Beginning a week after the earthquake in Haiti, Peace Corps DR sent a team of Peace Corps volunteers who had nursing skills or spoke Kreyol to a hospital in Jimani. This hospital was not originally a large hospital, however due to the large amount of Haitians who were coming over the border seeking medical care, it was opened to treat them. The first team stayed for a week, helping out where they could in the wards and trying to organize all the volunteers who were coming from the States to help.
The volunteers worked long hours for a week and Peace Corps then asked another group to go out there to take over them. On Monday I arrived here in Jimani and began to help with two other volunteers. We are filling in for the volunteers who had been working on the administrative/volunteer part of the hospital. After hearing stories from them, it seems as if we came in as things were finally beginning to get organized, because at the beginning things were absolute chaos; partly because entire families were coming over the border with their loved ones and had to set up camp at the hospital, and partly because there were no records or organization of the volunteers who were coming in and out to help and how long they could stay.
Starting today things have begun to get really organized; a logistical team has been brought in to organize the entire hospital better, and we’re expected to help them in whatever way we can.
Let’s start at the beginning: I found out on Friday night that Peace Corps was looking for a team to go out to the border, and I immediately contacted my boss to let her know I was interested. I rushed around finishing things in my site, and on Monday morning I got on a bus from the capital going to Jimani. Almost the entire bus (Except for the driver, two Dominicans, and three Americans) were Haitians headed across the border. We squeezed in 5 per row (no aisle) and set off on the five and a half hour drive. Even though most people were headed back to Haiti to assess the damage of the earthquake on their hometowns and houses, they were a very chipper bunch, chatting away in Kreyol amongst each other almost the entire time (I tried to keep up but couldn’t do it). We made one bathroom stop about an hour into the trip, and then an hour before the end of the trip we stopped. I thought it was going to be a bathroom break, and it was, except it was completely out in the open. All the men jumped out and immediately began peeing outside the bus, and several women did the same thing. I was tempted, but couldn’t bring myself to do it! After we got on the bus, one woman began feeling sick. Several men started fanning her and trying to feed her, and in the process she decided she was too hot, so she simply took off her shirt and sat there for a good half an hour until she felt better! Nobody seemed uncomfortable with it in any way shape or form, which made me not worry about it either!
We arrived in Jimani and met up with the volunteers who had been there the previous week. They showed us a little around the town and then we went up the hospital to get a little orientation. The town itself seemed a little sleepy, but once we got to the hospital it was bustling with people. The hospital itself is two large buildings, one of which is really a hospital, and the other or which was set up originally as an orphanage but is currently four different wards to treat the patients. In addition, patients are in being treated in a chapel and under a large circus tent. Many of the patients that are supposed to be located in the orphanage decided to set up tents outside because they were afraid of another earthquake (there continue to be tremors).
That night around 6 I headed up to the hospital with the Peace Corps volunteer I was to be replacing to shadow her and figure out everything that was going on in the hospital. We did a lot of just running around, coordinating between the main office and the wards, some translation, and lots of registration of incoming volunteers. The patients here have been very grateful for the care they are getting, but there are some very injured people. There have been up to 300 patients in the hospital (although the numbers are becoming smaller as they get transferred to other hospitals or released) and many of those patients have bone fractures, or have had limbs amputated (250). I haven’t had much time to talk to patients because we’ve been running around doing admin stuff or pulled away for translation, however the tragedy can be seen everywhere; people fled Port-au-Prince for medical care, but now they are in the hospital with nothing, often because all their personal items were buried in the rubble, and they have no where to go back to. People have been very generous in donating money to the Red Cross and other medical organizations, which is an immediate need, however the cold facts are that this is a tragedy with lasting effects, and Haitians are going to need support in reconstructing their city, their schools, and finding homes for the displaced families.
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