The Dominican country side was beautiful. Crazy traffic and drivers abound, because there isn’t any insurance and no police enforcement. Traffic lights and lanes are simply guidelines. It’s about 100 miles from Santo Domingo to Port au Prince as the crow flies, closer to 130 miles driving the roads. We were told it could take up to 10 hours to get there. And we were prepared to have no where to pick up food or use the bathroom.
The road was filled with buses that had brightly colored curtains and themes. Like the bus that was bright pink with fuchsia curtains and sequin tie backs. These were carrying Dominicans from one city to the next. I never did get a good picture of one. As we got within 20 or 30 miles of the DR-Haiti border, the traffic became pretty thick. For a long while we followed a Canadian army convoy with dozens of vehicles and large excavation equipment, semi-truck after semi with aid. A few cars and trucks were coming out of Haiti, but the preponderance of the traffic was going in. Slowly.
There were "no passing" signs everywhere (“No rebase”), which was a complete joke. People passed at any time, at any speed. If there happened to be an oncoming car, you either tried to gun it and get by, or reluctantly got back behind the vehicle you were trying to pass. Lots of polite beeping on the part of the passer, to warn the pass-ee that they had company. All in all, it was very nerve-wracking.
The DR countryside, at least at this point in the trip, seemed to highlight pretty little brightly painted houses. Small, but neat. Evidence of disseminated poverty abounded, but kids were in their uniforms going to school and it didn’t seem so bad. Smaller communities were more densely populated with poorly constructed shacks built from salvaged materials. This, we though, was the poverty that would greet us in Haiti. We had beautiful scenery, though, of mountains and Lake Enriquillo.
After about 4 hours, we reached the DR-Haiti border. My pitiful medical Spanish had gotten us through our overnight stay at the church, and was mostly getting us by with our drivers, who spoke little English. We encountered a problem at the border that meant the car being driven as a third vehicle, whose purpose was to enable the Dominicans to drive themselves back home after they dropped us off in Port au Prince, lacked the paperwork necessary to get it in to the country. So, we parked the car, consolidated our stuff into the two remaining vehicles, and headed into Haiti. We weren’t stopped really on either side of the border. On the DR side, they looked into the van full of white people and supplies, and waved us through. On the Haitian side, they didn’t even look inside the car, or make us stop. We slowed down, they waved us in.
The roads immediately went from poor to horrible. Not paved in most parts, large potholes in many places. The road leading into the country from the border was narrow, and in places bordered on both sides by water from Étang Saumâtre, also called Lake Azuei. It’s Haiti’s largest lake, and it’s salt water. I was surprised by the beauty of the view, if not equally surprised by the treacherous roads. Our brave driver, though, was unphased and kept passing the semis in front of us while going around curves on the dusty one lane road. I don’t think I’ll be unnerved in US traffic ever again.
Shortly after crossing into Haiti, the driver, Milton, looked at me and asked in Spanish if I knew where we were heading.
”Sure,” I said, “we’re going to Port au Prince. First, we’re going to the mission compound at Global Outreach.”
“ Yes, but I understand you have directions.”
A few panicked moments later and it became clear that our group leader had been told the drivers knew how to get to the compound. Evidently this driver didn’t. Janet had the address of the compound. Global Outreach, rue 1, km 25, Titanyen, Haiti. We stopped a few times to ask if any of the locals had any idea where the address was; my French plus their Creole = no idea. My guidebook had a rough map of the area, and I since we knew it was northeast of the airport, off we went. All along, we tried to use our various cell phones. None of them worked. At one point, we were stuck in traffic and asked a truck driver next to us if he heard of Titanyen. He said no, let us use his cell phone. We called the compound. Someone answered, but had no idea how to give us directions. We gave the cell phone back.
We ended up in downtown Port au Prince. In the dead center of the devastation. Stunning. Building after building in a crumbled pile, sometimes pouring into the streets. A few buildings on each block stood, sometimes leaning over the street. One building had pancaked down and you could clearly see the mattress crushed between 2 floors, the couch crushed between the floor above. No way on earth someone sitting on that couch, or resting in that bed, could have survived. Buildings had folded over and were laying in the street, blocking the way. Our little caravan kept having to turn around, back down streets.
We were too stunned to take many photos, plus we were worried about our safety. We saw no UN, police, army. Nothing but hundreds of Haitians sifting through the rubble, trying to scavenge building materials, clothing, shoes, pieces of wood for fires. Anything. Small kids, some who I’m sure were Audrey’s age, barefoot and ragged, gathering tires and sticks. At one point, we drove over some debris and got stuck. Haitians walking by jumped right in and removed the stuff from in front of and under that car.
