If you want to make G-d laugh, tell Him your plans. Haiti blog #2
Sun., March 21.-
We awoke bright and early 2 hours later to cheerfully greet our beloved TSA employees once more. We boarded and departed without incident. I’ve traveled over the ocean before, but never in the Caribbean, so I hadn’t quite realized that Caribbean Blue isn’t just a figure of speech or the name of a paint shade. This picture doesn't do the color itself justice- it really DOES look like the otherworldly blue in the tourism posters- that's not Photoshop!
We arrived at Port au Prince an hour and forty minutes later and walked into a blast furnace.
While I was comfortable on the flight in my yoga pants and a t-shirt, they were more than overly warm in Haiti. We were met at the airport by Dr. Daniel Sussot, a long-time aid worker for Airline Ambassadors who has been providing disaster relief for over 25 years. Driving him was Jean-Jean, a filmmaker and local resident along with his wife Regine. They were extremely gracious and took us to CDTI where we THOUGHT we would be working. While it may have been the best equipped facility in Port au Prince, and may have a great OR, their ability to deal with inpatients was, to say the least, sadly deficient through no fault of their own. Due to the quake damage it was necessary to house patients in tents outside the facility.
Fortunately the volunteer staff worked very hard to make the best of the situation, but with hurricane season/rainy season approaching, the situation was untenable. Also, due to financial issues (all hospitals are currently operating without charging) it was unclear how much longer they would remain open. I have learned that since we left, CDTI has closed their doors.
At any rate, when we arrived we found that there had been an influx of Mexican medical workers who came as a team, so the three of us were superfluous. This was slightly disconcerting, as that had been our place to stay and where we would have gotten meals. Fortunately our “pickup artists” weren’t willing to dump us on the streets, so they decided to keep us. First they took us up to Jean-Jean’s family home, which is actually a compound. There were several houses “stacked” on the property. Port au Prince is located entirely on a hill, and as a result, houses and apartment buildings “stack” going uphill with each floor going up becoming larger as the hill’s receding slope makes more room available, though in many areas the area of increase is exceptionally small since the incline is so pronounced. The houses in this compound were stacked three floors high, though I saw many other houses or apartment buildings six or seven high.
The main house where Jean Jean, Regine, and his father live.
We brought our bags in and Dr. Sussot asked if we would be willing to visit some nuns who lived in Carre Four, a suburb of Port au Prince and the epicenter of the quake. Being exceedingly grateful for their assistance, we agreed.
First, we stopped at a “church” on Delmas (one of the main streets in Port au Prince at which Airline Ambassadors was providing activities for local children. It was also a central hub for Airline Ambassadors in that area, and where the local head of the organization was staying, along with some staff. The kids had been practicing songs, and sang to us and some other assembled adults. They were dressed in their best, and absolutely adorable.
Right "behind" this facility, there was a tent city. The tent cities are all hugely different depending on when they were put together, the area of town they were in, and who organized them. This one was pretty organized, and they were lucky in that they had shower facilies- the regularly shaped line of "telephone booth" sized structures in the foreground of the picture.
Clean water is at an absolute premium. No one wastes clean water, and no one drinks the water that comes out of the tap in Haiti, drinkable water has to be purchased or purified at home. You can buy sealed plastic bags of water to drink on the street, but even then you have to be careful because the bag may have been cooled in contaminated ice so you have to clean the bag thoroughly before drinking.
Next, we needed to find an ATM. This part of the trip provided an amusing but nervous-making moment. We had picked up a couple of “bodyguards” because of the fact that we were going to go get money and because of the area we were going to- very near the Petionville Plaza tent city. Apparently the mayor of Petionville had decided that the tents had to go and was threatening to bulldoze them down if they weren’t removed by that coming Saturday. While it’s easy to criticize this as a cruel and heartless move, it’s also important to remember that this is the camp that flooded out when the rains came early (fortunately only once) and two babies died because they were washed downhill in the deluge. The camp put a _large_ number of destitute and desperate people in close proximity to people withdrawing money from the bank- a glaring invitation to trouble. As we were loading into the van with the body guards in the seat behind us, Daniel (Dr. Sussot) looked at us, grinned, and said “Welcome to white slavery in Haiti!” Fortunately for us, he was just kidding! We proceeded in the direction of the ATM that they knew of that was functional- ATMs are extremely fickle in Haiti- while there are many, most of them are not functional. I didn’t find out while I was there if this was due to a shortage of cash, disruption in telephone service, or if this is simply the normal state of affairs. On the way to the ATM, Dr. Sussot decided that he wanted a beer, and the guys were all for that! I was tired, and at least one of the “bodyguards” was going to stay with the SUV anyway, so while they went in search of beer, I took a brief nap in the back of the van. When they returned, they had quite a story to tell. Apparently the place that Dr. Sussot stopped at for the beer was a nightclub/brothel! There were LARGE neatly dressed men outside the door doing their best to look intimidating (which I take it was rather easy for them!) and when the guys got inside, it was loud with pumping club music and featured um, women with inadequate clothing. They returned to the SUV extremely amused about their little adventure, and I decided that I was quite happy that I had opted for the nap.
