My dad and I decided to go to Haiti in August of last year. We were both interested in doing medical mission work and I had recently refreshed my French language skills in France. Little did we know that we would be narrowly avoiding death, or at least tragedy, by leaving two days before the earthquake of Jan, 12 struck.
We stayed with Haitian-born doctors Hubert Morquette and Junie Hyacinthe, and worked at their newly built mission hospital named King’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince. The complex included a six-story hospital, an orphanage with 64 children, and a school with 108 children.
The most eye-opening part of the trip was not seeing the shantytowns or the size of the stomach of a malnourished child, but rather the repetition of these sights. We drove to the beach on the Friday of our week-long trip, again and again passing young children with stomachs that ballooned out in front of them due to malnourishment. Even at the orphanage, where the children were well fed, the two youngest orphans had enormous, bloated bellies from being malnourished as infants.
The top of King’s Hospital had a commanding view of both a suburb of Port-au-Prince called Delmas and the surrounding valley leading to the coast. Few buildings were more than one story high and a few rooms large (the hospital was the tallest building within the 360 degree view). Everything seemed to be falling apart except for the mountains.
This is not to say that Haiti was not beautiful. The white sand beaches of Jacmel could be mistaken for many other beaches in the Caribbean on which world-class resorts build their reputations. The mountains were lush, green, and terraced.
When I found out that the earthquake had hit, I was shell-shocked, stunned, speechless, what have you. Without being able to articulate it at the time, I felt that all the memories and stimulation that had painted my experience—the sights, the smells, the people, the sounds—had ruptured along with Haiti.
A day after the earthquake I heard from Lumière Medical Missions, the group that had organized our trip. I found out that Hubert had called at 5:30 PM after the earthquake, to say that no one had died and that the hospital was one of the few in Port-au-Prince that were still intact.
Up until the earthquake, King’s Hospital was not open to patients due to a lack of funds, supplies, and staff. It is currently filled to over maximum capacity. I have heard that Hubert and Junie are working furiously—performing surgeries on wounds and broken bones—and are in desperate need of both doctors and supplies.
My main concerns for Haiti are threefold. First, the thousands of homeless Haitians will now have an even harder time finding the food, water, and shelter we take for granted. Second, inmates from the prison in downtown Port-au-Prince escaped, which means there is a possibility that some of the pro-Aristide gangsters responsible for the violence from 2003-2008 are now free. Third, the country itself already had so far to go with its medicine before the earthquake. Before the earthquake exacerbated the situation, King’s Hospital was in need of fund-raising to establish a beneficent fund to support the many Haitian patients who could not pay full price for necessary medical attention. With the attention of the world on earthquake relief (as it should be), Haitian causes have thankfully become the focus of charities nationwide. But to what extent will Haiti be restored?
All we can hope is that aid and disaster relief efforts will establish greater infrastructure, rather than eliminating the recent and shaky stability Haiti has had due to an increase in police force and the recent capture—by President Préval’s government—of the leader of the gang responsible for the revolts.
Haiti is not just a disaster-torn third-world country that deserves to be patronized or that deserves pity and energy. Keep an eye out for fundraising events on campus and contribute a dollar, trusting that the money will yield tangible outcomes. What the earthquake has not changed is Haiti’s potential to be a thriving island nation with an intriguing identity. Now more than ever it needs help to get there.
The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in Biology and French.
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