“How Was Your Trip?” A Fresh Look at Haiti
POSTED ON Aug 25, 2010 / UPDATED ON Feb 25, 2011
Daniel Vallon, COTN representative in Haiti, with Rayshee and Kervens.
Dr. Vicki, as she's known by the children, shows photos of their time in the clinic.
The reunion of COTN families in Port-au-Prince.
Delmas camps, home to Stanley, Jordani, Steven, Silo, and Antoine.
Mikelyn Charles in the tent she calls home.
This drawing by 8-year-old Steven Reveil illustrates their tenacity.
Dr. Vicki Sakata is an ER doctor specializing in pediatric emergency care who lives and works in Tacoma, Washington. Dr. Sakata led the first Children of the Nations (COTN) Haiti Relief team only a few days after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, on January 12, 2010. She spent weeks working with COTN to care for children in COTN’s medical clinic in Barahona, Dominican Republic, and her involvement continues. Below, she writes about returning recently to visit all the children and their families, now back home in Haiti. She checked in on both their physical and emotional wounds.
I just returned on August 14 from a two-week trip to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This is my third visit since the earthquake this past January. Although I’m always thrilled when people are interested in Haiti, I also find it impossible to answer the question, “How was your trip?” My primary goal was visiting all of the Haitian families that we cared for through COTN at the makeshift hospital in Jimani and at COTN’s medical clinic in Barahona. They are all now back living in Haiti.
Thanks to the pre-planning of Daniel Vallon, COTN’s Haitian contact, all thirteen of the families were aware of my arrival. I wanted them together again for a little party—they hadn’t all seen each other since being in the COTN clinic in Barahona. Almost all of them live in Port-au-Prince, so it would seem that organizing such a reunion would be a simple endeavor. But getting from Point A to Point B, even if it’s only five miles away, can take an hour in the chaos that is this urban disaster zone. We started at 1 p.m. Four hours later, we were all sitting down at Epi Dor—otherwise known as the “Haitian McDonalds”—happily chatting over burgers and fries. I showed them photos of their time in Barahona at COTN’s clinic, and COTN gave each family a Creole bible. It was a joyous reunion.
I am very happy to report that all of the children are healthy and their external wounds have healed well. After seeing their living conditions, this truly is a miracle. Throughout my stay—with Daniel and Benjamin (the father of one of the children, Jordani) as my guides—we went to see every family individually. Each received a backpack filled with school and hygiene supplies.
Along with their families, most of the children who received medical care in COTN’s clinic are living in camps in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince. I have seen news coverage of the relief camps there and I am certainly no stranger to difficult living situations in developing countries, but walking through the misery of these places is beyond words. Seeing our families living resiliently in spite of it all was a very humbling experience. They live in shacks of tarps over flimsy wood frames, mostly with dirt floors, some only big enough for two people to lie down. The shacks are literally inches away from their neighbors. The sun beats down mercilessly. The stench of overflowing pit toilets and trash is nauseating. Free aid has stopped and everyone must now purchase and haul fresh drinking water to their shack every day. And every evening they must clean out the flooding waters and feces-filled mud after the nightly monsoon rains.
Even through all this, our families are managing with diligence. I’m not sure how they do it, but amidst the squalor, their own personal spaces are immaculate. Their tarp floors are spotless, their children are scrubbed clean, their toes manicured.
It’s the life outside of their personal space that is most worrisome. One has some control over one’s own personal cleanliness, but you cannot control the rapist down the “block,” the thief around the corner, the potential fire every night. One mom has moved four times because of fear of personal safety. The only thing that separates you from someone who wants you or your possessions is a knife and a tarp. During the time I was there, a murder occurred behind a COTN family’s house. A few days later a candle tipped over in the night and fire spread rapidly through the camp, killing a 6-month-old child.
So, “how was your trip?” I’m not sure yet.
These families have been through so much and yet still face obstacles that make my troubles seem like child’s play. I lay awake at night and think about Janti (Jordani’s mom) in a Delmas camp. As her children sleep fitfully in the stifling heat, she has one ear peeled, listening for the telltale ripping of a knife against her wall—the tarp that separates her family from a mean and unforgiving world.
But progress is present.
And progress in this situation needs to be measured in smiles of healthy children, rather than in numbers of new houses built. Progress is one neatly sewn dress shirt, not factories filled with workers. Progress is a single successful report card, not a new school building. And in this sense, with God’s eternal grace and the work He is doing through COTN, these small steps will multiply.
Thank you for your continued interest in the COTN families in Haiti. I always tell them they have not just me, not just COTN, but many friends and “family” around the US who think about them, pray for them, and offer their monetary support. I have to believe just knowing that is enough to give them strength to face another day.