HAITI’S HOPE by Cathlyn Daly

February 8, 2010

photo of child found in rubble of demolished kindergarten

Eleven of us from Children’s Hope traveled together to Haiti to provide Humanitarian relief, specifically to bring medicine and medical supplies and to administer basic medical care. We went to Haiti to help, to be of service.

What we didn’t expect was to return from Haiti feeling so blessed, so privileged and so humbled. Not one of us wanted to leave Haiti and return home. One member of our team, an EMT, did, in fact, stay behind. Many members of our team will be returning at the end of March.

I suppose what most people would expect me to say if asked what I remember most about Haiti would be the devastation left behind from the earthquake.

Monumental and horrific as the devastation was, what I will remember most about Haiti is its peoples’ sense of community, gentle strength, enduring patience, kind respect, intelligence, curiosity, and bright smiles.

I will remember their stories. Stories that longed to be told and needed to be heard; stories that break your heart and make you weep.

I’ll remember people’s daily struggle to survive under the poorest conditions in the western hemisphere. Our Haitian guide and historian told us that before the earthquake less than 10% of the population had any kind of employment. Imagine now, after the earthquake, the fate of the Haitian people.

I will remember the dedication of the Haitian caregivers, American healthcare workers/providers and relief organizations that give all that they have, tirelessly, selflessly, from the heart, to help those who need it most. Appropriately, Matthew 25 Clinic (one of the clinics where we delivered medicines, medical supplies and provided basic medical care) is named after the verse in the Bible which says: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”.

I will remember our friend Rea standing next to homes reduced to rubble saying, “My student is still buried under there, and over there”.

I will remember walking amongst the rubble and finding photos of happy families, of children in their graduation gowns, report cards, and a bible opened to the chapter of Ezekiel.

I will remember a man on the road telling us the story of losing all twelve members of his family and his home. He told us that his purpose in life now was to help those less fortunate then himself.

I will remember the story of Roberta. Her father stopped us on the road. He was a single father, raising two beautiful, intelligent daughters of whom he was enormously proud of and loved deeply. Both were model students. Roberta was 14 years old and excelled in computers, so much so that she had been on Haiti TV as a model for other young teens. As he held up the two photos of his daughters, tears streamed down his face and he began to sob. Both daughters were now buried under the rubble. His shop had been looted after the earthquake. He had nothing left. No family, No possessions. No hope. We all cried. As I’m writing this story, I find the tears still flow. I’ll probably always cry when I remember this man’s tragic life story.

I’ll remember the camaraderie of our group. The bond that we all shared amidst great sadness and tragedy will always be something I hold dear. In a group of eleven people in stressful circumstances, in close quarters for long stretches of time, there was never a cross word spoken nor any kind of negativity. We traveled together, experienced some “interesting” situations, ate, lodged, served, conversed, laughed and cried together. We were an incredible team.

But what I will always remember the most profoundly are the children - how much they wanted to be loved and how much love they had to give. As a mom, I was deeply moved by their innocence while at the same time feeling surrounded by old souls for these are children who had seen and experienced much hardship and loss and had come to accept this as their way of life. They cared for their younger siblings (some without parents) and took on tasks and burdens without complaint. Their smiles and laughs were magical to us.

So, as the song goes, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”, and as our Haitian guide said to me when I broke down crying once, “Don’t cry, Cathlyn, this is their lives.”

The question is, how can we best turn our heartbreak into a positive outcome for the people of Haiti?

The current struggles are just beginning for the people of Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced into makeshift tent cities with no sanitation. Disease outbreaks are a constant threat. The rainy season is soon to begin. The Hurricane season will start in June. People housed under bed sheets, tarps and tents have no protection against the brutality of a storm, let alone a hurricane.

We were just a small group. However, as Margaret Meade said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Please help Children’s Hope give the children of Haiti a chance at life - the hope of a future filled with something other than misery and pain. Your donations provide Children’s Hope with the ability to purchase much needed supplies: medicines, surgical supplies, diabetic supplies, vitamins, blood pressure monitors, miniature soccer balls (the children love them), tarps, rope, tools, and so much more. The children are the hope. They are the future of Haiti.

