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Blessed are they that mourn

I got home Sunday evening and I’m still exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping well. I turn a corner in my car and instinctively look for crumbled buildings. I look at my children and want to hug each one of them and cry. We were warned by the social workers on our trip that we would have a period of adjustment when we returned home. I didn’t think it would be me though. I am so used to going and coming from Haiti. But not this Haiti. Not the Haiti where everyone has a tale of sadness, of death of a loved one, or of a miraculous escape.

There has been talk of salvaging the rubble to make roads. If you use large magnets to remove the rebar, then crush the concrete you can make an admirable road filler. Haiti needs paved roads, clean water, garbage collection and a government that cares about its people. Might as well start with the roads. How will it feel driving down a road made of the pieces of misery? Will each crunch of rubber over what once was someone’s house release a scream?

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.

A wise friend shared with me this quote by Stanley Jones:

“The most absolutely happy people of the world are those who choose to care till it hurts. The most miserable people of the world are those who center upon themselves and deliberately shun the cares of others in the interest of their own happiness. It eludes them. They save their lives and they lose them.”

I don’t know why terrible things like earthquakes happen. I don’t know why so many people have to suffer. I believe that there are opportunities for each of us to care till it hurts, to comfort those who mourn, to make a difference, just as there are opportunities to turn our faces away from suffering, to ignore those in need, to stay inside our own lives.

I hope the world doesn’t turn its face away from Haiti. If it does, I don’t think

Haiti will survive.

Waiting to come home.

I am sitting under a tarp at L’Aeroport Toussaint Louverture as I write. It’s a pleasant day for Haiti in January but dusty, and dirty and hot enough. Various types of aircraft are taking off and landing as soon as they can clear the runway. We left our house in Bon Repos this morning at 7:30 with roughly half our team. The rest are staying until Wednesday or longer. Although I wish I could stay, I think it’s time for me to go home, pay some bills and start planning for the rehabilitation effort that is going to be sorely needed in the coming months. I have had so many messages of support and good wishes for our team and the people of Haiti. It has been one of the few bright lights during this dark tragedy. I hope that everyone will continue to remember Haiti when the next big media event pushes the earthquake from the headlines.

Haiti always gives those who visit a moral headache. There is so much need, so much sorrow, where do you begin? And whom do you choose to help? Two of our drivers are in their mid twenties, speak English well, and desperately want to study at a university to learn skills that are critical for their country. Daniel’s dream is to study mechanical engineering. He was enrolled in engineering classes in Haiti, but it will be at least a year, maybe two before any kind of higher education becomes available again in Port-au-Prince. He wants to go to BYU in Provo Utah, but needs a visa and a sponsor. Dino our other driver wants to go to BYU to study architecture. I am asked over and over for help in obtaining visas every time I come to Haiti. Daniel and Dino are two of Haiti’s best and brightest. They would be a credit to any university in the states. I don’t know if their dreams will ever come true.

We have been on the tarmac now for four hours. We could have gotten on a plane sooner but one of our group isn’t a US citizen and this has held us back. We are watching a C-17 transport plane being loaded with orphans who have cleared immigration and are going to their new families in the states. Brandt, our “get things done” guy is working on getting him on that plane to care for them during the flight. The children emerge from an old school bus painted robin’s egg blue. Some are frightened, some excited, most are too young to understand that they will be leaving their country forever. More and more children come out of the bus and my heart breaks for each one, and for each one left behind.

One member of our group, a medical student, got a message from his wife a few days ago. The two of them had been considering adopting a child and she told him that she had prayed and come up with the address of an orphanage near Port-au-Prince. “Go and find our daughter” were his instructions and she gave him a description of what she’d look like.

How do you choose a child?” he asked. “It’s not like going to the pet store for a puppy”. If those kids only knew how their lives would be changed if this young “blan” happened to choose them. I imagine a young Haitian-American growing up with only the tiniest bit of memory of living in Haiti. No doubt that life in the US would bring challenges that most American kids don’t have to face, but isn’t a home filled with love and attention, enough food and water, and a good education, what all parents wish for their children? I imagine the emotional turmoil of this young child after she grows up and one day decides to return to Haiti—to the orphanage where she was picked by a stranger on a day so long ago that she may not have any memories of it at all.

