For those of you have asked Graham has been in Haiti since mid-June but I just arrived this weekend.
The flights from Vancouver and Dallas were rather uneventful. Then I made it to Miami where I had to wait for 4 hours for my connecting flight to Port-au-Prince. Slowly but surely fellow passengers started arriving to the lounge. First, a couple of Haitian families, then some very young looking girls and last but not least four groups in colour coordinated t-shirts.
The Haitians were all very well dressed so I assumed they were part of Haiti's minuscule wealthy class. A few moments later, I realized the man sitting next to me on the plane was having trouble filling out his immigration form. The other passenger on my row showed him the other side of the form written in French and Creole but he still seemed very perplexed. Then it dawned on me that he could not read or write. I asked for his passport information and filled it out for him, then turned around to realize the flight attendants were doing the same all over the plane. According to UNICEF about 45% of Haiti’s population is illiterate.
The second group in the plane turned out to be nurses who were coming to Haiti for a one-week volunteering program. The two nurses that I talked to were from Ohio and Tennessee. They were both in their early 20s and had never left the United States before. I asked if the volunteering program was part of their degree and they said it wasn’t. They had some time off and decided to get some field experience. They didn’t know exactly where in Haiti they were going or what type of facility they were helping at. They were unsure their program was at all connected to the local governments or any official health care program. There were another 22 nurses on the same plane. They brought lots of supplies and a lot of goodwill. The country needs all the help it can get, particularly in the health care area. But how much can they change in less than 7 days?
The third group was made of four small sub-groups. They were easy to tell apart due to their brightly coloured t-shirts in neon blue, pink, orange and yellow. Most groups had about 15 people. There were some very young boys, some older, they seemed fairly equally divided between men and women, there were also children with special needs, and a couple of mothers with their very young babies. So who were these people? After lining up to buy some coffee before boarding our 6:30am flight, I was finally able to read the t-shirts up close one by one: Methodist Relief Mission, then Haiti Adventist Group, then the Haitian Christian mission, and finally the Evangelical Mission.
To my very opinionated/ agnostic/ atheist friends out there...Any comments?
(*We also welcome comments from the rest of you!)
The flights from Vancouver and Dallas were rather uneventful. Then I made it to Miami where I had to wait for 4 hours for my connecting flight to Port-au-Prince. Slowly but surely fellow passengers started arriving to the lounge. First, a couple of Haitian families, then some very young looking girls and last but not least four groups in colour coordinated t-shirts.
The Haitians were all very well dressed so I assumed they were part of Haiti's minuscule wealthy class. A few moments later, I realized the man sitting next to me on the plane was having trouble filling out his immigration form. The other passenger on my row showed him the other side of the form written in French and Creole but he still seemed very perplexed. Then it dawned on me that he could not read or write. I asked for his passport information and filled it out for him, then turned around to realize the flight attendants were doing the same all over the plane. According to UNICEF about 45% of Haiti’s population is illiterate.
The second group in the plane turned out to be nurses who were coming to Haiti for a one-week volunteering program. The two nurses that I talked to were from Ohio and Tennessee. They were both in their early 20s and had never left the United States before. I asked if the volunteering program was part of their degree and they said it wasn’t. They had some time off and decided to get some field experience. They didn’t know exactly where in Haiti they were going or what type of facility they were helping at. They were unsure their program was at all connected to the local governments or any official health care program. There were another 22 nurses on the same plane. They brought lots of supplies and a lot of goodwill. The country needs all the help it can get, particularly in the health care area. But how much can they change in less than 7 days?
The third group was made of four small sub-groups. They were easy to tell apart due to their brightly coloured t-shirts in neon blue, pink, orange and yellow. Most groups had about 15 people. There were some very young boys, some older, they seemed fairly equally divided between men and women, there were also children with special needs, and a couple of mothers with their very young babies. So who were these people? After lining up to buy some coffee before boarding our 6:30am flight, I was finally able to read the t-shirts up close one by one: Methodist Relief Mission, then Haiti Adventist Group, then the Haitian Christian mission, and finally the Evangelical Mission.
To my very opinionated/ agnostic/ atheist friends out there...Any comments?
(*We also welcome comments from the rest of you!)
I'm more shocked at the nurses going there for 7 days... seriously?! I don't know what they can possibly hope to accomplish in that amount of time except going home and feeling like they contributed... which really isn't worth all that much. Glad you arrived safely! Looking forward to more posts!
ReplyDeleteJulia, It is sad that you don't think giving up precious vacation time to help someone is 'worth all that much."
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that a nurse who spends a week on a properly organized "mission" could have a net positive effect. However, I have a bigger problem with the hundreds of people coming down for a week to volunteer in orphanages or to help reconstruct houses. In doing so they use up precious space, food and transportation. A donation of the value of their plane ticket can do far more good for Haiti.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that it may not actually be that beneficial to the Haitian population for a nurse to be there for only 7 days.I guess someone would have to do a cost benefit analysis and I am only guessing that there wouldn't be a net positive effect, given what I know from my International Development background and my friends working on the ground for the UN. But if there is then great... but I don't actually see the difference between the people volunteering to help build a house and a nurse that has never left the United States going for 7 days and actually contributing effectively.
ReplyDeleteEven if one does the same job, moving locations requires adjustment that I didn't think could happen in 7 days. Maybe there is training given prior to leaving the US so they can hit the ground running. I am just not a proponent of the more the better - it has to be organized and not overlap with specialized organizations like MSF - who are the experts. I'm all for contributing, but not just contributing for the sake of contributing.
I know what you're saying - but there is an important difference between construction and nursing. There is over 50% unemployment in Haiti, most of whom are young men who desperately need an income. These people should be the ones building houses (ie. Cash for work programs). On the other hand, Haiti has a massive shortage of qualified health care professionals which in the short term needs to be filled with foreigners.(This will be further exacerbated by the fact that many medical schools collapsed during the earthquake). The trick - as you note - is the to make sure foreign nurses are aligned with good organizations to make them effective, even if they are short term.
ReplyDeleteHere is some more commentary on the volunteers issue:
ReplyDelete"A Plane Full of Volunteers Bound for Haiti" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saundra-schimmelpfennig/a-plane-full-of-volunteer_b_610587.html