DANIEL ROUZIER: RAGE IN THE GUT
to Phillip Villedrouin, giving meaning has never been more important. This morning, I am no longer even angry. The rage that burned in my gut is now just a dull ember. I look at these images with a heavy weight in my heart. They set fire to Le Montcel. Flames...
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 4 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
BY DANIEL ROUZIER
In homage to Phillip Villedrouin, giving meaning has never been more important.
This morning, I am no longer even angry. The rage that burned in my gut is now just a dull ember. I look at these images with a heavy weight in my heart. They set fire to Le Montcel. Flames that gnaw at the shadow of a dream, but this time, thank God, they did not snatch a child from its mother's arms to throw it into hungry pyres. They did not murder nuns. They did not rape young women. No, this time, they only ravaged stones, roofs, fields. Wood, earth.
But a life's work... that is what they reduced to tatters.
What was Le Montcel? The incarnation of a dream patiently woven, stone by stone, by a businessman whom death took before fire could devour his hope. Le Montcel was a forty-room hotel where simplicity found its luxury, a restaurant where modest dishes took on the appearance of a feast, an ecological farm-school where fruits were harvested from the earth with the respect due to a nurturing mother. Up there, irrigation techniques, reinvented ancestral knowledge found their breath, dispensed to farmers whom the State forgot in the folds of the hills. It was a utopia in miniature: plots reforested through sheer effort, sweat, and faith. A charcoal production center from what others left to rot. A project where hope was shaped with rudimentary tools. And then, there was this open-air chapel, where people of all religions, all colors, all origins gathered, seeking something beyond simple rest. Perhaps a peace that the world below denied them. I remember. That clear morning when compatriots gathered there, who before their stay at Le Montcel disagreed on everything, had agreed to spend three days together. A miracle of fragile understanding. On the last day, they had washed each other's feet, in a humble yet highly symbolic gesture. Then they had attended together an improbable, even miraculous, unity mass: a Mambo reading the first lesson, a Baptist pastor singing the psalms, an Anglican bishop lending his voice to the second lesson, the Gospel delivered by a Catholic bishop, and finally, an Imam preaching the homily.
All of that no longer exists. Yesterday, brigands set fire to Le Montcel. I stand there, eyes closed to a sky splattered with ashes. The silence is heavy like a shroud. What remains of this man's dream now that the acrid smell of burnt wood reigns over the mountain? Perhaps a memory dying in the minds of those who knew this space dedicated to silence, to the peace of a time stolen from chaos. I think of the ivy creeping on the inn's walls, its stubborn tendrils seeking the earth. Of the rose gardens, the flowering peach trees. Of those pines standing like melancholic giants. In that undergrowth, children once played, their laughter echoing in the pure air. In one of the many greenhouses, I had seen Philipp teach young people how to read the rain, how to decipher the secret language of clouds and store water. Fragile knowledge, transmitted in a breath, ephemeral like the wind. Le Montcel was not just a hotel or a farm. It was a dream carved from the rock of an impossible utopia, a desperate attempt to connect people to their land, to fill the void left by betrayed political promises. Those who climbed the mountain sought not only rest but a form of rebirth. A return to the world, cleansed of its filth and lies. I saw women plant seeds there with the conviction of building a future. I saw men weep in silence before the calm beauty of the hills. I saw men and women who believed themselves enemies embrace on the morning of the third day of a retreat. I saw a Marxist ask to be baptized. But in one night, the mountain lost its light. Yet, the ashes speak. The ruins preserve the memory of those who did not give up. The brigands did not just burn down a place; they wanted to break a bond, to stifle a promise made to the earth itself, to our shared Haiti. This morning, the sun weakly pierces through the gray veil. I refuse to believe that all is lost. In the smell of charred wood persists a vivid memory. A memory waiting for its time to be reborn. Like those stubborn seeds that, despite drought, always end up sprouting.
What was Le Montcel? The incarnation of a dream patiently woven, stone by stone, by a businessman whom death took before fire could devour his hope. Le Montcel was a forty-room hotel where simplicity found its luxury, a restaurant where modest dishes took on the appearance of a feast, an ecological farm-school where fruits were harvested from the earth with the respect due to a nurturing mother. Up there, irrigation techniques, reinvented ancestral knowledge found their breath, dispensed to farmers whom the State forgot in the folds of the hills. It was a utopia in miniature: plots reforested through sheer effort, sweat, and faith. A charcoal production center from what others left to rot. A project where hope was shaped with rudimentary tools. And then, there was this open-air chapel, where people of all religions, all colors, all origins gathered, seeking something beyond simple rest. Perhaps a peace that the world below denied them. I remember. That clear morning when compatriots gathered there, who before their stay at Le Montcel disagreed on everything, had agreed to spend three days together. A miracle of fragile understanding. On the last day, they had washed each other's feet, in a humble yet highly symbolic gesture. Then they had attended together an improbable, even miraculous, unity mass: a Mambo reading the first lesson, a Baptist pastor singing the psalms, an Anglican bishop lending his voice to the second lesson, the Gospel delivered by a Catholic bishop, and finally, an Imam preaching the homily.
All of that no longer exists. Yesterday, brigands set fire to Le Montcel. I stand there, eyes closed to a sky splattered with ashes. The silence is heavy like a shroud. What remains of this man's dream now that the acrid smell of burnt wood reigns over the mountain? Perhaps a memory dying in the minds of those who knew this space dedicated to silence, to the peace of a time stolen from chaos. I think of the ivy creeping on the inn's walls, its stubborn tendrils seeking the earth. Of the rose gardens, the flowering peach trees. Of those pines standing like melancholic giants. In that undergrowth, children once played, their laughter echoing in the pure air. In one of the many greenhouses, I had seen Philipp teach young people how to read the rain, how to decipher the secret language of clouds and store water. Fragile knowledge, transmitted in a breath, ephemeral like the wind. Le Montcel was not just a hotel or a farm. It was a dream carved from the rock of an impossible utopia, a desperate attempt to connect people to their land, to fill the void left by betrayed political promises. Those who climbed the mountain sought not only rest but a form of rebirth. A return to the world, cleansed of its filth and lies. I saw women plant seeds there with the conviction of building a future. I saw men weep in silence before the calm beauty of the hills. I saw men and women who believed themselves enemies embrace on the morning of the third day of a retreat. I saw a Marxist ask to be baptized. But in one night, the mountain lost its light. Yet, the ashes speak. The ruins preserve the memory of those who did not give up. The brigands did not just burn down a place; they wanted to break a bond, to stifle a promise made to the earth itself, to our shared Haiti. This morning, the sun weakly pierces through the gray veil. I refuse to believe that all is lost. In the smell of charred wood persists a vivid memory. A memory waiting for its time to be reborn. Like those stubborn seeds that, despite drought, always end up sprouting.
