Haiti mission offers many lessons

 “Please, pray for me.”  That  was one of the last things our  interpreter in the pharmacy said  to me, as we were packing up to leave.

 I’ve worked with her twice before, and I could see the stress on her face.  The village of Gramothe overall has fared pretty well since the earthquake rocked Haiti last winter, but they have not escaped loss of homes, family and friends. 

Nineteen homes sustained damage; only six have been rebuilt so far.  Many of those we saw in the clinic had less to eat than they did before the earthquake, and we could see from our records that many had lost weight. 

In the five days we held clinic we saw at least 1,100 people from all over the area. Some walked for days just to be seen by a medical provider. Because our May clinic was the last clinic for three months (the rainy season makes the clinic hard to reach) and because the people who started Mountain Top Ministries-Haiti come to the United States to talk about their work and raise money to continue their work, we had an especially big job to do.  We tried to prepare and give people with serious and chronic conditions enough medicine to get them through until the next clinic in September.

People often ask me, “How do you deal with all the suffering and poverty there?”  It’s hard to put into words.  I just know that what we do is much more than handing out medicine.  We are a hope-line and sometimes a lifeline for the people there.  We come and do everything we can to make life a little bit easier, a little more comfortable.  There is no corner drugstore -- so even the basic medicines (Tylenol, Motrin, Tums, vitamins that we take for granted here) are important to help them deal with various ailments (ones from which we all occasionally suffer) until the next clinic.  Besides medicine we hand out cups of peanut butter (never crunchy-they don’t like it!) that we repackage every evening to give added protein-especially for the young children and pregnant/lactating women.  We give it out as “medicine” so they are more inclined to portion it out a little at a time and make it last longer.

My daughter, Mary, worked with me again this year in the pharmacy although she did get to use her expertise as a recently graduated dietitian in researching and educating our team on a special kind of peanut butter (Medical Mamba) that we were able to obtain and distribute.  Medical mamba (it is know by other names also) is a fortified peanut butter used all over the world to fight malnutrition in young children.  There are specific guidelines we had to follow in order to obtain and distribute it and records had to be kept.  We gave out every bit of what we had.  And I think it was very satisfying for Mary to be able use the knowledge she learned and studied at school to help the people there.

Since the pharmacy is the last stop for people, every day I’m the last one out of the clinic.  The rain comes every day, usually in the afternoon, so it is a challenge to wrap up our day and get down one side of the mountain and up the other side to where we stay before it gets dark.  It’s hard to even describe the condition of the roads we travel on to get up and down the mountain.  Quite a few people walk because they feel safer walking than riding in the trucks that take us to the clinic.  All I can say is that the potholes in Rockford streets are nothing compared to what we experience in Haiti.

Our medical team this time bonded quickly and for the most part we were a group of spiritually minded people.  We started off each day with prayer and a short reading from scripture.  I taught everyone a few songs-which we were supposed to sing at the Sunday service but it didn’t work out that way.  Instead as we toured the village we serenaded the villagers with a chorus of Fanga Alafaia and the other songs we learned.  It was appreciated and was a lot of fun for us and for them.       

There is a beauty and a sense of peacefulness in that part of Haiti up in the mountains.  The night sky is big and filled with brilliant stars. We are serenaded every night with the sounds of dogs barking, roosters crowing, insects chirping and humming, and goats bleating.  It is truly a humbling but also a satisfying experience to practice medicine in a third-world country.  It has afforded me a new perspective on life and living.  People there really know about living in the here and now because there may not be a tomorrow.  It’s a lesson I relearn every time I go.  I am also filled with gratitude to be able to work side by side with my daughter-and that my daughter feels called to use her gifts to do that work too (and with me).

Like all disasters, as the images of the devastation disappear from the media, they also disappear from our thoughts and minds.  However, since now I have seen it firsthand it is forever imprinted in my mind.  I felt this bond for Haiti long before the earthquake and I expect it will continue for years to come. I have friends there-faces of people I can see when I close my eyes.  When our pharmacy interpreter asked me to pray for her, my answer to her was, “I am always praying for you, for all of you here.”  You are my friends, people whom I’ve come to love.

Have a great summer (at least I hope its warm but not too hot, rainy but not too wet).

This page prepared by St. Anskar's, Rockford