Northwest Family Advocates

Check out the video report on my trip to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Rick

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Day 5

Today was a day of mixed emotions. The five families were notified they would be leaving on Saturday. They knew it would come but none of them want to go. They have been treated so well here physically, spiritually and emotionally they feel this could be their home. Still they know it is not so they must prepare for Saturday.

It reminds me of my situation. We know Heaven will be our ultimate home but this world has treated us so well financially, materially and sensually that but we long to stay here. Why else are we reluctant to, in the words of Acts, give it to those who have need. Why do we hold on so tight to the things that can only bring temporary pleasure? We have a death grip on the things of this world. And the world has a grip on death. It seems so backward, especially in the light of what I have seen here over the last week. I’m not speaking to you specifically, but if the shoe fits….

I again spent quality time with more of the children and their parents. In one situation I had to confront a father who is here with his son but has had nothing to do with him. He comes to the clinic but sits in the cabana taking with the people who come to the clinic from the city, the men who work at the facility, even the security and transportation people. I asked him why he came everyday if not to interact with his son. He said he had no reason. I asked him if he lacked confidence in his ability to do anything for his son and felt inadequate about not knowing what to do. He said yes while nodding his head. I told him men the world over when feeling like he was would do the same thing, avoid the issue altogether and let those who knew do it. I told him that his son would begin thinking something was wrong with him, that his father didn’t love him any longer because of his injury, that his son needed him to be with him, to support him, to hold him, to engage with him even though he felt so inadequate. Knowing his father wanted to still be with him would help his son more than the medical care he was getting as it would help him feel he had value and worth in spite of his disabilities.

On the lighter side, I have been teaching the kids some Swahili and they are loving it. They are writing it down with the Swahili and the English words so they are learning two languages at once! They have so much natural ability with language it surprises me all the time. One boy already speaks three languages and has learned some Japanese from an earlier nurse and is now well into Swahili. When the nurse returned from giving the evening meds they brought me a note from a girl named Mikerlina saying good night to me in Swahili and in English. It was priceless!

Good night from The Dominican!

I awoke at 4:15 this morning, Wide awake. I heard the Lord whisper my name telling me to get up and go on the trip scheduled to go to Haiti that morning. I had not planned on going but rather staying here to assist in the clinic as we now have only one nurse and one physical therapist and they will need all the help they can get. But, the Lord said go, so I did. I had no idea why or what but I went.

We left at 5:30 with no breakfast in a 12 person van that could actually only fit 8 for the four hour drive that eventually ended 4 ½ hours later in Port Au Prince. What I experienced was beyond words.

The country here is sparse hills with a white hard soil that turns to mud with the rain.. The trip was dry and dusty with lots, and I mean, lots of ruts, bumps and traffic. Horns are the tool of the day here. It is comical to see two cars on a two lane road going parallel to each other in the same direction while another car approaches from the opposite direction Then there are the moitorbikes weaving in and around everyone. It seems the one with the loudest, longest horn wins the right of way. I spent a lot of time looking at my lap!

As we began to enter the city of Port Au Prince the traffic and the shear numbers of people increased with each mile (kilometer). And with them the noise level did as well. Soon, it was a wall of noise that actually was like a very disjointed musical. Everywhere you look there are motorbikes buzzing like bees and each of them has at least two if not three people aboard. I saw one with a papa and mama with two children aboard the children sandwiched between the parents! There are small pick ups made into very colorful taxis that will hold 15 or more people in the cap and in the bed of the truck. The world became a place of constant motion and sound and color.

Along the streets are the vendors of every imaginable item with their wares hung on whatever is available including telephone poles! They are selling, cooking, eating, standing and talking or begging. The children are all underfoot sucking on pieces of sugar cane watching the world unfold around them. As we would drive by they would shout “Blanc! Blanc!”, which is white in Creole, speaking of us. On the darker side of things dogs, goats and chickens roamed freely among the chaos pecking and scratching through the huge mounds of garbage in the streets looking for food. The dogs all look like they are starving with ribs boldly protruding from their sides. The garbage piles are the actually lines five feet high and three feet wide for the entire block and they reek to say the least. At one point I saw two men cleaning the gutter of the street with mops in their hands and bandanas over their mouths and noses. They were sweeping the raw sewage down the gutter to who knows where. Where is the health department? Oh wait, what is a health department?

We met with a group of pastors and learned that hundreds of people are coming to Christ weekly in the churches that are now packed with people who before wouldn’t be there. Is it fear? Is it that they have finally reached that point that they realize one cannot control life, or is it the deep prevailing sadness you see everywhere from the losses they have suffered that are beyond imagination. They say, “We were poor before the earthquake now we are poorer still”.

