Dedication and Desolation
Well the sun came up on another day in paradise to the gentle swish -swish of the sweeper outside my door at 5:30 with his palm frond broom, the crows assembling to start their chorus of caws for the morning, the barely audible bleat of the UN trumpet sounding revelry just down the street and the laundry lady arriving for work on the path outside my window singing a hymn I recognized as How Great Thou Art. That was here at the Hotel. At my administrator's house in the poor zone of Feugerolle, just outside the City, he woke to the rude realization that someone had come in the night and stole two tires and the battery from his jeep.
Since this was the day scheduled to take all the care packages we assembled yesterday out to the Millot hospital, having no tires meant we would be off to our usual late start. Undaunted, we rented a vehicle and 8 of us set off. I asked Toto if he was angry that someone stole his tires and he said "no, not angry -I am just sad." I am always amazed at the number of hits these people must have taken to get to this state of resignation and complacency about such violations. He said he will make a report to the police tomorrow because they don't want to do paper work on Sundays. I can only imagine how unresigned and uncomplacent any of us would be waking to the same situation.
I really don't know how to talk about the scene at the hospital today. I don't know how to process it. I could use words like overwhelming -heart wrenching -devastating and any other number of adjectives, but I really do not think anything could verbally describe what is happening in Millot hospital. Even worse is the knowledge that Millot hospital right now is a representation of what is cloning itself madly all over this island wherever there is a clinic or hospital. Perhaps just relaying what I garnered from the Doctors I had the privilege to talk with today would be the best course for me to take.
First of all, the hospital in Millot is the second largest hospital outside of the Port au Prince area. It has a helicopter pad behind it. It has the capacity for 70 beds. Today it is floundering with overflow patients upwards of 400 at last count. There has been no aid -No AID has come to this hospital at all. They have had promises for weeks of food, medical supplies, surgical equipment, orthopedic equipment and everything right down to diapers for the babies. No food has been delivered at all -AT ALL! The army promised tents that didn't arrive so some brilliant person went online and contacted the company who makes these large tents and even a pop up instant hospital tent and contacted them directly. By taking this route, they were able to get them all delivered without the army's involvement. Sanitation is marginal at best. There is 1 nurse per tent taking care of over 50-60 patients -all with major injuries to be monitored and major wounds to be dressed etc. The American doctor I talked to in Millot was spewing forth so much incredulous information so fast I could hardly catch it all.
This Doctor was livid at the continued confusion and voracious vortex that delivering aid seems to be still whirling around in in Port au Prince. The doctor said they use the "cop out" that it is such a difficult situation to please be patient. The general understanding is that they just don't want to take direction from anyone on site and if you push, you then get pushed to the bottom of their priority list. Apparently the extra 100 hospital cots that did arrive a while ago are locked up in the Mayor's office and he would like to "sell" them to the doctors working in his town's hospital. Donated beds that he is trying to make money off of while patients with amputated limbs are laying on bath towels and sheets on the dirty floor of the tents. Of course, every time something like this came shooting out of this Doctor's mouth like a blasting bullet, the cover phrase "this is off the record of course" followed it up. One learns quickly to cover words with the safety net required to not jeopardize one's position further. I was begged to find ways to get the word out that medical teams and people able to ship aid find ways to avoid the bottleneck of the International melange of groups hindering everything while the powers that be are trying to convince the world at large that things are getting better. I didn't have the heart to reveal that I am a representative of a teeny by comparison group and probably have no way of exposing this request. The intensity and desperation pushing out of every pore kept me silent.
The children's section stopped me from breathing for a while. Row upon row of carved up children sitting like they were all posing for macabre portraits. One hundred or more children in one room are not silent. One hundred or more children in a room do not sit still. One hundred or more children in a room with severed limbs, crushed heads, burnt bodies are not able to stop tears and screams. One hundred or more children in a room removed from parents, homes and any familiar touches of life as they knew it a few weeks ago cannot mask the fear that grips them. BUT EVERYONE OF THESE PRECIOUS LITTLE ANGELS DID!
The adult sections were no different. It was not a war scene like some are saying. These are not soldiers being cut up and patched up as best as the incredible, unrelenting volunteer medical teams can. These are market ladies, peasant farmers, grannies, simple people. Unlike soldiers, they are not being patched up to be sent home to their families. They are displaced, homeless, many times family-less. They don't know where they are going when they are able to be discharged. NO ONE COULD TELL ME THAT THERE IS ANY PLAN OF WHERE THEY CAN GO WHEN THEY ARE ABLE TO BE DISCHARGED!
A nurse flung hard words at me when she spit out that "they are able to figure out how to helicopter these patients in her to Millot hospital, but they have no plan at all on how to helicopter aid to help us care for them and they have no plan for their release." Again it was said "no one has answers to anything." The personnel I was able to talk to said the only thing we can do is focus on the 50 or more patients we are tending to at one time. The surgeons are so swamped that they barely have time to re-scrub before the next major surgery is on the table. At that moment a stretcher appeared through the freshly erected security gate carrying a lady still limp from having her arm at the shoulder and one foot taken off. She was paraded through the me-lay of bodies to the furthest tent to continue coming out of her anesthetic. I was told by a nurse holding a toddler -"for example, this little guy (also armless) was helicoptered in yesterday with some others and there was not even a note pinned to his t-shirt to say where he was being shipped from and where he had his surgery." So, now no one knows whether he has parents or what town he is from or anything. Wondering what will happen to him brings the same resounding mantra-like refrain "no one has answers to anything."
I squatted down beside a mother whose story wraps up the whole thing in a drenchingly sad scene. She was sitting on a cot beside her little boy and asked me to take their photo after I gave her one of our care packages. I took the photo and spoke to her in Kreyole. Her little boy was 5 and had his whole head bandaged as well as limbs. They think they are going to have to remove his eye. She said her other little boy died inches away from this one. She is not crying and I have finally been exposed to enough truths here to understand why. There is just no well deep enough to hold the amount of tears required for moments like this so dry inside sobs suffice. She said, "I am here in Millot. My whole life I lived in one neighborhood. I never traveled anywhere and now I have rode on a UN machine and a helicopter and have arrived in Millot. I don't know where Millot is. I don't know when they will make me leave. I don't know what decisions I need to make. Everyone who takes me from here to there do not speak Keryole so I just go." And then the question of the day that I had asked so many at this hospital site was turned and put to me -"do you know what I will need to do when they ask me to leave Millot?" And, with ripping remorse, I had to reply "no one has the answers." I would have given my own arm to have been able to give this mother another response. I left her sitting on that cot with her head down and hands around what then seemed like a pitiful offering in the form of our black plastic sack of hygiene items.
I have her photo and it will go on my desk as a constant reminder of the thousands of Haitian people who will be looking for answers for years to come. It will also remind me of the unparalleled dedication of the medical teams giving their all and then some for long days who also can't seem to get the answers they need. It will also remind me of a desperation that without tears or screams is hopefully loud enough to be heard across the ocean to the rest of the world for years, not months to come.
Kenbe Ayiti (hold fast Haiti)
Julie
Posted on Sunday, February 7 2010, at 3:53 PM.