Haiti: Part 3 - A Survivor's Story

"I don't feel like a hero but lucky to have the faith and ability to help." ~Dr. Jolie (Photo: Scott Mortensen)

Haiti - part 3

"I just felt like I needed to get up early and walk around the orphanage and pray," Patty tells me about the day of the earthquake, "I don't know why."

Patty works at New Life Children's Home where we've set up our base camp. One of few American-made structures in Haiti, the compound appears almost untouched by the massive quake that killed more than 200,000 people.

I'm staying at camp to write an article for a London magazine while the medical team sets up a clinic in a remote area of town. Patty's offered to let me shower in her apartment. There's no hot water but I'm grateful for the shower after days of only having sponge baths from a bucket.

our tent camp with New Life's main building in the background.

A survivor's story
After I've showered, I ask Patty to tell me more about the earthquake.

"It didn't start out like a normal day," she says. "The guard came running in saying someone left a baby in the road." 

The staff had been able to track down the baby's mother from a note attached to the child's clothes.  The 17-year-old said she couldn't afford to feed the child. She agreed to bring Natalia's birth certificate to the orphanage later that day.

"Then the earthquake happened," Patty recalls.

"I was getting thrown everywhere. The sound was deafening. I tried to run outside. The ground was heaving."  At first, Patty didn't know that beyond the gates Port-au-Prince was in ruins. "Then I looked to the hills and there was nothing but a cloud of dust rising up. I knew it was bad. Oh my God," I said, "Oh my God."

Natalia's mother never returned that day. No one knows if she's alive or dead.

Meeting Natalia
Patty asks if I want to meet Natalia. As we walk past orphans, many with physical handicaps, tears fill my eyes. Natalia's playing on a slide. She's plump and healthy, unlike the emaciated babies I've seen so far.

I try to get Natalia to smile but she doesn't like the playtime interruption. I hold her, thinking, "Natalia, I'm sorry you were left in the road. I'm sorry you'll probably never know what happened to your mommy."

...Later it occurs to me that being abandoned on a dirt road may have saved Natalia's life.

As the sun sets and the team returns, I go sit with them under the mango tree. I feel their  strength and love, and hope rises for Haiti's future - for Natalia.

To read part 4, click here.

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Haiti: Part 2 - Peace in His Soul

"Finally arrived to what I thought was home...only to realize a far off place that has faced total devastation is much more home." ~Kerry Lewis, nurse


I'll be posting a few stories about covering the earthquake in Haiti.  To read part 1, click here.

I've never fallen in love with so many people in such a short time. Even though most of the relief team members were strangers to me when we boarded the plane to Haiti, we were forever knit together by the end of our trip.

Many of us stayed up until dawn our last night together - talking, laughing, some drinking smuggled Haitian rum.  We couldn't say goodbye.  "I feel like I'm breaking up with a boyfriend I still love," said Jolie. We loved hard and we loved well in Haiti...


Haiti - Part 2

driving through flattened neighborhoods.  Brian Field photo

Today we drive through slums that are almost completely flattened by the earthquake on our way to find patients. The dirt roads are so narrow that our tap-tap (flatbed truck taxi) barely fits through the streets.

We jump off the truck in an alley as we arrive at a windowless garage that's being used as medical clinic. Injured survivors are lined up outside and a crowd quickly gathers. "Food! Water!" they shout to us in Creole. We carry only medical supplies. We're afraid the crowd might riot.

Instead of rioting though, children tug our hands inviting us to play with them. sick people ask for prayer. young men check out the women on our team.

Bree is passing out stickers to kids who shriek with delight as if they'd been given Playstations.  Boys shout as Brian tosses them in the air.  Women bring babies to sit on my lap. It feels like a neighborhood picnic - except we have no food.

Dr. Ian Armstrong with the children (Dave de Vos photo)

An interpreter who traveled with us from the U.S. hasn't seen his family since a year before the earthquake. He's able to get word to his sisters in a nearby village. Somehow they find us and a joyful reunion takes place in the midst of the crowd.

Duty interrupts play
Our doctors have found a badly injured man who has received virtually no treatment since a building collapsed on him. We'll use our tap-tap as an ambulance to get him to the main tent hospital where the most severely injured victims are being treated.

The men take the bench from the back of the truck to use as a stretcher.  Doctors strap the man to the board keep his body in place on the bumpy drive - he has a serious head injury and his leg is broken in two places. He winces as the men lift him into the truck but doesn't complain.

"My daughter," is all he whispers. His daughter climbs in the truck to be with him. I'm sitting next to him and want to stay but I'm asked to ride up front; the heavier men will ride in back to weigh down the truck and try to make the ride less bumpy.

Later back at base camp, I think of the injured father...the dignity in his face. Even in the midst of his pain and sorrow, he held on to the peace in his soul.

To read part 3, click here.

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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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Saving Lives in Haiti

Just now able to get out my first post since arriving in Haiti. This is from an article for a London publication.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Transformational Development Agency's team has just left an area of Port-au-Prince where a family asked them to help recover the bodies of three loved ones buried under their house when it collapsed in the January 12th earthquake.

There is nothing the team or anyone else can do to remove the thousands of pounds of rubble without the heavy equipment still needed to clear much of Haiti's ruins.

