Our Partnership with Heartline Haiti 

Meet Elianise

Story written by Haitian journalist, Aljany Narcius

Elianise is a 31-year-old first-time mother, who was born in Môle Saint-Nicolas, a gorgeous commune on Haiti’s northwestern coast, less than a hundred miles from Cuba’s shores. Elianise lost her mother at a very young age and did not know her father, so she was raised by her grandparents in the rainy town of Mare-Rouge.

Elianise – one of the small percentage of Haitian women who reach postsecondary education – took her initial classes in a small school in Mare-Rouge before pursuing accounting at a Port-au-Prince university, living with an aunt who took her in. Soon, she was hired! A local mango factory needed an accountant, and there was Elianise.

A year later, she met a charming fellow accountant, and that January she was married. By March, she was pregnant. But the wheels turned around her, and even with the men and women of the Maternity Center alongside her, getting through her nine months was a gauntlet. She braved danger – during armed gang operations, anti-government protests, episodes of “Peyi lòk” (Creole for “country lockdown”), gasoline shortages, and the permanently simmering atmosphere of violence, all to keep her maternity appointments. But she found a way every time.

“There was a great availability of caregivers at the Maternity Center. Before I was pregnant, I didn’t think about the value of it. But it helps bring serenity. There is easy access to the staff who know how to answer our questions. There is a real human aspect,” said Elianise. In December, she delivered a healthy baby!  Elianise shares, “At no time did I doubt my safety or my baby’s safety when I gave birth at Heartline Maternity Center.  The staff explains to us what exactly will happen to us, and they include the fathers too. We are reassured.”