Today the entire Operation Blessing team and a team of Israeli doctors from our partner organization IsraAid went to the village of Balan for a multi-faceted relief mission.

Balan is about 45 minutes outside of downtown Port-Au-Prince and, until today, had received no aid since the earthquake. The rural villagers find life a struggle at the best of times; the salt-parched soil surrounding the village makes farming almost impossible and their limited water source is filthy.

Now, after the quake, the few villagers who had jobs in the city are out of work and inflated food prices have made it extremely difficult for the families to buy food. The media has focused on the destruction in Port-Au-Prince, which is indeed a wreck, but very little has been said about the fate of the outlying villages.

Most of the homes in Balan are simple wooden structures covered in mud. The quake flattened a few of the homes, and the rest were shaken so violently that the mud tore off in patches leaving dust on the ground. Broken homes, lack of income, sickness and hunger—it is suffering that no human should endure.

We prepared 400 relief kits in our warehouse; each one consisted of rice, pasta, canned goods, MREs, oatmeal and personal hygiene items. When we arrived in the village, there were several hundred people already assembled. They let out a cheer upon the sight of our big green truck.

The first order of the day was to get the kits distributed. After the local pastor said a prayer of thanks, a representative of each family was called to receive a food package and a case of water.

With 386 families (totaling over 2,500 people), it was a hot, noisy and dusty affair. But it was also very touching as the villagers thanked the team as they receive their supplies. Mothers with infants were also given extra supplies of baby food.

Meanwhile, the Israeli doctors set up a clinic in the (unfinished) church building and were soon flooded with patients desperate for the rare chance to see a doctor. There were many children with severe malnutrition and diarrhea and quite a few with serious infections.

One child came in with a broken wrist; it had been broken for three days and, had we not arrived, he wouldn’t have seen a doctor! (We later took the boy to the national hospital in PAP, where he is going to receive treatment). The villagers often cannot even afford the transportation to get to a doctor, let alone the treatment, so many chronic diseases and ailments go untreated.

The doctors found children crippled because simple procedures were not carried out when they were needed. One crippled boy had a break in his leg that had been left to fuse that way. We are planning to send him to PAP tomorrow where an orthopedic surgeon will operate to give him mobility again.

The doctors are returning again tomorrow because they weren’t able to treat all the children in need of attention, let alone the long line of adults.

In the midst of the food distribution and medical work, the team searched out a spot for a WMI unit and set about tackling Balan’s horrific water problem. We had two men dig out a section of the stream so that it would be deep enough for us to draw a steady supply of water and, to the delight of the onlookers, our cage stacking technique commenced.

Having pre-assembled most of the unit in our warehouse, we were able to have it up and running quickly. For the first time in a very long time, there was a constant supply of crystal clear drinking water in Balan.

As soon as the villagers caught a glimpse of the clean water, there were buckets and bottles flying into the area from all angles. I took a step back to watch the villagers hustling to get water; a few horses were drinking from the murky stream and a group of kids were bathing.

This was our 6th unit installed since the quake, so at full capacity OB is providing 60,000 gallons of water to quake survivors on a daily basis and we have more units to install in the coming days.

We left Balan at dusk, having met three essential needs in one day: food, medicine and water. We will return on Monday to distribute shelter kits provided by the UN; the plastic sheeting will help to seal up the cracks left by the quake with the rainy season impending.

This type of holistic intervention at a single location is where OB excels in ensuring impact during our relief efforts around the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Caribbean, David Darg, Disaster Relief, Earthquake, Haiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.