I say we, meaning my travel partner and I. Let's call him TJ. He is a close friend and paramedic as well, and has been a long-time mentor of mine. To cop a cliché, he taught me everything I know. I'm glad to have him on the trip.
The team meets in the lobby at 0245. A freezing rain has started outside, as two shuttle vans load us and our luggage. Thirteen team members and forty bags. TJ and I alone have 200 pounds of gear among six bags and two stretchers. Even then we'll end up short on supplies.
Our team consists of a pediatric ER doc, a primary care doc, a few nurses, and TJ and myself. The docs are phenomenal, and we'll learn a lot from them.
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Wheels down in Port au Prince at a little bit after noon. My initial impression is that of a functioning country. There is little visible damage at the airport, although roving humvees and the University of Miami field hospital in the distance are reminders to what brings us here.To my surprise, our flight is positively packed with aid workers. We are hustled into a hanger, where chaos ensues as massive amounts of baggage are unloaded.
After some orderly jostling, our bags are collected and we are herded through a cursory customs check. Outside, in the blinding sunlight, Haiti hits me. A gate separates the airport from the road, and crowded there are people looking for work, looking for people off the plane, and looking to hustle. Our driver meets us, and we begin a caravan towards the vans.
At the vans is a lesson in situational awareness. Men looking for work started arguing with the people our agency had already hired. They thronged around our team leader, a timid women with no medical background. As the team milled about, the crowd got larger and larger. People started pushing and shoving, and voices were being raised. This whole time, TJ and I were on edge, circling the crowd and listening to that fuzzy gut feeling. Some internal tipping point was reached, and we plucked our team "leader" from the crowd, shoved half the team into one van and hustled ourselves and the rest into the other. Welcome to Haiti.
As we drove into the heart of Port au Prince, the scale of destructive began to come into perspective. All around us, there are piles of rubble that used to be buildings. Those that are still standing are missing facades, or floors, or leaning dangerously. A burnt out car flashes past my view. Blocks upon blocks of tents zip by, as rhythmically as utility poles. The tents nearer the airport are bigger, and nicer--the result of USAID and the Red Cross. Nearer in the city, tents become scarce and anyone with more than one tarp has a mansion. Every yard of every house we pass has a tent. No one goes inside.
Our destination is a clinic set up inside what is left of the barracks for the Haitian special forces. The tiny compound is divided from the presidential palace by a tent city covering what used to be a lush, green park. Inside the compound, the soldiers have set up their own tent city in the courtyard. Here is were most of them live with their families. I find out that we are to camp out on the roof of the barracks--apparently it is still structurally safe...comparably. The view from the roof is devastatingly awesome. It overlooks the tent city, and the collapsing presidential palace. Destruction can be found down every street, and the view we have from one side was previously obstructed by a four story building housing the legislature. That building collapsed with many inside.
We set up tents on the flat, concrete roof. The space is shared with other groups, from Columbia, Argentina, and the US. I'm told to keep my tent zipped shut, as there are "rats the size of cats" Turns out not to be an exaggeration.
Our team is thrown into the fire immediately, as the clinic is short-staffed. TJ and I take our first patient when we intercept a doctor who is about to send a pre-ecclamptic patient to a nearby hospital. We throw here on one of the stretchers we brought and load her into a surprisingly modern ambulance owned by the special forces unit we are staying with. Inside is an old Ferno pram, the only supplies being a few angios and some old IV bags. Several translators and a police escort are tossed into the ambulance with us, and off we go.
It will become apparent during the week that anytime the ambulance goes out, it goes lights and sirens. To and from our destination. It seems silly at first, but we roll with it and soon realize it is the only way we have any hope of getting anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, considering the insane traffic congestion on the streets.
Thankfully, the patient remains stable, as our biggest challenge is just finding the hospital. It turns out the hospital is little more than some old MASH-style field tents in the area behind the presidential palace. We are directed straight to the OB ward, where we search for someone in charge. The ward is a few cots in a tent, with no staff in sight. With much translation difficulty, we discern there is no bed for our patient, or a doctor, among somnolent babies and fatigued mothers. With the help of some friendly GIs, we are directed to the ED.
The ED is, again, two field tents together with a few cots. An MD and NP, visibly burnt out, accept our patient. We transfer her over to a bloody green mesh cot that is hastily washed off as we arrive.
Leaving the ED, the smell of heat, people, and concrete fills the air. Evening has set in, and somewhere something is burning. Our work is cut out for us.
We return to the compound, as a curfew is set at dark for all aid workers in the city. Tents are pitched, and as sirens wail across the city, we settle in to our first night in Haiti.
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