Mesi, (thank you in Creole)

Cathlyn Daly

Donations can be sent to:

CHILDREN’S HOPE
3025-A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Haiti photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=187249&id=556608199&l=f978b5f8c3

Haiti Weather Report: Mostly Foggy With Rain Storms Expected

Mark Hyman, MD
Posted: February 27, 2010 03:59 AM
February 24, 2009

Photo: Haiti’s “IRS” building completely demolished. Tax files lay strewn amongst the rubble and along the street

Imagine all of the Federal buildings in Washington collapsing in less than a minute killing 30-40% of our government workforce, crippling the tax collection system leaving the government no money to pay salaries or overhead. Our government, which seems to barely work at full capacity with gleaming buildings and a gargantuan budget, would come to a halt.

This is the state of Haiti today. Arriving again in Haiti, five weeks after we first landed in the chaos of the first days after the earthquake, the tarmac of the airport was eerily quiet, almost deserted. Some things had changed. There were more tent camps, a few more latrines, less rubble in the roads, more mouths fed, less acute medical injuries and trauma, more tents instead of open air surgical wards at the University Hospital where we were the first surgical team after the quake. But the layers of trauma were more apparent. At the University Hospital, the entire second year nursing class was crushed and died in the nursing school. Teachers and nearly all the schools were destroyed. During the five o’clock hour of the quake all the priests and seminarians met in their churches. Most of the priests, the future priests and their churches are now gone. The Universities with most of their precious intellectual capital of professors and the best and the brightest of Haiti are gone.

With few to govern, few to teach, few to learn, and few to help the people pray and soothe their souls, with the political, cultural, educational, and spiritual amputation of a nation, the world community must recognize the deep, cold, dark and powerful vacuum left by the quake that sucks deep into the heart and soul of every Haitian.

Now imagine New York after a similar disaster, a city of 8 million with a loss of a million citizens, with four million people living in the streets, with winter about to come and a marginally functioning government without resources to help. That is the state of Port au Prince today. With our global attention deficit disorder, we have moved on. The “donate to Haiti” banners at the bottom of our television screens have disappeared. At the Ebolele Hotel in Port au Prince, where many of the major networks stayed, there was one reporter from CBS left on ground, and he too was leaving in a week. Only Al Jeezera, committed to reporting on the poor and Third World countries, is moving in en force build a new Haiti bureau.

We used a hotel room occupied by ABC until a few days ago. Piled nearly to the ceiling in the midst of a city of dehydrated and thirsty Haitians, were cases upon cases of Dharasni filtered pure water. The outpouring of money and aid to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the quake is still piled half a billion dollars high waiting to be distributed, with only a fraction spent. There are few mechanisms to receive the funding. Absent are the governance, management and accountability necessary for intermediate needs or effective re-building.

We went back to the University Hospital, across the sprawling, crumbling compound patients still were crowded in sweltering tents under the hot Haitian sun. Most of the hospital staff still has not returned to work because their homes were destroyed and many fled to distant locations to find shelter with family or in tent camps, and most had not been paid in many months, even before the earthquake. Many of the NGO’s who came with us the first week, were now gone or are soon to leave, fulfilling their mission of immediate disaster relief. With the outpouring of aid, the nation’s largest and public hospital, which trains nearly all the physicians and nurses in the country, still has no sheets for the beds, still has no wash basins and towels to clean the patients, still doesn’t not have a generator capable of stable power to run even the copier and printer in the makeshift administration office.

In the best of times, their equipment was inadequate for a rural clinic in Alabama, and now in the time of greatest need they still have no EKG machines, pulse oximeters (to measure blood oxygen levels) glucometers to measure blood sugar, a view box to examine X-rays. Imagine the most important University Hospital in the United States without a CT scanner. There was not even the most basic and cheapest medication (chloroquine) to treat the cases malaria and cerebral malaria increasing now that the rainy season has started.

