DAY SIX - Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010: Merline and Vladamir, 2 Haitian doctors in love

Our last day of work at the hospital started with an uneventful ride to the hospital. I decided to go to the other hospital, St. Damien’s, to see how it worked. They had a much nicer facility, thanks to being Italian-run and private, but had similar stories to tell. St Damien’s had two other sister hospitals in Central America, and they had recruited their staff to come and help in Haiti. This was the hospital where Angelina Jolie and John Edwards came.

I did dressing changes in the morning, working out of a tent that was smotheringly hot.

The bus came to pick us up so we could join the rest of the group. Off we went for a bus tour of Port au Prince.

Driving through town with Merline and Vladamir, a pair of young Haitian doctors, made the devastation personal. They had made it to medical school in Haiti thanks to an American benefactor, who had wanted to be a nurse but never could afford it. After her rich uncle died and left her money, she set up a fund to put seven Haitians through medical school. Merline and Vladamir were two of those seven. They met through school and were now engaged with plans to marry in November on her birthday.

As we drove through the crumbled buildings, they shared where their favorite restaurant used to be, where they would take out-of-town friends when they visited. Merline told us the hardest part for her was walking around right after the earthquake. She could hear the cries of those trapped under the rumble. Worse yet was a few days later, when the cries stopped.

Realizing I was heading home, back to my cushy middle class life, and that this horror was their reality for the foreseeable future, the tears finally came. I cried off and on as we finished our tour. Towards the end, I asked Merline how she was holding up, really truly holding up. Her response? She told me she hadn’t dealt with what she’d lost. But for Haitians, 2010 had a lot of promise. A perfect score in school is 10/10, so 2010 was thought to be lucky.

Then the earthquake hit. Yet, she felt that God could somehow use this horror as a way of bringing the world’s attention to Haiti, and in turn help her become greater than she was before. She had such hope, something I saw in many of the Haitians I had met.