Aftershocks

There were no aftershocks felt while we were in Haiti, but I will be feeling the aftershocks of this trip for sometime. In my dreams, I see children with amputations selling goods from baskets on their heads, babies with clubfeet needing casting, cases in the HAH ORs and doing battle with the flies to prevent them from landing on our patients' open wounds. When I'm awake, I still hear the cries of the people experiencing PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) including our little 11 year old girl, Mirlanda, who lost her entire family in the quake; I hear the cries of a mother, Denise, who awoke from anesthesia suffering flashbacks of losing her baby. How do you even begin to comfort someone who has lost so much? I see Joseph battling to keep his leg and prevent an amputation, and Kettely, sick from necrotizing fasciitis, struggling to save what remains of her leg after an infection of the stump of her above knee amputation. There are countless men, women, and children struggling to rebuild their lives and families, with stories of homes destroyed, businesses ruined, lives lost. Last Friday, I lost a friend to cancer. In my grief, I collapsed in gut wrenching tears. Yet at the same time, I thought of the images of people running through the streets in the days after the quake inconsolable from the loss of their children, parents, their entire family. I felt deep pain and anguish from one friend passing and could not even begin to imagine what these people have lived through. Yet there is still a spirit in them of determination and to push ahead and continue. I was amazed when we drove through town and the couple short walks we took beyond the hospital gates to see all the road side stands people had set up trying to sell their wares to passersby. Families have large steel bowls, probably close to 2 feet in diameter, that they place over open flames to cook their meals with the smells of delicious foods wafting through the open car windows. Each morning during our morning report and worship, we saw children in neatly pressed uniforms being led hand in hand by parents taking them to school for the day. We saw bright eyes and big smiles and loving and tender moments between family members caring for their loved ones in the hospital. Kettely's daughter wiping her mother's forehead with a damp cloth to quell the heat from her fever, a mother rushing to put clean sheets on her son's cot after he returned from surgery, families bringing in meals for their loved ones, mothers emptying bedpans for their children. The list goes on.

I left Haiti Thursday morning, a day before scheduled so that I could be at the memorial service on Friday afternoon for my friend, Gail. I returned home to WI Thursday night and got to my house about 10:30, having left the hospital at 6 that morning. It was a long day of travel and full of emotions-- emotions for leaving behind Haiti and the people there, emotions for knowing that Gail is gone and the pain of burying a friend, a mother, a wife, a sister. Our plane from Port Au Prince was full of various relief workers-- I sat next to Carlos, a biomedical technician from Cape Coral volunteering at the Medishare field hospital, and Stan from US AID working to build infrastructure in the country. I knew that most everyone on that plane had seen things like I had and had been there caring for the Haitian people and for the country. Once in Miami, though, we all went our separate ways, and my next flights were back to a random mix of US citizens and visitors returning from vacations or business trips. TVs in the airports showed preview coverage of the Kentucky Derby. Flying into Miami showed subdivision after subdivision with red roofs and blue sparkling pools, well groomed golf courses, green lawns and flourishing trees. Streets in repair and free of free flowing water. When we flew out of Port Au Prince, I saw blue tarps over tent cities and homes and buildings destroyed. From the plane as we were waiting to leave Miami, the tears flowed despite my feeble attempts to keep them at bay so as to not draw attention to myself from those next to me in my row. I had, just that morning, said good-bye to a new friend who sleeps a few hours a night in a tent on the campus of HAH. Last week, a departing aid worker gave him a sleeping bag so now he has a bit of cushion between him and the ground. I gave him some money and some of my remaining snacks so he might eat more than once a day. I left all my meal replacement bars to Joseph, our patient fighting for life and limb as he suffers from malnutrition amongst other battles. I could not keep in the tears of seeing our wealth and comparing it to the world I had just left. I got to leave. I do not know if I will ever see those people again. Yet how can I not return? As hard as the trip was, coming back to the US might be even harder. In Chicago, I had a longer layover, and got to sit down with a large twist cone of TCBY frozen yogurt. After the long hot days and sweaty nights, I missed having cold drinks and ice cream in the evening, and when I saw the TCBY stand in O'Hare, I had to stop. As I sat with my cone in the sunlight, enjoying the warm rays through the window of the terminal, I saw a woman eating a "to-go" meal of out a styrofoam container. I immediately flashed back to the lunchtime meal distributions at HAH which were served in those same divided styrofoam containers, with a large portion of rice and beans, a small serving of a vegetable or salad, and some sort of protein. I think in my two weeks there, I ate those meals twice. A woman from Loma Linda with whom I worked a lot during the two weeks would save me a meal somedays when there were enough for the "Americans" to get meals. Often I wouldn't get to the breakroom anywhere near the time of food delivery. One night, she had left a meal for me with my name on it, but instead of eating it, I heated it back up in the microwave and took it down to Joseph who had not had a meal in two days. He was often "Pa mange, pa bwe" (Creole for no food, no drink or NPO for the medical people amongst my readers) during the mid-day meal distributions while awaiting surgery, so he would not get a meal. His family had little to bring him and he would go days without eating. So we started trying to make sure Joseph got to eat at least one good meal a day. He was the recipient of much of our left over food upon departure. I left my sheets, blanket, and Green Bay Packers towel in the care of Jeannie to have washed and given to a patient or interpreter in need.

As I walked through the terminals of the airports, I saw all the luxury shops in which one could buy expensive soaps, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. I thought of my friend Jeanty, the volunteer interpreter from Cap Haitien who had come to HAH to help when he heard and felt the quake. He told me Thursday morning that he wanted to come to the US someday. What shock he would have had to see the extravagances in the airport! I said good bye to him Thursday morning not far from the tent he sleeps in. He showers in the hospital and gets one meal a day from the hospital cooks. He is very thin and is hoping to make some money to send home to his mom and 5 brothers and sisters to help feed them up in Cap Haitien. The PAP airport is a sharp contrast. There is one entrance and one metal detector and xray machine through which everyone passes. Then, one line to get to the desk to check in and check baggage. While waiting to get through the first metal detector, the line extends outside under a canvas awning where locals come up and down the line saying, "Missus" or "Mister, buy my painting?" "Like my painting?" "want a bracelet?" "jewelry?" One even knew the word "Souvenir" I bought a wooden jar and hoped that it would help his family eat this week. Inside the airport, once we got through emigration, we went through another xray machine and metal detector and then proceeded to the gate. Along the way there was one tiny shop with a few books and Haitian artwork on display with carved wooden boxes, metalwork, jewelry. Before the stairs, there was one stand selling coffee beans. That was it-- two small stands inside and street vendors outside. The control tower was a box of windows high on a truck lift. The baggage claim was a makeshift conveyor belt that sometimes worked in an old airplane hangar with fans and makeshift gates for immigration and customs. It is apparent that the quake has damaged the airport and they are making do.

This weekend, I have not felt well, struggling with a bit of a GI bug and exhaustion. I have spent my weekend on the couch in my living room watching the wind blow through the trees and listening to the birds. I am hardly interested in TV though I did watch the last inning of the Cubs game yesterday. I was glad to see a win, but would I have really cared if they had lost? My friend, Sylvia, from LLU wrote to me Friday night telling me in her email of her travel which summed up my experiences on Thursday as well. She writes,

"When I arrived at customs [in Miami] the officer asked me if I had accomplished my goals in Haiti. I told him "Oh no, I never could have." Then the second officer who checked my passport said, "Welcome Home." and I choked up and couldn't even reply. It just seemed so surreal."

Yes, it just seems so surreal.