The Reality of Haiti: Reminders

This past week, the College of the Holy Cross was here at Be Like Brit, building a home for yet another family who was living in absolute squalor - quite literally sleeping under the cap for the bed of a pickup truck placed on the ground with a piece of foam and cardboard inside for a mattress. It doesn't get much worse than that when it comes to living situations here. Aside from those who quite literally have no shelter, or for those who are still reeling from the destruction of Hurricane Matthew (recently, an organization found a group of about 100 Haitians living in a cave - yes, a cave), this family of four was so excited to receive a safe, solid structure to call home. Our friends from College of the Holy Cross were fabulous in their efforts and truly moved by the work they did this past week.

Our Medical Britsionarys this week included Ophthalmologist Dr. Vicki Kvedar, her daughter Julie, and Dr. Olga Smulders-Meyer, who, it would end up, we would be so fortunate to have on hand this particular week even more so than usual. While Vicki and Julie conducted eye examinations for all of our children, many of our staff, and dozens of people from the community, Twenty-one of our children were fitted for glasses this past week! Vicki and Julie were also able to respond to a local eye-emergency when a friend of one of our employees suffered an injury to the eye when a piece of concrete lodged itself in and, as Vicki explained, as an alkali, effectively this patient was suffering a chemical burn in the eye and would have gone blind if not treated. Talk about timing...

Olga worked alongside our own staff nurse, Madame Mirlaine, with all of the typical needs we see in a home with 66 children and a large staff. Olga and Mirlaine, along with the help of a few College of the Holy Cross students also did a full, detailed inventory of all of the items we have in our clinic, noting items that we still need, items that we perhaps do not need, and making lists of items that perhaps could best be used by other organizations or clinics. We'll be posting a Wish List for Medical Items soon, and I'm already working with other clinics to see what items we have that we won't use that could be helpful to them.

Selfishly, I need to use this week's blog as an opportunity to vent about an experience a good friend of mine went through this week in Haiti. I hope you will forgive me.

Last week, on Sunday January 8, 2017, at around 11:00am, an accident involving a vehicle which was traveling from the northern city of Port de Paix, en route for Port au Prince. As is common in Haiti, this vehicle was some sort of combination of a bus/truck, overloaded with both cargo and people. For those who can't afford the typical transportation of what is called a papadap (a 12-seater van - with actual seat belts), catching a ride on top of this bus/truck, often sitting on bags of charcoal and rice, is a free and reasonable option. This day, however, the vehicle would for some reason turn over on its side while en route. The carnage that ensued, as evidenced by the many videos and photographs from the scene that I have watched on Haitian Facebook Pages, was nothing short of horrific.

It turns out that upwards of 30 people were killed in that accident. Numbers, of course, range from 18 to 30, but either way, needlessly, a significant loss of life occurred arguably as an effect of - the result of - poverty. One of those who was seriously injured also happened to be a good friend - a man I've known for over a year - whose brother is the guardian at my apartment building in Port au Prince. He's the father of three young children, and his wife died last year for reasons unknown. To say he's struggled is an understatement, and I've always done my best to try to help out when I can. This past Christmas, for example, I was able to enroll his two school-aged children in school formally. Small things like that make such a big difference, and I'm fortunate in life to be able to do that.

At any rate, what followed after the accident is nothing short of a travesty. I took to Facebook to air my frustrations and report the events as they unfolded. Here's how that all went down:

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It's somewhat graphic but I think terribly important for people to see. Imagine getting in to a serious accident in which upwards of 30 people are killed. Decapitated. Limbs ripped from their bodies. Not an ambulance in sight.

Imagine when you go after your brother or sister or family loved one, hoping to find them in the hands of those who want to help, instead you find you have to put your Passport up as collateral to get a ride in the back of an open pickup truck. You travel three hours over bumpy roads with every jolt sending screaming pain through your broken body. You arrive at a hospital only to find it refused you because it is overrun with victims, and despite your serious injuries, sorry, but they aren't "bad enough".

You are then lucky enough to find someone from which to borrow 150 USD and travel to the next town. Another grueling two hours on unforgiving roads. You're told this hospital has good surgeons. Yet, when you finally arrive, now more than six hours after your life threatening accident, there are no surgeons to be found. No aid in sight. 