When I asked the director of the hospital, Dr. Alix Lassegue what he needed most, he said 1000 tents for his staff, and enough money to pay their salaries to encourage those who survived to return to work. Those who had not lost their homes, or who could stay with friends did come. Dr. Patrick Charles, a pediatrician who worked at the hospital before the quake was taking care of the dozens of children with marasmus and kwashiorkor (severe malnutrition) in the pediatric tent. He had been working 12-hour shifts without pay since the earthquake and no food all day, while he fed starving children therapeutic milk and Plumpynut, a protein and vitamin rich food.

But the problems of the Hospital are a microcosm of what is endemic to Haiti now. A medical school professor makes $500 US dollars a month. Those in private practice can make $5000 making it difficult to rebuild any enduring, effective public hospital.
If our medical school professors made $20,000 a year, while their colleagues in private practice made $200,000 a year our medical schools would collapse. These problems are endemic and will not be overcome easily. The Haitian heart and spirit, their uninvited suffering for centuries call us out of our small worlds to join with them in their struggle to rebuild their country. Mrs. Marlene Thompson, the administrator of the University Hospital lost her home during the quake and has not left the hospital campus in six weeks. She sleeps on a cot in a back room and holds the hospital together through the fierce love for her people and the patients. We cannot leave her alone on a cot in the back of an abandoned hospital ward.

But the question of how to join, how to partner, how to help without dominating and imposing our concepts of development remains as open and rough as the denuded, deforested country. The nation of the first (and only) slave revolt in 1804 was embargoed and isolated in its earliest days by America and the world and then forced to pay reparations of over 400 million francs over many decades for “taking” the French land. Americans occupied and controlled Haitian government directly or indirectly for most of the 20th century and built into the society what Paul Farmer refers to as “structural violence”. It is no accident that there are no trees on the Haitian side of the island of Hispaniola while the Costa Rican side is lush and tropical. It is no accident that there are no industries, no natural resources left, no substantial ways for Haitians to support themselves. This is not just the result of coups and corruption but of centuries of policies that have made the problems structural and embedded.

It is six weeks after the quake and there is no one fully in charge. The UN is observant but not acting, the international aid organizations are mostly disorganized, isolated in silos and uncoordinated, and the government infrastructure had its staff and sources of revenue amputated. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, various governments are all are scrambling for control of the spoils of the quake. The reparations the world can pay back to Haitians is to accompany them in the process of creating institutions that can sustain civilizations with respect and guidance and co-creation - health care, industry, agriculture, governance, and justice. The collective intelligence and skills of the international community can solve this problem in solidarity with the Haitian people while preserving their sovereignty.

The Haitian people accommodate. Perhaps that is why we ignore them. The dancer who lost both her feet danced for us in her bed, swaying her body and waving her hands entertaining us, imploring us to tell her story. On Sunday morning in Cange, in the central plateau of Haiti where so many escaped Port au Prince to receive care and shelter, the Church was turned into a hospital ward, and Sunday services were held in an old auditorium a thousand people huddled into the building and spilled into the courtyard to celebrate life, to help each other. This was Zanmi Lasante, Partners in Health, the place where Paul Farmer created a vibrant health center and community out of the most desolate place in Haiti 25 years ago. That morning Paul translated the stories of those who survived the quake, who came to Cange to get help and shared their gratitude, their hope, and their love with all of us. There is only gratitude and patience and fortitude in the face of so little.

And soon there will be even less despite the aid. The weather report in Haiti is not good. Storms are coming, rain will wash over the “tent” camps which are often just bed sheets thrown over some sticks housing thousands without sanitation. At the Prime Minister’s house in Port au Prince 3500 people are camped on the ground with four port-a-potties that haven’t been serviced and are piled high with human feces. Children wade through feces in these camps. Some vaccinations against typhoid, measles and yellow fever had been given, but there is no way to vaccinate again cholera, tuberculosis or malaria. The earthquake set the stage for disasters of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and infection. The weather is not good in Haiti.
But the opportunity exists for a partnership model of support for governance aided by the international community so the aid can be effectively deployed, the people house, fed, given clean water, sanitation and soon, jobs to pay them to rebuild their own homes, economy and society. Our army should stay for humanitarian aid. They came when we called them to the hospital and help keep the aid workers and the patients alive. We can bring sunnier days to Haiti. But we have to keep our attention, money, support and participation focused and constant.

