Doctor Jay looked puzzled as he tinkered with the blood pressure machine, tightening valves, checking for connection, beginning to look unnerved for the first time that day.
“I just can’t figure out what’s wrong,” he said to the interpreter, who then began to explain the situation in Creole. Our patient, a Haitian mountain pastor, had come down the mountain for the free medical clinic we were conducting at the orphanage. He was a small bearded man in his early forties who’s main complaint had been tansyon wo, high blood pressure.
Once translated, he just chuckled at the news of the broken machine la. This I found was common among our circle of Haitian friends. When life became frustrating or difficult or complicated, everyone just giggled. There seemed to be few alternatives in a nation like this. Life had been distilled to laughing it off.
“Why don’t you come back tomorrow,” Doctor Jay told the smiling man, who thanked us in Creole, and went on his way, exiting past the long line of villagers waiting to come in.
This was not the only issue our little clinic experienced that day. We had hauled several suitcases of donated medical supplies and a retired Bonita Springs doctor with us, over the ocean, through customs, across the country of Haiti by bus to the orphanage. Other than naturopathy, I had no real western medical experience, but I was assigned as the doctor’s assistant. It was my job to document the orphan’s health as well as establish medical records for a new clinic being built on the property.
Halfway into the first day of the clinic, I documented stomach aches, asthma, thrush, malnutrition, worms, diarrhea, AIDS, fungus, scabies....and now high blood pressure. I looked at the table where our supplies lay and realized, we are not prepared for this. Our supply table was laden with American supplies: some band-aids, antibacterial creams, vitamins, cold remedies, and a broken battery-operated blood-pressure machine. Here in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, band-aids weren’t going help.
I walked out of the clinic that day through the sticky Haitian mountain mud, somewhat discouraged, but comforting myself with the knowledge that this was a scouting trip. Take one step, God will be faithfull, take another, God is faithful.
At the dinner table that night, I decided to take the next step. Sharing our dinner of bouyon kabrit was Junior, a young farmer. He was raised at the orphanage and it was his desire to give back. “I want to do a lot here,” he told me in calculated English that afternoon. “Bon tè?” I asked him as we looked out at healthy crops of banana, pineapple, corn and cabbage. “Good land,” he replied, and smiled. That evening I handed him a packet of Moringa seeds, the ‘miracle plant’ indigenous to Haiti. Moringa is proving to be one of the most nutritious plants on the planet, decreasing infant mortality rates and saving lives in famished parts of Africa. It is easy to grow and is actually grows wild in on the island of Hispaniola.
“Oh,” one of our Haitian pastors said dismissively, “I know what this is. We feed it to the animals.” Junior shot me a puzzled look. “Oh, no!” I said, “You should feed it to people!” The pastor looked at me like I was a blan fou, until our host’s wife chimed in. “Oh, I remember this. I know this! Moringa, yes. My mother made tea with the flowers for l’oppression....” Asthma. “It made the breathing fasil.” Easy.
“What else did she do?” I pulled my chair a little closer.
“For TB, tuberculosis...pas problem. Galanga. Make the tea, strong, vert. Drink it every morning for 7 days. 7 days later... healthy. Pa plis maladi!” Ginger leaves, who knew.
“What about skin disease, what did she do for skin disease!?”
“What about skin disease, what did she do for skin disease!?”
“The ocean. Everyday my father take a bath in the ocean. He was very healthy. No problems. Bèl po. And moringa, yes, I know this well. Anpil byen.”
Junior put the seeds in his pocket and gave me a smile.
The next day, the line for people to get into the clinic was twice as long as the day before. Word had gotten out in the village. Knowing I would be there for hours I took a walk outside before we began. I came across the kitchen where a small group of women were preparing raw chicken by rubbing it with orange peels. “Prezève?” I asked, and they nodded yes. To preserve.
Orange peel, I remembered from naturopathic medicine, is a natural astringent and strong anti-bacterial. It is also anti-parasitical. I saw a pot of rice in beans cooking in the corner above a small pile of burning sticks. I remembered another anti-parasitical: cloves. Traditional Haitian rice and beans is flavored with cloves...
