Final day countdown:



Get up – 4:30 a.m.


Record the sounds of Haitian dawn. Check.


Photo walk through town and tent city. Check.


Write. Check.


Interview Sterling. Check.


Interview Archange. Check.


Photo walk with Brian to goat farm community. Check.


Visit Orphanage, video, photos. Check.


Bonus interview with Ronald. Check.


Purchase items for auction. Check.


Run to beach, demonstrate mad water ballet skills, smash face into ocean floor. Check.






It wasn’t supposed to go this way. That last bit was to be a refreshing unwind with friends before we bid them orevwe. The best part was the way each of them, all nurses and doctors mind you, recoiled and gasped as they swam up to me. “Good Lord!” What happened?!” Um, nice bedside manner guys.


I already knew from the force of impact that it was bad and I was hearing the ponderous strains of cello and having a Peter Benchley moment as the blood flowing from my face created a gauzy bloom in the celadon water. However, with each expression of shock and disgust, I knew that I had truly blown it. “I am not an animal!” was the lament that started surge through my mind with each gushing (overflowing) pulse of my heart. This refrain actually continued through the night as everyone I encountered back at the mission offered the same succession of utterances of horror. The Haitian guards at the gate gave me the same disconcerted, somewhat apoplectic, stares that they gave me when I went for a run. The look that seemed to say, “That is one crazy white woman.”


Anyway, the point of this story really is that bad things happen when we least expect it. I cannot tell you how foolish I feel to have injured myself because of a lapse of judgment in a moment of frivolity


Worse yet, is that as I fly home bandaged and unglamorous, this warped moment of frivolity, occupies a space of jarring contrast in my mind, caught in juxtaposition to the fresh images of the frightened, wounded and despairing survivors of the earthquake.


The earthquake, happened out of the blue, plucking them from their plans and their routines and deposited them in a place that is tenuous, uncertain and seemingly infinite.

My pathetic schnoz will heal. I have some fervent prayers going up against infection and scarring but soon I will be home. I will work, I will hug, I will resume my routine and I will heal.


Gito may or may not. A bureaucratic glitch might eclipse his hope of being able to go to Chile for open-heart surgery. Sherlyn may or may not. She seems like mere flotsam in an overcrowded, understaffed tent hospital and possible solution and many answers are miles away in the fractured capital city. Cassandre, Archange, and all the others suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms probably will, though it will take a long time.


And what happens in the meantime, to the nation waiting for restoration? How does she rise with strength and purpose when her people, her leaders are confused and tentative, living in tents, living in fear.

The work started by the doctors and our mental health specialists will help. The approach of taking the promising Haitian nurses and training them in these recovery skills is a momentous step. Aimee has returned to the states and in order not to overburden Mary with the PTSD workshop responsibilities the staff has the brilliant idea of assigning Myrto, a local nurse, to help. She now teaches alongside and learns from Mary, demonstrating the relaxation techniques and helping the people to understand that there experiences of seemingly enduring fear are not abnormal – and not forever.


The plans and the commitment that Dr. Bob has brought for an on-site, staffed medical clinic will help. Again, this will offer progressive health care in the Grand Goave area so that basic diagnosis and treatment does not need to be found via an expensive trip to Port au Prince or elsewhere. This will provide jobs for local nurses and eventually doctors. The groundbreaking for the clinic could be this very summer.

The eager desire of people like Sterling, the technical school administrator, to see the school open again and to see students financially equipped to attend also helps. Sterling has already started setting up the computer lab again and desks will soon fill the great tent donated by City church in Kirkland WA. Jobs will be created when construction on the technical school and medical clinic are commenced and families will earn money to eat, rebuild their lives and attend school.

Marc and Lisa Honorat and their vision for Haiti ARISE, their devotion and faith, and others like them will help. Their confidence in God’s love and mercy and the joy that they themselves bring to their community is unequivocally essential to the sustenance of hope.

I leave Haiti with crowded impressions of people in my mind. Mackenzie and Mary and the other little children from the tent cities, who walked through town with me holding my hand and bubbling Creole, have followed me home and, quite honestly, resonate with painful longing in my heart. I yearn for a way to deliver them from so much need.

Yet, I have returned home with gratitude for what we have, and a renewed determination to fulfill my role with Haiti ARISE by trying to keep Haiti in the minds of compassionate people. She simply must not be abandoned. There are ways to help by offering a hand up and not just hand outs. Communication between agencies and the government is an essential change that must occur. Comprehensive assessments of what are available in terms of health care and housing and education across the country is essential. Money must continue to pour in to help rebuild the infrastructure and to bring food and shelter during restoration. Decentralizing the government, education, health care and industry could make a dramatic difference. The collapse of Port au Prince crippled the entire country.

So I return home with this truly unmaskable injury, and whether or not it was divinely allowed, it offers me the perspective that I could not just slip in and out of the place fortified by a warm fuzzy feeling of altruistic satisfaction with myself. I am, instead, reminded that there is big wound in our hemisphere that needs to be healed. Each time I asked a medical professional how long it would take my unsightly nose to heal they dodged an answer altogether or shook their head sadly. I was assured that it would get better, however, though it would take a long time.

Haiti is suffering and her healing will take a long, long time.