How do you choose a child? The medical student wandered among the children. They were running, shouting, pulling at his hand, excited at by the break in their routine occasioned by the visit of this stranger. He looked across the dirt yard and saw a shy little girl standing under a tree. After a minute, she looked up at him and smiled. “And I just knew” he said with tears in his eyes. “She was supposed to be my daughter”. He took her back to where we were staying, cleaned her up and watched her eat and eat and eat. Our host and his wife promised to make sure this beautiful little girl was cared for until the paper work can be cleared. Some of our team went back and helped put up a tarp over the other kids’ bunk beds so they wouldn’t have to sleep in the open. The building where they lived was destroyed by the earthquake. I look over and notice that today, even after only a few hours of separation, this new father already misses his daughter.

Oresto Oclor

Why did I come to Haiti? I knew it was going to be heart wrenching. In the best of times Haiti can be completely exasperating. You plan things, review the plan, make contingencies and when you step off the plane the “reality of Haiti” throws an ape sized wrench right into the middle of your well laid plans. You can only imagine how much worse a natural catastrophe has made it. Our church leaders meet late into every night trying to balance coordinating our medical team with the needs of the church members for whom they are responsible. We owe a great deal to our volunteer drivers, translators, and clinic helpers many of whom help our team all day, then go back to the churchyard where they find their families under a sheet or in a tent, hopeful that they have found enough food and water for the day in their absence.

A snapshot of Haiti that makes you want to laugh and cry: Half of our team was busy trying to load 5 patients with leg fractures in our landcruiser early this afternoon. Having done this more times than I can count this past week, I know that you can get 3 patients safely in the landcruiser if one of them is small. With the traffic and disorder in the streets, two trips down to the general hospital could take most of the afternoon. So, at the very moment we were struggling to fit in as many patients as possible, an AMBULANCE drives past the chapel gate and up to the chapel. What great luck! I think. The man parks the ambulance behind the church, locks the doors and walks out of the church and down the street! None of the members thought to ask his name, why he was parking in our churchyard, or why in heaven’s name he wasn’t using his AMBULANCE to transport patients! Haiti will drive you crazy if you let it.

This morning on the way into our clinic we came upon a man lying injured in the street. He was clutching his chest and complaining of trouble breathing. He also had an open tibia-fibula fracture. The strange thing about him was that his injury had nothing to do with the earthquake, he was running to catch a tap-tap (local Haitian taxi) and slipped. He was fortunate to have a team of doctors and nurses jammed into 2 landcruisers and a pick-up come on the scene a few minutes after the accident. We loaded him in the back of our pick-up on top of our supplies and took him to the general hospital which is now the command center for medical care. We have been there so many times delivering injured patients, that the soldiers at the gate barely acknowledge us as we zoom through.

We all have heard the story of the boy and the starfish. A small boy at low tide is picking up starfish one by one and throwing them back into the water. A man comes by, looks at the thousands of starfish strewn up and down the beach, and tells the boy, “Look at all these starfish! You could stand here all day throwing starfish into the water and it wouldn’t make a difference”. The boy picks up a starfish and throws it into the water. “I made a difference for that one,” he replies.

Why did I come to Haiti? I couldn’t stay away for one thing. I love this country. I cry for the suffering, ache for the innocent in misery and rejoice in the joyful resilient spirit of the Haitian people. I have friends here that I have known for more than 20 years. I met one in the yard of the Petionville church whom I haven’t seen since I was a missionary there in 1983. I also came because if I could, I wanted to get a starfish back to the water.