Once back in the Clinic, Doctor Jay and I called in the first patient. It was going to be a long day. Several people in, I was already fighting discouragement. We simply didn’t have the supplies on this trip for the issues were were encountering. I took to reaching into my back pack and giving away my own supplies: coconut water for electrolytes, homeopathy for stress, black walnut tincture for worms, saline spray for allergies, magnesium for pain. It is more blessed to give....
While checking the vitals of yet another villager, the door to our room swung open and three young girls skipped in, giggling, “L ap fè mal! L ap fè mal!” Sophia, one of the girls who lives at the orphanage, ran to me with a small cut on her arm which had oozed a little blood. “Ranje m' ” she said, in her typical sass. I cleaned the cut and applied a band-aid. I then gave her a dozen or so loud smoochy kisses on her arm, which made her giggle out of the room with the other laughing orphans in tow.
But looking at that band aid - that big, awkward, white plastic American-made band-aid - on this little, brown, Haitian orphan's arm - a girl who may have never worn a band-aid before in her life, was surreal. Like many Haitians, she was resilient, self-sufficient, strong. Her cute, skinny knees were scarred and calloused from probably a hundred uncared for falls on rocks and concrete. What was my blan band-aid going to do for her? Hadn’t my kisses and concern been enough? Wasn’t that an aloes des jardins plant I saw growing by the dormitory?
Later that day, the mountain pastor returned, this time san yon bab, without a beard. “Kote se bab ou?” the translator asked, recognizing the bearded man from the day before. We were glad he came back. The blood pressure machine had been working fine all day after some tweaking and a fresh battery. Our translator gave us the explanation: the man shaved his beard because he thought it was keeping the blood pressure machine from working. When we put his arm in the cuff, however, the machine mysteriously stopped working, again. I pondered the power of the lwa. I even wished I had a fèy doktè here to teach me a thing or two...
Again I glanced at my table of neat rows of colorful, shiny boxes of American supplies. We are SO not prepared for this! After finishing up for that day, I left the clinic to trudge through the mud once again. During our walk, I looked up at a mango tree, laden with fruit. “No child is sick during mango season,” I heard our host say. And yet, we had seen at least a dozen people today with malnutrition. Our translator explained, “No, they don’t eat mangoes. They are only sold at market.” That night, I struggled to scrub the mountain mud off my shoes. I began to see that the issues of Haiti are as complex as the mud is sticky. Here we were to help, but how do we help?
On my last day at the orphanage, a village woman and schoolteacher approached me. In broken English, she said, “Madame, is very nice to known you,” and continued to talk in Creole to my translator. He listened, and then shook his head before rebuking her and sending her on her way. “I am sorry, lady,” he said to me. “She asked you for money for her school; I told her she couldn’t do that, that she shouldn’t ask you for money here.”
I wondered what I was doing here, in Haiti. My once bulging suitcase that barely made weight a the terminal was now deflated and empty, carrying only some muddy clothes and some rocks as souvenirs. I had no money left in my pockets, but for 2 single dollars I was saving to buy a water in the airport. I had no money back at home. I looked at the woman as she walked off, sensing her resiliency, sensing her strength. I was exhausted. I had nothing to give her, nothing left. Realizing my own inadequacy to do anything for Haiti, I sensed the presence of God. I remembered Peter’s words in the third chapter of Acts, "I don't have any silver or gold for you. But I'll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!" The only thing I really had to offer Haiti, is Jesus.
“Why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?” It’s always about Jesus.
At the airport on the way back home, I met a woman who was also returning from a medical clinic in a tent village in Port Au Prince. “It was wild,” she exclaimed. “So many issues! We weren’t prepared for the need we encountered. But we did what we could. One of our doctors performed some surgeries with an Exacto knife... without painkillers... in the mud.”
She asked me if I was going to return. “Of course,” I said.
“Good,” she replied, “Because the need is great.”
The issues of Haiti are complex.
The need in Haiti is great.
My Jesus is greater.
And He told me to go.
Not by might, not by power, not by human wisdom, not with band-aids, not with silver and gold.
“‘By my Spirit’, says the Lord.”
Ayiti, mwen pral retounen.
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