A friend of mine is currently in Haiti serving at an orphanage for a few months. She is presently in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was there when the earthquake took place. Here are some excerpts from her journals that share some of the realities of being there during and after the earthquake. As you read it, please pray for the people there. At the bottom are some ways you can help:
The Internet is still down, and I don’t know when we will have it again, so I thought I would start a sort of journal just so I don’t forget to tell you things.
Yesterday, Jan 12th, the earthquake struck at 5:15 pm. I was on the internet, hoping Ian would sign on and try video chat with me when all of a sudden everything in the room began to sway, then the shelves started to collapse. Corrigan and Shelley were in the kitchen doorway with the black babies so I went to the front of the house to find the white kids. The house stood, but several huge cracks in the cement walls are now visible.
We looked out the gate and saw that neighbors’ walls had collapsed, anything that was cheaply made without rebar had fallen into the already rough streets. This meant that all the neighborhoods in the ravines were demolished. Shelley and I hopped in the car to see if we could help any of the ladies in her beading program who lived down there. We first stopped at one of the boy’s homes, who lives with the Clays. The house and neighborhood that his mother lived in was completely toppled over. Several children had head bumps and bruises, but one woman in particular had the back of her Achilles tendon sliced through and the skin was just sitting there in the dirt. To slow the bleeding she had packed the wound with coffee beans. So, having seen that an orphanage just up the road was starting a makeshift clinic, we took turns carrying her up and out of the ravine. From there we went back to the next ravine, where many of the ladies who do the beading program work. By now it was almost total darkness, but we crossed the little stream to see the houses of our friends were still standing, although the houses of many other had crumbled right beside them. Many had already been reported dead. Miraculously, the new home for the girl, who had attempted abandonment of her baby that morning, was still standing.
Assuming all of the people we were looking for would be making their way to the Clay’s home, we returned. What devastation lay around us, and yet I could not help but praise God that so many literal walls had crumbled in only a few seconds of earthquake and prayed for spiritual walls to follow soon after. It was a strong reminder of the frailty of Satan’s power and the unfathomable strength of God’s. Haitians have said that ten years ago, they were still poor, but no one had walls around their homes. Today Haitians live in fear of one another and every building has a ten-foot wall with barbed wire or broken glass cemented into the top. Every store that I have entered has had a minimum of one armed guard in the parking lot, probably with no practice at firing the very scary, very illegal looking weapon slung over their shoulder.
On the way home we learned that the strength of the earthquake had been a 7.3, which would not seem so impressive in the states where quality of design is typically appreciated, but here in Haiti, quality over expediency is a rare thing indeed. Not only had our favorite grocery store, the one with the different cheeses and unique sauces not to mention I’m sure over 200 people inside, had crumbled, but so had the Palace, the central point of Haiti’s government. It was said downtown was in rubble.
Turning onto our street we heard the sound of music, then saw the Clay’s gates wide open. Corrigan had turned the natural disaster into a block party, bringing out his sound system to blast praise music, starting up the grill for spaghetti and calling out to anyone who needed a place to rest and eat, to come in and grab a plate.
Shelley’s eyes filled with tears in appreciation for Corrigan’s heart echoing Christ. Beatrice, a Haitian woman who has a heart for other Haitians, had walked her children the half-mile to the Clays, but when we arrived, she asked Shelley to please take her in the car to find her husband. I stayed behind this time, watching babies, slicing bread and dropping everything (not babies) to ride out the after shocks. As the night progressed, we accumulated a crowd of about 20 people. We slept in the paved front yard, dragging pillows, cushions and mattresses outdoors for our new and old friends to sleep on.
That night Shelley maybe had a full five minutes of sleep, thanks to babies, a man who thought 11:30 would be an excellent opportunity to deliver a Haitian sermon on Jesus’ coming, Jackson’s midnight vomit and various other interruptions. I slept through most things other than the dogs sitting on my head or licking me and I think I held Jackson for a little while after he puked.
