Studies At USI May Help Student To 'move A Mountain' When He Returns To Haiti

Sometimes things are so big, so monumental in a person's life that they become afraid of being swept away by emotion. That's when they get very quiet.

Sometimes that's how Steeve Jean reacts to wonderful things. He gets very quiet.

He's had some really hard things happen to him. Like grinding poverty. Like losing his precious mother very suddenly and unexpectedly.

And he's had a few blessings along the way. One was the gift of a lightning quick mind that seems to be his ticket out of poverty. And there's the blessing of a family living on Evansville's westside, the Riordans, who decided to extend their hands all the way from southern Indiana to the country of Haiti to help him out a bit.

He grew up in Plaine du Nord, a small town outside of Cap Haitien. Kim and Jim Riordan are parishioners at Resurrection Parish, and they started sponsoring him back in 2004 when he was a seventh grader at St. Pierre School. The sponsorship program was through St. Joseph Parish in Vanderburgh County, thanks to the leadership of Butch Feulner. This year, the program is sponsoring 192 students, including 14 at the university level.

"Butch had been going to Haiti for years," Jim explains, and while he and Kim didn't know Steeve, Butch did.

When he was in Haiti, he would often attend Mass at the parish where Steeve served as an altar boy in the early morning hours before school.

Butch remembers talking with Steeve, and asking how he was doing in school. He responded that he was doing well, "getting all A's" with a rank of number one in his class. He told Butch that he'd like to be a doctor.

When Butch asked about Steeve's family, that brought sadness. As he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, he said, "My mom just died."

The young man knew "at a young age" that he had to take his education very seriously. When his mother died, he worked even harder realizing "now I have to achieve my goals and take care of the people in my family."

As Jim and Butch talked about Steeve and his potential, they began to look for ways to bring him to the United States for a college education.

The Riordans' cost for sponsorship for grade school and high school was $300 a year, and included tuition, books, uniforms, meals and vitamins. They knew that the costs for college in the United States would be dramatically higher.

One evening, Jim told Kim his idea about bringing Steeve to this country to study. The next morning, she said, "I've been thinking about this. We need to meet him before we make any decisions."

HEADING TO HAITI

By November of 2011, Jim was heading to Haiti. "I didn't want to tell Steeve our idea, but I talked with all his family about helping him get into college. I wanted to make sure the family was okay with him leaving."

His grandmother, Rose Toussaint, is 96 years old. That's very unusual in a country where the life expectancy isn't past the fifties. When Jim talked with her, through an interpreter, "she looked me right in the eye and said she had always known that Steeve was very smart and that he would have to go away to study. All of the family knew he needed to go away because he was extremely intelligent."

During that visit, Jim started the process of paving the way for Steeve to study in the United States. He gave the young student a computer with the Rosetta Stone program for English installed on it. "I told him, 'I want you to learn English better. It [the computer] is yours.'

"He didn't get real excited" about the gift, Jim remembers. Steeve explains, "I thought I was going to cry so I didn't say anything. It was very very wonderful."

Jim also brought the video, "The Blind Side," with him on that trip. In it, a young impoverished student is adopted by an affluent family. The movie script includes these words, "I want to go to school where you live."

A  few days later, as Jim and Steeve talked about college, Steeve echoed those words, telling his sponsor, "I want to go to school where you live."

"It caught me off guard," Jim remembers

Jim headed back to the States, and Steeve continued a grueling routine of studies. Butch and Jim continued to talk, and "we decided where there's a will there's a way," Jim said. When he returned from Haiti, he did a lot of praying.

In February of 2012, he sent money to Steeve so he could purchase a phone. "I called him and told him about bringing him here to school. I told him, 'It's not guaranteed,’ and that when he was finished he would return to Haiti. He agreed that he wanted to do that."

Soon Steeve was getting a passport, and taking the Haitian National Exam. When he passed it, he became eligible for a five-year visa.

To obtain the visa, he needed to travel from his hometown to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. He had never been more than eight miles away from his home.

Here's where it gets interesting.

Jim was at a bank in Evansville, planning to wire money to Steeve.

He had heard there was another Haitian student in Evansville, here to study at the University of Southern Indiana on a State Department scholarship.

While in the bank, he spotted a young man and something told Jim that he might be the other Haitian student.

He approached him and introduced himself. Yes, the young man was from Haiti, and yes, he was going to study at USI. His name was Meschac Gervais.

Jim told Meschac about Steeve and his upcoming trip to Port-au-Prince. "I asked him, 'Do you have any idea about a safe place for Steeve to stay in Port-au-Prince?'" Meschac answered, "He can stay at my house. It's right next to the American embassy."

As the two men talked, Meschac said he was having a rough adjustment to life in the United States. Jim responded, "Come home with me." Meschac spent the next four days living with Jim and Kim and their four children in their home, getting acclimated to life in southern Indiana.

HEADING TO AMERICA

Back in Haiti, Steeve had been keeping a big secret. He was going to America, and he was going to be a college student there. Now he had permission to tell his family and friends. He headed to his parish church and told everyone. He cried, and they all cried too, thrilled at his great opportunity.

Soon he was on an airplane flying from Haiti into the Miami International Airport. When he arrived there, Jim and Butch were waiting for him. It was his first airplane ride, and his first American meal was a helping of pizza.

He was shocked by all of the electronic gadgets at the airport, including the auto flush on the toilets, the automatic soap and towel dispensers, and the escalator. "He stood for a while near an escalator not sure what to do," Jim remembers. The young man also had difficulty ordering food in restaurants. Jim explains, "In Haiti, you get what you are handed."

Of his life in Haiti, Steeve says he was "in the darkness. I miss Haiti, but I have to get a better future."

Of his life in American with the Riordans, he says, "I'm from Haiti. I don't want a lot. I don't want enough. I just want a little bit. They give me everything I want."

They have become his family. "They are mother and dad, sister and brother. They just give me everything I want."

Jim says, "We just give him a lot of love."

Steeve is concluding the first year of five at the University of Southern Indiana. The Riordans, many other generous families and USI have all contributed funds toward his education.

He leaves a country with a high school graduation rate of two percent. Fewer than one percent go on to college. There is a 60 to 70 percent illiteracy rate, and a 70 percent unemployment rate.

So many Haitians die every year from malnutrition and dehydration, a number that's "unheard of in the United States," Jim said.

"It's so hard to find a doctor in Haiti. If we can get him educated and send him back, he could go back and move a mountain as a doctor."

For additional information about the sponsor program go to this website:

http://www.stjoeco.org/haiti_mission.htm