Source & Credit: Fredrick News - Post | Frederick, Maryland
By Ron Cassie | News-Post Staff
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The U.N. estimated more than 1 million survivors are homeless.
Dr. Julian Choe of Frederick , his Mission Ryan project partner, Mark Zimmerman, and Humanity First team members arriving together Sunday came across one decomposing body almost immediately upon stepping out of their vehicles.
"That, to me, was shocking, on what, Day 12 or 13?," he said. "She was right on the sidewalk across from the national palace."
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Choe's small team and two Mitsubishi Monteros full of Humanity First medical professionals entered Haiti in a pre-dawn, ad-hoc convoy of about 100 trucks, pick-ups and SUVs. It's a smaller number than has been arriving every day for the past week, according to a USAID worker at the border. Nonetheless, it took three hours to reach Port-au-Prince on bumpy, narrow roads. The assistance does not begin to meet the need.
"I'd like to say I saw water and food being distributed in some organized fashion," Zimmerman said. "But I didn't."
As for the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers said to be in Port-au-Prince, few were visible Sunday, Zimmerman added, except those guarding the main hospital.
Leading Choe's team to the Humanity First clinic, Jean-Jacques pointed to a collapsed nursing school where most of the students had been killed, and the fallen Sacre-Coeur Catholic Cathedral. He was next to the national palace, walking with his girlfriend, when the quake struck.
"My school collapsed," he said. "Everything in this country collapsed."
Arriving at the Humanity First sidewalk clinic, set up five days after the earthquake. Choe and Zimmerman and others unloaded medical supplies. Choe jumped in quickly with patients, examining and cleaning old wounds, removing stitches from one patient's head, trying to prevent infections in most instances.
One girl he treated for a severe ankle injury, Rosena Fauver, 7, lost some of her classmates when her school collapsed, said her father, Jean-Claude Fauver. She also lost her mother, who was at home at the time of the earthquake.
His immediate concerns were simple.
"We have no food to eat, no water to drink, nowhere to live," Fauver said. "When they give humanitarian aid," he said, referring to those in the United States, Europe and the rest of the world, "Do they know we aren't receiving it 12 days later? My daughter and I are sleeping in the street. If it rains, we don't have a tent."
The Humanity First outdoor clinic in Port-au-Prince is near the national palace, located in front of an Ahmadiyya Muslim house of prayer that has hosted doctors and nurses since Jan. 17.
Ahmad Bashir, 63, a retired U.S. Army R.N., said he signed up for Humanity First, a Muslim volunteer organization, two days before the earthquake.
"I was at home getting fat on the couch and I thought I'd better do something," he said.
He was with one of the first medical teams to arrive.
"In 24 years in the army, I was never sent to a war zone," Bashir said. "Now I get a chance to put those skills into practice."
Bashir said the Humanity First clinic has been treating about 100 patients a day, and expected to top that number Sunday as more physicians arrived.
"People see doctors arriving and they come," he said.
They've been treating all types of injuries and issues, from lacerations, bruises and fractures to dehydration, arranging for hospital X-rays when necessary.
"It was very depressing here when I arrived: no running water, no electricity at night and no police at night," Bashir said. "Then, we had two or three aftershocks. Just as intense as the earthquake, except they only lasted a second or two, not 35. We'd run out of the house and it would be over already."
Like everyone else, Bashir said, nothing close to adequate food and water is getting distributed.
He is surprised people in Port-au-Prince seem to be hanging on emotionally despite everything.
"They still smile when you smile at them," he said. "And I can't imagine how traumatic this have been for them. But if you still can smile, that means you still have some hope, right?
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