SOUTH ORANGE - The materials Wyclef and Claudinette Jean have been taking with them on their flights to Haiti are most likely items donated by Local Talk Newspaper-area residents.
"We've been getting items from all over," said Patricia Fontaine at the Fusha Home Accents store at 2 South Orange Ave. Feb. 2. "We even had U-Haul trucks from Brooklyn come up to bring things."
Fontaine was sorting received items into general categories along the three-room office's walls. Eight-by-11-inch sheets of paper marked "Shoes," "Bottled Water" and the like were taped on.
It takes a moment for Fontaine to navigate the rooms. One is greeted by six folded wheelchairs entering 2 South Orange Ave. About 24 packed cardboard boxes, all marked 'Yele to Haiti,' are several feet in, ready for delivery. There are several more items, marked "For Yele/Haiti" and set between a staircase and post office boxes at 4 South Orange Ave.'s entrance in the same building.
"Claudinette and I started operations the day of the earthquake," said Fontaine. "We first moved all the house accessory models from here into storage; that took a couple of hours."
Fontaine said that she, the Jeans and others involved with their Yele Foundation have been busy ever since.
"The support has been fantastic," said Fontaine. "We had to get a warehouse in South Orange to help distribute. We're seeing Newark Mayor (Cory A.) Booker about finding a second warehouse. We have a second collection store in New York City."
2 South Orange Ave., with its Haitian flags and Yele Foundation posters is hard to miss. The building is to the NJTransit South Orange station overpass' west and across from the vacant lot that was the Biefus Buick-Mercedes Benz dealership.
The three-story structure one held the offices of The Sickley Brothers Fuel Oil Co., local suppliers of heating oil and coal. The Sickleys went out of business and SOPAC/Clearview Cinemas now sit on the former oil and coal rail sidings.
The Jeans, however, are South Orange residents since before Wyclef formed "The Fugees" recording group with village native Lauryn Hill and Prakazrel "Pras" Michel in the 1990s. W. Jean, born in 1972 in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti Oct. 17, 1972, and his family first immigrated to Brooklyn. He went on to live in Newark and Saddle Brook before settling in South Orange.
"Fusha has been here for 18 months," said Fontaine. "Claudinette's the owner."
The Fugees sold 20 million copies of their two albums before spinning off into solo careers in 2000. W. Jean, along the way, married Marie Claudinette in 1994 and started the Yele Haiti Foundation in 2005.
Yele Haiti originally supplied up to 6,800 scholarships for Haitian schoolchildren in five of the island's provinces before distributing food there in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008.
W. Jean, with uncle and Haitian Ambassador to the United States Raymond Alcide Joseph, announced the Yele earthquake relief effort Jan. 13. They urged phone callers or Twitter users to send $5 donations by texting "Yele" to 501501. Details are found at yele.org - which, as of Feb. 2, had recovered from earlier volume-derived crashes.
"What we do is that we ask people who are going to Haiti," said Fontaine, "is take one or two bags or boxes with them on their flight."
Jean is one of 70 musicians who are recording a remixed "We Are The World" at A&E Records' Hollywood studio Feb. 2. Original producer Quincy Jones and lyrics co-writer Lionel Richie are the only holdovers from when "We Are The World" was first recorded for USA for Africa famine relief Jan. 28, 1985. Proceeds for the remixed version, to debut during NBC's Feb. 13 telecast of the XXI Winter Olympiad at Vancouver, is to go towards earthquake relief.
Jean had scheduled to release his latest album, "Wyclef Jean", this month.
Two signs that appeared in 2 South Orange Ave.'s windows over the weekend prompted concern. The first read: No More Clothes, Thank You.
"We've enough clothes," said Fontaine. "We need other things - especially medical supplies and tents."
Haitian president Rene Preval had first called for more tents Jan. 25. Tent cities have sprung up in and around the Port-au-Prince capital city. Some 400,000 people - who have lost their homes or are fearful of returning before an aftershock strikes - are homeless.
Some of the tent dwellers are on hospital grounds either awaiting medical help or are recuperating from such aid or surgery. Dr. Mark McKenney, trauma surgeon from Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, described Haitian hospital conditions on a Feb. 2 public radio broadcast.
"In a normal emergency, we come in, perform our services and turn operations back over to the local doctors and nurses in a couple of weeks," said Dr. McKenney on "The Takeaway" news program. "Here, there are hospitals destroyed and doctors and nurses killed by the earthquake. This is going to take months."
The other window sign was of a realtor's "For Sale" lawn marker.
"That's for the second floor," said Fontaine. "We're going to be here for months or as long as it takes."
Yele's local collection center is also accepting disposable and reusable cookware and utensils, cleaning pads, toiletries, pencils and notebooks, linen, individual bottles of water of less than a gallon size and money.
The center at 2 South Orange Avenue is open 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Saturdays. Call (973) 378-3330 for details.
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