The trip into Port Au Prince was the most humbling, frustrating and painful experiences I have had in my life. I’ve seen the imagines on the news, on CNN, in the papers, ut nothing can prepare one for the real thing. It was a reality check of the greatest magnitude. It was a reality check of the harshest kind. It has been more than I can take in let alone try to explain, but I will try…

Imagine a city of 3 ½ million people, about the size of Phoenix, AZ, but in a fraction of the geographical space. It is much denser that New York City. People are everywhere at all hours of the day and night. Then, imagine the buildings lining the streets one after another without any open spaces between them. They are all made of concrete, concrete blocks, concrete floors, concrete walls, concrete ceilings and concrete roofs. They are even plastered with concrete painted in the tropical colors; yellow, blue, green and pink. All the buildings are three stories or more and many are five or six stories tall. The bottom floor are the shops, stores, cafe’s and bars. The floors above are living spaces for the people. Now, imagine the streets (the main ones) being no wider than the one in front of your house or narrower. There are cars parked three deep, cars driving in both lanes in both directions at the same time, people jamming the sidewalks and streets. Children are in the apartments, in the streets with their parents or in school. Life was going on as it has for two hundred years.

Then, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, their world changes. The earth began to rock, dust began to rise and then all hell broke loose. Buildings that a moment ago were shaking were now breaking apart and collapsing. Because there is no place to go they collapse into the streets, onto the cars, trucks, onto the street stands, onto the people. Great slabs of concrete fall, cascading down in a thunderous roar that will not stop. For a full 40 seconds this continues. Dust and smoke fill the air so thick one cannot breathe, Think of the twin towers. Then silence, punctuated by random crashes of building parts, is all that is heard. Then, from this silence rise the screams, the cries for help, the confusion and the pain fills the air everywhere. People begin running in circles screaming asking what has happened, what has God done?

Buildings once tall and seemingly strong lay in pieces all over the ground and into the streets. In some areas nothing is standing, it’s all gone. In others, half a house stands, or one lone building stands while those on both sides of it are gone. It’s bizarre, the pattern of destruction. The quake occurred about 15 miles west of the city and as you progress into the city the damage becomes worse until you are in the center of town. To see a five or six story building simply collapsed onto the ground floor reminds me of film of the bombing of Germany during WW2.

Where have all the living gone? I once thought they had abandoned the city for the countryside but I was wrong. They now live in tent, and it’s a stretch to say tent, neighborhoods everywhere. Anywhere there is a clear space, even amid the rubble, there are shelters of one kind or another. Most have tarps for a roof and blankets for walls. They cook in the street on open fires. And I have no idea what they sleep on. Even on the median strips between the lanes of a major road there are tents. The parents have pushed the rubble into the street to make a place for the children to play; otherwise they would step out of their shelter and right into heavy traffic.

That was 7 weeks ago, yet the evidence is as if it were a hour ago. The only difference is that over 200,000 people are no longer on earth. One has to ask to where did they go? What was their relationship to God or to one another? This question permeates the air There is a hopelessness here, a despair coming from deep within. Why did God punish us in this way? We were already poor why did He take what little we had left. This is especially true among the young people. They have given up on Haiti; they have given up on God. This does not mean they are devil worshippers or sold out to Satan, they simply have nothing whatsoever to believe in. There is no present and no future. Despair is seen in their eyes, their faces, and their gate as they walk aimlessly in the streets. In the entire 6 hours we were in the city I saw no smiles, no joy, just somber faces, eyes downcast. It is so sad, so deeply gripping its almost suffocating.

The thing that struck me was the lengths the people have gone to try to maintain a sense of normality, like nothing ever happened. The same busy activities that occurred on a daily basis still go on every day. Just the set of the stage has been changed dramatically. Life goes on…

This is a wasteland and will probably be for years, even decades to come. Because the government is corrupt (the people’s words, not mine) there is no confidence anything will change. This pathetic to see them attempt to do the impossible. We stopped at what once was a very large church and spoke with the Pastor who was working with a group of his congregation trying to clear what was left of their building. He said it may take them years but it will be rebuilt. One small single ray of hope in a sea of despair. I hope he’s right, but I doubt it. I am working very hard at not being cynical about the situation but it is difficult to remain positive when you understand the lack of resources of any kind available no matter amount of money one has.

I am, however, very hopeful about the people as I know One who is above circumstance, in who we hope, One who knows every story, every sorrow and has counted every tear and put them in a bottle. This is the one hope we have and it’s a certainty! In whom can we put our trust, in the Master builder, the builder of men and women and children shaping them into the very likeness of Christ by using hunks of concrete, and a shaking earth.

I hope this makes some kind of sense as my thought are swirling through my head, my heart hurts and I’ve had to write this in spurts between other assignments.

This afternoon I will hold my first group session with the children. Pray!

In Him, broken for His kids,

Rick

Good evening gang!