Because of “the realities of Haiti” we didn’t get on the road to our Carrefour clinic until 2:30 in the afternoon. We had to rendezvous with the other team members back at the general hospital at 5pm. While traffic was at a standstill, we realized that we would have less than an hour to do a clinic. I asked the team if they wanted to continue or just go back home. The vote was to continue. We got lost on they way and got there even later than we anticipated. Most of the people in the church grounds looked fairly well cared for. We asked if there were any injured who needed treatment. We saw a few lacerations and a facial hematoma but most of the patients at the clinic had flu symptoms or were suffering anxiety due to the quake. Then they brought in a little boy. Oresto Oclor was a 4 yr old whose father had fashioned a device with two sticks and a little wicker and wood child’s chair. He and his sister had carried Oresto down the mountain for the past two days in Cleopatra fashion. He didn’t know where to take Oresto and had been sitting outside the church for an hour or two to rest. Oresto’s face was covered with dirt and dried tears. We unwrapped his blanket and saw that his ear was nearly torn off. He had a large chunk of skin torn out of his forehead and another larger chunk from his under his arm over his ribs. We unwrapped a dirty bandage from his hand and saw that it was dead. The quake had killed Oresto’s mother, and trapped Oresto under some concrete blocks. His father told us that another child who died in the quake was found lying on little Oresto’s hand. His wrist was infected and dying and the bones of his hand were sticking through the skin and had already turned black. Liz our nurse, cradled Oresto in her arms and cried as he screamed in pain while she bandaged his wounds. His forehead was burning and we could tell that he was septic and had bacteria coursing through his blood. This child would die if we didn’t get him immediate treatment. We packed up our clinic in a rush, and explained to Oresto’s father that they both had to come with us right now. Liz wrapped Oresto in a blanket and tried to shield him as best she could from the rough bumps in the road. Oresto was brave but cried out each time the car was jarred.

After what seemed like hours we got to the general hospital. We bypassed triage and were led to the pediatric tent. The Swiss were taking care of the pediatric trauma, and a world renowned pediatric orthopedic surgeon saw Oresto within 10 minutes. I don’t think anyone can save Oresto’s hand, but I think that we saved his life. Oresto’s father doesn’t speak any French and we tried to explain everything that was going on and what to expect. He only had one question. “Please, when the doctors are done, they will give me back my son won’t they?”

So many things combined exactly to get Oresto to us and us to Oresto.

I think that is why I came to Haiti.

Jan 21st

I am beginning to understand the impact that this earthquake has had on Haiti and the people. There was another shock today causing the people to run out of the CDTI hospital where our surgeons have been working. The decision was made that the hospital was unsafe and we started evacuating patients. We spoke to the 82^nd airborne and got promises to have 12 of the patients at CDTI evacuated to the hospital ships where they would get surgery first thing in the morning. One woman refused surgery and refused to go. They asked me to come and translate for her and when I told her that if she didn’t have surgery on her broken femur she might never walk again, she said, “It’s not the surgery I’m afraid of, I just won’t go back in that building!”

We loaded up 5 patients in our van and a car, wincing ourselves as they screamed in pain, and broke curfew to get them to the state hospital. It took us almost an hour to find someone who would let us unload them, and finally all we could do was put them down on the street, no padding, no stretcher just a thin sheet over the asphalt. One of the men screamed when we put him down, and as I tried to calm him, by telling him that his pain would be treated soon, he screamed, “don’t put me next to that building, put me under that tree where nothing will fall on me!” We rushed back to CDTI hospital to pick up the 7 remaining patients and I notice that there WERE new cracks in the walls which weren’t there yesterday.

Earlier, we drove out to Fontamarra to the LDS chapel to assess the needs there. Noel our healing hands driver was with me. The scenes of destruction and the stench of death were numbing. House after house crumbled or leaning, ready to collapse, one door frame standing unharmed with no house surrounding it. It was hard to believe I was seeing what my eyes were telling me. Noel told me about the quake for him. His daughters ages 18 and 8 were at the market when the quake hit. He ran to the market to find it was not there. Frantic he crawled over the rubble calling his daughters’ names until finally he heard one of them calling “Papa, papa help me!” He crawled as close as he could and spent the next 3 days and nights comforting his children urging them to feel around for something to eat or drink until they were finally rescued on the fourth day. Both were seriously injured but alive. I could see the anguish in his eyes as he described sleeping next to his daughters’ voices. I could only imagine the terror I would feel if I couldn’t get to my own daughters.