The University Hospital needs help now and is caught in the vacuum where aid cannot get through. It is close to our hearts because it is where we spent the first week after the disaster helping bring it back from a standstill and shock. In order to help the hospital, Partners in Health has helped create a small foundation to support the hospital directly, which serves the poor. It is called, at least for now, “Friends of HUEH” or French for University Hospital. Please donate to Partners in Health at http://www.pih.org and request the funds be for “Friends of HUEH”. A small amount can be the difference between good care and no care.

Team Haiti - Children’s Hope

Top Left to Right: Chris Crabb; Paul Burke; Leisa Faulkner; Jordan Barnes; Christene Timmons; David Crandall
Bottom Left to Right: Cathlyn Daly; Grant Barnes; Brittany Barnes; Caleb Barnes

Team Member: Mostafa Noori (stayed an additional two weeks in Haiti after we departed back to the States)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read journals of team member’s accounts below:

Cathlyn’s Email exchanges with Chief of Infectious Disease at her Medical Facility upon her return from Haiti below:

Hi Dr. V,

I returned home from Haiti late last night. It was a whirlwind trip, but certainly a life impacting experience. I didn’t want to come home. I’d like to return and split my time in half with Children’s Hope and the team from here. One of my teammates, Mostafa, the nephew of Dr. N. (anesthesiologist here at our facility), chose to stay another two weeks at Matthew 25, a medical clinic/tent city that we worked at.

I apologize for not being able to post from Haiti. There wasn’t internet access from where we were. We never had more than 4-5 hours of sleep from the day we left Sacramento until we returned. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone. We never wanted for water or food. We never felt unsafe. The videos we witnessed on CNN of wild crowds did not accurately reflect anything we saw or felt. In actuality, Americans were welcomed, embraced. The spirit of the Haitian people is amazing. Not one Haitian ever asked us for anything. They have nothing. They only wanted to say “thank you” and to tell us their stories. For those that were hurt, their gratitude for our attention and care was palpable.

The earthquake situation is worse than can be described. The tent situation is desperate. In one tent city that we know of there were 40,000 people with no sanitation whatsover. There are tent cities everywhere in varying sizes. We met doctors and medical teams from all over the USA. The unofficial mayor, Rea, took us to a bluff where she had arranged for one doctor to administer to over 100 people she had gathered there from all over. The people had been waiting there for two days.  The doctor never arrived. When told that the doctor wasn’t coming, the people didn’t complain. They weren’t angry. They just came up and thanked us. Their patience and kindness was/is astounding. As we drove our two vans down the street at the bottom of the bluff, people in scrubs began to exit out of a nearby building and began to follow after us. I walked back to talk to them and it was a physician who had a clinic down the street. Several minutes later his team of nurses and more doctors caught up with us. They told us that they had just completed seeing 240 patients that day and that they were with a group called Pro-Vision. I invited them to come up to the bluff with us, meet the Rea and founder of our group, Leisa Faulkner.  There’s a lot more to the story, but ultimately, the patients eventually were able to be seen by this group of physicians.  It was a matter of coordination (people knowing where to find help) and negotiating with the priest in the village because patients are not allowed to be seen on a Sunday.

On the plane ride home, I sat next to a surgeon from New Hampshire. He had been part of a team which had been assembled to deal with patients whose limbs had already been amputated. Their mission was to prepare or redo patients’ amputated limbs for prostheses. They were working out of a surgical clinic in the Dominican Republic. I shared my photos with him that I had taken in Haiti (uploaded onto my netbook). I told him a few stories, sometimes unable to hold back the tears. I told him no one on our team wanted to come home. He said no one from his team wanted to come home either. They all planned to go back. While sitting on the plane talking, CNN broke the news of the man who had been buried for 27 days under rubble being rescued. The two rows of medical personnel sitting in exit rows (where we had been placed), cried.