It’s the end of my first full day and I have to say it was a doozy! We started out this morning with a show and tell tour of the place and the meet and greet with the kids and some of the parents. We have 9 children from 4 to 16 years old. All have broken arms or legs, severe wounds caused by being crushed by the house falling on them and four of them have amputations. One girl, 10 years old, has lost her left arm just below the shoulder; a boy, 7 years old and another 10 have lost their right leg, one just above the knee, the other just below and one little boy lost three fingers on his right hand. One girl has a broken left arm that was operated on and long rods were inserted. The only problem is one of the rods is protruding from her elbow. The crush injuries are horrific in that large portions of skin and muscle were literally scraped from their legs from their buttocks to their knee. These are huge wounds that required skin grafts and they look like an inch of tissue was removed from their legs. This is the status report on the extent of their injuries. Now add to this an outbreak of chickenpox in the clinic and you get the idea. Man, its something else!

The clinic is in two sections; a clinic for the people of Barahona which offers treatment for free or very little cost and the recovery side of the clinic where the kids stay while they are being treated. Three of them go home at night but the rest stay here. Their parents attend them day and night, bathing, feeding (cooking and feeding) and dressing them. The clinic is also very basic: shelter and that’s about it. It is chaotic, dirty (to our standards) with on and off electricity and no air conditioning. Put twenty five people in one room the size of a large classroom and you can imagine the noise and chaos, and the heat and humidity.

I have met and chatted with all of the children but have only had an opportunity to talk to one mother. She is young, 29 with three children her youngest is here. She lost everything in the earthquake and when her son is discharged she will return to Haiti where she and her family will be homeless. What do you say to someone in that situation? God is good just doesn’t quite cut it. She is Catholic and believes God has taken care of her but she is angry because she tool her son to several hospitals where she was turned away before she traveled three to Jamini, DR where he was treated. They told her they would have to remove the injured part of his foot that was crushed but when they got in the OR they found the foot and leg was infected so they had to amputate the leg bust below the knee. No notice, no emotional preparation nothing. He simply came out of surgery without a leg. He is taking it much better than his mother. Indeed it was civil war medicine in that they just did what they had to do with no frills whatsoever. They had no aftercare of any kind and weren’t even given antibiotics.
Except for one boy they are all healing well and we are discharging three of them sometime this next week

In spite of all this the children are very happy and doing well emotionally. I am concerned about only two of them and I hope to spend more time with them this weekend. Working through an interpreter is difficult at best as English is their third language after Spanish and Creole. But we forge ahead as we can and I think it will be working better each day as I become more familiar with the accents and such. Tonight we had a going away party for the two nurses and their assistant and we served milk and cookies. The kids loved it and began singing songs in Creole. I don’t know for sure but I think one was “When the Roll is Called up Yonder”. Just like in Africa the singing was beautiful with harmony you couldn’t believe.

I slept very well last night (10 hours) and awoke in a much better condition than when I went to bed. I do however still feel the effects of the trip here and lack of sleep. If I can sleep as well tonight as I did last night I will be in great shape. After observing and talking to the other team I can see this will be an exhausting ten days and I will need to take very good care of myself emotionally and physically or I will not be the kind of help the kids need.

As far as my role here is to be defined, change is the word of the day. Today I was a babysitter, recreational therapist, a nurse assistant, janitor and for a brief time a counselor. What tomorrow brings, God only knows. I do know that my time here is not my own and I am serving at His pleasure and as He directs.  This is indeed an adventure. The most interesting thing I did was sit in on changing and dressing wounds. Its very unusual to watch a ten year old disinfect his hands, don surgical gloves and remove his own bandage from his stump, clean it, remove a piece of absorbent tape that was crammed into his open wound to help in heal from the onside out and then very stoically allow the nurse to re-insert another piece an inch and a half into his wound. It was obvious that it hurt him terribly by his cries of pain, but he didn’t move a muscle in protest. All these kids are learning to change and redress their wounds so that they can do it when they leave here. Amazing! And, because there in only one nurse here this week I may get to scrub in on a surgery and assist the surgeon who is arriving tomorrow if he needs to operate on the little girl with the rods to do something about them.

I am amazed by what I’ve seen here. The quality of the volunteers, the staff both US and nationals, the translators is amazing. They’re all servants to the core and God is using them in wonderful life changing ways. I am blessed and privileged to be a part of what God is doing here. This place is indeed a light in the darkness! I am at times overwhelmed with the stories of these children, their courage in the face of things I can’t even imagine and the way they are rising above their circumstances. God, help me always to remember what I have experienced today when something doesn’t go my way or I am inconvenienced in some way!

Well, family, the hour is getting late and I need to hit the sack. My day tomorrow begins at 4:45 AM to see the medical team off and then prepare for the day at the clinic. Please know that I feel, and I mean FEEL, your prayers for me in this place and I cannot do it without you. And I mean that like no other time in my life before. I love you all, miss you and wish I had more words to convey what god is doing here. I will attach some pictures I took today so you can see just a bit of what I have experienced.