Steve’s Experience part I

One of the volunteers, Steven, wrote down his experience. It is very long, but worth every word. We’re still adding pictures, but go ahead and read… It is incredibly touching.

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Where to start?

My writing in this has a 2 fold purpose. First to share this tragic and beautiful experience with all of you since the whole world has stopped still to watch the horrific aftermath of the Earthquake in Haiti. I know you all are so concerned about the welfare of our affected brothers. But I’m hoping this has a therapeutic effect on me as well. I hate being the guy to send out an email thats way too long and have my reader skip thru because there’s just too much.

Tons of trucks loaded up with coffins headed for the haitian border.

So I originally was going to make 2 versions. A short and long.

But forget it, I couldn’t be bothered. Im going to break it down really well and I’m sort of a paragraph and punctuation nazi, so it should be bearable. Print it and break it down over a few days. I don’t mind if you share it. Even cut out some fluff and cut and paste just the good experiences. Im going to break down my day by day 8 day experience as best as I remember since its sort of all melded together.

First off, we felt the earthquake all the way over here in DR. I was oblivious to the damage since I don’t own a TV. We do continue to feel aftershocks, which are a little unnerving. Some say that the aftershocks could continue for months.

What has happened is truly devastating.

What was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has become even poorer.

We have made our objective helping our brothers and sisters who have suffered or lost their lives in the affected areas but also have been giving attention to others who are in need. The relief committee went and found the Jimani hospital which is very small and limited in resources overflowing with patients from Haiti. It was decided that in order to find our brothers amongst the hundreds, brothers who speak Haitian Creole would be needed.

Group picture of the volunteers.

Several brothers from all over the DR who had learned Creole offered themselves right away and were even willing to sleep in tents for several days to help our brothers. When these brothers that served as translators were not working with our brothers they offered their services to the many doctors in the hospitals to translate for them.

The doctors were very impressed with their willing spirit. They were viewed by so many patients and their family members as the only hope for receiving attention.It was becoming a real challenge to keep our brothers under watch since as the hospital maxed out its walking space in the aisles, not to mention just the rooms,other spots in the area where opened up as a triage or for patients to recover fromsurgery, none of which were hygienic or proper for any human being.

Buen Samaritano

One place was a two story building called the Buen Samaritano. It was converted into a triage center, but because of the limited resources most people were lying on a mat on the floor and then later in the open field without shelter, most with severe injuries. All the patients could do was to wait and watch as the short staffed doctor staff attended to the most critical. Many were left waiting for hours and others days.

The patients that were witnesses were so happy when the witnesses found them and they could speak to them in their own language. Since so many witnesses volunteered themselves, often each witness patient had a witness who stayed by their side constantly talking to them and comforting them.The Branch in Haiti continued to send over in different Bethel vehicles some of the patients that were at the Assembly Hall in Haiti.

Shocking state of affairs

They sent over the most critically injured, hoping for them to receive better care in the DR. From Sat Jan 16 th – Wed Jan 20th the brothers and volunteers in Jimani and other cities in the DR where patients were sent, were working around the clock to try to attend to some 70 patients or so , the majority being Jehovah’s Witnesses. It wasn’t just a matter of getting them to Jimani and into the hospital, but rather getting them to Jimani and then have them sent out by transporting them to better equipped hospitals in other cities in the DR.

Because of our isolated location, often these severely injured brothers had to be transported in the back of pick-up trucks or vans and travel for 3-5 hours to receive better attention. But our Haitian brothers are such fine examples of never complaining and just being grateful for the brotherhood they have. A lot of brothers providing transportation were willing to stay up all night to drive these brothers to better hospitals. On the other end in cities such as Barahona, Azua, Bani, San Cristobal, Santo Domingo and La Vega, there were brothers up in the middle night waiting to receive our brothers and make sure they got the attention they need.

Saturday Jan 18th we were scrambling putting together the finishing touches of our Zone Visit Sunday the 19th. 65,000 or so attended at 5 different stadiums throughout the island. We spent the day cleaning and setting up our 7,000 seat stadium. So word gets going around that a brother had been assigned to get a group together to go to the Haitian border to a Dominican town called Jimani. A group was going to leave at 3am for this border town which is about 7 hours away from where I live. So I ring the brother and apparently you needed a pick uptruck to join the party.

