Back in Haiti AE (After Earthquake)

After 2 weeks of trying to get into Haiti, we finally made it. It wasn't without it's challenges (of course). Almost all of the supplies we brought to be loaded on the plane in Addison had to stay on the ground. Why? Well to make a long story short, the wonderful pilot that came to pick us up already had a plane FULL of med supplies bound for Haiti (including an X-Ray machine). We grabbed what we could and hopped on our PC-12 bound for Fort Lauderdale. The only seats on the plane were the co-pilot seat and one seat surrounded by cargo. Yep...I got shotgun :)

Our pilot was a wonderful 6'7" English man from Vancouver. He handed me maps and had me help navigate for him. I got to wear the headset and everything! Arriving in Fort Lauderdale was easy enough. We stayed with Johnny's friend (Uncle Tony) for the night and had a wonderful time trying to stay awake chatting.

This morning we left for Jacmel (yes...we were originally supposed to fly into Port-au-Prince, but things aren't super organized right now). Richard also assumed we'd be able to get a ride with the Canadians on their helicopter back into Port-au-Prince. More on that later...
I took the copilot seat again excited at my newfound understanding of aviation (very very limited understanding). Our pilot, Richard, told me once we got close to Jacmel we'd be flying VFR. Not sure what that stands for, but it basically means flying without relying on air traffic control to keep you from hitting other planes. Yes, that means I was looking out the window watching for anything that could pose a threat to our little PC-12. Sure enough, a huge cargo plane started turning towards us. I saved the day of course by pointing it out to Richard who promptly took evasive action. Eh, we dropped in altitude a bit. Nothing fancy.

When we arrived in Jacmel (after the sketchy air traffic control warned us of the 'dark spot' on the runway to avoid), there was no helicopter. Instead we were greeted by several Canadians in camouflage. Canadian flags were everywhere...I was definitely kicking myself for not wearing my Canada shirt Heather sent me. We asked if we could get on the helicopter coming to take the medical supplies. "EY, ah, we can only take Canadian citizens or people who need emergency medical care, EY". Yeah...neither qualification applied to us. So, we were stuck at the airport without a sure ride to Port-au-Prince (or place to stay in Jacmel). Dang Canadians.

After I asked everybody and their mom about getting a ride back to Port-au-Prince (and while Johnny juggled rocks), we basically found out we would not get a ride today. Sometimes American helicopters land, and maybe they'd be able to take us. But no one knew when or if they'd come back. Dang Americans. Oh...wait. I then went into asking about a place for us to stay tonight. Johnny guarded our stuff by giving stern looks at anyone who came close. He was also in a bad mood about the whole Canadian pride thing.

We found a place not too far from Jacmel and will stay here until tomorrow morning when our ride comes. The earthquake definitely affected Jacmel too; large parts of the downtown area collapsed. We passed a few homes that were destroyed along the way. I've been able to talk with a lot of people here who have told me their stories. Many have lost family members and friends, but still have a positive attitude about what the Lord is doing here. Please keep us in your prayers and check back tomorrow for another update!

Kim & Johnny

Gonaives, DC, National Palace...

So the last time I 'blogged' was in January. That was 2 months ago. I'm good at updating facebook....so be sure to add me on there if you haven't yet. So what have I been up to the last few months? Well, I finished the school's yearbook with my students, visited Gonaives, took 6 students to Washington DC, took 21 students to visit the National Palace in Haiti, hung out with Johnny on his quick 3-day visit to Haiti, and recently had an all-night campout with 75 middle and high school students.

So here is a summary of everything from the past couple of months:

I went to Gonaives with Pam because her brother works with an NGO out there involved with disaster relief. Gonaives was severely damaged by the hurricanes this past fall and recovery has been slow. It was neat to be able to visit another part of Haiti and to see the efforts of so many people working to get the city back on its feet. We toured projects that the UN and IOM were working on and saw the damage left from the storms.


The trip to Washington DC was exciting because my students and I were able to get an inside look into the US government. We met with an official from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who talked with us about how the US is working with Haiti. The students learned a lot and were able to see how open our government really is. We visited museums, the Library of Congress, monuments, and were able to sit in on the House in session. Hopefully the students will learn from the experience and become more engaged in their own government.



In fact, I was able to take my government class to visit the National Palace (Haiti's White House). We took a tour of the palace and met with the Secretary General and learned a lot about how the Haitian government works. We also visited the national museum and saw some neat artifacts from Haiti's past. The students loved seeing the personal belongings of their revolutionary heroes. That was the first time most of them had ever seen the inside of the Palace or visited their nation's history.









Just a couple of weeks ago, Johnny was able to visit for a couple of days and see a quick glimpse of Haiti. He spoke at school chapel on Wednesday morning and had all of the kids rolling in the aisles. They loved his message and still ask me when he's coming back to speak in chapel again.

