Well, well, well. Things seem to finally be happening! I just got home after another fund-raiser for Haiti, one last night and one tonight. Altogether, I probably collected about 75 lbs of supplies for Haiti, including clothes, medical supplies, and crayons, among other useful items. I am inspired by the support from my friends and even complete strangers. When I go back to Haiti, I know I have a marvelous group of friends here looking out for me and praying for me.
So, enough with the mushy gobbledygook, on to the stats. Still am not sure about what is going on with the clinic. Gordon is flying to Haiti tomorrow with a team of doctors and mechanics and such, and he will be assessing the situation at the clinic to see just what should be expected. If there are still problems structurally with the clinic, those will probably be addressed first, meaning a group of workers will be sent to rebuild. If, in the best of circumstances, the clinic is ship-shape, we can send doctors and nurses who have volunteered to work in Haiti. Either way, I have been told that I will be the coordinator of the second group of volunteers to the clinic.
In an ideal situation, this is what would happen with the clinic: organize with Medical Teams International and Mercy Corps and set them up on the compound, use the soccer field as consultation rooms or operating rooms if necessary, keep the flow of volunteers constant or have some semi-permanent doctors there so that we can keep the gates open to the public every day, and be a base for medical teams to send out mobile units into the community or to the more rural areas to help those who aren't able to reach the clinic. My ultimate goal is to make the clinic into more than what it is now, make it into something like a hub for other organizations to work from. There is plenty of space, beds, medical equipment (or ability to acquire said equipment), and support to make this happen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and praying that this will come to fruition.
In the last post, I don't remember if I had updated about the situation with my friends in Haiti. I had been wondering about my friend and fellow classmate, Molly Hightower, who was living in Port-au-Prince at the time. A few days after the earthquake, her body was found in the remains of her apartment building. A man I worked with briefly during my first visit to Haiti in March of 2009 was also a casualty of the earthquake, leaving a wife and daughter. There are more whom I was not particularly close to, but I am as concerned for them as for any other friends I have there. I am not yet sure about what happened to Daniel and Nubia or Jorje and his wife. The Haitian doctors who I worked with at the clinic are still unaccounted for, and I am most concerned for Dr. Hermione, perhaps one of the most gifted and compassionate and strong women I have ever been fortunate to cross paths with. I sincerely hope Dr. Gordon can give me some good news about her, her husband, and a French journalist, Amelie, who was living with them. These are the last I am waiting to hear about, the rest are safe and physically unharmed. My friends from the Colombian UN are all doing well, emotionally drained and exhausted, but physically, none are injured. I have not heard anything about the Peruvian UN battalion, and I am taking this as good news. Nothing on the news about it, so I am assuming the battalion is still in working order.
Overall, I am in a very good state of mind. I am uneasy about not knowing the fate of my friends, but I will be in Haiti soon enough and can be my own investigator and find out just what happened to them. Once Gordon returns from Haiti, most likely he will be in the States on Feb. 6th and I hope to get the word from him on what is the next step for the clinic and a set date as to when I will be shipping out. This time, my goal is one year. I may need to return to the States for recuperation at some point, but I hope to stay and help to make the clinic function better and get medical care to more people. I'll do my best. And before I sign off, I have to put in a huge thank you to every last person who has donated money or time or supplies for this mission. Haiti needs so much aid and love and prayer and I have seen such an outpouring of this, it renews my gratitude to the human race, reminds me that we have not forgot what it's like to reach out to your fellow humans. I tried to veer away from the mushy sentiments, but I can't. At this moment, I'm proud to say I'm human.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
you are my favorite sister.
Post a Comment