Haiti bethel was driving injured JW’s and bible students to receive care in Dominican Hospitals. So our mission would be to pick them up from the border and lay them in the back of our trucks since TONS had broken legs. I drive a Honda CRV which is a problem. So I asked if there was anything else I could do and he said: “No, get a truck.” So me and Kerry Stackhouse (Blondguy with glasses in most pictures by a white pick up truck) were trying to think of someone to lend us a pick up. Plus it couldn’t be a wimpy one or unreliable because of the high stakes. So Victor the special pioneer in my cong suggests thatwe rent 1 or 2 pick ups.

Neither of us can afford that so I phoned my sister. She gave me the green light to go ahead and get whatever we needed, that the friends back home would help out. Finding pickups at such short notice was proving impossible. Its all mid size suv’s and cars. So I phoned the brother back and said I was unable but that i’m sure I could help in another way. I had $$ coming in and they’ll need to eat, and I speak French and Creole. He told me for the last time: “My instructions are, get a truck or your out”. (And if this email cycles back to you, i’m so over it. You were under so much pressure and I love you now.)

So I was starting to feel like Jehovah wasn’t blessing this, it shouldn’t be so hard. So me and Kerry decided to try one more agency. She could have 2, 2007 Nissan Frontiers in 3 hours for 150$ US each, per day. I got her down to 126$ US each per day when I told her the cause. So we were in! I caledl the bro back and he was surprised when I told him I got 2 trucks. So our instructions were to meet him at his house at 3am to join a 4 truck convoy headed to Jimani.

DAY 1:

So its like 6pm Sunday evening and we are packing for what we thought might be 1 or 2 days. Fortunately I pack like a girl. I took everything. Before we left to collect the trucks, this same brother rings me and says: “You wanted to help out? Now’s your chance. Grab a pen and a pad. We need a generator, oscillating fans, 50 feet of copper wire, 2 x 5 gallon gas cans, counter top stoves, latex gloves, alcohol, swabs, pain killers, 3 extension cords, light bulbs, light switches, 20 feet of chain, a propane gas cylinder, tents and tons of other randomstuff. We had no idea why for half of it but we followed orders. I called up anotherneed greater close by called Ryan Dixon whom I met 24 hours earlier at the zone visit, and he wanted in. He said he’d call home to get some start-up $ too.

So we met at our Dominican Walmart and got most everything. The generator and propane cylinder we were able to borrow from a brother. Didn’t find tents. So then I get another call once were all revved up and its the brother adding a million more things to the list and re-assigning me to send the stuff with the 3rd truck which we had since acquired and for me and Kerry to report to Santo Domingo Bethel by noon the next day to pick up 3 professional emergency rescueguys from California who were also Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had hopped on a plane to come help, as well as a Haitian bible student who was one of the first to get helped out of Haiti. His 14 yo son had both legs amputated and was recovering at bethel in Santo Domingo. He needed to get back to Haiti and we were headed that way.

DAY 2:

We arrive at Bethel by noon. We waited around, had lunch and heard this mans story. Finally the rescue guys arrived way later than we thought and we setoff to Jimani at about 4pm. Bethel loaded us up with lots more medical supplies that needed to get to Haiti bethel.

So Kerry, Esther and one of the rescue experts were in one truck and I’m in the other with the haitian man and 2 of the Californian brothers. Its a 5 or so hour drive. The pressure got turned way up when they started getting calls on their mobiles on the way, that there was an unbaptized publisher trapped under a crushed Unibank. His father who is deaf had located him and had been sitting outside the rubble for a few days, trying to get help. So this was a specific mission for these emergency brothers who came equipped with pulleys and hooksand stuff. For about 2 hours of the drive, as I’m doing easily 130km/ph on dodgy Dominican roads, these guys are strategizing on what sort of knots to use when they get there. “Should we go with the Larson or the full-barrengers?” I dont know. It was an adrenaline rush all the same.

So we get to the Jimani hospital by 10pm and there’s a bethel truck waiting for these guys to get to this trapped person. I stayed in Jimani and never saw them for 3 or so days. They arrived too late and he died about 4-6 hours before they gotthere. There was likely nothing they could have done even if they got there on time. Would have needed a crane to get him out, the full-barrenger would have done nothing. Apparently they saw an unimaginable array of body parts in the nook they crawled thru.

Only the beginning.

So I arrive at Jimani Hospital at like 10pm. We had about 12 or so Witness Volunteers at this point.

