| 
Fabiola Simon in the classroom turned consultation room in Morency | | 
Translators working with Nurse Practitioner students at Morency Primary School |
July 21, 2010
As we approached the Mobile Clinic site – a Hope for Haiti supported primary school in the coastal community of Morency – something stood out in the crowd of villagers awaiting healthcare. Eager yet infinitely patient, the usual mix of men, women, children, and the elderly lined up outside the school. But among them, a remarkable amount of pregnant women waited in the shade of the sea grape trees, the early morning light glowing behind them on the Caribbean.
Eighteen in total, they were of varying ages and stages of pregnancy. What united them was their lack of access to regular prenatal care, living hours on foot from the nearest public maternity ward located in the Les Cayes General Hospital. To respond, Hope for Haiti nurse Rachel St. Germain brought these women together in what, just weeks earlier, had served as a first grade classroom. Seated on benches lining the half-lit room, the women listened as Miss Rachel talked about their pregnancies and investigated what kind of care each woman had sought so far.
She then consulted each woman individually, monitoring her weight, pulse, and blood pressure, discussing her sexual health, and investigating any other health issues she may have which could pose risks to her pregnancy. If a woman needed to see one of the three Haitian doctors on our team, she did so immediately. And before leaving, all of the women received a three-month supply of prenatal vitamins acquired through one of our partners, Vitamin Angels.
Fabiola Simon, at 24 years old, was eight months pregnant with her first child on the day of this Mobile Clinic. Thanks to Miss Rachel’s screening, her severe anemia was identified and she was referred to the HFH Infirmary for follow up. Through our Robert E. Hord Emergency Medical Fund, Hope for Haiti paid for her consultation with a gynecologist in Les Cayes. Equipped with the appropriate information and medications, she was on her way to a healthy delivery.
Pregnant women wait to consult with Nurse Rachel during our
July 2010 Medical Mission in Morency | 
Miss Rachel monitoring blood pressure | 
Fabiola Simon follows up at the HFH Infirmary |
The following weekend, while crossing the mountains that separate Morency from Les Cayes, Fabiola went into labor. Women and midwives from the community came to her aid, and Fabiola had her baby there on the roadside. The delivery was successful and her child is healthy. Fabiola’s first concern, upon informing Hope for Haiti of the incident, was when she could come to Hope for Haiti’s Infirmary for post-natal care. We’ll see Fabiola and her baby very soon – evidence of another rural healthcare link successfully formed.
| 
The standard post-quake classroom |
July 1, 2010
It is remarkable how little time schools in Haiti lost despite the earthquake. While it would have been understandable and even expected for the catastrophe to derail the entire academic year, schools resumed session only weeks after the disaster. Teacher, directors, the Ministry of Education, students, and families stayed strong and got back on track. Now, using only a few weeks of summer as extra sessions, schools are wrapping up a complete year despite January’s shattering interruption.
In the Southern Department, primary school students in the cities of Les Cayes and Aquin finished their year on time. First through fifth graders completed their required curriculum and tested out last week. Today marks the second day of testing for all 6th graders on the National Exam, performance on which determines if a student passes on to secondary school. In other departments, including Port-au-Prince, official State exams will be held in late July and early August.
The rubble at Pelagie Primary School | 
Testing is in full swing at Hope for Haiti schools all over the south | 
5th grade students at Pelagie Primary School |
High school students testing at St. Thomas Secondary, which accepted over 100 displaced students from Port au Prince for the second half of the year | |
Hope for Haiti is continuing to work beyond the prescribed school calendar with our program partners, making sure that they and their teachers are supported until the very end. One school in particular that exemplifies such resilience is Pelagie Primary School, in the mountains of southeast Haiti. With their main building destroyed, Pelagie’s nine classes (Pre-K to 6th grade) are continuing under tents like the one shown here. Even as the rainy season sets in, Pelagie’s 250 students continue walking to class, studying, and learning so as to not repeat a year. While the quake seemed to take away so many vital things, in Hope for Haiti supported schools, Education was not one of them.
| 
Team members, left to right. Elise Gower, Katie Callahan, Karl Schmid, Shannon Shea (top); Maria Marx, Mollie Vita, Eddie Kloniecke, and Joe Boyd (bottom) |
June 11, 2010
This past week Hope for Haiti field staff spent eight days with an outstanding group of college students from the University of Scranton's International Service Program. Led by Ms. Elise Gower (Program Coordinator) and Joe Boyd (Faculty Chaperone), the students selected for the trip were responsible for an entire semester of planning, fundraising, education, faith-based reflection, and community building. Once on the ground in Haiti, their objective was to learn, their task to serve, and their framework to question the realities they encountered as much as the ideas they brought with them.
