Bed Stuy Vollies Honors Mrs Sylvanie Donne Joseph SJ Dodgson MJoTA v5n2 p1222
On Saturday Dec 15, I drove Mrs Sylvanie Donne Joseph across Brooklyn to the mother ship for the Bed Stuy Vollies at the corner of Greene Street and Marcus Garvey Boulevard.
We walked into the trailer and saw the senior officers of the Bed Stuy Vollies hard at work scheduling, and in the main room the weekly meeting had started.
In the room was one of the 2 nurses I with whom I had been sent to Haiti in the month after the catastrophic earthquake in 2010 that leveled many buildings in Port au Prince, leading to the deaths of 10% of the population of Haiti.
I introduced Mrs Sylvanie as the angel who saved our lives: I was stranded at the bus stop for the bus to the Dominican Republic, to Santo Domingo airport with 2 nurses and without the cash we needed. Our co-ordinator had left us at the bus station and vanished and we had no way of contacting her.
Mrs Sylvanie immediately whipped out the last of her cash and paid what was needed for us to travel. And accompanied us all the way to Santo Domingo. When we arrived, her cousin collected the 3 of us and took us to his home to wash and eat. All the while thanking us for helping Haiti. And then they drove us to the airport to catch our flights back to New York, which was more than a foot deep in snow.
At the Bed Stuy Vollies on Saturday, we had inadvertently wandered in on the weekly meeting. As soon as I told them who Mrs Sylvanie was, Director of Operations Rudy Muhammed arranged a special meeting for her, and honored her.
