The U.S. government has started telling American citizens to leave Haiti after an American nurse and her child were kidnapped. Several thousands of people marched through Haiti's Capital Port-au-Prince last week, demanding protection from violence.

Kenya recently offered to lead a multinational police force to restore order. As the crisis has unfolded, the Haitian communities of New York City have been struggling to help the people of Haiti because of limited travel and instability.

Ricot Dupuy is the co-founder of Radio Soleil, a Haitian radio station in Brooklyn, and Maryse Cadet is the president of the Association for the Children of Regnier, Haiti. Cadet supports a school in Regnier, a locality in the western part of the country from Brooklyn. Both Dupuy and Cadet spoke with WNYC’s All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about how New York's Haitian communities are reacting.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

SC: Ricot, what have you been hearing from the community here about the current unrest and what are they hearing from family and friends who are still in Haiti?

RD: The talk of the town now is the projected foreign intervention by foreign forces, with Kenya at the head. Some people are for it, some people are against it. My understanding is that the people who have the least sense of history, they would embrace it. But the people who were schooled in Haitian history - they're not applauding because foreign intervention is part of what our problem is.

The U.S. entered Haiti in 1915 and they stayed there for 19 years. And then you have a series of interventions by the United Nations. That was supposed to give us a Haiti-free of gangs, free of political persecutions and things intensified, things got worse. So foreign intervention has never been good for us. In fact, foreign intervention is why, to a great degree, why we are where we are.

Maryse, can you tell us more about your organization and how the decision to start a school in Regnier came about?

MC: The Association for the Children of Regnier was founded in 1995. We opened a school in Les Cayes, which is one of the towns in Regnier. And then we found out that a majority of the people over there don't know how to read and write. We also have families that have 10 to 11 children - none of them go to school.

So we see there was a need there for education, and also they have to leave the town to go to the city of Cayes, which is far away. Some of them don't have parents over there in the city of Cayes, and then those that could afford it go send the children to the city of Cayes when the majority of the girls, they come back pregnant. So there was a big need over there for education. We start with 24 orphanages and then up.

How has the unrest in Haiti affected your work and are you still able to send resources to the school?

MC: It's a big problem for us because not only we cannot go to visit the school, to visit the students, to visit the staff, to have meetings with them. We have to conduct everything on Zoom, on WhatsApp, and sometimes because they don't have electricity over there, sometimes the WhatsApp, you have the communication keep breaking and everything.

It’s not conducted the way we expect it to be conducted. And in addition, we send school supplies and clothes for the students and meals for the kids - and those things don't reach the school at all. And the teachers also - some of them come from the city of Cayes to teach the kids. They cannot come because of the insecurity.

What have you been hearing from students and teachers who are on the ground in Regnier right now?

MC: Basically everybody that is in Haiti, period, is afraid for their lives. It's like they go to sleep at night, they don't know if they're gonna be alive tomorrow. That's the way it is. The teachers and everything, and even the school was supposed to open usually in September. This year, 2022-2023, the school was open in November and all of this from September to November, you could understand there's a big lapse.

And these kids, they cannot afford a laptop. They cannot afford to have classes on Zoom, just like over here. Not only can’t the parents provide them the laptop, but also there is no electricity over there.

Ricot, has the Haitian community in New York City been coming together to support each other during these times?

RD: The diaspora, to a great degree, carry the brunt of everything. So whatever they used to send to their relatives in Haiti, they had to increase it. The price of everything has gone up. If, for example, in a normal situation, you make a call to Haiti and the person doesn't answer, you wait and you make another call.

But in Haiti right now, if you call once and you call a second time and the person does not answer, the first thing that comes to your mind is – did something happen? Was that person kidnapped?

It gets to that point, people have death in the family. They can't go there, and Haitians are very, very family oriented. For Haitians not to be able to go to a parent's funeral - that itself is a death sentence. Kidnapped family members in Haiti - they call the diaspora for help, and so we essentially are the one paying for those ransoms and just imagine the level of stress associated with all this. So whatever they are feeling in Haiti, to a great degree, we feel it as well.

Ricot, how do you think people can help Haiti right now?

RD: The way to help Haiti is to understand what Haitians want. They want to be able to choose their leaders, and that is the problem. Haitians have been denied this for a long time. The leaders are chosen by the international community, the so-called Core Group. It’s a group of six: The U.S., the U.N. Canada, France and so on. Not a fly flies in Haiti without the approval of the international community - it is that bad.

And they prefer a so-called Dec. 21 accord by Ariel Henry, but who is Ariel Henry? I don't even call him the Prime Minister because he was not elected. He's totally illegitimate, and the international community is okay with it when the vast majority of Haitians are saying ‘over our dead body.’

So the way for people to, to help us is to allow the true Haitian story to be told, not the concocted story by the international community.