Kyle ver Steeg, the plastic surgeon with our group, enjoying his first Haitian beer.
From there we went a few blocks to a local eatery that we called “Haitian Subway”- Epi D'Or.
They had a full line of sandwiches, ice cream, crepes, and at their larger locations (though this wasn’t one of them) a full bakery. I was really warm and as a result not too hungry, but I was really happy to see fruit juices easily available.
We ate, and from there went to Carre Four. It took us about 45 minutes to get there, and the trip was...impressive. The roads in Haiti are the worst I’ve ever been on- worse than the ones in Mexico. There is a local driving etiquette which I figured out after watching for about half an hour. While there are some traffic lights, there are many intersections where there are no lights. Many of the smaller streets are pretty much single-lane traffic only- one car has to pull over. If you’re coming through, you beep your horn multiple times to let them know you’re coming through.
If you come up behind a bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car you intend to pass you beep your horn to let them know that you’re going to do so. It looks crazy at first, but it does make sense. Also, people will squeeze through spaces that I’d never want to try to get through, but on the other hand they’ve been doing that since they learned to drive. I did note that even the newest-looking cars on the street often had evidence of multiple collisions.
The other thing we saw a lot of were the local taxi-buses, called tap-taps.
They're largely small pickups that have been covered with some sort of topper to provide protection from rain. They're privately owned, and brightly decorated. They go up and down the main routes in the town. You tell the driver's assistant how far you're going, and they tell you how much you have to pay. You hop on, and hop off at your stop. Given the condition of the streets and the overloading of the tap-taps, I'd say that there could be a booming business in shocks....if anyone ever bothered to fix them. Which I'm pretty certain that they don't. They're almost always painted brightly, usually with some religious or philosophical theme. We decided during our stay that the paint jobs functioned rather like a peacock's plumage does for attracting a mate- we noticed that the most brightly painted, "prettiest" ones were always the most crowded.
If you watched a lot of the coverage of the earthquake, you may have heard the story of a convent affiliated school, L'Ecole de Saint Francois de Salle, that collapsed, killing almost all of the children and several Sisters who were teaching. Miraculously, one sister survived a number of days buried alive, and was found when she was finally able to extend her hand, clutching a rosary, out of the rubble. This was the location in Carre Four that we were visiting. When we arrived, the children were playing motion and song games- they played nearly the whole time we were there.
They had rebuilt the desks, and were starting to teach classes again. In the background is the rubble from the collapsed school.
We visited the nuns- there were a number of them who were elderly and had chronic illnesses, as well as some that had had (presumably) cardiac events that had not been treated. This is a huge problem in Haiti- things like heart attack and stroke happen, and no one is treated. There is no preventative care to speak of. The little village that was on the side of the hill- cinder block buildings with tin roofs- was full of children not wearing shoes, which concerned us because it appeared that there might be an outbreak of filariasis- there were a number of children with obvious eye infections with severely scarred corneas. According to the family of one little boy, he had seen an eye doctor who had prescribed drops for his eyes, but the infection was getting worse. We asked Dr. Sussot if it would be possible to get the children with the eye infections to one of the hospitals to see an ophthalmologist because they were heading towards permanent blindness without treatment.
It was beyond what we had supplies for to do much for these children, which was heart-breaking, but we were able to give a little boy a walker that fit him much better. It looked to us as if he had cerebral palsy, because his legs were contracted under him and his feet were contracted such that he couldn’t place the soles on the ground. But still, this little guy was full of smiles, and cruised around on a broken old walker that didn’t really fit him. This area, like everywhere else, was on a hill, and he would plant the walker up hill and drag himself on his knees up the hill! The first thing you'd see of him coming was a huge smile. According to Dr. Sussot, this little guy had lost his family in the quake, IIUC. If I could have brought him home with me and fostered him for a year or two to get PT and any corrective surgery he might have needed, I would have done it in a skinny minute.
After our visit to Carre Four, we returned to Jean Jean’s home, and collapsed for the night.
