National Nurses United

Haiti_FNL 2/25/10 11:59 AM Page 26 "It was like community nursing, psych nursing, and medical-surgical nursing in one." — CECELIA WILLIAMS , RN H aiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere before the earthquake, with close to 80 percent of the population living on less than $2 per day. In Port au Prince in the weeks following the quake, the smell of death pervaded the streets. Vendors sold corn porridge and plantains amid clouds of flies, steps away from where pigs rooted through open sewers. The price of gas had skyrocketed to $10 per gallon. Foreigners walking the streets were surrounded by Haitians rubbing their stomachs and gesturing towards their mouths, asking in pantomime for food. On one muggy afternoon, Mike Brewer, RN, bent over the ruins of a concrete-block house in Solino, one of the city's poorest slums, his face carrying the strain of barely-contained grief. Beside him stood Benjy, the stocky 19-year-old Brewer saved from Port au Prince's streets years ago, and who built the house with Brewer's help to shelter other homeless kids. Around them stretched lines of shacks and squat cement dwellings, many reduced to rubble. A tough, weather-beaten Texan, Brewer spent the last 10 years in Haiti, founding an organization dedicated to getting children off the streets, where they faced beatings at the hands of street gangs and police, and into a network of safe houses around the capital. Now, at least one of his charges—14-year-old Chelo—is dead, crushed when the house he was staying in collapsed. Brewer lost all of his safe houses to the quake, and most of the children he'd sheltered are homeless again, hungry and in need of medical attention. "All of the kids were really traumatized by the quake," Brewer said. "We are setting up tarps and tents in parks for them to stay in until I can raise the funds for a home big enough for all of them." Brewer's commitment to Haiti's children began on a visit to the country in the 1990s, he says, while on leave from his job conducting health assessments for the United States government. Brewer had heard of the plight of Haiti's restaveks—children orphaned, abandoned or sold into slavery by desperate parents. One day while walking near the city docks, he came upon a child lying in a ditch who was barely breathing. Ignoring passers-by who urged him to let the boy die, Brewer revived him. Moved by the experience, Brewer quit his job, moved to Haiti and started the nonprofit Haitian Street Kids, Inc. He spent his days walking the streets of Port au Prince, conversing with street children—sheltering those he could, while giving others clothes, food, or simple comfort. "They have very dangerous lives and so they have to put on a mask to survive," Brewer said. "But the minute you take them in and let them know that somebody is going to care for them and provide them opportunities, they change just like that." Since the quake, Brewer had focused his efforts on advocating not just for children but for the entire neighborhood of Solino, which he said has yet to receive its fair share of humanitarian aid. 26 N AT I O N A L N U R S E Excerpts from ANurse's Journal inHaiti Massachusetts RN Kathy Reardon was stationed at a hospital in Milot, a small town 70 miles from the capital, where she wrote in her diary every day. FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2010 Puddle jumper to Cap Haitien. A little nerve-wracking when they have the instruction manual out! It took 45 minutes to arrive at the "hospital," over dirt roads with people in the streets, living in shacks on the side of the road. All Pam and I kept saying was "I can't believe we're doing this." I think we've been saying this since we got the call to come. We saw the soccer field where the choppers land, and where all the patients are housed. What a sight—people in every corner of these large rooms. It was a school house. The hospital has taken it over for patients. They all have various injuries—some with one limb missing, some with both legs missing, some paraplegics with huge open sacral wounds like you've never seen sleeping on mattresses on the floor. They try and do three rounds a day for about 60 to 65 patients. Some can be discharged but there's nowhere for them to go—and the family members stay and sleep there too. Unbelievable. An exhausting, shell-shocking, eye-opening day. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2010 Today was a very long day—we worked from 8:30 a.m. to 12 midnight. We heard choppers overhead all day. W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2010

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