I'm ok. Sorry about not being in touch, but we´ve been working around the clock. We are in Port-au-Prince, the situation is bad but we are in a secure area. I don´t even know where to start telling you about my experience here...We got here on Wednesday, early in the morning. Getting across the border was extremely time consuming because the US Coast Guard was controlling everything and they were only opening up the border twice a day, at 6am and 6pm. If you´re not there in line with your papers ready you can´t get across, but after three long hours we finally got through. It felt as if I was in another world. It was all white and foggy from the lake and all you could see was dry shrubs and dark water with mountains in the background.
There was probably about 150 vehicles that got through and 15 were ours, 11 Cars , a caravan, 2 ambulances and a BIG gua gua (that's what they call buses in the Dominican Republic) we drove for about three more hours on a single dirt road. The small towns we went through broke my heart and made me speechless. The people who live in them live in complete poverty, but ironically the children were always smiling! I fell asleep and when I woke up we were in front of the US embassy, which was in complete CHAOS!! There were probably about 3000 Haitians trying to leave the country. They were surrounding the building and flooding the streets trying to get answers on whether or not they could leave. We kept on driving...
We finally got to Port-au-Prince at 3:00 p.m. It was even worse than what the news had depicted, but not in the sense that there were dead bodies everywhere because there weren´t. It was worse because when you looked in the people´s eyes you could feel their desperation, you could tell that they felt as if there was no hope for them, as if there was nothing left for them. Some people were attempting to sell the remainder of their things just to make a small amount of money to buy water. The most difficult part for me had to be seeing everyone in the street. The people feared going anywhere near a building because they worried that in just another second another aftershock would come and destroy the little bit of life that they have managed to hold onto.
We finally arrived at our camp ground where their were close friends of the people in the organizations that I am here with. The organizations MOSCTHA and MUDHA are made up of Dominicans of Haitian decent and their close friends were the one supporting us and providing us with a place to stay. We all got inside and began setting up our tents because we were not crazy enough to try and sleep in a building. We spent the day getting to know one another, since we would be working hand in hand with each other. After we ate a delicious, yet small portioned Haitian meal (it was VERY spicy!), the medical team headed out to investigate the scene.
After watching the news I thought we would have to drive/walk around as if every step we took we would have to be cautious of our lives, but that wasn't the case. Perhaps the reason for this was that 70% of the people I was with were Haitian and knew just about EVERYONE we encountered. The Haitians were happy to see that there were people in the world that still care about them. The medical team drove around and finally decided to stop. We were in a small suburb of the capital that looked as if it hadn't received any attention or support from any organization. This is where reality set in...
We arrived with a vehicle and ambulance and began checking out the scene. Just about everyone walked up to us with an injury, some were minor, a cut or two, but others were much worse. We had a 70 year old man who was in a wheelbarrel. He had lost one of his legs, half of his arm and he had cuts everywhere about an inch or so deep. This was the first man I helped save in Haiti.The next patient I worked on was a young boy, around the age of six. He was in worse condition, the huge gash in his head was so deep you could see his skull. When we took off his cap it was filled with puss and the cut was extremely infected. All that went through my head was where do I start? It was great having the support of the doctors, seeing as that I am only a certified professional rescuer and don't have any experience in trauma. That being said, I can now say that after working on this boy, I learned what it takes most students to learn in a bit of time in about 5 min. In this crash course I had to remove the infection from the cut as well as scrape the dead skin away. I was provided with a surgeon´s kit (scissors, scalpel, tweezers, gauze, etc.) and I started to scrub. One of the doctors saw me and said in Spanish, "si lo quieres, lo haces duro". This means, if you care about him, you'll scrub hard. Meaning that the only way to save someone´s life is to make sure you scrub hard enough to remove the infection. I scrubbed with all of my might, but as I scrubbed all I can remember is his scream. It ran through every bone in my body, but I knew that when I handed his mother his antibiotics and sent them on their way that I had done a great thing. I had helped to save another life.
We continued to work and didn't return to the campsite until it was dark. I lost my breath as I noticed that none of the lights worked because there was no electricity. Everyone had to sleep on the street, but it wasn´t until I saw a mother and her child curled up in a corner with nothing but a suitcase securing their tiny piece of land for the night that my heart went out to Haiti and it will most likely will stay here.