*Photographs courtesy of Kyle ver Steeg
We awoke bright and early 2 hours later to cheerfully greet our beloved TSA employees once more. We boarded and departed without incident. I’ve traveled over the ocean before, but never in the Caribbean, so I hadn’t quite realized that Caribbean Blue isn’t just a figure of speech or the name of a paint shade. This picture doesn't do the color itself justice- it really DOES look like the otherworldly blue in the tourism posters- that's not Photoshop!
We arrived at Port au Prince an hour and forty minutes later and walked into a blast furnace.
While I was comfortable on the flight in my yoga pants and a t-shirt, they were more than overly warm in Haiti. We were met at the airport by Dr. Daniel Sussot, a long-time aid worker for Airline Ambassadors who has been providing disaster relief for over 25 years. Driving him was Jean-Jean, a filmmaker and local resident along with his wife Regine. They were extremely gracious and took us to CDTI where we THOUGHT we would be working. While it may have been the best equipped facility in Port au Prince, and may have a great OR, their ability to deal with inpatients was, to say the least, sadly deficient through no fault of their own. Due to the quake damage it was necessary to house patients in tents outside the facility.
Fortunately the volunteer staff worked very hard to make the best of the situation, but with hurricane season/rainy season approaching, the situation was untenable. Also, due to financial issues (all hospitals are currently operating without charging) it was unclear how much longer they would remain open. I have learned that since we left, CDTI has closed their doors.
At any rate, when we arrived we found that there had been an influx of Mexican medical workers who came as a team, so the three of us were superfluous. This was slightly disconcerting, as that had been our place to stay and where we would have gotten meals. Fortunately our “pickup artists” weren’t willing to dump us on the streets, so they decided to keep us. First they took us up to Jean-Jean’s family home, which is actually a compound. There were several houses “stacked” on the property. Port au Prince is located entirely on a hill, and as a result, houses and apartment buildings “stack” going uphill with each floor going up becoming larger as the hill’s receding slope makes more room available, though in many areas the area of increase is exceptionally small since the incline is so pronounced. The houses in this compound were stacked three floors high, though I saw many other houses or apartment buildings six or seven high.
The main house where Jean Jean, Regine, and his father live.
We brought our bags in and Dr. Sussot asked if we would be willing to visit some nuns who lived in Carre Four, a suburb of Port au Prince and the epicenter of the quake. Being exceedingly grateful for their assistance, we agreed.
First, we stopped at a “church” on Delmas (one of the main streets in Port au Prince at which Airline Ambassadors was providing activities for local children. It was also a central hub for Airline Ambassadors in that area, and where the local head of the organization was staying, along with some staff. The kids had been practicing songs, and sang to us and some other assembled adults. They were dressed in their best, and absolutely adorable.
Right "behind" this facility, there was a tent city. The tent cities are all hugely different depending on when they were put together, the area of town they were in, and who organized them. This one was pretty organized, and they were lucky in that they had shower facilies- the regularly shaped line of "telephone booth" sized structures in the foreground of the picture.
Clean water is at an absolute premium. No one wastes clean water, and no one drinks the water that comes out of the tap in Haiti, drinkable water has to be purchased or purified at home. You can buy sealed plastic bags of water to drink on the street, but even then you have to be careful because the bag may have been cooled in contaminated ice so you have to clean the bag thoroughly before drinking.
Next, we needed to find an ATM. This part of the trip provided an amusing but nervous-making moment. We had picked up a couple of “bodyguards” because of the fact that we were going to go get money and because of the area we were going to- very near the Petionville Plaza tent city. Apparently the mayor of Petionville had decided that the tents had to go and was threatening to bulldoze them down if they weren’t removed by that coming Saturday. While it’s easy to criticize this as a cruel and heartless move, it’s also important to remember that this is the camp that flooded out when the rains came early (fortunately only once) and two babies died because they were washed downhill in the deluge. The camp put a _large_ number of destitute and desperate people in close proximity to people withdrawing money from the bank- a glaring invitation to trouble. As we were loading into the van with the body guards in the seat behind us, Daniel (Dr. Sussot) looked at us, grinned, and said “Welcome to white slavery in Haiti!” Fortunately for us, he was just kidding! We proceeded in the direction of the ATM that they knew of that was functional- ATMs are extremely fickle in Haiti- while there are many, most of them are not functional. I didn’t find out while I was there if this was due to a shortage of cash, disruption in telephone service, or if this is simply the normal state of affairs. On the way to the ATM, Dr. Sussot decided that he wanted a beer, and the guys were all for that! I was tired, and at least one of the “bodyguards” was going to stay with the SUV anyway, so while they went in search of beer, I took a brief nap in the back of the van. When they returned, they had quite a story to tell. Apparently the place that Dr. Sussot stopped at for the beer was a nightclub/brothel! There were LARGE neatly dressed men outside the door doing their best to look intimidating (which I take it was rather easy for them!) and when the guys got inside, it was loud with pumping club music and featured um, women with inadequate clothing. They returned to the SUV extremely amused about their little adventure, and I decided that I was quite happy that I had opted for the nap.