The surgeon said to me, “we only did eleven surgeries, but then I remember the starfish story that another doctor told me. Do you know the story of the starfish?” and I said “no.”

Two men are walking along the shoreline. One of the men keeps picking up starfish and throwing them back into the surf. The other man says, “why do you bother, most will just end up washing back up. It’s futile. You’re wasting your time.” The man picks up another starfish and throws it back in and says “it matters to that one.”

Cathlyn
*****

Dear Cathlyn

Many thanks for your inspiring account. I have sent it out to the managers and all providers.

A.V., M.D.
*****

Dear Dr. V...wasn’t expecting that (should have proofed my writing...was just writing from my heart), but I’m happy if you think my thoughts are worth sharing. If it inspires or encourages any provider to go to Haiti, that would be wonderful. Doctors and nurses are greatly needed. The same day we were leaving Matthew 25 clinic, the team of doctors and nurses were also exiting, leaving behind a skeleton nursing staff (before the earthquake, Matthew 25 was not a medical clinic).  So that the nurses or staff would know how to continue caring for the amputees after the medical teams had left, they were filming the physicians and nurses debriding and bandaging the amputated limbs.

The humanitarian relief effort pulling together by the various countries is inspiring. As we were leaving Haiti we saw a convoy of Italian bulldozers on their way into Haiti. The Cuban and American doctors are working together and providing much needed relief. EMT’s and medical assistants help with assisting the providers and reassuring patients. We were able to deliver medications, help set up pharmacies, bandaging, vaccinations etc. A couple of our team members were fluent in Spanish (our driver was from the Dominican Republic and spoke only Spanish) and one of our team members spoke fluent creole which was invaluable.

The downtown area was hit very hard. The earthquake struck at 5pm. Many people perished in the government buildings. We were taken to the hardest hit area of Port-au-Prince which as at the very top of a steep hill. It was wiped out, devastated. Heartbreaking. Although we saw a lot of earthquake destruction all around us, it was at this place where it all became so real. Where all the bodies still lay underneath the rubble and the stories we heard made us weep. Our Haitian guide pulled me aside, put his arm around me to comfort me and said “Do not weep for us, this is our lives.” Where on a wall, in creole, someone had written in charcoal “if you are hungry, we have corpses. If you are thirsty, we have dust.” And the Red Cross flag waved at the top of the hill.

Cathlyn

Cathlyn Daly, PharmTech, CMA
Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Technician
*****

Jordan Barnes writes:

I could not have anticipated what I was to see, or the affect that our experience in Haiti would have on me. 

My fiance Christene and I left from Ocean Beach to join ten others and 1,200 lbs of medicine and supplies that had been donated.  This is only a fraction of the donations that “Children’s Hope” has received since the catastrophic quake, but such was our weight allotment, the rest will go down in subsequent trips. 

My mother Leisa Faulkner began Children’s Hope, a non-profit/non-religious organization, in 2004 to help the desperate situation of the children of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.  Along with humanitarian aid, my mother has become very involved in the political situation there.  Our last trip down there was her 12th. 

We spent most all our time in Port au Prince, where through her previous trips, my mother had established ties with community leaders.  Governing now only exists at the local level, “mayors” of what are now tent cities have the best idea of what the people in their area need most. 

We worked to distribute the huge quantities of medicine, stocking “pharmacies” (usually located in one of the few buildings still sound in the area) with what they needed, and then off through the debris filled streets.  When we felt as if we most usefully proportioned out the medicines, we took to helping in the hospitals.  Now in what used to be orphanages, schools, and soccer fields, under tarpaulin roofs, the battle is on against the second wave of this disaster.  Malaria, typhoid, cholera, and hepatitis A are breaking out as sanitation is almost impossible and the density of people guarantees quick transmition.  We gave vaccinations, changed bandages of amputees and helped teach them to use crutches or wheelchairs, and helped the sick in outlaying regions get the treatment they needed. 

