It feels like everyone in the camp is sick. All night long all you hear is people vomiting. I slept with my face mask on but for some reason I don’t think I will become immune to this. The topic of conversation is always about vomit and diarrhea. Combined with the unforgiving sun….this is hard. I don’t know how the people of Haiti will survive this. It is so hard. I am trying to fight it but I feel so sick today. I nearly passed out at the UN. I am angry because there is no time to be sick but I feel like all my body knows how to do right now is be sick. I am spending more and more time in the pit latrine. It is indescribably disgusting. It is a hole in the ground filled to the brim with diarrhea and vomit. There are flies all in it and around it. Just the thought of going in there makes me want to puke. I have never smelled anything like that. There are only 60 people in our camp. I can’t even imagine what it is like in a huge camp in the city. Thousands of people living in worst conditions… What do there pit latrines look like? What do they smell like? Do they even have shovels like we have? Oh God. What will happen to all these people?
Today we notice things changing at the camp we were staying at. There was even more military and they had dogs. Security wasn’t tight at all for the first few days, pretty much anyone could get into camp. Today however they were asking for all of our passports and giving our drivers a hard time. People are getting restless. It is so hot. The military guys are all sun burnt. So many people want jobs. This is so unbelievable to me. There is so much work to be done, so many people wanting to work and millions of dollars. What is the problem? The disconnect bothers me more and more everyday.
The good news is that the kids at the VM orphanage look so much better today! Even little Richardson. He was playing duck-duck-goose with the other kids. You can tell he is still very weak, but he has made such incredible progress! Doctors came out today and gave all of the kids tetanus shots as well. This was an incredible gift because of all of the broken glass and rusty nails on the compound. All these kids without shoes…this could be a recipe for disaster…instead, once again we have what we need for today.
By the time we finished working today we were all exhausted and hungry. We went to a street vendor and had enormous plates of rice, beans, plantains and chicken (I think). It was the best I had eaten the whole time there. So good! We sat outside with a group of awesome Haitian people and just learned about each other. We also learned the bathroom was a bucket in the room where the plantains were drying on the ground and where 3 women slept. I have truly never seen anything like this in my life. I can not believe this is happening. It is a disgrace.
Our water barrels ran dry last night. I was so dirty and hot my skin was stinging as I tried to sleep. I feel disgusting and exhausted. Emotionally tired today. we have a few meetings at the UN compound this morning to try to secure more food for the orphans and more tents. A friend of Sarah’s, a pilot is scheduled to fly in this afternoon…we learned of a hospital in Jacmel – a town about 40 minutes away by plane that was conducting amputations without morphine. It is true – this is really happening. Can you even imagine? Most of us can’t even have a headache without taking 4 aspirin and people are having their arms and legs cut off without any sort of pain killer. It seems ungodly. It is truly unbearable to think about. It was our plan to work with some of the docs here and fly any medical supplies we could to this part of the country. Read the rest of this entry »
There is no sleeping in Haiti. Dogs howl out of hunger all night and it sounds as though the removal of street debris takes place in the moonlight as well. Military planes fly at all hours of the night and not to mention it is unforgivably hot. I am working with Sarah Ehrlich today. She is the ED of an organization Help for Orphans International. She has just received a 3 ton donation from the World Food Program to distribute to different orphanages in Port-Au-Prince. By the time I arrive on the UN compound, there were many logistics that needed to be worked out to distribute the food. I also just met a man who is with his son and one other college who have extra water pumps that can be delivered. We work on securing that donation so we can bring them with us to the food drop offs. The roads are horrendous, and communication is almost impossible. We lose the food truck twice as we try to make our way to the first orphanage Our first stop was at a makeshift orphanage on a dump site of all places that was constructed as a last minute emergency response to try to compensate for a few of the thousands of orphans abandoned, staving and completely alone in the county. Read the rest of this entry »
We went back to the mountain community this morning, with extra help. The doctor we were with had an old hand water pump that we realized we needed badly at our site. I spent hours pumping water for the kids as they patiently lined up holding dirty old jars and glass containers. They wouldn’t even let me finish filling their containers before they grabbed their containers back and drank fervently. This went on for hours. We played jump rope and danced a little while the parents waited for their turn to see the doctor. It wasn’t until we were sitting in the shade helping a little box with asthma breathe from a ventilator that I realized that most of the kids had wounds or cuts that were infected. It started with a small girl, holding her baby brother; she tugged at my arm and pointed to the scalp of this little boy. He had a deep laceration in his head. This day we were lucky enough to have acquired a bottle of peroxide. I cleaned out his head to the best of my ability and put on a small bandage. Before I knew it, a line had formed. Child after child would show me a wound of some sort (nearly always infected) on a child next to them. A small boy, Stevenson who was 4 but looked as though he was two had a horrid cut on his little toe. As I tried to clean it the entire nail came off. He didn’t even flinch as I poured the remainder of the peroxide on his raw, bloody toe. He just laid his head on my chest.
Julie Colombino
President
UNA Greater Orlando