Kyle ver Steeg, the plastic surgeon with our group, enjoying his first Haitian beer.
From there we went a few blocks to a local eatery that we called “Haitian Subway”- Epi D'Or.
They had a full line of sandwiches, ice cream, crepes, and at their larger locations (though this wasn’t one of them) a full bakery. I was really warm and as a result not too hungry, but I was really happy to see fruit juices easily available.
We ate, and from there went to Carre Four. It took us about 45 minutes to get there, and the trip was...impressive. The roads in Haiti are the worst I’ve ever been on- worse than the ones in Mexico. There is a local driving etiquette which I figured out after watching for about half an hour. While there are some traffic lights, there are many intersections where there are no lights. Many of the smaller streets are pretty much single-lane traffic only- one car has to pull over. If you’re coming through, you beep your horn multiple times to let them know you’re coming through.
If you come up behind a bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car you intend to pass you beep your horn to let them know that you’re going to do so. It looks crazy at first, but it does make sense. Also, people will squeeze through spaces that I’d never want to try to get through, but on the other hand they’ve been doing that since they learned to drive. I did note that even the newest-looking cars on the street often had evidence of multiple collisions.
The other thing we saw a lot of were the local taxi-buses, called tap-taps.
They're largely small pickups that have been covered with some sort of topper to provide protection from rain. They're privately owned, and brightly decorated. They go up and down the main routes in the town. You tell the driver's assistant how far you're going, and they tell you how much you have to pay. You hop on, and hop off at your stop. Given the condition of the streets and the overloading of the tap-taps, I'd say that there could be a booming business in shocks....if anyone ever bothered to fix them. Which I'm pretty certain that they don't. They're almost always painted brightly, usually with some religious or philosophical theme. We decided during our stay that the paint jobs functioned rather like a peacock's plumage does for attracting a mate- we noticed that the most brightly painted, "prettiest" ones were always the most crowded.
If you watched a lot of the coverage of the earthquake, you may have heard the story of a convent affiliated school, L'Ecole de Saint Francois de Salle, that collapsed, killing almost all of the children and several Sisters who were teaching. Miraculously, one sister survived a number of days buried alive, and was found when she was finally able to extend her hand, clutching a rosary, out of the rubble. This was the location in Carre Four that we were visiting. When we arrived, the children were playing motion and song games- they played nearly the whole time we were there.
They had rebuilt the desks, and were starting to teach classes again. In the background is the rubble from the collapsed school.
We visited the nuns- there were a number of them who were elderly and had chronic illnesses, as well as some that had had (presumably) cardiac events that had not been treated. This is a huge problem in Haiti- things like heart attack and stroke happen, and no one is treated. There is no preventative care to speak of. The little village that was on the side of the hill- cinder block buildings with tin roofs- was full of children not wearing shoes, which concerned us because it appeared that there might be an outbreak of filariasis- there were a number of children with obvious eye infections with severely scarred corneas. According to the family of one little boy, he had seen an eye doctor who had prescribed drops for his eyes, but the infection was getting worse. We asked Dr. Sussot if it would be possible to get the children with the eye infections to one of the hospitals to see an ophthalmologist because they were heading towards permanent blindness without treatment.
It was beyond what we had supplies for to do much for these children, which was heart-breaking, but we were able to give a little boy a walker that fit him much better. It looked to us as if he had cerebral palsy, because his legs were contracted under him and his feet were contracted such that he couldn’t place the soles on the ground. But still, this little guy was full of smiles, and cruised around on a broken old walker that didn’t really fit him. This area, like everywhere else, was on a hill, and he would plant the walker up hill and drag himself on his knees up the hill! The first thing you'd see of him coming was a huge smile. According to Dr. Sussot, this little guy had lost his family in the quake, IIUC. If I could have brought him home with me and fostered him for a year or two to get PT and any corrective surgery he might have needed, I would have done it in a skinny minute.
After our visit to Carre Four, we returned to Jean Jean’s home, and collapsed for the night.
*Photographs courtesy of Kyle ver Steeg