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By Susan Gallagher
Magalie Rigaud was in a supermarket with her twin sons on Jan. 12 when the Haiti earthquake collapsed the store, buring them beneath rubble until looters came to their rescue eight hours later.
The next day, Rigaud headed off to her job with Catholic Relief Services, the Church’s international agency that has been providing humanitarian aid to Haiti quake victims for almost 11 months and plans to do a lot more.
Rigaud was in Helena for the Bishops’ Social Justice Summit held Nov. 10 at Carroll College. On the day before the conference, she shared her story with The Montana Catholic.
She said she and her sons, 12 years old at the time, prayed while trapped and they sang songs in Creole and French. Asking God to help them, they prayed also for people whose fate was unknown to them in the immediate aftermath of the quake, said Rigaud. Relatives “on the outside” included her 18-year-old daughter.
Rigaud said collapse of the five-story building that included the supermarket killed about 100 people, but she and her sons emerged in good shape, her daughter was safe and the family’s home endured the earthquake.
“If you put your faith in God, you know that he is there for you and he’s not going to let you down,” said Rigaud, a lifelong Catholic. She said that as she and her boys awaited rescue she told them, “We are not going to die today.” They didn’t panic, because she did not panic, she said.
Rigaud was at the supermarket, in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, to buy food for her cat, Snow. As the store collapsed and its contents and occupants were thrown about, she said, she and the boys ended up protected by dog food. It landed in a way that shielded them.
At CRS, for which Bishop George Leo Thomas is a board member and chairman of the U.S. Operations Committee, Rigaud is responsible for logistics, including distributions from warehouses. She has helped the agency with its immediate response to the quake and its ongoing assistance, and she speaks enthusiastically about being part of long-term reconstruction. Shortly before the trip to Helena, she was involved in CRS’s response to the cholera outbreak in Haiti.
Her earlier employment was with aid agencies CARE and Save the Children.
“For me, this (humanitarian work) is my path,” she said.
Web Exclusive published in The Montana Catholic Online, November 19, 2010.
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