The next place they tell you to go is another 2.5 hours away. This time you can't find a ride. It's too late, too dark, too dangerous to travel. Instead, you throw your helpless, lifeless loved one on top of another bus, the same kind of bus that almost killed him earlier that day, to travel to the Capital. Indeed, you think, there must be hope in the Capital...

But there isn't. You sit on the side of the road waiting for a connection to come through. This hospital won't take him because he's suffered trauma; the next one won't take him because they say he hasn't suffered trauma. They only accept those who are suffering from what their specialty is.

"We can treat for the head injuries but he's got the broken leg. We can treat for the broken leg, but he's got head injuries."

"We can treat it all but not without paying us first."

So you go to the next place they tell you. And the next. And the next, until finally you just give up and quite literally take your loved one home to die on a friend's bed in his weekend apartment...

You wake up and find to your surprise that your loved one is still alive. You call your connections. They call theirs. Finally some progress. You get a CAT Scan some 30 hours after you've suffered this accident, yet you know you have only been lucky enough to get this diagnostic test because of the connections that your non-Haitian friend has. You haven't had so much as a Tylenol for your pain or even a drop of fluids. Your friends worry you could go in to kidney failure before any real help arrives.

Finally this gigantic, complex, disjointed and ineffective system sends you on your way with the results of your CAT Scan in hand. Nobody has told you or your family anything. You still have received no treatment for your wounds; nothing to alleviate your pain. Not a drop of water in over a day.

You then find yourself dropped off by one hospital in front of the government hospital in your Capital city. Your Walter Reed or your Mass General, although it goes without saying this hospital doesn't even come close to that comparison. It matters little, anyway. It's closed. They're on strike. And even though you realize that when you get there, you sit in an empty waiting room anyway, because nobody knows what to do...

Then, you're me. Or, you're you. Privileged. Access to emergency evacuations by helicopter and private flights to Miami at even the slighted discomfort in the chest; even a hint of a heart attack or even for anxiety. And you try to help. And you feel so helpless. And you feel so guilty. And you feel like, well, shit. 

And so you use what you have and go after that friend to bring him yourself to a place where you know you can get away with demanding for his care; for demanding to be seen; for demanding to be listened to and talked to; for demanding for the decency of a sheet to sprawl out on the floor in the hallway of your last hope. You bring your friend back to a place that is probably a eight hour drive in total from where your accident occurred and you are lucky enough that your friend happens to work for an organization which has a small clinic and happens to have two American doctors on site for the week. They've offered to at least deliver first-aid, start IV fluids, and interpret the results of the CAT Scan you had earlier - a diagnostic test whose results nobody has even considered looking at until now.

On a week marking the 7th Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake, and experiencing the frustration and helplessness I felt for my friend when I was not able to use my contacts and pull strings to find care for him in a country whose healthcare network is not only ineffective but in many cases simply nonexistent, I was forced to contemplate what the world must have been like for those injured and lost in the rubble, waiting for a cavalry to come which arguably never came. Or, even if it did, if it didn't come for you, the fact that it came really was irrelevant.

Our bubbles of privilege are just that - they keep us isolated from the real and true suffering in the world. As someone who has experienced Haiti for more than four years now, I always felt like I had a decent understanding of the challenges people face. As a social worker, I am wired to be an advocate for those in need - a voice for the voiceless - and perhaps in my successes in the past in terms of access to quality medical care, I forgot how much of what provided me that access was simple privilege, and that perhaps the advocacy part was really just me thinking I was being effective. 

Either way, because of my privilege and my resources, I was able to admit Emmanuel to a private hospital where he is recovering well. My friends and family have been overwhelmingly supportive, and we've raised enough money to pay those bills and ensure proper after care. Without those resources, this story would have ended very differently. Thanks to the program at Be Like Brit, we had doctors on hand who could help. Thanks to the network of NGOs and missionaries, I was able to secure a CAT Scan for Emmanuel, in a country where at any given time there may be only one or two or three functioning for a population of 10 million.

Britney's dream and final wish saved another life this week. 

This week, we remember the some 300,000 people who perished in the 2010 earthquake here in Haiti. We remember the millions of people who were displaced. The countless individuals whose bodies were broken, who lost limbs, who suffered unimaginable injury. We remember them in all that we do, and their lives - particularly those lives that were lost - motivate us to continue to work towards an end that continues the compassion, brings healing to the sick, and comfort to those in distress. 

Thank you for helping us help the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit.