Haiti: Part 1

"Haiti...felt like the land in which I had always belonged..." ~Shay



 A nurse from our Haiti relief team sent a message today asking, "Shay, do we still need to check your bags?"  She was teasing me about an email from our leader saying he thought I might have an orphaned baby hidden in my bag when we left Haiti.

"Today I was thinking of two-week-old Kevin," I replied. "I wonder if he's sad? is someone holding him? is he sleeping? is he smiling?" I know it was the right thing to do to leave Kevin at the orphanage but it's hard to leave a newborn who falls asleep holding my hand.

Haiti - Part 1

our team arriving in Haiti

We can see bed sheets blanketing the landscape as we fly into Port-au-Prince. From the air, the colorful fabrics look like laundry hung out to dry. From the ground, we see the sheets are actually makeshift tents.

We throw our gear into a flatbed pickup truck (a tap-tap taxi) and climb in the back.  I feel fear rising as we pull out of the airport and head to an orphanage where we're setting up base camp - the airport guards seemed to be our only protection from mobs of homeless Haitians jamming the roadway. Some media reports had warned about machete-wielding gangs looting and terrorizing survivors in the earthquake aftermath.

Men try to sell us trinkets and boys ask for money as we slowly drive past...women hold out their hands for food. I realize the people don't want to hurt us - they just want our help. From then on Haiti does not feel like a foreign land...somehow it begins to feel like the land in which I had always belonged.

The roads to New Life Children's Home are surprisingly clear of rubble. The staff has agreed to let us camp on the orphanage soccer field. An armed guard slides aside a heavy, metal gate to let our tap-tap enter.

Our team leader, Rikki, gives us a brief safety orientation. "Please do not walk around the compound perimeter at night," he warns. "The guards will not know it's you and we want to take everyone home who came with us."

The smallest victims

We're getting settled in our tents when we hear someone yell, "We need a nurse!" We have two nurses in our four-person tent. I follow the nurses to what I thought was a crumbling storehouse.

The scene looks like something out of a holocaust movie: concrete floor. bare light bulbs. urine stench. gaunt children in blood-soaked bandages lying on cots...

New Life makeshift clinic.  Lori Bailey photo

It's actually a makeshift hospital for the earthquake's youngest victims - brought here because there was nowhere else to take them.

A baby burned on the top half of her body when a pot of boiling water spilled in the earthquake needs her bandages changed. A nurse snaps on rubber gloves. I watch for a second and then do the same - there's no one else to help.

  

In that moment, I'm no longer just a journalist. "Scissors. bandages," the nurse gives instructions and I run back and forth grabbing supplies off rickety wooden benches being used as shelves.

The nurse quickly attends to patient after patient. I follow - sometimes just giving a sip of water to a boy with a broken leg; other times creating crude patient charts out of notebook paper.  Frequently I'm trying to hide my tears. Haiti has already begun to steal my heart.

To read part 2, click here.

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