The dozen or so soccer balls we brought were worth their weight in gold, or rather smiles.  Watching the children play soccer together; smiling, hugging, and laughing they seemed to forget if only for a moment the pain and just be kids. 

Now what little infrastructure and “stability” the people of Haiti had is all but gone.  The devastation is total; government buildings, schools, hospitals, and homes flattened. 

They press on through resiliency of spirit and unity. 

A unity and oneness that Fox news and CNN would not have you believe, and the mounted 50 caliber weapons on UN tanks do not promote.  We never saw riot or looting, but only people pulling together, sharing, lifting each other up.  Because they have to, because it is what they have always done. 

As a man sitting atop a pile of rubble that used to be his neighborhood his, his family still buried somewhere below his feet proclaimed, “I realize that I am here to help those less fortunate than myself.” The only people that I can think of that are less fortunate than that man are those in that country that have lost not only family and friends, but arms and legs.  It is a horrible thing to say, but we met countless Haitians, mostly very young, who fell to such a fate.  A people that have endured disaster after disaster, oppression, slavery, coup upon coup are now faced with surviving the worst natural disaster on record. 

The people of Haiti are the most beautiful I have ever met, their smiles beaming from under the rubble, and hand in hand they stand up and dance. 

I will most likely be returning to Haiti soon, accompanied once again by my loving mother, to sit on an enormous donation (from a resident of Ocean Beach-THANK YOU!) of 15,000 bottles of antimicrobial cleanser/sanitizer and ensure its passage and proper distribution.  Please continue to support, you cannot give enough.  The need is truly great, and the people could not be more thankful.

Jordan Barnes

If you would like to donate through Children’s Hope:

Children’s Hope
3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Leaving on a Humanitarian Mission to Haiti with Children’s Hope

Dear friends,

As many of you know, I am headed to Haiti with my friends and colleagues, Leisa and Paul and six other volunteers. We are part of an organization called Children’s Hope, a local organization, based in Cameron Park, CA (Leisa is the founder and Executive Director). We were due to leave Thursday, Jan 28th, but our trip has been delayed until next Thursday, February 4th. This will give us more time to purchase medical supplies, medicines and tarps (the rainy season begins in 9 days). Many of you have asked me “what is Children’s Hope, who are Leisa and Paul and how can Ihelp?” I’ve attached a few links and info for you below.

For those of you who have been so kind to donate money, thank you from the bottom of my heart. 100% of the money will go towards medicine or much needed supplies. All of us are volunteers. We are paying for our own plane tickets and all of our own expenses. There is no overhead in anything Children’s Hope does.

If you would like to donate money to help Children’s Hope purchase desperately needed medicine and supplies to take to Haiti for the next trip on March 29th, you can send a check to Children’s Hope, 3025 Cambridge Road #A, Cameron Park, CA 95682.

Any amount you would be able to contribute would be greatly appreciated.

I feel privileged to be able to go on this humanitarian mission and I’m honored to be able to go with such a good group of people.

With much gratitude and love,

Cathlyn
President, Capitol Area Progressives

Watch this recent Channel 10 news interview video of Leisa and Paul in the top right hand corner:
http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=73262

http://www.2childrenshope.org/
http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=10884

Below are snipits of Leisa’s recent Haiti Journal posted in California’s National Organization for Women
http://www.canow.org/

This series of guest posts is written by Leisa Faulkner, founder of Children’s Hope.

Haiti Journal #4: Carrying Babies Out of Haiti
The following post was written on January 20th.

There is so much to tell...latest news first:

We aren’t sure we are coming home yet.

Not five minutes off the small plane last night from the Dominican Republic (story next time), we were asked to go back into Haiti to hand-carry out babies that need transport. Paul turned to me ans said, “I guess you want to go do that”.

I nodded. He said he couldn’t let me go back alone. We are waiting for details now. 