The result was a refreshing combination of service and discovery - an exploration into the challenges facing developing countries and the values that shape how we think about and act toward them.
The group witnessed the diversity of Hope for Haiti's programs in Port au Prince and throughout the southern peninsula. They visited IDP camps and rural schools, assisted with Vitamin A and multivitamin distributions, helped lay a cement foundation by hand at the Hope for Haiti Infirmary, and volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity. Their most meaningful project entailed cleaning up and painting an orphanage in downtown Les Cayes. Working alongside the home's 19 boys, 2 girls, and 2 host parents, the Scranton team helped transform the entire living space in less than two days. Old, dirt-covered walls were rejuvenated with fresh, bright paint. The floors were cleaned, furniture rearranged, and basketball hoop refurbished.
The refurbished basketball hoop, already being put to good use. | | 
Schneider, one of the orphans, with the original walls in the background. | | 
The transformation. |
A finished room. | |
The project's most rewarding aspect, however, was not the physical improvement of the orphanage but the connections forged between the American and Haitian students. In line with Hope for Haiti's overall methodology of partnership, the group didn't paint or repair for anyone; we painted with them. The pictures posted here show the work and the transformation.
The students rounded out their week with a reflection on faith and a call to action. Despite their project's success, they realized that poverty in Haiti can leave us all feeling pretty helpless. So they questioned and collectively sought to answer an open-ended question: what will they do? Friend, colleague, reader: what will you do? What do we all have to offer people who deserve our service and merit our respect? With regard to this group, Hope for Haiti cannot wait to see.
| 
Magneure Jean comes to monitor her blood glucose level. |
May 23, 2010
Colloquially, diabetes in Haiti is known as suffering from "sugar." Some have too much, others have too little, and almost everyone lacks the resources to control it. Recently, the irregular blood glucose levels, constant monitoring, restricted diets, and extreme fluctuations in weight and health that accompany this disease have become a chronic challenge to Hope for Haiti's Emergency Medical Relief program.
Over the last few months, we've identified and treated multiple cases of both Type I and Type II diabetes at the Hope for Haiti Infirmary in Les Cayes and the Don Bosco Clinic in Carrefour. Elderly men and women are just as vulnerable as young girls and boys and many cases, left untreated, are life threatening.
Eighteen-year-old Auguste Féline comes from Beaumond, a town six hours west of Les Cayes. After entering a coma in her home and local hospital, Auguste's family brought her to the general hospital in Les Cayes. When she arrived, however, she found no doctors available to treat her. Luckily, Hope for Haiti's Dr. Steeve Victor was visiting another patient and able to diagnose her case: severe Type I Diabetes.
Auguste spent 18 days in a private hospital with Hope for Haiti's finances and Dr. Victor and Dr. Elmide's supervision. She took meds, learned to monitor her own blood glucose levels, and has made an incredible recovery. At first, her average blood glucose reading was 222, with extreme reports around 300 or 400 (the American Diabetes Association cites an average reading between 90 and 130 mg/dL). A month later, she reported a blood glucose reading of only 91. Not only is her treatment working, Auguste is also showing impressive responsibility in managing her condition.
Magneure Jean, a twenty-six-year-old resident of Les Cayes, was not more than a skeletal frame when she came to check her blood glucose at the HFH Infirmary. It was no surprise that several tests with multiple glucometers would only render one reading: HIGH. Too high for a number, over a lethal 600 mg/dL. After weeks of treatment and in-patient care with one of our local partners, Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity, Magneure is also recovering. She's putting on weight, sleeping well, and reading a much more manageable blood glucose level of around 300.
Although Magneure and Auguste's cases are particularly severe, their conditions are not uncommon. Thanks to the flexibility of our Emergency Medical Relief program and the expertise of our staff, we're ready to treat them as effectively as the next ones.
