Haitian Student Desperately Tries to Contact Family

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Updated: 4:00 AM Jan 14, 2010 Haitian Student Desperately Tries to Contact Family Haitians currently here in the U.S. are desperately trying to get ahold of their families back home. Posted: 3:44 PM Jan 13, 2010 Reporter: Liz Hayes Email Address: lhayes@wsaw.com

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Haitians currently here in the U.S. are desperately trying to get ahold of their families back home.

A Haitian foreign exchange student living in Mosinee is anxiously awaiting word from his relatives in Port-au-Prince.

Cleandfee Alexandre, 26, wants to know why.

Why has this natural disaster struck his homeland, after all the adversity his people already face?

And more importantly, are his family members and friends alive?

The UW-Stout engineering student was last in Haiti this summer, a country filled with extreme poverty and an unstable government.

"We haven't been living in Haiti, we've been surviving," Cleandfee Alexandre said.

He says his government is nowhere near prepared to deal with an earthquake of the magnitude, and all the destruction it's left behind.

"It's really sad to see that but I don't think our Government can respond until the international community shows up in Haiti and tries to help," he said.

So far, Alexandre has spoken with his brother-in-law back home, who says his sister and nephew are okay.

But dozens more relatives and friends are still unaccounted for.

When he heard of the disaster, he immediately tried to call his loved ones, but the country has had a major communication breakdown.

He says even if he could go back to Haiti tomorrow, he feels there's nothing he could do to help.

For now, he'll wait, pray and hope for the best.

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