Dr. C. Tannert Pinney, trying to make a difference in the misery of the people of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, kept being amazed by what he heard coming over the wall of the compound where he slept: songs and celebration.
A massive tent city was huddled back there, he said, as large as a couple of football fields and an absolute breeding ground of disease and desperation. So how could the inhabitants be singing?
“It was late at night, every night, between about 10 and 11 p.m., and in the morning, too. I thought, ‘My God, these people just lived through an earthquake.’ The resilience of the people was incredible to me.”
Equally incredible, though, was the poverty.
“The people of Haiti had nothing before this earthquake, and the earthquake wiped them out,” he said.
Pinney, a Hockinson resident and retired emergency room physician, traveled to Haiti in early February as part of an effort by Project Helping Hands, a growing nonprofit organization that started in Keizer, Ore. Medical professionals pay their own way to hot spots around the globe where they can set up charity clinics.
“We have a lot of people with great talent and big hearts who are willing to give up their time and their own funds to go on these trips,” he said.
Pinney said Project Helping Hands has recently grown to the point where it needs a board of directors — which he has joined. The group is nonpolitical and nonreligious, he said.
He’s been to Bolivia twice in recent years, he said, and when word spread that Project Helping Hands would head for Haiti in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake, he was eager to join that expedition, too. Twenty people went, he said — 10 from the Portland area and 10 more from elsewhere around the nation.
The group flew American Airlines, he said, which was kind enough to waive a $100-per-piece luggage fee for many plastic tubs of medical supplies being brought into Haiti.
They flew into the Dominican Republic on Feb. 6 and took a 10-hour van ride across the island, past the national border into Haiti and Port-au-Prince, the capital city and epicenter of the earthquake.
“As you cross the border, the difference between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is night and day,” he said. “Suddenly it’s all rutted roads and gravel and people living under tarps by the side of the road.” His sense was that this was partially earthquake aftermath, he said, but partially the underlying state of poverty of Haitian society.
“We got into Port-au-Prince. Man, it was like a war zone,” he said. “The buildings were all just completely collapsed and there’s no equipment, nothing to clean up the mess. There’s been very little work to reclaim all this. The rubble is just sitting there.”
He added that the government offered food vouchers to encourage people to clean up the rubble and sort it into collectable piles. “It was beginning to look somewhat better.”
Eventually, the Project Helping Hands group reached Port-au-Prince and the compound of its host, a Christian group called One World Mission. The accommodations were reasonably comfortable — real rooms, real beds, even a swimming pool. And just over the compound wall were thousands of people who had nothing but their prayers.
“They were living under tarps held up by sticks,” he said. “When they had homes, at least they had places to go to the bathroom. Now they didn’t even have that. It was very heart-wrenching.”
Injuries and poverty
The Project Helping Hands team set up a clinic in a rocky courtyard next to a dilapidated home, Pinney said. Out front was a triage nurse and an interpreter. Inside was a pharmacy tent, an intravenous treatment tent and a supply tent. Patients would line up outside, talk to the nurse and interpreter, and gain admittance to the help within.
“We put out that we needed interpreters, and of course the local folks are all looking for ways to make money,” Pinney said. “We ended up with 10 interpreters who stayed with us.”
While the medical team saw its fair share of festering earthquake wounds and injuries that had never received proper treatment, Pinney said, more of the ailments it faced were the ongoing, grinding effects of poverty and hunger — easy to treat in the short term but tough to prevent without a wholesale shift in conditions.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure. Untreated diabetes, both adult and juvenile-onset. Ear infections. Scabies and fungal infections — and secondary infections that festered after the primary ones were left untreated. Malnutrition and even typhoid — a disease that can rage where conditions are unsanitary.
“I’ve never seen it in this country,” Pinney said during a telephone interview from his Hockinson home. “But the streets are littered and the water isn’t clean.”
Lack of clean water and hygiene also had the Project Helping Hands seeing plenty of vaginal infections in young girls — not to mention the evidence of sex trafficking and rape.
“There was a girl who was repeatedly raped by a local boy and treated like a slave by her aunt,” Pinney said. “We were able to get her out of that situation.”
All in all, he said, the clinic treated more than 250 people per day — 30 percent to 35 percent of them younger than 18. It amounted to more than 1,400 people over the course of four whole days and two half days.
“There were so many ‘thank yous’ and smiles and ‘God bless yous,’” Pinney said. “It was very rewarding to see how grateful they were for what we did.”
He added that Project Helping Hands apparently scored points for cultural sensitivity — which is part of what had them invited back by One World Mission.
In contrast, one church-sponsored clinic appeared to be interested in treating large numbers of people quickly and in proselytizing, he said. Another faith-based clinic decided to shrug off an official nationwide period of mourning and remembrance one Friday morning; Pinney said that group prayed together and decided God was on their side.
“Their interpreter just went ballistic. He wouldn’t work for them,” Pinney said.
The Project Helping Hands group, by contrast, took its time and talked at some length with each patient. Its host, One World Mission, guaranteed it continuing space and opportunities. “We’re going to have a regular presence in Haiti once or twice a year from now on,” Pinney said.
Pinney said he wanted to thank several generous donors to the Project Helping Hands mission to Haiti, including Lacamas Medical Clinic, which donated $1,000 in equipment, and Hockinson Middle School, which raised $6,300. He will be speaking to a school assembly, and presenting a slide show, at 9 a.m. Thursday.
“I was very impressed by the enormity of the response to Haiti by the people of the world and the people in this country,” he said.
But he won’t be going back to Haiti. Next stop is an orphanage in western Kenya, he said.
“I have always wanted to do this,” said Pinney, 60. “Now that I’ve retired, my skills have given me the opportunity to do something good. It’s been very exciting and very fulfilling.”
Source:columbian.co
