A heart for Haiti

The emotional tug toward Haiti has been long and persistent for Mike and Tifanni Watkins.

It started five years ago, when the Polson couple began checking into adoption agencies and found Chances for Children, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based nonprofit organization that was formed specifically to focus on improving the lives of Haitian children.

In June 2008, during their first trip to Haiti, the Watkinses met their two new sons, orphaned brothers Peterson, now 7, and Adlerson, 5. The adoption process was long and tedious, though, and it wasn’t until the following year — 25 months and one day after they’d begun the process — that they finally brought the boys home to Montana.

Then the earthquake devastated portions of Haiti in 2010, and the pull toward the struggling Caribbean country became even greater for the couple.

“All you can think about is those kids are like my kids,” Tifanni said.

So they went back again in September 2010 to paint cribs, unpack boxes and help Chances for Children open another orphanage in Haiti. Tiffani has made six trips to Haiti, Mike’s been there five times.

“I cashed out my retirement from the school district,” Tifanni, a former teacher, said. “We use our tax returns to pay for the trips; one time we sold a couple guns.”

At some point they reached the realization that Haiti is where they belong. They and their four children, which include biological daughters Aurrora, 10, and Gabriella, 10 months, will relocate to Haiti at the end of August.

“It got to the point where we said if our kids were here [in Haiti] we wouldn’t go home,” said Mike, a pharmacy technician for Health Care Plus in Polson.

The Watkinses will be the directors of Chances for Children’s long-term Children’s Center in the mountainside community of Kenscoff, about 15 miles and an hour’s drive from Port-au-Prince. The faith-based, family-style facility will care for and educate 60 Haitian children who are not eligible for adoption.

They’ll make sure all of the children receive necessary medical care and attend school, and will oversee the staff who provide care for the children.

“We’ll oversee the cooks, schedule employees’ hours, purchase food and maintain the building and the resources of the Children's Center,” Tifanni said. “Many times things in Haiti don't go as planned, so we will have to be flexible in our duties in order to provide the best home possible for the children.”

The sustainability project in Kenscoff extends well beyond the non-adoption children’s home they’ll run. It also includes an adoption home, women’s training, a vocational education program, a community center, a medical clinic and a local church.

“We also plan on keeping our own family a priority, so it will be necessary for us to carve out time to spend together as a family,” Tifanni continued.

They plan to home-school their own children. Initially the family will live in a small apartment onsite, but eventually they will settle into a rented house in the area.

“It’s a nice area and doesn’t have the oppressive heat of other parts of the country, because it’s in the mountains,” Tifanni said.

Mike explained that scores of Haitians aren’t issued a birth certificate when they’re born, so there’s no “paper trail” needed to facilitate adoptions. One of their responsibilities will be maintaining paperwork on each child.

Child slavery is a big problem in Haiti, and if abandoned youths don’t have a home or place to go, such as an orphanage or children’s home, they’re easy prey for the slave trade, Tifanni said.

Just as missionaries typically are required to raise their own money to support themselves overseas, the Watkinses will need to find financial support for their long-term mission to Haiti.

“It’ll cost $60,000 a year, and we have a third of that,” Tifanni said.

They’ll need a generator and have to buy water, among other essentials.

“Even the most simple things are expensive there,” she added. “We won’t have health insurance. It’s cheaper to pay your way for medical care. Bags of nails cost as much there as a medical procedure, because everything has to be brought in.”

The family also doesn’t have the $10,000 it would cost for a shipping container to transport their belongings, so they’re planning to take 16 suitcases and assorted carry-on bags to get what they need to Haiti.

Tifanni has started a blog (mountainstomountains.blogspot.com) to keep people abreast of their forthcoming transition, and to work through some of the anxiety and emotions that come with such a life-changing move. In recent posts she talked about faith and change:

“Here's the thing, I realize that I've never truly gone without, and I have faith that God will continue to provide for us through the unknown. So I soldier on, even when I start to hyperventilate thinking about all that needs to be done before we go ...

“For the most part, I love change. I like to rearrange my furniture, change up the look of my house and generally work things over. ... It has become a very useful skill since we've moved 10 times in 12 1/2 years ...

“The thing is that when I'm faced with the unfamiliar, I automatically think, ‘what if its bad?’ I try to replace [those negative thoughts] with thoughts of unexpected good that could be just around the corner, because in reality I realize that living in Haiti will be hard, but hard doesn't automatically equal bad. I think in the end going through the hard makes the success that much more rewarding.”

Tax-deductible donations to the Watkinses may be made online at www.chances4children.org, or may be mailed to Chances for Children, 20343 North Hayden Road, Suite 105-114, Scottsdale, AZ 85255. Donations should note they are for Mike and Tifanni Watkins.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.