We are emotionally on over-load. As Doctor Jim Morgan confided in me yesterday in Cite Soleil, the transition between depression and manic doesn’t seem to happen in these conditions, they just exist together. He had seen between 45-50 amputations in two days at the bigger hospitals where he pulls two and three shifts. Dr Joey said that yesterday was the first 24 hour period without “after-shocks”. Everything is a shock in Haiti, even for those of us who have been going in for years.
Continue reading “Haiti Journal #4: Carrying Babies Out of Haiti” »

Haiti Journal #3: Arrival
The following post was written on January 17th.

We got in! 
What a relief! And the miracles keep happening. Neil Kopple, (yes, a relation) donated his time, his jet and his bagels to the cause. After “Clean The World“‘s Shawn Seiple connected us with Neil, a humanitarian/benefactor who generously flew us into the U.S. Air Force controlled Port au Prince airport, then handed us bag after bag of fresh bagels and cream cheese. 

The tower was down, the terminal in shambles and coated with a layer of water, and yet things ran with amazing success and a chaotic sort of precision.  Though there was a moment just before landing that our co-pilot (Paul Burke) later reported to us that we lost audio connection with ground control. Our hats are off to Neil for volunteering to fly us in his amazing little jet with just a 20 minute window each way, for meeting the challenge of getting us there safely, and as the volunteers at Matthew 25 House would say was his shinning moment, got the bagels here intact.

Such a trivial thing seems almost frivolous, but for the team of 20 who have been working without sleep treating the earthquake victims, it made for just a moment of relief from the non-stop emotions that come with staving off death against all odds.
Continue reading “Haiti Journal #3: Arrival” »
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Haiti Journal #2: Miracles
The following post was written on January 16th.
Saturday. 11:30 p.m. In route to Boca Raton, Florida.

A day of miracles. 
Miracle #1
When we tumbled into bed this morning around 2am it was the first time since Wednesday that we had been in a bed. We hardly embraced a 7:30 a.m. wake up call. But Anthony Bone was on the job, so off we went. We met him the night before as he “pulled a double” by working the bell hop station. He normally supervises in housekeeping. He convinced his boss to have us speak to the staff this morning. After Paul gave a little explanation of how Children’s Hope regularly goes into Haiti with medical and school supplies, I spoke for a minute. Since most of the staff are from Haiti originally, I used my very limited Creole which made them laugh, I told them the phone service in Haiti is picking back up, which made them smile, but when we spoke of the tragedy and mentioned the Hatian saying that through solidarity many hands make the burden lighter...they cried. Then, one by one this staff of 100 of the most underpaid, undervalued in our society came up and kissed my check while they each pressed a few dollars into my hand...some with more, some with less...after I had cred, hugged and kissed more than I ever had we floated up to our room.We didn’t expect one dollar, and we ended up with a total of $1,359.85. I think the 85 cents were my favorite.
Continue reading “Haiti Journal #2: Miracles” »

Haiti Journal #1: Preparation
The following post was written on January 15th.

It took ten volunteers two days to plead for, pray for, and pack our bags for Haiti...and we are finally closing in...two hours
To finish up...these are the hours that the last vital decisions are made. Which is worth more: flashlights that wind-up, or extra scissors and forceps? 

In the last 48 hours more than $8,300 in pledges were called in, emailed in, sent by text, or simply-gently handed over in a little banded roll wrapped in a note that reminds us to, “Be careful!!”. Thank you.

Within that same 48 hours following the worst disaster in 200 years hearts were touched, doors opened and more than 200 lbs. of medicines and medical supplies were also promised, delivered and packed. 

In Haiti, our friends waiting on the ground say that folks are holding cloths over their faces now to stave off the stench of death, yet stories of children pulled from the rubble inspire us. The “Lamp for Haiti” Clinic refuses to close it’s doors. Medicines sent through Children’s Hope will replenish desperately needed supplies. Folks have really come through.

Today, when our tickets into Haiti were cancelled, “Clean the World” offered us seats on their plane. Volunteers are still milling about even after 3 a.m. to make sure we have all the help we need to get out in two hours. Thank you...lives will be saved, parents comforted...children held and healed...I have every faith.

Peace, all ways and always,
Leisa

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