We were so lost. Just at the point when we realized dusk was falling, we saw some UN soldiers. I hopped out of the car and shouted “Parlez-vous francais? Habla espanol? Do you speak English?”. The lovely Colombian soldier answered “Oui! Si! Yes!” Not sure I’ve ever heard sweeter words. They were doing some excavations at Fort National, a national landmark as a former fortress, and the site of an UN post that was devastated in the quake. The kind fellows directed us where we might find the hospital (we figured we’d have better luck with that than this mythical city where the compound was located).
In the end, I gave them hugs, they gave us a map. This probably wasn’t my most sophisticated moment, but before we left, we said thanks, faire-d le bise, with the soldiers (the European tradition of kissing on the cheeks is called faire le bise) out of gratitude. The soldiers then decided to give us an escort into the neighborhood where the hospital was, Petionville. For the rest of the trip, the group teased me that the only reason we made it out of Port au Prince was because I kissed the soldier. They led us out of the devastated area, into the limits of Petionville. They pulled over to make sure we could make it the rest of the way. We used the remaining water we had to fill up the radiator of the van, which was now overheating. Situation now sort of under control, the soldiers returned to their post and we drove another 20 minutes into Petionville.
There weren’t a lot of street signs, so we still couldn’t find the hospital. We asked a man who was sitting next to us in his truck at a stop light if he knew of the hospital (again, my French is pitiful now). He couldn’t explain it to me (my Creole is non-existent) so he drove us there. I ran inside what turned out to be a little clinic. A British doctor and nurse were treating wounds and had no idea about any hospitals nearby.
However, a Haitian patient thought he knew where we meant and offered to go with us to show us. I gave up my spot in the front seat, and let our new Haitian friend give directions to our Dominican driver, occasionally filling in the gaps that their language difference produced. ("Izquierda! Izquierda! Left! Left, not right! Gauche! Gauche!"). After another 20 minutes, we rounded a corner onto a steep, curved driveway. At the top, l’Hopital de la Communauté Haitienne. We found the entrance, and the five of us hopped out of the van, hardly daring to get our hopes up. I wandered in and with great joy saw a few workers wearing the characteristic red t-shirts.
The first team member we saw was a nurse named Kathy, who was clearly startled by how exuberantly we greeted her. She didn’t figure out until 2 days later the context that led to us being so thrilled to see her. We all jumped right into working.
I ended up helping out with a woman in labor, trying to track down supplies. I learned that the hospital doesn’t have blankets for newborns, and that the families have to bring something in. In one case, I saw a father of a newborn taking off his shirt to wrap his new baby in. I learned that we had some medicines for neonatal resuscitation, but that essentially, if babies aren’t vigorous within the first few minutes, that’s about all we can do. There are no resources for babies who need extra help. Just oxygen.
There were two babies who ended up dying while we were there, both of whom would have easily lived in the U.S. One baby was born right before the earthquake and her mother died during the quake. She was found by passers-by, who did the best they could to care for her, but by the time they got her to the airport, she was severely dehydrated. We didn’t have the supplies or skills to get her hydrated, no NG tubes to feed her. She died in the arms of one of the volunteers. Another baby was born about a month early, but was just too small and needed a little extra help we simply couldn’t provide. She died with her parents.
One of my teammates, Amanda, asked where the baby’s body would go. She was directed to the morgue, which was just a blocked off room like any other. The baby’s body just lay on a table. After some discussion, she found out that the body would be thrown in the trash. To Amanda, this wasn’t acceptable, and she went to our team leader. Together they approached the Haitian head of the hospital. She stated she “would take care of it,” but none of us are optimistic that the outcome will be any different. There just isn’t any money to bury the baby of poor Haitians while in the middle of the devastation.
A little before 6 pm, we boarded the bus and headed home. The ride took a long time due to traffic. Apparently it’s normally an hour to Titanyen, but it took us nearly two hours. I was surprised at how dark it was since most of Port au Prince is without electricity. Just at sunset, I saw two kids doing cartwheels across the empty area of a tent city; I was amazed at that contrast.
The compound where we stayed belongs to Global Outreach. We stayed in a 3 bedroom house that recently was vacated. A missionary family lived there, and they had been serving in Haiti for a number of years. They had 4 children, plus had two Haitian children they had long since been trying to adopt. For the past few years, the parents would alternate taking their biological children home to the US to visit, since they couldn’t take the Haitian children out of the country. After the earthquake, the government gave a limited number of reprieves for adoptions already in progress. So to take advantage of that, the family packed up and left within 24 hours. They will have to stay out of Haiti for >2 years. I can only imagine.
A quick cold shower, then I passed out for a few hours.
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