Antonio called me this evening and told me that he had an architect go over the guest house and that it wasn’t safe for us to use. So that makes all of our buildings gone. I am saddened not so much for the loss of our compound, but for the fact that in the next few months there will be so many who need rehabilitation services and we won’t be able to provide them. I am glad that Noel’s daughters are alive, and I’m glad that 12 people will have surgery to fix their broken bodies. I have seen strange and terrible things in Haiti this week---things that I hope I never see again.

Jan 20th

I awakened this am to someone shaking my bed violently. I opened my eyes and looked down at the foot of my mattress as it slid back and forth. A 6.1 aftershock which unfortunately didn’t cause any more damage in town. We are staying in Bon Repos in a nice house out on the plain away from Port-au-Prince. They have a generator and if you are reading this then the internet is working. It is a nice place but with traffic, it takes an hour and a half to get into the Central chapel where we have decided to hold our clinic. One of our trauma surgeons and our orthopedist left on a helicopter right after breakfast. Leogane, a small town south of PAP was hit hard. We heard that one of the surgeons was doing amputations without anesthetic. As of 11:30 tonight, they are still not back. Our other surgeons and trauma nurse went to the Sacre Coeur hospital where they worked hard all day. They are running out of pins, screws, and even sterile gowns. They fixed a homeless, parentless 13 year old boy’s tibia fracture today and will go after his crushed femur tomorrow. I presume he is out on the lawn waiting with the other patients for the sun to come up and the doctors to come back. Even in such trying circumstances I’m sure our docs and all the docs working there from dawn until dusk will do a good job for him. It’s what they are trained to do. I worry about what will happen to him after he gets the medical care he needs. What will happen to him then? Haiti’s social services are overwhelmed in even the best of times. Who will take care of him? More and more it seems like whether you live or die in Haiti is all just a cruel game of chance.

After dropping the other docs off at our clinic, we drove up the mountain to the Healing Hands compound. I hesitated going in, even knowing what I would find. It was terrible. Everything is gone, the school, the prosthetic shop, the clinic and our apartments. We walked down the drive and heard a steady chop, chop and the clang of metal against metal. The son of the poor woman who was buried in her apartment had hired 4 or 5 guys to try and dig her out. All they could round up were a few hammers and their own strength, no picks, no sledge hammers, no heavy equipment. I’m not sure they will ever get her body out.

A bright spot in all the sadness—Jean is alive! He showed up at the compound today! He was on the 6^th floor of his school when the quake happened. Fortune must have smiled on him as he was by the window. He jumped out as the building began to fall. Of the 30 people in his class only 5 survived. Jean’s leg was injured but not seriously. It was so nice to see his large bright smile.

We walked around the compound and I took some pictures. Some of the staff’s family are homeless and have set up a tent on the grass under the tall mahogany and palm trees. It would be a good place to camp if they were camping. I would hate to be there in the first big rainstorm however.

We drove up to the Petionville chapel in the afternoon. It’s grounds are covered with people. They hadn’t eaten anything since Tuesday morning and they were hungry. Everyone cheered when the 82^nd Airborne arrived with an entire truckload of water, and meals. The men quickly formed a line, unloaded the truck and stacked the supplies in the chapel. It made me feel proud to be an American. One of the soldiers said, “if this was Iraq, it would be the women doing the unloading”. I’m glad we use our forces for relief as well fighting.

I helped transport an eleven year old girl to a French clinic in Petionville this evening. They had an awning up in the street and we lay her down in the middle of the street. She was frightened, so we went back to the chapel and brought her grandfather down to stay with her. A French team was using a private plastic surgery center as a makeshift trauma unit with their triage on the street and the sidewalks. The cooperation that exists here is amazing. Everyone is sharing what they have, helping out when they can, and doing their best to ease the suffering. It’s just enough to give one a little bit of hope for the future.

I have been up for the past 36 hours. When we found that we couldn’t get a charter plane from Ft. Lauderdale, we hired a bus and drove the 45 minutes to Miami. We got on a flight to Santo Domingo which got in around midnight. From the airport, we were loaded on two Domnican buses, the really crowded bumpy kind although ours had pink fringed curtains which was certainly a nice touch. Then 8 bumping, grinding, neck cramping hours from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince. The driver blared merengue music from the speakers for most of the journey but no one said anything because we figured it might help him stay awake.