A special pioneer from France called Antony Gwinner serving in a town called Barahona, and a special pioneer from Ontario called Chris Chapman serving in a neighboring town called Duverge. These two SUPERSTARS were unofficially coordinating this thing. Every few minutes they would receive calls to their mobiles from Haiti and Dominican Bethel with lists of injured Haitian witnesses or bible students. So they would compile these lists of really oddly spelt french names and our task was to set up shop in our around Jimani Hospital and identify our people to either

a) set them up in one of our trucks and taxi them way further in land to better hospitals where we had witness doctors and nurses ready, or

b) admit them into this under staffed, over crowded, under supplied hospital and get them stable enough to get them out asap.

This was the mission.Every 30 minutes or so every sort of vehicle you can think of would pull up with dozens and dozens of very badly injured quake victims. So we had to scramble to cautiously interview them to find out if they were ours. Injured victims were allowed to bring only one family member with them. I say cautiously because at this point we were trying to stay relatively discreet or undercover. Once people started to see the help and attention we were giving, suddenly everyone was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Im skipping my first impressions of the hospital inside, but I’ll go back) So we would go room to room, bed to bed speaking with the victims loved one or with the victim themselves, if they weren’t too sedated. For this we needed lots of French and Creole speakers.

I would sit next to them and say: “I can’t imagine what you’ve been thru, how are you feeling? Where were you hurt? At times like this we need to have a strong faith. Are you Christian? Oh good i’m glad. What church do you attend? Most answered: “Evangelical, Pentecostal or Catholic”. In which case I would wrap it upwith: “Thats great. Make sure you pray a lot” and then im outta there and on to the next. We would find ones who claimed to be bible students and then we would ask them what the name of the book is that they use for the study. What color is it? What do JW call their churches? Questions like these. Not in an interrogating fashion but more conversational because most thought we were just making small talk.

As soon as we identified a legitimate student, we would place a magazine at the foot of their bed for us to identify them. Problem is, people wouldnick the magazines and read them since most of the literature we had was in Creole. You might be thinking that an i.d. badge would be better, but this was in the fetal stage of our operation. Plus the hospital staff would shuffle people around like crazy and by the minute, the hospital occupancy kept swelling. First impression when I walked into Jimani Hospital. Shock, depression, despair etc. Its was appalling. As the pictures will indicate, people EVERYWHERE.

Thin mattresses all over the floor inches away from each other. Loved ones laying in bed next to their injured ‘whoever’. Plus it was an oven in there even though its winter. Nearly everyone had an amputated limb. I set foot in there at like 10pm. So surgeries were done for the day. It looked like a war zone. No one was without a head bandage an arm sling or a cast. I guess our brothers had set up shop earlier that day or even the day before, im not sure. But at any rate, a woman who lived right across the street, about 20 meters away from the front door of emerge, lent us her unfinished house to set up our camp.

It was a 3 bedroom rancher with only walls and a roof. No windows,no electricity, no plumbing but it had a nice gravel / rock / dirt floor. So we installed our generators, got electricity going, pitched tents and air mattresses and that was going to be our home base.So after we identified legitimate bible students of the 65 patients I instinctively went into nurse mode. What an infections control nightmare. XL gloves were nowhere to be found. Im going to consider it a modern day miracle if I don’t come away with TB, Hep A or worse.

So its like 11pm or so and most of our volunteers are getting ready for bed since at the moment we are under control. We’re not expecting more patients tonight, and our 7 bible students were having their pain controlled and seemed alright. Most went to bed except 2 or 3 of us. I didn’t expect to but I ended up working a night shift that same night. Myself and 2 nurses attempted to care for 65 patients and 65 loved ones. International aide hadn’t arrived as of yet. Im told all the action was in Haiti, but slower to get to theDominican side.

People who had not yet been catheterized were peeing themselves or worse and I couldn’t get a bed-pan under them because it was too painful. There were no soaker pads, just bed sheets that turn cold once you’ve wet the bed. No extra blankets to be found. Absolute nightmare. One guy about 40 who only had 3 toesamputated went crazy. We had to bind him at the feet and ankles. His cousin escorted him who spoke perfect english. He explained to me that his entire familywas crushed the second floor collapsed and he saw them all die. So he was in a state of shock. Now he was wrest-less and screaming but I couldn’t chance untying him. I had to help him pee into an empty water bottle with the spout cut off. He didn’t let anyone sleep in that hallway until we pinned him down and gavehim a shot of something pretty heavy. He was out in 10 minutes.

Neither of the nurses spoke anything but spanish so I was running up and down the halls bouncing from room to room translating and trying, mostly in vain to keep people comfortable. Didn’t really stop all night.

I finally stopped at 6:30am and slept in a kingdom hall chair until 7:30am. Back to the grind.

Click here for part II.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Personal Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.