Since Sunday, TDA's 40-member team, comprised mostly of doctors, nurses, paramedics and EMT's, has been performing surgeries and other medical procedures on victims severely injured in the earthquake that killed more than 150,000 people. "Initially you just try to stop the bleeding," said Los Angeles, California paramedic Dane Melberg. "Then you go from there."

Despite initial safety concerns, the team has not encountered any violence, nor have they seen riots over food shortages, corpses left to burn in the streets, or machete-wielding gangs looting properties as portrayed in the media.

Touring some of Haiti's most heavily damaged towns today, the team is finding that critical medical needs are stabilizing. Dr. Ian Armstrong, a California neurosurgeon, credits his colleagues with saving lives that would otherwise be lost more than two weeks after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Armstrong said the intervention of one of TDA's doctors meant the difference between life and death for a one-year-old boy named Jerry suffering from a possible skull fracture.

"She absolutely saved that boy's life," he said of Dr. Jolie Pfaler of St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Pfaler found that the boy had never been x-rayed or assessed and was able to get him immediate surgery at the main tent hospital at Port-au-Prince airport.

"Haiti destroyed."
Amidst the tragedy in Haiti, the team celebrated reuniting one of its members with his family, whom he'd not seen since before the earthquake. Edison Senat traveled with TDA from the United States to serve as an interpreter.

On January 12th, he had received a text message from his father: "Haiti destroyed," it said. "We had a terrible earthquake." While several friends and two cousins were killed, Senat was able to hug his three sisters for the first time in nearly a year when they were able to meet him at a TDA medical clinic.  "I know God protected my family," Edison said.

not just broken bones
TDA's team includes several non-medical volunteers as well. They have been instrumental in offering comfort and encouragement to earthquake victims, particularly orphaned children.

Bree Bailey, a Production Manager at California's Lionsgate Studios, said she came on the trip because, "A doctor may come here and fix a child's broken bone, you may come here and fix a child's broken heart."

TDA team leader Rikki Alakija is already looking to future involvement in Haiti as the country begins the long rebuilding process. He plans to bring construction teams within the next month or two and expects TDA to help develop employment opportunities to help those left jobless as a result of the quake.

As the team prepares to return to the United States, Alakija summed up their feelings, saying, "When everybody leaves here, they will take a little bit of Haiti with them and leave a little bit of themselves in Haiti."

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From Hollywood to Haiti

Haiti response team en route to Port-au-Prince

Just a quick note to let everyone know we're on our way to Haiti! We left LAX this afternoon and we're now in Florida where it's 3 am.

Our team will fly out in phases over the next 24 hours on private planes owned by Joe Gibbs Racing. The former Washington Redskins coach sent three charter jets to transport relief teams to Haiti since the Port-au-Prince airport is still closed to commercial flights.

It's been a ton of work transporting 40 people and supplies but Delta Airlines ended up letting us check everything for free to Miami. That helped since we each have large packs carrying our own food, sleeping bags, clothes and necessities.

The doctors, nurses, EMT's and paramedics will leave first to take medical supplies and treat victims. I'll go on the next flight with other members of the media and support staff. The team is made up of about 32 men and eight women.

If we can get Internet, I'll be posting updates at www.tdaafrica.com.

Thank you for your support!

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Packing for Haiti

Dr. Yodi Alakija, TDA's founder, has overseen the relief mission since the January 12th earthquake

Hail, torrential rains, exhaustion and other hurdles were the order of the day as we packed for Haiti. Our group, Transformational Development Agency (TDA) posted these photos.

Not even the weather could stop volunteers from donating and packing medical supplies, water and food for Team TDA's trip to Haiti tomorrow.

About 50 doctors, nurses and paramedics will be setting up a medical clinic at an orphanage in Port-au-Prince. I'll be working as a journalist and helping with logistics.

Rikki Alakija, TDA's leader, takes a call while project leader Melissa Herman packs medical supplies

I'm not sure if I'll be able to get Internet in Haiti but will post updates when I can. Thanks to everyone for your support, encouragement and most of all, prayers.

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Hindrances to Haiti

"Search teams refuse to abandon hope after two children were pulled alive from the rubble." AFP

I write this post not knowing if I'll have to cancel my trip to Haiti in these hours just before take off. I'd had a sinking feeling when our departure was delayed several days that other deadlines could prevent me from going.

Honestly? I didn't want to go to Haiti when the head of Transformational Development Agency first asked me to help her team with media and logistics support. 

I'm not a doctor or a nurse or a rescue worker. I couldn't see myself working among dead bodies, surviving in horrendous conditions, facing machete-wielding mobs reported by some news outlets.

But as I saw the destruction and heard of friends' missing loved ones and wept at the suffering, I kept thinking about a quote I'd heard years ago by Dwight L. Moody. 

The world has yet to see what God can do with a life fully yielded to Him.

And so I said yes. Because maybe my life is that one.

My blog's title, Blot Your Lips!, was appropriate when I was writing about the journey to Hollywood - not Haiti. But as I've embraced what somehow feels like destiny, I've become filled with expectation.

Nehemiah rebuilt a wall that should have taken months or years in 52 days because God touched the work. Like the miraculous rescue of the children pulled from the rubble more than a week after the quake, maybe God will put his touch to Haiti.

So even though today brought obstacles to my trip my heart still says, "Yes."

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