Riding With Haiti Air Ambulance Part 4: Service Among Perpetual Poverty

EMS World contributor and advisory board member Kevin Collopy is volunteering this month with the first air ambulance service in Haiti. He’s chronicling the experience with a series of blog posts. Earlier posts:

Part 1: https://www.emsworld.com/article/12075142

Part 2: https://www.emsworld.com/article/12075601

Part 3: https://www.emsworld.com/article/12076210

To say most Haitians live an impoverished life is an understatement, at least when you speak of life in terms of financial wealth, material goods or the size of one’s home. However, when you speak to their happiness, compassion and sense of responsibility to the greater community, Haitians are some of the richest persons on earth. Over the past several days, the continuous selfless acts I’ve seen from so many people here are simply a living miracle.

Most of our Haiti Air Ambulance EMTs grew up in homes smaller than American kitchens. They had few opportunities and have worked to support and sustain their families as long as they can remember. Every conversation with them involves their personal desire to be better and grow, and at some point includes their wish to be able to do more to help others. As one so eloquently stated, “Haiti Air Ambulance isn’t a job for me; it’s an opportunity to learn from the best so that someday I too can provide this care.”

This selflessness permeates all of their actions. It’s a rarity to see any of them idle at work—when not on patient missions, they are seeking out chores, asking questions or quenching their thirst for knowledge by studying harder than I’ve seen any American EMT or paramedic student study, ever! In the morning before the last HAA volunteer departed, she commented about some intestinal discomfort. Without missing a beat, one of our Haitian colleagues walked outside, climbed a 25-foot palm tree and picked five ripe coconuts. After some quick machete work, he handed freshly opened coconuts not just to her, but also to me and every other American present. When I commented that it was quite kind though unnecessary, he smiled and said (through a translator), “It’s my pleasure. You are here doing so much for us, there is no way we can ever thank you.”

Today we have the opportunity to visit what is considered the most progressive hospital in Haiti, which allows me to tour while we replace some medications. Walking through the courtyard that serves as a waiting room for every unit (all the units open up into the courtyard) is beyond humbling. To describe the work done by the Haitian medical staff and American volunteers as “the best they can do for the situation they’re in” doesn’t do their limited resources justice.

Pierre, our EMT and my tour guide, takes us first to the pediatric ICU. The PICU shares the hospital’s four ventilators (used LTV 1200s) with the adult ICU; each ICU is best described as a 15’ x 30’ room with four beds. I was told they can bring in more when needed. No child is alone—at least one family member is there with each (family is responsible for cleaning, bathing and feeding the patients). There are four clinicians in the room. “They treat everything here,” I’m told. “Every few months neurosurgeons and cardiovascular surgeons come and operate on some of these children.” Nothing more needs to be said.

After seeing the adult ICU, we head to the one upstairs department, where Thomas (from Ghana) has the sole responsibility of casting and making prosthetic legs for every amputee the hospital treats. His open-air department contains plaster molds, fiberglass, hand saws and a stock of well over 1,000 carbon-fiber and molded rubber legs waiting to be sized. He makes more than 200 limbs a year, he tells me, and he thinks they are missing about 75% of those needed in the country. When I ask about computer-aided technology for fitting prosthetics, he explains they used to have such a scanner and sent the data to Miami, but frequent power outages destroyed the scanner and computer.

Later in the day we come back with a 6-year-old girl for the pediatric unit. We flew her in after she presented to a mission-based clinic with new-onset seizures. We brought her mother too, as she otherwise had no ride for the seven-hour trip from the clinic to the hospital. When we arrive, two physicians and three nurses are waiting for us. We have to place her on a repurposed Stryker EMS stretcher, as she is the 11th child in the 15’ x 30’ unit. Before we can leave, a pickup truck arrives with a combative patient from a motor vehicle accident in its bed. As five staff from their one-room/three-bed ER (with seven chairs for those waiting) run to assist, we can only watch in awe of their selflessness.

Pierre isn’t done leaving me humbled for the day. At lunch he’d excused himself because his mom was coming by the hangar and he explained he needed to give her some money. He brought her in a short time later and, with his arm around her and smiling, introduced her to all of us in what appeared to be one of his proudest moments. In the evening I learn why.

Pierre frontloaded this true miracle on our flight back with the 6-year-old by pointing out the area in which he grew up. It’s one of the most dangerous sections of Haiti, and the night his mom took him and his siblings away from their home, it was burned by gang members. She abandoned everything she possessed to protect her children. Since that time, she has continued sacrificing for children and established an orphanage. This isn’t just any orphanage; in the 16-plus years she’s been running it, she’s only accepted newborns to 3-year-olds, and she’s found homes for more than 1,000 (Pierre thinks it’s closer to 1,200). She currently has 92 children for whom she cares.

After our shift we visit the orphanage, which used to be a hotel. Our time there is a juxtaposition of gut-wrenching despair and heartwarming gratitude. In the first minutes after we arrive, we again meet Pierre’s mom and are shown the infants, who are being watched over by three family friends. Pierre picks out one child and, after hugging him, shows me a picture taken of him in the hospital, after his mom found him in a garbage can! Now a happy 5-month-old, he’s anxious to find his forever home.

As we head outside, 30 children are initially skittish. After a few hugs from familiar faces (Pierre and the HAA chief flight paramedic, Stacy), the kids are posing for our camera and excitedly climbing on our pilot and me. After several moments a deaf and partially blind 13-year-old girl comes over to us and wants her picture taken—she can see well enough to recognize her own shape in a picture. After she flips through all of our pilot’s pictures, he shows her a video of the ocean. She watches it, and it strikes me that even though she lives on an island, she has never seen the ocean. There is such love and commitment to selflessly help and teach these children, enveloped in deep poverty that permeates the soul, yet overshadowed by the carefree happiness only children can have.

After we leave Pierre explains that the American charity that had been helping provide them with clothing and setting up adoptions had lost funding and discontinued its work. Seeing our desire to help, he quickly tells me that all his mother ever hopes for is clothes for her children, food to help them grow and materials for the classes she holds in her “school,” where she teaches all of them English, math and reading (in English and Creole). He explains that her mission is to never turn a child away, and to always find ways to help them. You can read more about her orphanage and its work at https://maisondesenfantsdedieu.org/.

There is really nothing more to say.

Kevin T. Collopy, BA, FP-C, CCEMT-P, NREMT-P, WEMT, is an educator, e-learning content developer and author of numerous articles and textbook chapters. He is also the clinical education coordinator for AirLink/VitaLink in Wilmington, NC, and a lead instructor for Wilderness Medical Associates. Contact him at ktcollopy@gmail.com.