by cycling and working out at the Arlington Heights Wellness Center. "I don't know when, but I'm going back, to help build a relationship with another village."

The president of the coffee growers association and
and the machine for processing washed coffee

McShane moans a bit to help start a generator.

Meanwhile,

the village of Baradères will this year ship 10,000 pounds of coffee beans ; a portion will go to the Baltimore Coffee and Tea company, which will roast the beans and then package them; another portion will be sent to church communities like St. James where, often along with Fair
Trade chocolate

bars, will be sold to parishioners; and a third portion will be sold
through the website "JustHaiti.org." The latter is a volunteer, multi-service tax-exempt organization, which claims it helped the coffee growers' association in 2009 sell its coffee for more than three times the fair trade price.

"It's an unbelievable business model," McShane said, now taking his eyes off the laptop images of his trek. "No middle man. All of the profit goes back to Baradères."

Coming of Age in Hectic Times

Niall's childhood until age 11 was spent in the heavily Catholic-populated Northern Ireland town of Strabane where his father taught grade school for children with learning disabilities. His mother also taught grade school but later became a stay-at-home mom. A brother, Paul, died at age 22, and a sister, Bairbre—she prefers this Irish spelling for Barbara—is a 46-year-old pastoral resources worker today in an Irish archdiocese. A step-sister, Eithne, is a company human resources employee in England.

At age seven, Niall's mother died, leaving her husband to care for the three children in the early 70s, an era Niall described as a "pretty hectic time in Northern Ireland." The earlier Civil Rights unrest in that country had led to the British government sending troops into the country. " Because of all this, my dad chose to send my brother and I to a boarding school run by Vincentian priests," Niall recalled. "They were pretty strict and believed in corporal punishment and the good ole fashioned stuff." He is "quite sure" that the whacking he got once or twice was quite was deserved.

Those early boarding school years were tough for Niall who, with his brother, could come home for a weekend only once a month. Separation from family still bothers him today. "Loneliness is something that affects me a lot . Companionship is very important to me."

After boarding school, Niall graduated from the University of London, where he majored in physics and astronomy. Marriage to an Irish lass followed. While working in Germany, daughter Jenie, was born. Now 23, she is earning a master's degree in ergonomics at Indiana University. She wears a black belt in the martial arts.

After working for the Motorola company in Ireland and then as a Motorola liaison for their Arlington Heights plant, the McShanes immigrated to America in 1995, where Niall worked as a software engineering manager until November of 2009. He is now employed by Cleversafe, Inc. in Chicago.

When asked what his life's challenges have been, Niall mentioned the unfortunate collapse of his marriage, currently being annulled by the Catholic church. "Out of that came a lot of depression, a lot of anger," he admitted. "I was feeling pretty broken. But I think that's mostly in the past." Looking out his third floor window at the train station across the street, he recalled how he surmounted this dark period with faith, with reading Psalms about how God lifts up the broken, and with the love and support of family (he went to Ireland for a month in the midst of his turmoil) and friends like the faith-group men with whom he meets from 6 to 7:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings in the St. James basement.

Niall doesn't spend a lot time in recreation; when he does, it's working out at the local gym, reading a variety of books—his current one is about particle physics—and cooking his own dinner. (My wife and I found his Irish soda bread delicious.)

In sizing up his goals, Niall quotes popular Catholic lecturer and author Matthew Kelly: "Be the best version of yourself." To Niall, this means being a good father, employee, and member of the community. "There are times," he reflects, "when I feel I can do a whole lot better, but also times when I feel I am using the gifts God gave me. "

Home sweet home - with many reflections
for Niall after an arduous trip

As for what pumps Mr. McShane's heart so hard for peace and justice issues, such as those he addressed in Haiti, it might be the memory of his father's decades of service with the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Ireland, an organization to which Niall belongs at St. James. But the real spark, Niall says, came from a homily about "respect for life" he heard delivered in 2008 or 2009 by former St. James priest, Fr. Jim Hearne. "He gave a a phenomenal homily in which he broadened the whole concept of respect for life," Niall said. "It went beyond the issue of abortion and into respect for all life. It really struck a chord with me and tapped into something I had felt for a very long time."

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rrschwarz7@wowway.com