Living Nightmare

Only a few days have passed since I arrived in Haiti, but it feels like months. Michael, my intrepid colleague, and I left Minneapolis just two days after the earthquake to assess how the American Refugee Committee could support the people of Haiti in their moment of greatest need. We traveled through the Dominican Republic and caught a US military plane to Port-au-Prince, picking up a tent on the way. We're now camping out at the UN base, sharing water facilities with a growing crowd. We're not getting some meals here, but have plenty of peanut butter for when we don't.

I lived and worked in Haiti in the 90s and loved it. I arrived uncertain about the fate of my friends and former colleagues -- I had no way to reach them. In the last few days, I've learned that three friends from my former staff are alive, and I've recruited one to work with us. Just this evening, we were driving back to the UN base, laughing about old times as we turned to view a haunting scene -- blocks and blocks of people sleeping the street, bedsheets hoisted with string to demarcate their space, homes destroyed or too terrified to stay inside.

The scale of what the Haitian people are experiencing is unfathomable. I can't stop thinking about two other old colleagues, who died in the collapsed UN headquarters. They stayed all these years because they loved the Haitian people as I do. I'm grappling with basic questions about life and suffering -- why so many people here must continue to face tragedy without end, this one more devastating than anything they have seen before?

Nepali soldiers form part of the UN security forces here, and I've had dinner with them at the base -- as a former Peace Corps volunteer there, they help me out. Our first 'tent neighbors' were a crew of firefighters from the Dominican Republic...they came for search and rescue but found few alive. They drove off in their fire truck a few days later because they were running short of food, but they left us water and few snacks. In a day, I was communicating in Spanish, Nepali, French, and English.

I have a book of thoughts racing through my head. We need to get support to those who need it, but what a logistical nightmare....a perfect storm of obstacles. The port was badly damaged, so nothing comes through it. Everyone wants to ship through the airport, the overland connections from the DR are potholed and slow. The US military took control of the airport and has organized shipments, but the backlog is enormous. Meanwhile, Haitians gather in any open space available to them, desperate for support. Today, the waiting list for surgeries at the main hospital was 1,200 names long.

Our expanded crew is arriving tomorrow from the DR, and we can step it up and build on the prep and staff we've begun to assemble. We need to get support directly to communities. This is a living nightmare, and I want more than anything to relieve this suffering. Today, doctors at the UN compound were doing amputations without anesthesia (i.e. ‘bite down on this’) because supplies are short everywhere. The docs end up in debates about whether to amputate on a person they are quite sure is going to die. These are the big, established organizations....we’re going for a community approach and, within all these limitations, will try to burn through and get things done.

It just started raining -- hard. I hope it doesn't last.