My First Day Experience Here

This is a delayed post from my 1st day here.

2/23/10

We arrived yesterday afternoon into Cap Hatien.  Our plane descended into a beautiful green landscape, quite mountainous and filled with sundry plots of farmland.   From there we were taken into town by our Haitian porter,  Delnatice, to try and find some electrical supplies for our hospital engineer.  

While “OKap” was described in travel guides as a “sleepy, little town”, I found it anything but.  People everywhere, on the move, in every direction.  On bikes, scooters and on foot people were scurrying about with an urgency I would more likely associate with  New York than  Haiti.   A volunteer explained it to me.  “They are all living for today.  Tomorrow is so uncertain that every day they do as much as they can everyday.  It has become more pronounced since the earthquake”

We visited several hardware, contracting and electrical stores, but none of them had the  basic supplies we needed.  So up the mountain to Milot.  It was a wild, bumpy ride on a dirt road, dodging potholes the size of Volkswagens.  Finally we arrived at Sacre Coeur Hospital and it was pretty amazing.  

The compound spanned over several blocks.  A volunteer compound that had previously existed  needed to be rapidly expanded to handle the sudden influx of volunteers.  Tents had been constructed and the rooms which formerly held 1-2 volunteers now held four.  Another anesthesiologist described the experience as “the most challenging camping trip I’ve ever been on”.

The hospital itself now spilled over into several military tents known as “tent city”.  The sicker, acute patients stayed in the hospital building.  The bulk of the patients however stayed in the tents.  As we were walking to visit the operating rooms, there was a band playing.  It sounded like a slow New Orleans jazz band.  My colleague commented, 

“ You know what that is, dont you?  That’s a Haitian funeral procession.  You’re gonna hear that a lot here...”