At 6:15 the roosters were crowing like it was any other day. We awoke and went to find a little boy’s grandmother. He said her leg was broken. The neighborhood she lived in was also demolished and Shelley and I tried to administer as much first aid as our little box would allow. One girl’s finger tips were hanging on by strands of skin, so I had to wash those out and then put the stuff that stings on . . . that was a bit frustrating considering the language barrier. We rebandaged a few and I thought about John Wayne giving me his diatribe on the evils of band-aids and if you want something to heal quickly, air is the best thing for it. So we told them we would come back tomorrow to wash their wounds one more time and unwrap them. We brought the grandmother home with us and after placing her on my mattress in the front yard I started cutting away at her blood encrusted bandaging around her ankle. Let’s just say it was gnarly, but I kept snipping, no matter how often she called on Jesus to return. There was a gaping hole in her ankle that I eventually washed out and rebandaged.
From there Shelley went back to the makeshift clinic to relieve them of people with wounds they couldn’t treat any further, like broken limbs. We kept the mattresses out on the ground, fed, splinted, rebandaged and drugged all of our patients. Shelley even found some heavy duty pain relief in a pharmacy near by that you use a surringe to shoot it in the buttocks. Everybody was pretty mellow at around 3:30 in the afternoon, so Kristlyn put on rice and beans on the outdoor grill and made a huge pot full for the now 30 people in the yard.
Some pretty convincing cloud cover came over in the late afternoon, so Shelley and Corrigan put up a tarp for everyone to sleep under. The earth was still grumbling with after shock, so we tried to figure out sleeping arrangements as best we could. Corrigan, Keziah, and Zebedee slept in the car. Richard took Ember on his mattress outside and Shelley, Jackson and I slept in the front room with easy access to the door. Besides being eaten by flies and mosquitoes and the occasional earth tremble it was a more peaceful night than the night before.
January 14th - Priority one – baths - especially the little ones - smell like pee and that’s bringing on the flies. So Shelley bathed and clothed about 8 little ones, not including her own. Kristlyn made oatmeal for the crowd and I used up my hard boiled eggs on Clay kidd-o’s who needed some protein.
After breakfast, I rebandaged four people while Shelley got laundry going, both in the machine and having a few Haitian ladies doing it by hand. We washed all the sheets and all the clothes of our people, most of which were soaked in pee. It’s pretty clear that one little boy is broke his leg and he’s such a moaner, so while I was changing his bandages, (his muscle tissue was popping out) I spoke firmly to him that he was going to break his lungs and then he’d really be in trouble if he didn’t quit screaming like a little girl. He needed to breath, so everyone around him started taking deep breaths for him to follow. I’m definitely not a nurse, and I have little to no bed side manner when all the person is doing is causing a scene. . . but you know, I really think that is just part of the culture to be so . . . voluble, in times of pain.
So, after all bandages were changed, it was time to bathe the girl with the broken leg. Richard lifted her up and I boiled some water, so she wouldn’t be so cold in the regular water. We had made splints out of chair legs for her, so we undid the wrap holding her leg straight. She was soaked in urine and had day old bandages that were stuck in her wounds. So we soaked the bandages to loosen them while I wiped her down. She screamed for a good portion of removing the bandages, but seeing how she was a little girl, I couldn’t get too upset for her screaming like one. We got her out of the bathtub, rebandaged her cuts then rewrapped her leg with the chair leg splints. We couldn’t find any of the larger diapers, but we did find one size 3, which is what Shelley’s one year-old daughter wears. The girl we put the diaper on is 6 years old, but she is so skinny that it stretched to fit. Shelley had picked out a red dress of Keziah’s to give to her, so we put that on her and carried her back outside.