Magneure Jean on IV fluids at the HFH Infirmary. | 
Auguste Féline after a month of treatment | 
Auguste Féline accompanied by her brother at the HFH Infirmary |
| 
Waking up to Hope |
May 7, 2010
Our six-person volunteer team and in-country staff spent the last two days of their Medical Mission at the Hope for Haiti Infirmary in downtown Les Cayes. Working alongside Hope for Haiti doctors Steeve Victor and Elmide Nazaire, the group confronted many of the same health issues as in the rural areas, this time concentrated in the city.
While treating numerous cases of diabetes and high blood pressure, nurse practitioner Monna Lesperance was most concerned about follow-up. In the Haitian healthcare environment, how can we provide not just treatment but also consistent care? Medications that regulate blood pressure or control blood glucose levels must be used regularly, which requires that patients have a dependable, accessible source of these medications and a provider whom they trust. From what we saw this week—returning patients with files and charts, records of treatment histories and appointment cards—the Hope for Haiti Infirmary has successfully become that stable healthcare force.
Nurse Daphné (right) consults with Dr. Elmide Nazaire | 
Executive Director, Elizabeth Davison, after taking vital signs on a patient | 
A girl with her medications outside the HFH Infirmary |
Nurse Connie Wheeler checks out a child | |
Frantz Clauzel Jacques, a translator for the Hope for Haiti team, was more concerned with the challenge of access. "To bring medical care to people who would not otherwise have it...to me, that is the greatest," he said. Whether the patients are in urban centers or rural areas-like Clauzel's hometown of Morency, nestled outside Cayes between the mountains and the sea and another site for Hope for Haiti Mobile Clinics-the value of access that volunteer teams help provide is immeasurable. For Clauzel, what matters is a realization of circumstance: when arbitrary factors like location and income determine who gets healthcare and who doesn't, something has to be done. "After all," he admits, speaking of the healthcare situation many Haitians are in, "I could be there, too."
The final and most inspiring part of the week's experience was the collaboration between the Haitian and visiting medical professionals. Working side by side to treat an increased number of patients and consulting with each other on complicated cases, the doctors and nurses found a common cause and developed a shared expertise that far exceeded any of their own individual talents.
Our next Medical Mission is scheduled for July. Until then, Hope for Haiti’s local doctors and nurses will continue operating the Infirmary, working every day to continue the mission that this amazing volunteer team helped emphasize.
| 
Nurse Candi in the Mobile Pharmacy | | 
May Medical Mission Team Members |
May 4, 2010
This update from Les Cayes, Haiti covers the efforts of our 6-person Medical Team as they provide high-quality, primary healthcare to hundreds of patients throughout the south of Haiti. This week, we have four returning volunteers from Florida—Dr. Steve Shukan, registered nurse Candi Thompson, nurse practitioner Monna Lesperance, and Hope for Haiti's Executive Director, Elizabeth Davison. Joining us also are two first time volunteers from Detroit and Canada, registered nurses Connie Wheeler and John St. Laurent.
Accompanied by Hope for Haiti field staff and translators, the team spent their first two days conducting Mobile Medical Clinics in the rural communities of Baradères and Ravine Sable. In Baradères, we worked at the Little Sisters of Saint Thérèse clinic, a standing healthcare facility when there has been no doctor since November 2009. Dr. Shukan, a pediatric specialist, was in his element treating a strikingly high number of sick children, while Connie and John processed the vital signs and chief complaints of every patient in the packed, noisy clinic.
Monna and Dr. Steeve Victor, Hope for Haiti's Healthcare Director, confronted several intense emergency cases and performed emergency life-saving procedures. So far, we've consulted 225 patients and sent them all home with treatment, medications, and necessary follow-up instructions. It is obvious to the team that the increased stress placed on families post-earthquake has resulted in a severe strain on the overall health of the community.
Waiting to be seen, Ravine Sable | 
Dr. Shukan extracts a bead stuck in a child's ear. | 
A teenage girl with bruised ribs, accompanied by her mother, Baraderes. |
Tomorrow brings us back from the field to the Hope for Haiti Infirmary in downtown Les Cayes. Our goal will be simple: to do all we can to alleviate Les Cayes’ overwhelmed healthcare system as it struggles to keep up with the intensity of post-quake Haiti.
| 
The path to Mogis Primary School |
April 28, 2010
Experiences like today make me feel as though things might one day be right with the world.
While visiting schools in our Education Program, I was accompanied by our two community health nurses, Miss Pierrette and Miss Rachel. Together they’re leading our newest Nutrition initiative to deliver public health outreach to Hope for Haiti’s 25 supported primary schools in the south.
