Rosemarie Häfeli, the Magician of Many Lives, Including Mine

By Jean Venel Casséus In Haiti, everyone remembers a figure from elsewhere who played a significant role in their journey. I have mine: Rosemarie Häfeli. Her name is etched into my aspirations and my leaps, those necessary bounds to move forward. It flows between my steps and my sentences, between what I seek and what I write. I remember that October morning in 1988 when I set foot, for the first time, in the Verena College of the Salvation Army, in Delmas 2. I entered to learn the first letters of the alphabet, without knowing that one day they would assemble under my fingers for a poem, a news article, or an essay. Long before my time, long before that of thousands of other children, long before the mastered architecture of classrooms and courses, there was an act in 1969. A woman from Switzerland, a trained nurse, thirty-three years old, set foot on the soil of Port-au-Prince for a mission that almost immediately dissipated. Faced with this open time, without a defined function, Rosemarie Häfeli chose to act. She opened a school. A wooden structure in Delmas 2, a few teachers, gathered students, and the conviction that learning could stand firm in an environment deprived of essential social services. From 1969 until the turn of the 2000s, for over thirty-one years, Major Häfeli consistently supported the Verena College of the Salvation Army. She organized it, disciplined it, and gave it a rigorous pedagogical framework. The institution remained free and welcomed children from the most deprived backgrounds, while maintaining a level of excellence that stood comparison with the country's most privileged schools. When the time for transmission arrived, she passed the torch to other administrators, leaving behind a solid, structured institution, capable of continuing its path despite political uncertainties, multidimensional insecurity, and natural disasters. The Verena College of the Salvation Army still exists today, as the living presence of a patiently built work. In the name of all my loved ones, in the name of all my comrades from rough benches and too-thin notebooks, in the name of those uncertain mornings when we walked barefoot towards the future, I say thank you, Rosemarie Häfeli. Thank you for the patience sown in our eyes, for the discipline instilled without harshness, for the dignity offered unconditionally. In the name of all those childhoods you welcomed without asking where they came from, but only where they wanted to go, I offer you this gratitude that overflows words and seeks refuge in poetry. In the name of all dreams, in the name of all generations of barefoot sons and daughters to whom you gave flesh, a language, a posture towards the world, I salute the grace of your 90th birthday, which we celebrate this year. You opened a school and broadened horizons. Thank you, in the name of all dust grains turned into pearls, through your generosity. May this text reach you like a handful of light, offered with love, in the name of those who still walk, standing tall, in the wake of your footsteps. —
January 20, 2026