a1539: First-time volunteers to Haiti unprepared for what they saw(fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Stanley Lucas <slucas@iri.org>

Star Courier
First-time volunteers to Haiti unprepared for what they saw
March 28, 2002
By BETTY SULLIVAN  For the Star Courier



Katy Garms, 62, of Kewanee and her sister, Beverly Walker, 68, of Bradford, were looking forward to their trip to Haiti with FOTCOH (Friends of the Children of Haiti) this past month.

Walker's daughter Vicki, a 42-year-old medical technician at St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, has gone with this volunteer medical team three times in the past seven years. They stay for three weeks at a time.

It was she who convinced her mother and aunt to "adopt" little ones there, sending them necessary items their families couldn't get for them.

Garms and Walker attended many meetings over the past year to prepare for the trip. They heard about the terrible conditions and saw pictures. They planned to give everything away before coming home, even their own change of clothing.

But Garms said nothing could possibly have prepared her for Port-au-Prince, which they passed through on their way to the new clinic in the mountains.

"It's just one big open sewer," Garms said. "There's garbage and sewage floating in the streets.

"It smelled so bad," she said, "that I had to pull my shirt up over my nose to breathe. And we were in an air-conditioned bus."

The government does nothing for the people, being  worse as it was under "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc," who ruled the country for generations.

Having a "free" election a few years ago didn't help. Garms says the interpreters all told them that "the police are thieves. Nobody can trust them.''

On the other hand, the people will do any kind of hard work to earn a dollar, which is worth $5 in Haiti.

Garms and Walker are not trained for medical work but they went as cooks and took all their own food with them. They pre-cooked and froze the meat and Garms carried it in her 68-pound backpack on the plane.

Garms said they flew home with another team which had lived in tents and had eaten food cooked by the Haitians. The group lost about 15 pounds each, but the FOTCOH group gained weight while there.

Rice and beans were staples, she said, but they also baked sweet rolls and cookies, which finally endeared them to the three Haitian assistant cooks who didn't think they liked the Americans at first.

FOTCOH has been taking a mission team down every winter for 22 years. This year was the first time they had a real clinic building. Dick Hammon heads up the organization and it has long been his dream to eventually build a clinic where help can be given year around.

Now that the building is finally a reality -- although the interior is not yet complete -- he is aiming to send three teams a year, in February, May and August.

Garms said their brick building and whole compound is beautiful. It has nine-foot-high walls, iron gates and guards outside. The Haitians built it all.

But most of the clinic's 3,000-plus patients that were seen in the three weeks were seen inside the compound but outside the building.

It was just too hot inside, Garms said. Her niece, whose lab was inside, had most of her equipment stored on the floor as cabinets and tables have not yet been completed.

Garms said she saw a woman lying on a cot with an IV hanging from a nearby tree. Walker spent the time when she wasn't cooking holding babies while mothers were treated. She also helped to comfort the patients.

Their electric generator only ran from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Garms said. So she got up at 4 a.m. to take a cold shower, drink coffee and relax a little before the hectic day began. She said she took a cold shower the last thing at night and then jumped into bed, trying to get to sleep right away so she could escape the heat.

Garms recalled one man riding two days on a donkey to get to the clinic since his feet were badly diseased. Scabies were present everywhere. Caused by a tiny insect that burrows under the skin and stays there, the cure for it is a salt water solution.

People couldn't swim in the ocean to get rid of it because the voodoo doctors have told the women they will become sterile if they swim in the ocean, Garms said.

Hammon's wife spent all day, every day, washing the clothes of the team to keep them from getting scabies. Water pressure was very low, so it took a whole hour to fill the machine each time and she hung everything out to dry.

The care Haitians can get in the local "hospitals" is worse than nothing, said Garms. They are unsanitary and unaware of modern medical treatment.

For example, one family was told their daughter's heart was "too small for her body" and that she was going to die. In desperation, they came to the clinic. The FOTCOH doctors told the parents that all that was really wrong with girl was that she was anemic. They gave her medication and sent home pills for her to take. The parents cried in their gratitude.

One bright spot in this country where people seldom have anything to smile about, said Garms, was the home for children run by the Missionaries of Charity (the community founded by Mother Teresa). They had a home in Jacmel, about 15 minutes from Cavydier, where the clinic is located, and one in Port-au-Prince. They also ran a home for the elderly and for mental patients. Garms and Walker visited the home in Jacmel.

Garms said the sisters prayed all day Thursday and visited their many outposts in the mountains on Fridays.

The Altar Society of St. Mary's parish in Kewanee had donated $200 toward the trip and each volunteer had to pay $1,000 to go. They also gave a few baby gowns, dresses and health kits that Garms added to the huge boxes she shipped down in advance.

Some of the boxes had been broken into by the government and soaps and lotions stolen. But Hammon told Garms to ignore it. They have to abide by the government's rules and the voodoo taboos or they won't be able to continue their work, he explained.

Hammon told Garms of a young couple from the East, both doctors, who didn't abide by the rules. The husband called him just before he died, urging Hammon to abide by all the rules. They hadn't and thugs had broken into their clinic, raped and killed his wife and then cut off both his hands and feet. He was bleeding to death as he spoke.

Garms plans to fill some boxes to send in May, but this time, she said, her boxes will be included inside one of the large metal boxes shipped by the FOTCOH because there will be Friends' people there to oversee the opening.

The clinic desperately needs good equipment, Garms said. Much of the equipment donated by various hospitals and clinics is terribly worn and outdated.

It would help the clinic greatly if more people around central and western Illinois would give new thermometers, blood pressure equipment and other items.

Both Garms and Walker were able to visit their "adopted" children while there. They could see how what little they sent was needed and appreciated by the families.

A new group that has grown out of the FOTCOH called "Haitian Hearts" was started by Dr. John Carroll, a cardiologist with St. Francis, about five years ago. He spends about six months a year in Haiti.

After years of seeing Haitians with curable coronary conditions, he asked other St. Francis cardiologists to help. The hospital began funding heart surgeries, often costing $25,000, plus aftercare.

Donations began pouring in from all over central and western Illinois to continue this project. Carroll says the biggest hurdle in Haiti is the government, which pockets foreign aid and taxes, doing nothing for the people.

Another thing people are desperate for is shoes, Garms said. The island is volcanic and the rocks are very sharp.

"I may go again in a few years," Garms said. "The trip was very exhausting, but very much worthwhile. I came to realize how lucky we are in this country to live the way we do and to have good medical treatment available.

"Just being able to trust the government, the police, and the medical people who treat us is something to be thankful for."