Vassar Haiti Project - http://projects.vassar.edu/haiti
To learn more about the Vassar Haiti Project, please visit our website: http://projects.vassar.edu/Haiti .
©2008-09 Vassar Haiti Project. 124 Raymond Ave, Box 594, Poughkeepsie 12604 NY haitiproject@vassar.edudesign byBack to top↑
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Sandra Finch-Nguyen has forwarded this report from Haiti:
Thank you, Sandra!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Help Us Help Haiti! From Haiti Community Support (HCS) based in the U.S. Virgin Islands
at: www.haitisupport.org
(includes updates on the relief efforts of the organization)
Dear Friends of Haiti,
Haiti Community Support (HCS) Co-Director Mathilde Aurelien-Wilson, a Virgin Island resident and a native of Haiti, arrived in Port au Prince three days after the quake. With the Port au Prince airport closed, she flew to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. On the way overland into Haiti, she survived a near fatal bus collision.
Since arrival in Port au Prince, Mathilde has recruited 25 survivors to staff and run a neighborhood medical station: doctors and nurses, security and logistics, cooks and drivers and porters. Many of the staff themselves are wounded from the earthquake. Some staff are assigned to simply hold hands to comfort the sick and the shattered, others provide urgently needed medical treatment.
The medical station of Bon Repos isn't much to look at. Each morning the clinic is set up in the park under a shade tree. Each day neighbors bring out kitchen tables for exams, some poles hold up some old plastic to make walls for privacy. Most times times there are many patients being treated at once. At the end of the day it is all taken down. To date they have treated and helped many hundreds of wounded from the surrounding area, and those who have fled the devastation of the capital.
HCS Medical Leader for Bon Repos is St. Croix First Responder Peter Dybing, who has coordinated and administered care to hundreds of untreated people. He and his team have been tireless, and heroic. In a recent telephone call, he said that the thing he just can't understand is, "Where are the other medics? Why are the lives of these wounded now threatened and their limbs headed for amputation, just for lack of medics and supplies?"
Mathilde and her team have been sharing the life of their patients and her family members. They sleep each night on the ground, no tent, no roof of any kind. When asked what those nights are like, she paused a long time, and said that each night, as she sits amongst her family with 40 neighbors huddled together in a medical tent under the sky, that there are times where she's felt a peace unlike anything she ever felt before. She finished saying, "I know am in the right place......"
When asked what the world should know about Haiti tonight, here's what she had to say:
"Please tell the world that we Haitians are peaceful, we won't hurt you, please don't be afraid of us! Come out of your compound link fences, open your gates and help us. Stop brandishing your guns, stop looking at me like my little Haitian face is a security threat when I ask you to use the wifi space at my own airport! Don't send me to USAID where I'm told to wait in a line. We're helping our own people here! Why should I wait in your line? Why are you hiding behind your barb wire and your paperwork? Give us supplies, food, water, a tent!"
Before the end of tonight's phone call, this is what would she would like to say to President Obama tonight:
"Mr. President, tonight I sleep with my people under the cold sky. Please! Listen to a million voices of suffering. Come down here and coordinate this relief operation or another 150,000 desperate people could die. Please, Mr President, may I please have some gauze bandages. We've run out of suture kits."
Tomorrow Mathilde will drive back over the mountain to Port au Prince, seeking tarps and tents, water, food, water purification tablets, and, yes, boxes of those gauze pads and other urgently needed medical supplies.
-----
I am terrified for her, and the safety of her team. Please will you help us once again:
Email our updates to your friends. Ask them to help us.
Please donate on-line. Help us keep the clinic going. Help us deliver more immediate medical help directly to the streets and the hospitals.
Below you will find daily updates. Please feel free to let us know of any suggestions, questions, or should we be able to provide you with additional information.
With gratitude,
Bruce & Mathilde Wilson
Haiti Community Support, Inc.
(340) 772-1651
haitisupport@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/l/8a900;www.haitisupport.org
©2008-09 Vassar Haiti Project. 124 Raymond Ave, Box 594, Poughkeepsie 12604 NY haitiproject@vassar.edudesign byBack to top↑
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sandra Finch-Nguyen has forwarded this report from Haiti:
Thank you, Sandra!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Help Us Help Haiti! From Haiti Community Support (HCS) based in the U.S. Virgin Islands
at: www.haitisupport.org
(includes updates on the relief efforts of the organization)
Dear Friends of Haiti,
Haiti Community Support (HCS) Co-Director Mathilde Aurelien-Wilson, a Virgin Island resident and a native of Haiti, arrived in Port au Prince three days after the quake. With the Port au Prince airport closed, she flew to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. On the way overland into Haiti, she survived a near fatal bus collision.
Since arrival in Port au Prince, Mathilde has recruited 25 survivors to staff and run a neighborhood medical station: doctors and nurses, security and logistics, cooks and drivers and porters. Many of the staff themselves are wounded from the earthquake. Some staff are assigned to simply hold hands to comfort the sick and the shattered, others provide urgently needed medical treatment.
The medical station of Bon Repos isn't much to look at. Each morning the clinic is set up in the park under a shade tree. Each day neighbors bring out kitchen tables for exams, some poles hold up some old plastic to make walls for privacy. Most times times there are many patients being treated at once. At the end of the day it is all taken down. To date they have treated and helped many hundreds of wounded from the surrounding area, and those who have fled the devastation of the capital.
HCS Medical Leader for Bon Repos is St. Croix First Responder Peter Dybing, who has coordinated and administered care to hundreds of untreated people. He and his team have been tireless, and heroic. In a recent telephone call, he said that the thing he just can't understand is, "Where are the other medics? Why are the lives of these wounded now threatened and their limbs headed for amputation, just for lack of medics and supplies?"
Mathilde and her team have been sharing the life of their patients and her family members. They sleep each night on the ground, no tent, no roof of any kind. When asked what those nights are like, she paused a long time, and said that each night, as she sits amongst her family with 40 neighbors huddled together in a medical tent under the sky, that there are times where she's felt a peace unlike anything she ever felt before. She finished saying, "I know am in the right place......"
When asked what the world should know about Haiti tonight, here's what she had to say:
"Please tell the world that we Haitians are peaceful, we won't hurt you, please don't be afraid of us! Come out of your compound link fences, open your gates and help us. Stop brandishing your guns, stop looking at me like my little Haitian face is a security threat when I ask you to use the wifi space at my own airport! Don't send me to USAID where I'm told to wait in a line. We're helping our own people here! Why should I wait in your line? Why are you hiding behind your barb wire and your paperwork? Give us supplies, food, water, a tent!"
Before the end of tonight's phone call, this is what would she would like to say to President Obama tonight:
"Mr. President, tonight I sleep with my people under the cold sky. Please! Listen to a million voices of suffering. Come down here and coordinate this relief operation or another 150,000 desperate people could die. Please, Mr President, may I please have some gauze bandages. We've run out of suture kits."
Tomorrow Mathilde will drive back over the mountain to Port au Prince, seeking tarps and tents, water, food, water purification tablets, and, yes, boxes of those gauze pads and other urgently needed medical supplies.
-----
I am terrified for her, and the safety of her team. Please will you help us once again:
Email our updates to your friends. Ask them to help us.
Please donate on-line. Help us keep the clinic going. Help us deliver more immediate medical help directly to the streets and the hospitals.
Below you will find daily updates. Please feel free to let us know of any suggestions, questions, or should we be able to provide you with additional information.
With gratitude,
Bruce & Mathilde Wilson
Haiti Community Support, Inc.
(340) 772-1651
haitisupport@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/l/8a900;www.haitisupport.org