Today is the last day of our trip. We spent the morning at another tent city, “Camp Mega 4”, where about 4000 people live. This site seemed like the poorest of all the tent cities we visited this week. We were able to see 55 people in 4 hours. Most of the children are seriously malnourished. One of the babies we saw was 13 months old and he was the size of a 6 month old. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even hold his head up. He was in such bad condition that when the 17 year old mother tried to breastfeed him, he didn’t even have the strength to eat. He would literally die of malnutrition in a couple of weeks if no help was provided. The sad part is, the mother didn’t have any idea of the severity of the problem. We didn’t have anything for the poor little baby at that moment so we went back in the afternoon and brought them some milk. Our hosts Andre and Sylvie plan to visit her every two to three days to check on them. They are even willing to have the mother and child move in with them for awhile until the child is better. The entire team was deeply moved by the condition of this child. We are all praying for his total healing.

In the afternoon we visited a nearby orphanage, where our hosts Andre & Sylvia stayed for 2 weeks because the earthquake had demolished their house. This orphanage has a clinic facility and on site nurses, and runs clinics two days per week. They are very open to us using their facility in the future if we should ever have such a need. We then went back to the guest house and started an inventory list so we know what to bring for future trips. Our plan is to have a small pharmacy setup in the guest house to facilitate future medical trips.

At the end of the day, we give God all the praise and glory for what He has done through us and how faithful He has been to us over the past week. In this short time we were able to provide greatly needed dental and medical care to 600 adults and children. Haiti is a beautiful country and the people were so grateful for the help they received. I think it is fair to say this is a trip the entire group will remember for a long time. If we should sum up this experience in one word it would simply be “AMAZING.”

We went back to Silo where 1700 people reside; they seemed pleasantly surprised that we actually returned as we promised. When we got there, there were people from an NGO conducting census count. They were accompanied by armed security. We soon found out that there are multiple census counts conducted by various NGOs without anything being done for the people. That’s one of the most frustrating elements for local missionaries. About 8 or so security guards asked us for health checkups and all of them had problems sleeping due to the stress and trauma they suffered since the earthquake.

Our photographer Brad spent the whole day taking pictures within the camp and with the help of our wonderful host Andre, he was able to talk to the people and get to know more of their stories. Most Haitians are very reluctant when we approach them to take their picture. I guess I would also be tired of people taking pictures of me, as if i was in a zoo, after 6 months without seeing any improvement. But once we explained to them who we are and why we are here, they opened up and really showed their appreciation for our help.

Today, was our busiest day and we saw about 135 people. The situation got a little out of control for a little while because of the magnitude of the crowd and the excruciating heat but we were able to calm them down and continue with our medical clinic.

We moved on to another tent city today in Silo. It rained the night before so the place was extremely muddy. Again we had to climb through a broken section of a concrete wall and beyond which you would see the humble dwellings of these precious people. The tent we were using for our clinic was extremely small but the Lord gave us wisdom as to how to utilize the space to accomplish what needed to be done. We were up and running in no time. Today seemed hotter than ever, but that did not diminish our spirits. We were also grateful that we were able to find the local pharmaceutical company because we were able to replenish our stocks.

Each day we take a short break around 1pm and then we would continue working until sunset. Toward the end we had a group of women who started singing that they wished they would get to see the doctor in creole. Eventually we got to see everyone. By the time we were packing up we had to use our flashlights because it was so dark, but everyone got to see the dentist and doctor. Again we saw approximately 105 patients.

We went back to the same site for the second day as the need is immense. The medical highlight of the day was that we had a baby boy who had a fever and was breathing very fast, we thought he had clinical pneumonia; again, we had to be innovative with what we had. We used a paper drinking cup as a spacer to work with the asthma pump. After a few treatments, anti-fever medicine and antibiotic, the little boy was looking so much better. By noon-time we realized that we were running seriously short of medication and had to make an emergency trip to a local “mega” pharmacy which is extremely lacking just about everything. Fortunately, at the end of the day we were able to find a pharmaceutical manufacturer which is a real God send. This allowed us to restock a lot of items such as anti-fungal cream, children Tylenols, cough medicine, antiscabies, worm medicine, and antacid.

