MANCHESTER — The Rev. Joseph Gosselin spent three months living in a Haitian rectory with no air conditioning, near-constant noise and dust, rodents, insects and rarely a hot meal.

This paradise, at least when compared with the abject poverty of those he served during his missionary work, made him feel incredibly guilty.

“It seems so very unfair. These people lack the basic necessities of life,” the retired Catholic priest and Manchester native said in an interview a month after his return to Haiti.

“It hurts after awhile,” he added. “It's just very sad.”

From January through mid-April of this year, Gosselin presided over Masses, visited the sick and helped oversee the construction of a new school. He kept a journal of his time in the country, which was devastated in January 2010 by a catastrophic earthquake that killed at least 220,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless. He sent journal entries to friends and family, keeping them updated.

An entry from Jan. 19 reads, “My stomach has taken to the food which is well prepared but different and does take some getting use to. When I am tempted to complain I think of the majority of the people who at best live on two meals a day.”

Hunger is prevalent in Dessalines, Haiti, which is about three hours north of the country's capital, Port-au-Prince, and was the center of an area where Gosselin's mission was focused, he explained.

“That's something that was a shocker,” he said of widespread hunger. “The kids are perpetually hungry. You cannot walk outside without someone asking you for money or food.”

One particularly sad story is that of a 5-year-old girl who was carried into a school screaming in pain.

“I thought she'd been abused or something,” Gosselin said. It turned out the girl was suffering severe hunger pangs. “I was absolutely shocked when I saw that.”

Gosselin, who served as a priest at Sacred Heart Parish in Lebanon from 1982 through 1988, said the Catholic mission in Dessalines, led by a Haitian priest, feeds about 2,500 kids each day.

“The majority would go to school because they could get at least one square meal a day,” he said.

Constant noise

A Jan. 24 entry reads, “Again last Saturday the electricity stopped. Seven hours later the back up solar batteries breathed their last and of course when we needed him most the fella who operated the generator, back up of back up, was nowhere to be found.”

The power going out wasn't always a bad thing, though, Gosselin said with a smile.

Noise is constant in Haiti, he explained. One offender was a store across the street from his rectory that featured music blaring at all hours in an effort to attract customers.

“I used to pray for the electricity to go off so that thing would turn off,” he said. “By the third month, it was really starting to get on my nerves.”

Aiding the sick

Visiting the sick in Haiti is different than in the United States, Gosselin said.

“Instead of five minutes, it takes half an hour,” he said.

A typical visit includes small talk, confessions, songs, prayers and taking photos together, he said.

“Instead of seeing 15 people a day, you're lucky if you see five,” he said. “It's not mass production. There, it's a question of quality.”

At the market

Undated journal entry: “The first time one visits a local public market (held twice a week here) one wonders 'How can this possibly work?' It just looks so chaotic on the surface.”

One sight that he said amazed him was an open market he visited that would almost certainly be shut down by U.S. health officials. All manner of clothing, trinkets and food are sold at the market, which also features plenty of dirt, dust and insects.

Somehow, he said, it works and thrives.

Looking for work

Gosselin described Haitians as extremely hard-working people who at the same time come from a culture of dependency.

He said residents are trying to pick up the pieces after the earthquake, but are sometimes actually held back by the generosity of others.

“When people ask, 'What can I do for the people?' I answer, 'The least possible,'” Gosselin said.

This is the logic, he said: If you give the people of Haiti tons of rice, the rice farmer can't sell his crops. If you give away huge amounts of free clothing, the seamstress can't sell her services.

“Anything you do, you have to be very, very careful not to displace people who are trying to work,” he said.

He said that among the most discouraged people in the country are people in their mid-20s who can't find work.

“Most of these young people have one dream, and that's to get out of the country,” he said.

Undated journal entry: “To know them is to love and admire them their unbelievable resiliency.”

Haiti was one of the poorest countries in the world before the earthquake. Afterward, more than 1 million people were forced to live in tents. Two years later, it still has about 500,000 people living in tent cities and has an unemployment rate of 70 percent, Gosselin said.

“Their way of life is still a very difficult one,” he said. He said that among the 28 countries he's visited, “I have never seen poverty at their level. In other countries, there would be pockets of poverty. In Haiti, it's from one end of the country to the other.”

When Gosselin returned to Florida — where he moved after retiring — from Haiti last month, he was 15 pounds lighter and had a fresh perspective on his life and the lives he served, he said.

“I learned a long time ago to never complain,” he said. “But I'll tell you, this experience was a booster shot for that.”