Michelle Loubon

Deep fried pork (gri­ot), red beans and rice, fried chick­en, Russ­ian sal­ad and fried plan­tain rank among tra­di­tion­al Hait­ian dish­es. They were laid out for about 53 Hait­ian stu­dents at Sir Arthur Lewis Hall, St Au­gus­tine, on Christ­mas Eve (Fri­day night). Oc­ca­sion was a Christ­mas Eve din­ner host­ed by T&T mis­sion­ary Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC). They re­ceived gifts of cell­phones and key chains. Hec­tor-Joseph said: "For most stu­dents, this is prob­a­bly their first Christ­mas away from home. Many of them would have lost loved ones or would have known some­body who passed on. With­out most of those dy­nam­ics, these Hait­ian stu­dents have to face, be­ing away from home is hard. Christ­mas Eve night is the spe­cial night in Haiti."

Hec­tor-Joseph put the meal to­geth­er with the as­sis­tance of stu­dent Paul An­dre. Raised in Venezuela, he spe­cialis­es in French pas­tries. Among those present were spe­cial guest UWI's Prof Clement Im­bert, Deputy Dean, Un­der­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Af­fairs. Along with St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat, Im­bert was in­stru­men­tal in en­sur­ing their ar­rival to study man­age­ment and agri­cul­ture. Dur­ing the for­mal­i­ties, sev­er­al stu­dents paid ku­dos to Im­bert who they de­scribed as "their fa­ther." Their ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion was dis­rupt­ed af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake on Jan­u­ary 12 which killed 300, 000 peo­ple. Be­fore savour­ing the sump­tu­ous meal, the stu­dents were en­ter­tained by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. Stu­dents were spot­ted clap­ping, danc­ing and singing to mu­sic from Ed­win "Crazy" Ay­oung and Win­ston Scar­bor­ough.