While we had been bathing, Shelley had been sanitizing the mats and mattresses with our little bit of Febreze anti-bacterial and washing off the plastic sheets, so the little girl had a clean bed to return to. Lellin began making black beans for rice on the grill. This morning we learned the police station and prison collapsed, with the news that all of the policemen and all of the prisoners had been killed. Shelley learned that the city was digging mass graves just one block up the road from us, so after lunch we went and photographed the uncovered bodies. The holes were in the cemetery, but that didn’t make them any less disturbing. We were told a truck was going around picking up dead bodies from the side of the street to dump the bodies in the holes. I’ve got the pictures if you ever need a reason to throw up or cry.
Corrigan had been out all morning trying to run errands, but nothing was open. He dropped off one of our ladies at the makeshift clinic, because the skin flap on her Achilles either needed to be cut off or sutured. He then took photos of the Caribbean Market that had collapsed and tried to find food, but no grocers were open and no one from the Province had brought produce down to sell on the street. The only thing open was the gas station up the road and Corrigan said the atmosphere was riotous. His car was hit twice, just passing the gas station, as people were trying to cut him off to get in line. After he figured out food was not an option, he dropped by his school to figure out when work would begin. He was told the school is closed indefinitely as most of the upper class will be leaving Haiti in the next week or so, because they can, thus the school won’t have anyone paying tuition. The school is now turning itself into a relief center for when relief arrives for food, water and medical supplies. They think the earliest things will start up again is 6 weeks.
The radio tower is down, which is why the Clay’s Internet is down. We are going to try and get a message out to you and my parents that I am okay through another ministry that has Internet connection, but that may not happen again for another day or two. We are beginning to realize that we only have enough food to last us another 4-5 days before we run out, so your prayers are appreciated. We did find a huge bag of rice and a small bag of beans to feed the people in the yard.
Today we are going to work out, I think we missed cardio yesterday, so we’ll do that tonight, and yoga tomorrow. This will probably be very entertaining to the Haitians, but you do what ya’ gotta’ do. The Clay’s TV smashed during the quake in the front room, but I think we can just use my computer to watch the workout. I got Ian’s reminder that he loves me at 9:45 this morning on my phone. That was good to see, although I would definitely trade that reminder for a phone call right now. I’m hoping flights will be resuming their regular takeoff, but I’m glad I scheduled those extra few days in Orlando to return to Vicenza, in case I have to wait a few days to get out of Port-au-Prince.
This afternoon I wrapped a woman’s hand that was sliced badly in three places. She had rubbed all her wounds with coffee grounds, which had soaked up the blood, but the clinic wouldn’t take her because they would have to spend too much time cleaning out the wounds before they could suture anything, so they sent her to us and I got tasked with soaking, poking, and being the all around bitch that had to get the coffee ground out of her infecting skin. In the middle of cleaning, I remembered from the movie Roots that on slave ships the white people would throw buckets of salt water on to the slaves to cleanse and disinfect their wounds, although I remember the slaves shrieking like banchees, it was worth a shot. So I made some salt water in a pitcher and poured it over her hand into a bucket. It definitely made her go nuts, but the coffee beans started to come out and the wound’s puss began to wash away a little more. Then I made her soak a little but longer and all of this was communicated through hand gestures and then her yelling at me in Creole, which I took to mean it hurt badly. So I would nod, frown, and point her hand into the bucket. I went through about 50 q-tips, scraping the chunks of coffee out and all I could think was that the reason I didn’t try to become a doctor was because I couldn’t hold my lunch in anatomy class, and that was with cats! Irony and the blessing of Christ’s promise that I can do all things through Him who strengthens me have made this another exhausting day.
Shelley just got back from scouting for food, so she drove the woman back over to the clinic where hopefully they can do something for her now. She showed me a picture album that she had in her purse, so I’m guessing she’s someone who actually lived in a house and the home must have collapsed. She lost her 3 month old baby in the quake, and did not know where her husband was.
Links to practical ways you can help:
Gain
World Vision
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