As dawn was breaking, we made it to the Haitian border skirting along the largest lake in Haiti, “L’Etang Sumatre”. I have always wanted to see this lake which was beautiful in the mist of a new moring. Sumatre was supposed to harbor caimans or American crocodiles, and although I tried to keep a sharp eye, I didn’t see one.

It was about 8:30 when we arrived on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Initially things looked as I had remembered. Controlled chaos in the streets. Vendors crying, brightly painted lottery kiosks, cars honking, people hurrying, and shouting. Soon we saw a building whose roof looked like it had been stepped on by a giant, then another and another. We passed the airport and it looked like a weeklong rock festival. Tents of all colors everywhere. Flags from around the world. Large military planes taking off and landing every 30 seconds. Past the airport we saw our first camp. Thousands of sheets draped over sticks in an attempt to give a bit of modesty and to block out the sun. It was then that the magnitude of the disaster began to sink in. As we drove the the city and saw building after building crumbled to pieces, the cathedral, the palace and sadly most large schools which were still in session at the time of the quake, My heart sank. This was worse than I imagined.

We drove to the Central LDS Chapel not far from the Champs de Mars where 500 or so displaced church members are now living, and started a clinic in the bishop’s office. We treated infections, lacerations, fractures and whatever else we could. I accompanied a woman whose arm had been crushed and had acute compartment syndrome to Sacre Coeur Hospital. She needed urgent surgery or she would lose the limb. A year ago Sacre Coeur was the newest, nicest private hospital in Haiti. A large fountain with turtles swimming in it graced the entrance. Today it looked like a war zone. Hundreds of people lying on the ground or waiting patiently in long lines to be seen. We met a team of surgeons from Florida who had been working around the clock and were exhausted. They asked for more x-ray film and for water for themselves. We made a list of their most urgent needs and will send it back to Salt Lake. They promised to look at our lady with compartment syndrome as soon as they could, but we both knew it was too late. She would lose the limb. I tried to explain that to her, but she was adamant that she wouldn’t let anayont cut off her arm. We then drove to Hopital Canape Vert, which had a similar scene—French paramedics and doctors working as fast as they could bringing stretchers from the yard to the OR. It reminded me of a scene out of the civil war. Canape Vert is very near our clinic and as we drove to within a 5 minute walk of our clinic, I had to roll up the window as they smell of decaying bodies was too strong. I will try and visit our compound tomorrow. It has been a long, hard, sad day.

Jan18th

We have been cooling our heels (or should I say "heals") in Ft. Lauderdale since 11pm last night. We were scheduled to fly to Port-au-Prince tonight at 6 pm but apparently all flights but military to Haiti are canceled. Our new idea is to drive down to Miami, catch an American Airlines flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic at 8:20 tonight and try to drive or catch rides on helicopters tomorrow. Planes, Trains and Automobiles?

I spoke to Antonio Kebreau our Executive Director today. The guesthouse has a few cracks, but is livable. There is apparently water (at least for now) and hopefully electricity if we can find diesel for the generator. We have other housing options to consider as well. We are trying to decide whether to stay overnight in Santo Domingo or get on a bus and drive through the night to get to PAP. At this point, I just want to get there. We have divided our group into teams in an effort to be as organized as possible when/if we make it to Haiti. The docs are coming to grips with what we can and cannot do once we are there. I got through to Dr. Ben Nau the president of the HHH board this am. He reported that they are dealing with a lot of crush injuries and that there were a lot of US docs there, but not enough plates, screws, and power drills, none of which we have. Then he asked us to bring food. We will bring what we can.

We have two reporters from the Deseret news who are traveling with us. You can see the photos they have posted at deseretnews.com Thanks to all for the many messages of support and encouragement. We really appreciate them.