Lastly (for now), we just had an all-night camp out for the middle and high school students. We 'locked' them in on campus for the night. We played capture the flag, soccer, basketball, kick the can, and a variation of hide-and-go-seek. Each kid was to bring a can of soup or bag of Ramen, which we mixed all together in one huge pot. Our 'soup surprise' was actually very good!! We also built a campfire and made s'mores. We did have to explain s'mores-making again as last year there was some confusion as to whether the chocolate needed to be roasted with the marshmallows :)

There are a lot more activities coming up and I'm super excited about them. Currently, I am planning a girls' retreat for the young ladies in high school. My goal is that the seniors will mentor the younger girls into becoming strong leaders at the school next year. Keep that in your prayers as the details come together :)

Happy New Year!

Well I'm back in Haiti after a nice, restful time back in Texas with the family. The first semester ended well, and I enjoyed spending two weeks in colder weather. Well, I enjoyed a couple of days of it...then I decided I needed my tropical heat back!  School started up on Monday and it was great to see my students again. We swapped Christmas break stories and reviewed some from last semester. I also have a new roommate! Pam, a fellow teacher and friend that lived in the apartment next to mine, is now living with me. We are sharing a one-bedroom apartment and loving it! She and I get along great...well, at least for now! haha. We'll see how well we do after being together 24/7. 

Today we had a picnic out at a family's house in Croix de Bouquets. We had great food, fellowship, and plenty of Guitar Hero World Tour!  We also had the opportunity to visit Double Harvest, a ministry here in Haiti that is involved in conservation and reforestation projects. They grow all sorts of plants--from ornamental to vegetables and trees. Pam and I bought tomato plants and marigolds to plant in our little flower bed.

When we got back home, we decided we needed to go ahead and plant the tomatoes before they died. Without proper gardening tools, we had to improvise. Pam came out with a soup spoon and bread knife and started going to town in our less-than-fertile dirt pile.  Our guard just watched and laughed. He then gave me this big stick, as if I knew what to do with it. I just gave him that "I'll stick with my silverware, thank you" look and kept digging. He broke the stick and started digging his own holes--twice as fast as me of course. I realized the broken stick was a much better gardening tool than knife and spoon, so together we all finished planting the tomatoes. Our cat, fiendish as he is, thought it was his job to dig up the tomatoes after we planted them. Needless to say he got squirted with water.

Overall it was a great week. The weather is beautiful here this time of year and our garden is off to a great start. Oh, and my new year's resolution is to update my blog more regularly :) 

Happy New Year!

school collapse survivors

Miquette and a little boy from the school

Me with Danilove and her mother

A few weeks ago a school collapsed in Haiti, killing 90 and injuring a hundred more. I had the incredible opportunity to visit L'hopital General in Port-au-Prince with Miquette Denie and Denise Blesh, coworkers and friends of mine at QCS. Together we were able to bring bottles of water, stuffed animals, cookies, crackers and candy to the kids recovering from the collapse. We saw nearly 20 kids spread in 4 different rooms. Many of the children lost friends, teachers, and siblings in the collapse. Miquette was able to organize over a thousand dollars in donations for the families of the victims to help with hospital bills and, if necessary, funeral costs. We had the families come two weeks after our visit to the QCS campus. Here they received $500 HTD each (roughly $65 US). Many of the children were still recovering in the hospital. The families were thrilled to have help in the midst of such an awful tragedy. 

The Aftermath Part III

Better late than never...

When we were leaving Cabaret there was a young woman in the back of one of the trucks. One of the other missionaries asked why she was there and he was told that she needed a place to recuperate and eat good food.  He said the orphanage was full so Pam and I offered our house.  We found out that the night Cabaret flooded, she woke up and ran for her 3 month old baby. As she was trying to get to higher ground, the flood waters came. A banana tree washed by and knocked the baby out of her arms. She was swept down the raging waters and into a tree where she fought through the night. She was found the next morning in the tree, alive, but her baby was not. 

She was 17 years old.

We brought her home and got her some soup. She had no energy and was bandaged from the many cuts on her body. We set up a bed and table for her in the living room. Later, however, we discovered she didn't just need a place to recuperate from the trauma, and it wasn't only food she needed. When we felt her forehead, we discovered that she was burning up. After fighting with her to let us take her temperature, we discovered she had a fever of 104.3.  We immediately tried to get the sheets off of her and put a cold rag on her head. She refused. We tried giving her tylenol, but she refused. After nearly an hour of trying to calm her fears of foreign medicine and wet rags, she finally let us get her temperature down. Little did we know that the next few days of our lives would look just like this!