The program, which all started thanks to Hope for Haiti’s partnership with Vitamin Angels out of Santa Barbara, California, has three components: distributing Vitamin A boosters to preschoolers five and under, providing all students with Albendazole (de-worming medication) and one-month packets of multivitamins, and leading an interactive lesson on hygiene, health, and nutrition.
Mother and her 7 kids come for Vitamins at Marre a Coiffe Primary School | 
Community Health Nurses Miss Rachel and Miss Pierrette Prepping Multivitamins | 
Beginning the public health lesson inside Mogis Primary School |
What makes today stand out is the distance we traveled to connect this program with students in rural areas. I hiked with Pierre, our agronomist and translator, and Ronald, the area’s school supervisor, to Marre à Coiffe, Tiami, and Mogis Primary Schools. These schools are far away—inaccessible by car, over two hours above the nearest healthcare facilities—and filled with hundreds of children in need of nutrition interventions.
Maudeleine on Pierre's shoulders |
One of these children was Maudeleine, the Director of Mogis' niece. Because of where she lives, Maudeleine doesn’t go to a doctor regularly. She doesn’t get the Vitamin A boosters given in equipped health clinics, and she doesn’t take multivitamins every morning. Chances are, she gets worms regularly and lacks essential components of her immune system to fight off common childhood illnesses. Sadly, Maudeleine is not alone.
As we left Mogis, Maudeleine came teetering down the mountain past me. Her little arms outstretched, she hopped delicately over the rocks—a playful four-year-old balancing act in a crisp white dress. Without second thought, Pierre bent down, scooped her up, and placed her squarely on his shoulders. As they plodded down the mountain in front of me, smiling and laughing, I saw the purpose of this program before me. In a snapshot, it all made sense:
Maudeleine doesn't have to make it entirely on her own. Yes, perhaps she could. But she shouldn’t have to. Today, on Pierre’s shoulders, she won't. And maybe when things actually are right with the world, no child ever will.
But until then, I'll keep feeling good about today. And Hope for Haiti will prepare to replicate it for the months to come. Our endeavor was small, but it was real and measurable. Mountains were crossed to make it happen, but each of the beneficiaries-each student, every face—was far worth the effort.
Patrick Eucalitto, Program Director
| 
St. Francois de Sales, 2008-09 school year |
April 3, 2010
How do you tell the story of a school that once was, when the classrooms you'd describe no longer exist? Where do you begin to fill in the pieces? Among the rubble, between the bodies - where can we find a narrative that helps destruction make sense?
Spending the past week visiting schools in Haiti's capital, I struggled immensely with these questions. The closest I came to clarity was at St. Francois de Sales in the neighborhood of Rivière Froide, commune of Carrefour, Port au Prince.
At the epicenter of the quake, Carrefour saw horrible destruction. The private school run by nuns had kindergarten, primary, and secondary levels. Over 1,350 students. Upwards of 50 teachers. Dozens of other nuns running crosscutting healthcare and social programs. A community of care on a hill, overlooking one of the most notoriously neglected areas of the capital.
Now, this is what's left of that hill. Where the school stood—primary and secondary, each several stories high—the rubble has finally been cleared. Eight of the Sister's 11 main buildings came down. Fortunately, the lack of rubble leaves space for tents under which school can continue and life can move on. But so far only three tents have come, and heartbreaking loss turns “moving on” into wishful thinking.
St. Francois de Sales, April 2010 | 
A notebook in the rubble | 
Sr. Mary Jeanne, a Little Sister of St. Therese |
The Sisters ran a primary school program for very poor children, many in "restavek" situations who are forced to work or do chores in the mornings and attend school in the afternoon. Class gets out around 5:00 pm, to accommodate the children's unjust reality. The earthquake struck at 4:50 pm. St. Francois de Sales is down to 1,200 students.
Boy after poking around in rubble | |
I imagine 150 bodies are never easy to extract. When they're children, the task to me is incomprehensible. Somehow the Sisters did it, and continue onwards ever stronger. Adapting. Regrouping. Growing where they must, in whatever space they can.
My attention is diverted from the Sister I’m interviewing by a collection of green plants, potted delicately in a row to my left. They start to move, new and fragile but strong enough to hold firm as a group of children scurry to pick them up.
"To decorate the Church under the tent," the Sister tells me. A weak smile breaking below distant eyes. "We'll hold mass in the yard. The children, they can help."
