Threshold - Winter 2004

Haiti: A People Easy to Love

Senye, si nap viv jodi a
malgre siklon, grangou, ak maladi,
nou dwe di,
“Mesi, Senye
Nou genle la pou yon bi.”

Lord, if we are alive today
in spite of hurricanes, hunger and sickness,
we should say,
“Thank you, Lord,
we must be here for a purpose.”
(Haitian prayer)

Sister Mary Rae Schrick, one of seven members of a medical mission to Haiti, came to realize the depth of truth in these words as she and her co-workers met the poor, the sick, and the inner strength of Haitians in four impoverished villages in Haiti. Sister Mary Rae, a physician’s assistant in Atchison, journeyed with two doctors, two nurses, a pharmacist, an “organizer,” and a handyman on May 11 to Haiti, the third poorest country of all nations. It is a country where life expectancy is 52, adult literacy 50%, average annual income below $500, and food, housing, and medical care inadequate. Their mission, affiliated with the Haiti Outreach of St. Paul’s School of Theology, a Methodist seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, is to serve the medical needs of the poor in four rural villages in Haiti.

They arrived in Port-au-Prince May 12 and headed for Torbeck. Port-au-Prince was “an eye-opener . . . colorful, overwhelming, overpopulated . . . children washing in ditches, beggars, vendors, and piled-up garbage.” Then began the trip to Les Cayes, the first of the four villages where the team would set up clinic. Their other three clinic stops were at Macabee, LePrete (high in the mountains) and Cavaillon.

During the infamous road trips from mission to mission, they sat on plastic trunks in the back of a pickup, a pickup often slowing to 10-15 miles per hour to avoid “mudslides, pot holes, goats, chickens, cows, oxen, donkeys . . . trucks, tap taps, motorcycles, bicycles, buses, jeeps, carts and crowds of people.” “Everyone seems to be walking somewhere,” Sister Mary Rae added. With four trunks of donated medical supplies, they continued on their mission to meet the sick. As they rode on their plastic-trunk perch, they saw in the distance the Caribbean Sea, the green, lush monsoon foliage. At other times, they saw signs of severe deforestation.

Clinics were set up on porches and in a church. Each day began with a prayer, even as long lines of the sick formed near the clinic. With scrubbed faces and Sunday-best clothes, the sick waited their turn. More than 600 patients, suffering from scabies, intestinal parasites, anemia, pneumonia, severe malnutrition, hypertension, and various other diseases came patiently to the clinics. A translator was on hand to assist. Some phrases echoed again and again in their Creole language:

Breathe deeply. Respire fo. Or Rale souf.
This will hurt. Sa va fe mal.
This won’t hurt. Sa pa ve mal.
Nice kid! Bon petit!
Now, tonight, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.
Konne a, aswe a demen, apredemen.

Sometimes directions were not clearly understood, or maybe they were understood, but there was a deeper prompting. An example: A mother was given five Vermox tablets. She put them in her mouth to swallow, then took one tablet out of her mouth and gave it to her older daughter; she took another out and gave it to her younger daughter.

Despite sultry, sticky weather and sometime torrential rains, river crossings, loss of electricity, and limited time, there are people that will long be remembered. The Haitian man near the clinic in Maccabee is one of those people. The clinic area was shaded by an apricot tree. Suddenly the Haitian man “shimmied up the tree, pulled off a couple of apricots, used his machete to peel the fruit, and gave us all slices to eat,” recalls Mary Rae. “Just a few germs…,” she adds with a smile. She also tells about a seven-day old baby who especially touched her heart. After the mother had died in childbirth, “the grandmother had been trying to feed it a water gruel from cereal but it looked to be dying. The sisters at the Mount, our office staff at Riverbend and some other people in Atchison had given me some money, which I gave to the pastor there to buy formula for a good length of time. I hope that now the child will live.”

Sister Mary Rae reflects, “I could write a complete story about the Haitians. In spite of all their poverty, lack of medical and physical care, their shortage of food and financial income, the heat, the great distances they travel, and their efforts to eke out their daily living — in spite of all of this, they are a happy people. They are friendly, well-dressed, and courteous. They have a patience and perseverance that we lack in our culture.” Her diary is not a complete story, but it certainly reveals much of her gratitude for her experience with the Haitian people, “a people,” she writes, who are “an easy people to love.”

Her prayer at the end of her clinic days in Haiti:
“Dear Lord, help all those we’ve seen today. Keep them safe from harm this night. Help all who are poor, hungry, and ill that they may be comforted by those more fortunate than they.”

Thomasita Homan. OSB

Photos of Sister Mary Rae with patients were taken by Marian Nolting.