First Mobile Clinics

15 May, 2010

The old one-two punch of the tropics, heat and humidity, is inescapable. Most days it’s between 95 and 100; even at night it cools down only a few degrees. I take a shower before I go to bed so I can get under the mosquito netting feeling slightly clean, but by morning I’m drenched in sweat.

Today we did our first two mobile clinics, both of them at orphanages. “New Voice House of Life” got its name through a clerical error. The director, Gesner Nozil, told me that when he received the papers after registering his orphanage he noticed that the name on the certificate wasn’t the one he’d filed. So he went back to the government office to request a correction. “That’s impossible,” the official said, “the correct name is the name that has been officially registered. Your orphanage is called ‘New Voice House of Life.’” This was my first taste of Haitian government bureaucracy—it is no surprise that the government has been so ineffectual in coordinating recovery efforts after the earthquake.

Mr Nozil told me that his children were outside playing when the earthquake struck. Miraculously, all 37 survived. But the orphanage was totally destroyed. The children slept in a garden under the stars for two days, then an aid agency appeared with tents, and they moved to the current location, in a field. Aid workers dug shallow pits for a three-seater toilet. When we arrived for the clinic the pits were almost full; new ones were being slowly dug.

To provide a little shade, we strung a USAID tarp between the big tent where the children slept and our Land Cruiser. Crude tables and chairs were set up as examining stations—each table had three chairs, one for the treater, one for the patient, and one for the translator. The children quietly lined up to be seen. There were lots of skin infections, diarrhea, coughs and headaches. And stomach aches. At the second orphanage I saw a seven-year old girl who had been trapped under earthquake rubble for four days. She’d had a stomach ache ever since.

After the clinic the children sang songs for us and one of our team members handed out little presents from his daughters, which were gratefully received. Then the children had lunch--small bowls of corn meal which had been cooked in boiling water. The big sack which held the corn meal said, "Donated by the American people."

After dinner at the guest house where our team was staying I took a walk with a team member and Lissa, a Haitian nurse who was working with us. Right across the little dirt road a telephone pole leaned against an iron fence it had partially knocked down. Behind the fence black goats were frisking in the rubble of what on January 11th had been a very substantial house. We strolled in the pink twilight past ruin after ruin, our shoes kicking up earthquake dust. Most of the houses had been flattened so that the concrete roof was draped over the first floor, which in turn was humped up over a central mound of rubble. Occasionally we saw clothes lying on the fallen roofs to dry.

We rounded a corner and saw a long row of destruction on either side of the road. Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I began to cry. I hardly ever cry. I apologized to Lissa: “I’m really sorry, this isn’t my country, these aren’t my people; I have no right to cry.” Lissa smiled. “I’m glad you cried,” she said softly.