I don't quite know how to make sense of the school situation in Port-au-Prince, but I know when I see people who do. The Little Sisters of Saint Therese, Haitian nuns and one of Hope for Haiti’s partners for the last 10 years, will continue moving forward with learning amidst reconstruction. And Hope for Haiti will be there, at their side. After all, 1,200 is still a number worth fighting for.
Patrick Eucalitto, Program Director
Berlinda Dumas receiving care by Dr. Steeve on January 13th
| |
March 25, 2010
We started the day with some of the Hope for Haiti public health team and the Carrefour clinic staff running a mobile clinic at Camp Villa located next to the Villa Creole Hotel. The camp has a little less than 200 people living on a tennis court. We have been working with the Villa Creole to provide tents, food, water, sanitation, and now medical care. The team treated 96 people before the day was done and will plan for a follow-up visit in two weeks. During the clinic, the team also took the time to give out vitamin packs and vitamin A.
| 
Berlinda Dumas with her baby sister on March 24th
|
The highlight of the day came when Dr. Steeve brought a cute little girl to my attention. I had spoken to her earlier while she was getting her vitals taken with her baby sister and at the time she was just a rather healthy looking little girl of 7, tougher than she should have to be, but still with a bit of innocence. Dr. Steeve, fighting back emotion, informed me that she was one of the severely injured cases that we found upon arrival to the Villa Creole after the earthquake. She had been in her house when it collapsed around her leaving her terrified with severe head trauma that nearly took her life. We found this little one writhing in pain and shock from the terrible surprise Mother Nature had bestowed and after stabilizing her Dr. Steeve went to work trying to care for the deep lacerations to her head.
Today she is still alive and living in the IDP camp behind the Villa Creole along with almost 200 others. In the dark that night with head lamps Dr. Steeve and I set out with one thought, save as many as you can, in a sea of so many faces that now feel too hard to remember fate has given us a chance reminder and Berlinda Dumas and her mother were given a chance to say "Mesi."
Mike Stewart, Country Director
March 22, 2010
January's earthquake did more than damage buildings, crush bodies, and destroy infrastructure-it profoundly impacted the hearts and minds of the Haitian people and drastically increased the need for mental health care and services.
The New York Times last week painted a dire picture of mental health institutions in post-quake Port-au-Prince, emphasizing the need to incorporate psychiatrics into the primary healthcare system throughout the country. Child psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Jones from one of our partner organizations, the International Medical Corps (IMC), is quoted in the article. IMC has chosen the Hope for Haiti Clinic at the Don Bosco Camp in Carrefour to centralize their weekly mental health training sessions, held each Thursday afternoon. See her comments here: In Haiti, Mental Health System Is in Collapse.
 Two weeks before the Times article, Hope for Haiti was addressing this issue at a workshop with Haitian mental health experts in Les Cayes. The group of local psychologists, social workers, educators, and counselors is called VAPS, the Volunteers for Psycho-Social Support, and their goal is to help individuals, families, and communities cope with the mental fallout of the quake. By conducting regular psychiatric consultations at local healthcare facilities, the group aids patients who lost limbs, parents who lost children, and families who've been torn apart. They’re also training teachers in local schools to identify post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and serve as role models for vulnerable students.
Our student nursing team from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania met with 8 VAPS members to learn their story, ask questions, share best practices, and brainstorm activities and options for collaboration. The 6 senior year nursing students and their professors, Dr. Patty Hannon and Dr. Corinna Dotter, learned how these Haitian professionals are selflessly applying their passion and skills to bring consolation to survivors and families in need. More importantly, they witnessed firsthand that although the aftershocks have stopped, the quake’s tremors continue to reverberate deeply in the national psyche.
Photos by: Lee Cohen
March 15, 2010
The long-term stabilization and re-building process is in full swing. Things have moved from managing the acute trauma to implementing long-term plans. While the tempo has not slowed it has now become a long distance race that is just as critical.
In the first four weeks following the earthquake, Hope for Haiti moved 193 tons of medical supplies flown in from the United States, which does not include the significant amount of critical supplies it moved between organizations on the ground. In addition, Hope for Haiti continues to support its ongoing education, nutrition and healthcare programs throughout the southern peninsula.
