Last Day.

Today was a strange one. We got up early, packed all of our things, then Rachel went to help another team with all of our medical supplies that we gave while Kimberly wandered off down the street with an interpreter to try to find a needy Haitian family to give her small camping air mattresses to. By the time Kimberly returned, my blood sugar was so low from missing breakfast that I had already dragged Lisa off down the street to Epi D'or, a European style coffee shop complete with a crepe stand inside.

After a delicious breakfast (in which Rachel, Danielle, and Kimberly did show up to join us) we went back to Quisqueya to pick up our taptap. We had agreed to pay the drivers $100 to take us wherever we wanted to go. We were excited to go up to a lookout point and see the city, but instead our drivers took us way past the lookout point to a Baptist Mission where there was a museum, a zoo, and a bunch of shopkeepers desperate for some American money.

We did a little shopping but got kind of annoyed at not being taken where we had wanted to go, and then on the (very long) way back down, the car was overheating and we wound up begging the driver to take us back to Quisqueya. When we arrived, we enlisted the help of a Quisqueya employee named Theo to explain to the drivers that 1) they didn't take us where we wanted to go and 2) our trip was cut short because of the car trouble, and so 3) we didn't think $100 was a fair price for that. So we agreed to pay them $70 -- there is a severe gas shortage until 4/24 when some more gas will arrive, so prices are steep right now.




Then we lazed around for a little while. About 10 minutes before our scheduled departure time for the airport, Miquette came running into the compound yelling for a doctor because there had been a "big accident" right outside. Rachel and I grabbed gloves and a BP cuff and hauled ass in the heat, where we found a Haitian man having been hit by a car while walking, being tended to by an American military medic. He was injured pretty badly, lots of cuts and scrapes and likely a big nasty ankle fracture. We kicked it into high gear, assessed his vitals, made a splint with the material in the medic's bag and wrapped his ankle, then Hans the German ER doc from Humedica jumped in and took over, started an I.V., had one of his staff bring a canvas stretcher, onto which we gently placed the man and carried him to the bed of a truck in the Quisqueya compound.

I couldn't help but think, dude, if you're gonna get hit by a car in Port au Prince, you really couldn't have picked a better place than the one where there was a small military unit and a compound full of American doctors. Really.

Anyway, it really helped me feel better about my last medical act in Haiti. Not abandoning a child in a dark empty hospital, but putting my hands to work helping a man who was in serious pain.

When I looked up after loading the man into the truck, I noticed Rachel was gone. I went up to our room and found it empty. My friends had finished grabbing all of my stuff and we were packed and ready to leave for the airport (at this point a little bit late.) We got to the airport at 2:30pm for a 5:45pm flight.



In the waiting area we met Faustian Desir, a Haitian-born American Army Staff Sergeant. He and 50 other young Haitian men took off in a boat headed for Cuba in 1990 when he was 18 years old. At the time, young men in Haiti were being murdered by the thousands by troops during the transition of government that led to Jean Bertrand Aristide's "presidency." An American Coast Guard ship picked them up, took them to Guantanamo, and after 2 weeks they let him go to the US along with 15 other Haitians. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Faustian volunteered for the US Army and he is now a recruiter but is also being used as an interpreter during this time of need. Today, he and his mother were on our flight -- he has arranged for her to live here permanently. Truly a fantastic story.

As our wheels lifted off the ground, my eyes welled with tears. I'm just not sure I'll ever see this place again, and to leave these poor people in the state they're in is so hard. The sun was setting and there were no street lights, no electricity anywhere other than the airport. The only light we saw was from fires on the ground -- likely people burning trash. Flying over Miami was a stark contrast. Everything is clean here, and the lights work, and the traffic flows, and there is a working infrastructure.

If the government officials in Haiti took the tax money they receive and hired Haitians to rebuild their country (instead of lining their own pockets), those Haitians would have money to spend, which would create demand, which would create business, which would create jobs. Not that these issues are so simple, really, but government corruption is the first place to start to fix things there. I believe that.

But for now, I am looking forward to seeing my family tomorrow. And I will remember to feel grateful for the blessings we have in our own country.

Signing off from Haiti,

- Megan