We cleaned more teeth and did more extractions. By now our fashion manager/chemical engineer dental assistants were working like clockwork. We had so many decayed teeth to fix that we actually asked a few patients to come back to our lodge at night so we can see them as there is no illuminating equipment in the tent city. They came to the guest house at around 7:30pm; we set them up on the front porch and worked until past 10pm. Did I mention we also experienced a tropical thunderstorm during the procedure with frequent power outages? Please pray for more dentists and hygienists to come to Haiti, people here really need our help!

We are staying at Delmas 75, which is about 20 minutes drive from down town Port-Au-Prince. We went to one of the nearby tent cities named “Gedeon” where 225 families, with approximately 900 people in total, live. We set up in a tent that is used for the Sunday service and boy was it HOT… Before we finished setting up, everyone was drenched in sweat; I couldn’t image how these people live under these conditions every single day.

Most people here have really bad teeth and most of them have never seen a dentist or owned a toothbrush, or even know what dental floss is. A number of patients also came with LARGE dental abscesses and we were able to provide them with injectable antibiotic and pills to follow up later in the week. A lot of them have periodontal disease as a result of poor hygiene and malnutrition. The dental work was very challenging because we do not have enough supplies and instruments, especially X-ray facilities. Despite all the challenges, God is faithful and skillfully guiding the hands of the dentist. This was field dentistry at its BEST. The dental chair was replaced by a rickety chair; the light source was a flashlight being held by the “dental assistants” and the ventilation was provided by one of our volunteers, a boy fanning manually. Sterilization was done by 6 containers with water/soap/isopropyl alcohol/chlorox/cavicide (chemical solution) and the autoclave was a pressure cooker. We saw about 20 dental patients today.

On the medical side, the doctor was given a king size chair and he felt like King Solomon. We saw approximately 80 people (adults and children). Most of the children presented with fever, vomiting, diarrhea, worm infestation and skin rashes. The adults presented with mostly gastrointestinal, respiratory and GYN issues. Providing a private examining area was extremely challenging and essentially consisted of team members and volunteers creating a human shield around the patient. We were fortunate to have a nursing student from Canada who was able to work alongside us and also trained our banker, Paul, to become a pharmacist. Oh and our photographer Brad made us feel like movie stars with his camera flashing everywhere.

At the end of the day we were all exhausted but certainly accomplished a lot. The team worked extremely well together from the get-go even though most of us only met each for the first time on this trip. Only God can make this happen.

DAY 1

The team of 6 had an extremely early start at 3am on Sunday morning. We had a smooth check in process and but slow security processing made our flight delayed. This resulted in a tight connection in Miami to continue on to Port-au-Prince. We arrived tired but excited in Haiti, but no checked bags made it Haiti with us because of out short connecting time in Miami. We still remained upbeat and trusted God that the bags would make it on a later flight the same day, otherwise we would not be able to start our medical or dental services. Since we had to pick up our brother Brad later since he had a later flight we had to make a second trip to the airport anyhow. Brad made it safely and we got 10 of our 11 checked bags. The personal luggage of one of our teammates did not make it. And even that was well orchestrated, because our sister Priscilla was not the least phased by it. The bigger picture was our medical and dental supplies were here, so we could start on time.

The host family is extremely gracious and our accommodations are definitely comfortable and adequate.We were immediately refreshed as we arrived and were made to fell right at home and welcomed. As soon as we received the bags and headed back to our base we did a complete inventory of our medical and dental supplies and re-arranged things in a manner to facilitate our mobile clinic. The team also spent the evening bagging the multivitamins and analgesics into smaller quantities for easier dispensing.

The drive through Port-au-Prince certainly still had a lot of evidence that something catastrophic happened here. There are tent cities everywhere and we will be in the midst of it all. But we are certainly all convinced that this is Gods work and we are excited to be a part of it.

Be well,
Dave

August 1-8
September 4-11
October 2-9
November 6-13
December 4-11

If you are interested in being a part of one of these teams or have additional questions, please contact the office as soon as possible. We are looking to fill the August 1-8 team first, so if that is the date you are interested in please contact us before July 13. Thank you in advance for your willingness to make a difference!