HHH compound

Here are more photos of the damage to our compound

“Men anpil, chay pa lou” is the Kreyol proverb. “Many hands make the burden light. I hope that is the case. I met most of our team at the airport this afternoon. There are ER docs, family practice docs, orthopedic and trauma surgeons, nurses and the rehabilitation doc. They all seem like good people. They are earnest, and caring. Lines of concern mark all of their faces. We are all anxious to get there and do what we can to ease the enormous burden of suffering. We loaded bandages, needles, syringes, surgical kits, IV fluids, and as much medication as we could fit into our bags. LDS Humanitarian packed two bags for each of us: one with food, a tent and a blanket, the other with medical supplies. Some of the doctors swung by to raid their hospitals and clinics on the way to the airport for sutures and hard to get anesthesia drugs. In times of emergency doctors are good at doing what needs to be done first and filling out the forms later.

I haven’t done much suturing since my internship, but I still remember how to hold a retractor (it seems that was all I did during my 3^rd year surgery rotation). I know Haiti and Port-au-Prince well, I speak the language, know the culture and I have led medical teams to Haiti for the past 12 years, so I’ll try and be of use.

We are worried about security. A few years ago an HHH team scheduled a clinic in Cite Soleil, Haiti’s poorest slum. When the team arrived at the clinic location, a small house in the middle of Cite Soleil, they found hundreds lined up outside. It was immediately obvious that the supplies they had brought were woefully inadequate. The team began to see patients but a rumor quickly spread that leaders had put their own families and friends at the front of the line and that “blans” were going to leave after treating only them. It got ugly quickly. Shouts, threats, pounding on the door and the tin roof, the line broke into a mob and surrounded the little house. The team got to the van and escaped from the crowd by dumping the rest of the supplies out on the street while driving away as the mob fought over pills and bandages.

I have never really felt fear in Haiti with groups of two or three or ten. I have learned to keep far away from groups large enough to become a mob when passion and frustration spills over. I was given a blessing this morning of protection, safety and discernment from one of my church leaders. And I feel good about our trip. I hope however, that they have made progress with getting food and water to the thousands who need it. Even in January the Haitian sun is too hot. I can’t imagine sitting out under the sun all day with a grinding stomach and nothing to drink. Jan 16^th.

Getting ready to go to Haiti

Haiti is a country that I have loved for many years. Ever since I served an LDS mission there in 1982 and 1983 for some reason that horrible, wonderful country has had a hold on me. I have attributed it to a voodoo curse in the past, but I have always known that it is the people who made me fall in love with their country. They are so warm, generous, and quick to laugh with the "blan" who keeps tripping my tongue over their Creole. I helped found the Healing Hands for Haiti International Foundation in 1998 and have been back with that group at least once or twice a year since then. HHHIF is dedicated to providing rehabilitation training, treatment, education and equipment to the physically disabled in Haiti.

The past 12 years have been a wonderful experience, visiting the country that I loved, helping people with nowhere else to turn regain a measure of physical function, and meeting and working with some of the most dedicated and compassionate people from all over the US, Canada, France, and of course, Haiti. We had a beautiful 6 acre compound with a PT/OT gym, clinic, rehab training school, prosthetic/orthotic shop guest house and several apartments whose rent helped support our efforts.

All of that but the guest house is now gone. The 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday centered just west Port-au-Prince was my worst nightmare come true. Anyone who has spent time in PAP, who has driven past the cinderblock and tin "bidonvilles" or shantytowns perched precariously on steep mountain slopes has wondered what would happen if..... Then a shudder and a quick turn of thought to something else-- too horrible to even think about. Well, now we know. Now the whole world knows.

Among the thousands of deaths were two of our tenants and the wife of one of our staff members, Annia St. Louis-- recent proud medical school graduate and even prouder mother of a 7 month old and a 4 year old. I can't stop thinking of Annia's husband Jony. He can't stop to grieve for his wife. He has to find food today for his children. Then he has to find food for them tomorrow and the next day and the next.

I have been waiting to get on a plane to Haiti since the earthquake. We are scheduled to leave tomorrow. I am torn with the frustration of not being there doing what I can to help, and the fear of what I will find when I do get there. If I have internet access, I will write daily blogs keeping friends and family up to date. Please keep all of us and Haiti in your thoughts and prayers.