By working to get these programs up and running again the organization will be providing additional employment opportunities to teachers and healthcare workers in public works to support the efforts of two IDP camps in Carrefour. In addition the re-building process will help generate construction jobs, work teams and support for our on-going programs, particularly our education program, which will provide children with some semblance of structure when the schools are successfully re-opened. All of this will help bring Haiti back to its feet.
Pictured below is one of Hope for Haiti's Public Health teams supporting the Don Bosco IDP camp in Carrefour, just outside Port-au-Prince.
March 10, 2010
The Firehouse Subs Company donated approximately 90,000 pounds of rice and beans to Hope for Haiti’s emergency relief effort for distribution in the first few weeks following the January 12th earthquake. The Hope for Haiti team distributed the food to the 9,000 people living within the Don Bosco internally displaced persons camp (IDP) in Carrefour. After a week and a half of nothing more than the occasional "Meal Ready to Eat" (MRE), the rice and beans did a tremendous amount to both boost morale and to feed thousands of hungry bellies. The Firehouse Subs team furthered their commitment by traveling to Haiti to volunteer and see first-hand the impact of their donation. While on the ground, they saw how food is distributed and lent a hand in the daily operations of the ongoing aid initiative. From moving trucks full of water storage tanks, to the delivery of walkers and canes, the team was not shy about getting their hands dirty.
 It's not every day that a donor gets the opportunity to see-up close and personal-how their donation impacts the people of Haiti. But the Firehouse Subs team took the time to see their donation through, and the thousands of smiling faces of the children who greeted them clearly validated their efforts. Thank you Firehouse Subs!
READ MORE
February 15, 2010
Gabion was transformed, early on after the earthquake, from a soccer stadium to an IDP (internally displaced peoples) camp. When I think of "camps," images of miles and miles of refugees, dirt, makeshift housing, and generally unsanitary conditions come to mind. I've been conditioned to associate camps with terrible living conditions. Gabion is definitely not terrible. It's not ideal—none of the people there want to live there—but it's clean and relatively well managed. There is an organized food program, that Hope for Haiti has helped with support from Kids Against Hunger, and there's a water supply on the premises. Really, it's the heat more than anything else that makes life in Gabion hard. That, and the pain brought to the camp from Port au Prince. The IDPs living in Gabion are the minority of people who have traveled to the south who don't have any family or friends to help support them. They've got nowhere else to go. And while there's "only" around 150 people living there, they're perhaps the loneliest people in Les Cayes. No family. No friends. No familiar surroundings to find comfort in. During the day, the heat makes staying in the tents unbearable, and people shrink next to the tiny slivers of shade. I've been trying to record as many stories from Gabion as I can, trying to preserve them, so that we don't forget what they went through, what they're still going through.
I first met Sophia a week ago. She was staying in a tent with a husband, wife, and 2 infants. She did not know any of them, had merely been grouped with them into a tent. Sophia is 13. When she was very little, she was "entered" into the Restavek system by her parents, which is often the equivalent of indentured servitude. The parents give her away to a family, and are promised that the child will receive an education in exchange. Instead, these children are usually put to work. Sophia was no exception. For as long as she can remember, Sophia lived with a family that was not hers, that did not treat her as family, and worked in the streets of Port au Prince selling corn. She told me that occasionally she would get to go to school, but then her adopted family would stop paying her tuition, and she would get kicked out. This pattern followed for many years, until the earthquake struck, killing her adopted family, and making this child a woman overnight-without family, without a home, without many options. She walked the streets aimlessly until finding a bus, and got in without even asking where it was going. She didn’t care. It was going far away from there. Sophia is still a young girl, and seems to be at peace with her situation. She isn't agitated as she tells me this story, simply stating the facts as if she were in a history class. I've tried to have her moved from Gabion to an orphanage, as girls her age are perhaps the most vulnerable in camp environments to sexual abuse. Bureaucracy is Sophia's enemy at the moment, but the government here, particularly the local mayoral office, is showing signs of life.
A few days later I bump into Sophia again as I'm dropping off medical supplies for the two doctors who treat minor injuries at Gabion (more serious cases are triaged to one of the two major hospitals in town). She is happy to see me. She has met other children her age to play with in the camp, which is good. She asks me if I can carry her.
"Carry you? What, on my shoulders? Where?" I assume, stupidly, that she wants to goof around.
"Out of here," she states plainly. "Can you carry me on your shoulders out of here?"