The poor girl was very, very sick. On top of losing her baby and getting stuck in a tree during a flood in the middle of the night, she was daily fighting a nasty cough and an even nastier fever. We took her to a clinic that diagnosed her with pneumonia and prescribed anibiotics among other things. Of course, more pills. From day 1 she refused to take any pills, so Pam and I had to smash the pills and put them in various beverages. One day it would be sprite, another day coke, and still others, just water.  She was very, very picky and changed her mind constantly. We decided it was a combination of her age (teenage girl!), recent trauma (losing a baby), high fevers (delirious) and the foreign environment (different house with 2 foreigners taking care of her). After 4 days of battling with her to have her take her meds, eat healthy food, and bathe, we decided it was best for her to return to her family. We were able to get her back to her village where her sister took over nurse duties.  

I am happy to report that a week after staying with us she was regaining her strength and doing much better. I am waiting to find out the most recent update as to her mental, emotional, and physical condition. 

The Aftermath Part II

On Saturday, nearly a week after Ike churned past Haiti, I was able to join some other QCS teachers on a trip to Cabaret, Haiti. Cabaret is a town not too far from us that flooded very quickly in a very short amount of time. Built next to a small river, the town was overtaken by a rush of water from the tree-stripped mountains. The house in the picture serves as an eerie reminder of the destructive forces of nature.  On either side of what's left of this house were more houses and shops that were carved out of the earth by the raging waters. 

 

Our team of 3 trucks full of volunteers, doctors, food, water, medicines, and clothing passed through many areas of flooding on the way to Cabaret. Very few places in the country were left untouched by the back-to-back storms this month. On our way out we had a UN escort. Once we got to their base--a few miles from our destination--we were surprised to see our small UN jeep escort upgrade to two large armored personnel carriers. 

Along the way, one of the vehicles in our caravan had a flat tire and overheated. That's usually par for the course when going anywhere in Haiti. Soon after we all got out to stretch our legs, Pam and I became instant celebrities to the Jordanian peacekeepers escorting us. We had to pose with different soldiers in the group as they took turns taking pictures. As strange as the experience was, it still helped to lighten the mood before experiencing difficult sights ahead. Plus, we got to hold a big gun. 

When we arrived in Desca, a small village just north of Cabaret, we were amazed by how much water was still rushing through. A stream that is easily crossed had cut a huge path through the middle of the village. Even more difficult is the fact that the waters started to rise at 2am-- without any warning. 

We arrived at a point where our tank escorts could not squeeze through. After our nice upgrade, they were forced to back up and turn around to find smaller vehicles to take us the rest of the way. We weren't allowed to begin food distribution until all of the caravan made it safely to the distribution point.  

Finally we were able to organize the families of victims to hand out food, water, and clothing.  We also had a clinic with two doctors examining those wounded or sick from the storms. Lastly, Pam and I were documenting the many school children who would now need sponsorship.  

Sadly, about 20% of the children from the school were killed in the flood. 

When we left that day we were all stunned by the gravity of the situation. At the same time, however, it was so amazing to be able to contribute in some small way to help a community get back on its feet. A lot of media attention is focused on Gonaives, and rightly so. But the smaller communities affected are sometimes forgotten by the rest of the world.  I have been so encouraged by the number of people who heard about the devastation here and were ready and willing to help. Haiti is a very small country, but there are a lot of very needy people here. The poorest are always the most affected by disasters such as these.  

The story doesn't end here...check back soon for part III!

The aftermath Part I

Here in Port-au-Prince, we were largely spared the worst of all of the storms. In my neighborhood, we sustained some strong winds and rain, but no major damage.  The rest of the country was not as lucky. Most of the reports I've received are terrible.  Here is a recap of the aftermath of the storms:

Hanna flooded Gonaives, an area that was also badly flooded in 2004. Over 3,000 people died then, and the city still was not ready for another heavy storm. This year less people died but thousands were still left homeless.  Two weeks ago we got word that 12 orphans and their caregivers were rescued off a roof and brought here to Delmas.  At midnight the water came rushing into their orphanage, leaving them only enough time to get to the roof with a day and a half's worth of food. They were there 3 days before a pastor from Port-au-Prince was able to get to them. Once rescued, they weren't able to bring anything but the clothes on their backs, which, for most, were soiled pajamas that barely protected them from the wind and rain. Several teachers from QCS and I were able to meet the kids and find out their specific needs. We went to the market to buy basic groceries, arranged for a doctor to see the sick, and brought over some much-needed clothing. We have also brought the children to the soccer field on our school campus to play games with the students. What an incredible experience to see two worlds--the wealthy students of QCS and the poor orphans of Gonaives--come together in such a difficult time.

May the Lord bless these relationships to brighten Haiti's future!