'Fr. Beans' educates in Haitian slum - his formula: a shack, a teacher, a non meal.

He's starting to feel his years, this saint of Soleil. He's labored and lived in one of the worst slums of the Western Hemisphere for more than four decades.

At age 80, recovering from prostate and colon cancer operations, and beset with glaucoma, Fr. Lawrence Bohnen sees new hope for his people, some of Haiti's most desperate poor.

His former pupil and colleague, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is back and the president has pledged not to forget his people. Millions of dollars in aid have been earmarked for an expanded public school system based on the model developed by Bohnen.

It became clear, in a visit to Haiti two years ago, a subsequent interview with Bohnen during one of his frequent visits to the United States and, most recently, through a kind of Christmas newsletter, that Bohnen never really lost hope even during the darkest times.

They call him "Father Beans," this Salesian missionary from Holland who came to Haiti in 1954 after his order was expelled from Hanoi. He was a teacher of Latin and Greek in Vietnam until the communist Viet Minh defeated the French.

He was sent to teach in the slums of Port-au-Prince. But there was no market for the classics. Few could write their names. Most were malnourished. All were oppressed by a series of dictators and military regimes.

So he started a cluster of one-room schools and found some teachers who knew a bit more than their pupils. Then he established a soup kitchen. For many, the noon serving of beans and rice was their only meal of the day.

Today, Bohnen oversees more than 180 schools that teach and feed 25,000 students a day in Cite Soleil.

Father Beans -- that's the meaning of his name in Dutch -- is slowing down a bit. He's recruited tow other Salesian priests, a Belgian, Fr. Damien Gijsbrechts, and a Haitian, Fr. Olibrice Zucchi-Angeto, to take over his job. But he has no intention of leaving his people. Not now. Not when for the first time in nearly two centuries Haitians, too, have hope.

"I'm going to stay here," he said. "But a normal person doesn't want to do what I do. You have to be a little crazy."

He's excited about the prospects of a new four-year teachers' college that has been established by his team in Cite Soleil. soon, his 900 instructors will be more than a chapter ahead of their pupils.

That means more will go on to technical schools and some will make it to the universities. Someday, maybe Cite Soleil won't be such a slum.

More than 200,000 people live in cardboard and scrap-metal shacks the size of packing crates, most without water or electricity, on a dismal plain near Portau-Prince's waterfront. Mountains of smoldering garbage cloud the skies. Fetid open sewers crisscross the settlements, called "Boston" and "Brooklyn." There's a rotting plank, which spans a ditch oozing with industrial and human waste and leads to one of his minischools. He likes to call it the "Brooklyn Bridge."

Bohnen has never gotten used to the stench. Nor the hopelessness that breeds in Cite Soleil, the "City of Sun."

"Nobody should be living here," he said. "This is against human dignity."

Bohnen long has been an outspoken critic of Haiti's ruling elite. Before Aristide returned from exile in the United States Oct. 15, Bohnen advocated revolution. "After two centuries of independence, this is what they get -- two centuries of government by a small minority," he said during interviews in Haiti and Wisconsin. He likened the setting to that on the eve of the French Revolution. "It's 1779 in Haiti," he said. "I hope there will be a revolution. But it would be better if it were peaceful."

Although the feared Tontons Macoute and right-wing government thugs, called attaches, often raided and burned suspected Aristide strongholds in Cite Soleil, slaughtering scores of slum dwellers, Bohnen rarely has been threatened and has never been arrested by the military. "They were in no hurry to take over my business," he said.

But now, with Aristide returned to power, he believes the country is back on track. "It will not be easy to rebuild Haiti, but (Aristide) will try," Bohnen said.

He likens his former pupil and fellow Salesian priest to Martin Luther King Jr.

The slain American civil rights leader was a dreamer, and so is Aristide, he said. "You can kill the dreamer but you can't kill the dream." He believes Aristide will be a target again. He already has survived several assassination attempts.

Bohnen has been an unflinching supporter of Aristide, bucking the sentiments of most Haitian bishops and many in his own religious order. Aristide left the Salesians after a rule was invoked barring members from politics. He recently bowed out of the priesthood under pressure from the Vatican.

But that hasn't deterred Bohnen's enthusiasm for his now-famous alumnus. Even while gangs of attaches roamed Cite Soleil, ruthlessly ridding it of all public mention of the exiled president, Bohnen maintained a large banner over one minischool that said, "Father Aristide, Old Grad."

Bohnen has been invited to the presidential palace, and Aristide has visited Cite Soleil. But the Dutch priest shuns the spotlight. He'd rather focus on the future of his schools.

Countless slum dwellers have learned to read and write. Many have made it through his junior high and technical schools, and an estimated 12,000 have learned a trade. Each year about 1,000 are able to escape Cite Soleil, but their places are quickly taken by those migrating from the barren countryside.

He figures his sites have served more than 70 million meals over the past four decades. "It's the biggest diner's club in the world," he said.

Much of that food comes free from the European Union. Recently, when one of his warehouses was looted in the wake of Aristide's return, his longtime friend, Dutch consul Rob J. padberg, quickly secured replacement commodities. It was the first time in 40 years that the food distribution system had been halted.

"But feeding is not the fundamental solution," Bohnen said. "Education is."

Bohnen started his ministry in 1954, in La Saline, Port-au-Prince's slum of the day. He was sent to establish a trade school, but he soon discovered most of his prospective students were illiterate. So he opened a couple of elementary schools in shacks. Later, he moved into nearby Cite Rouge and set up a similar school system. But the government, determined to get rid of the eyesore at the expense of the people, burned down the squatter settlement. Bohnen and the poor then moved to Cite Soleil.

In the early years, his centers educated about 3,000 a year. Today, the 182 minischools affect more than 10 times that number each day. Bohnen provides the teachers and the food, but each community has to provide the one-room school.

"The rules of the system say it's the promotion of the personal initiative of the poor people themselves," he said. "When we've helped 25,000 pupils, we've helped 50,000 parents, too."

The best pupils are accepted into the five central middle schools. From there, they can feed into a junior high school and then to the technical school he was sent to start 40 years ago. Each year, about 200 boys and 150 girls graduate from that two-year job-training program.

Bohnen frequently travels to the United States, Canada and Europe to raise funds for his school system. He tries to raise $1.5 million a year to cover his annual expenses.

He's most pleased about the changes he foresees coming from the new teachers college.

"The future is in good hands for many years," he said.

Bohnen said he had no illusions about coming to Haiti four decades ago. "I knew it would be hard work for centuries," he said. "If you expect results tomorrow, you'll become really crazy. And then you'll have no hope."