We both know the answer to the question, but Sophia wanted to ask me anyway, and there are no hard feelings when I tell her that I can't. What I can do is write about her story, and check in on her from time to time, and keep pushing on that immovable object called bureaucracy.
By Lee Cohen
February 3, 2010
"My name is Maxime Myrtil," the young man penned delicately in my yellow notepad.
"24 years old."
Halfway through his last year of high school, Maxime had been studying in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck. Fortunately, he told me, he escaped his crumbling school building unharmed and was able to make the uncertain trip back to the southern countryside where he grew up. Today, standing before me outside his mother's home in the rural community of Ravine Sable, Maxime explained the dilemma that many internally displaced persons (IDPs) are facing throughout Haiti’s southern peninsula: will I stay, or will I go?
Or better yet: must we stay? Can we ever go?
These are the kind of questions my colleague, Lee Cohen, and I were looking for when we went to investigate households like Maxime's. We’ve spent the past weeks in Cayes, immersed in the immediate problems of the city: overcrowded hospitals, shortages of medicine, bottlenecks of supplies in Port-au-Prince. But we knew it was time to start learning about the countless other pieces of this fractious puzzle—to learn where all the IDPs from Port-au-Prince were going, and how we might be able to help them. Although the earthquake didn't hit Les Cayes directly, we needed to know how its tremors were being felt in the communities we're used to working in regularly. Traveling about an hour from Cayes’ urban center, we sampled families in two towns where our partners, the community leaders, expressed concern for the swelling local population.
"Y'ap vini an vag," school director, Rode Petit-Frère, told me. "They're coming in waves." And they say there are more on the way.
Thus we learned that Ravine Sable's small households are increasing by up to and sometimes over 50%. The home of Mrs. Alexilomme Petit-Frère took in 11 family members displaced from Port-au-Prince. Down the road, Maxime's mother's family of 7 suddenly became an extended family of 16. From each of these family’s unique stories, similar trends began to emerge.
Most evident is how the earthquake is directly reversing Haiti's characteristically rapid rate of urbanization. Maxime and his brother Bony both grew up and went to primary school in Ravine Sable, but moved to Port-au-Prince once their age and studies outpaced the capacity of the local school system. Throughout all the years they were away, their mother paid their school tuitions and supported their lives in the city. But now Maxime, who wants to graduate and study computer science, is back in his hometown with no electricity, no running water, no cell phone service, and most significantly, no other choice.
A second trend revealed parents who had left children in the care of aunts, uncles, and grandparents in Ravine Sable to seek higher earnings in the capital. Their city lives disrupted, the choice I heard these parents discuss was unambiguous: try to make it in Port-au-Prince, or return to their roots, empty handed. But returning to the countryside they'd once left behind only compounds the new post-quake problems: not only does Ravine Sable have more mouths to feed and more people to house, but there is no longer a stream of income flowing from jobs in the city. Two strikes, not one. And the complexity marches on.
What struck me most were not these larger trends but rather the particular impacts such macro-level shifts have on real people. Pointed pangs of reality pressing firmly upon on individual lives—Like unbearably large time lags between meals, and shortages of water. Mrs. Alexilomme's 15-year-old daughter told me they had not yet eaten since the previous day. They were waiting, hoping, for the adults to return from the Wednesday market in Gwo Marin. It was afternoon.
To maintain perspective while absorbing these stories, I have to remind myself that they are only a sample of what’s happening in the South—thankfully, not every house is jam-packed with IDPs. People like 20-year-old Clergé Étoile help me do this. His home in Port-au-Prince destroyed, friends and classmates dead, he nonetheless remains focused on getting back to school and to finish the academic year. When contemplating his next move, this 10th grader's answer came down to one thing: education. "I don't want to lose this school year," he tells me. "So wherever I can complete my studies, be it in Port or near Ravine Sable, that's where I'll go."
As of today, I have not yet processed all Lee and I learned earlier this week. But so far, two things are abundantly clear: the problems we're encountering, both in Les Cayes and the countryside, are complex and inter-related. There will be no quick fix. And yet we learned too that there are many Haitians more powerful than these problems—Haitians with the strength to fight back complexity, move forward despite uncertainty, and not compromise the integrity of their existence in the face of self-doubt, loss, or fear.
As I thumb through my yellow notepad, I wish I were able to write more fully about the other stories I see. Scribbles of survival. Songs of strength. His name was Maxime Myrtil. But another in my notepad is as inspiring as the next.
| 
 |
|
|
