PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Even as darkness fell, sticky heat smothered Port-au-Prince like an electric blanket turned all the way up. As I stepped from the cool sanctuary of the Land Cruiser, my glasses fogged up; so I took them off and slipped them into my shirt pocket.

Nancy and I walked into the camp past young men who were wearing Haitian Boy Scout uniforms and were serving as security guards. Dr. Joseline Marhone came out from under a tarp that was stretched like a flat roof over tables piled high with boxes of bandages and medicines.

I greeted my old friend, and kissed her on both shiny cheeks. The last time I had seen Joseline was in November under much happier circumstances. We were in the shady parking lot of the Montana Hotel, transferring 225,000 doses of anti-parasite medicine into her vehicle. She used those pills to kick off a nationwide anti-parasite program. That was a happy day under the trees at the Montana.

Now the trees are gone, the Montana is gone, and much of Haiti is only a memory, but my friend remains, still smiling and still strong. Kissing her cheeks, I tasted the salt in her perspiration and felt that I was in the presence of a hero.

Joseline invited us to sit with her in the cubbyhole behind the piles of supplies. I asked her to tell me about the quake and what had happened since. For the next hour, she told the stories—about how, in an instant of thunderous horror, her house crashed down around her; how she urged her terrified grandson to squirm through a narrow tunnel out of the rubble, and then waited for her own rescue more concerned with where her grandson was than with her own fate.

She pointed to the skirt she was wearing and said it was all that she was able to salvage from her earthly belongings. Then she told us about the camps, and how they are getting worse instead of better, and how she regularly serves 200 patients a day at her makeshift clinic.

The saddest story was about what women and young girls are experiencing in the camps. Far worse than hunger, thirst and disease is the sexual abuse. Hundreds of women and young girls have been attacked since the quake.

Joseline then showed us around the camp and asked me to take a water sample and test it for contaminants. She said that the last two times she drank camp water she got diarrhea. I filled a bottle and promised to return.

I asked Nancy to take a photo of Joseline and me. I wanted one to go with the happy photo from what seems like so long ago.

As long as I am breathing I will work with every fiber of my being to help Joseline and Nancy help the Haitian people.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Dadadou is a tent city in Port-au-Prince where about 7,000 quake victims are living in tents set up on a sun-scalded AstroTurf soccer field.

David and I first went there over 2 weeks ago at the request of doctors from Partners in Health, whose mobile medical team had just started visiting the camp. OBI regularly works with Partners in Health to solve water problems, and, other than a scattered supply of bottled water, the people in Camp Dadadou were without water. The Partners in Health doctors met with us and requested that we provide water for Dadadou. 

David and I drove to the camp that afternoon, met with Dr. Jounie, the camp coordinator, and investigated. We found an empty underground cistern and a new 3,000 gallon metal water storage tank, also dry. David asked Pradel, OBI’s Haitian administrator, to call the water company and order truckloads of water; within an hour a truck was dumping 8,000 gallons into the cistern.

There are several trucking companies in Port-au-Prince, all of which buy water from companies that operate deep wells. The water is clear and appears clean, but the aquifer that the wells draw from is contaminated with fecal bacteria—the result of a dilapidated sewer system that leaks.

Haitian adults drink the water and only occasionally get sick because their immune systems have grown resistant to the germs, but children have not yet developed resistance and suffer from chronic water-borne disease. Worse yet, babies, whose immune systems are most vulnerable, often die.

About two hours after our arrival at Dadadou, our white box truck rolled in with a WMI water purification unit onboard. We spent about a half hour discussing where it would be best to set it up. The underground cistern was located over 100’ from the metal water tank. We had to engineer a way to pump the water from the cistern to the WMI unit and then into the storage tank. The problem was that cars drove back and forth between the cistern and the tank and would squash our waterline.

David found a way by tying the pipe along the top of the fence, and then elevating it high over the gate where the cars passed. It worked, and about an hour later, our water team, working with servicemen from WMI, had pure water flowing into the tank. By the time darkness fell, there was a happy crowd lined up to fill their water jugs and bottles.

The next morning, Kumar visited Dadadou to check on the water system and investigate other needs. Dr. Jounie explained to him that there were hundreds of children in the camp as well as 110 expectant mothers and 19 infants born since the quake. She told Kumar of the desperate need for formula and baby food, as well as nutritious food for pregnant mothers. Kumar went back to the OBI warehouse and loaded a truck with baby food, formula, MREs and hygiene kits.

Kumar fell in love with the people of Dadadou and has been going back every day since. Dr. Jounie told him how badly the children needed a place to meet and to resume some semblance of school. We had a 40’ by 60’ tent in our warehouse that had just arrived. It’s the one we had used in post-Katrina Slidell as our food and eating area. Kumar spent about a week clearing an area to set it up near the water tank and organizing a group of teachers.

The people of Dadadou are still hurting, but they are much better off than they were two weeks ago. Now, by the grace of God, the dedication of the hard-working OBI staff on the ground, and the benevolence of OB donors, they have safe water, nutritious food and even a makeshift school for their children. This is a prime example of what OBI is doing in Haiti.

Gridlocked traffic, exhaust fumes, blaring horns: a typical morning in Port-au-Prince.

Our relief efforts were back in full swing today, and a constant stream of partnering groups arrived at the warehouse to pick up supplies to be distributed to displaced families. In the Cite Solei slum our water team identified several new sites for water purification units.

The slum has thousands of displaced families and many have received little or no assistance with clean water. In some of the spots there is no water source. So in one area our team installed a huge 1,000 gallon tank from which to draw water. We will have a water truck making daily rounds ensuring that the tanks are full.

Back at the warehouse, I trained the first group of mothers (and father) in how to use the Lifesaver bottle. Our partner, Lifesaver Relief, has donated hundreds of bottles to be distributed to displaced Haitians. OBI has chosen to distribute the bottles to parents with very young children, especially nursing mothers.

We are doing the training in small groups to make sure that each parent has the opportunity to interact with us and ask questions. The Lifesaver bottle uses air pressure to force water through the filter; it comes out very clean and very fast under pressure. There was a lot of laughter as we all got squirted by water—clean, safe drinking water.

The team is getting ready to install our huge tent in Camp Dadadou to serve as a school. Today we were busy preparing all the parts and making sure there was a big space cleared in the camp. In the afternoon, our good friend Val came over to discuss details for expanding our fish farming project in an effort to establish over 100 new jobs and provide protein-rich fish to thousands of Haitians.

The village of Balan is as close to hell as you can get in this hemisphere.

There are children I saw today that will very likely be dead before my next visit.

It is a place that makes even Haitians cry when they visit. There are few jobs and crops won’t grow because the soil is bleached with salt.

Their water source lies miles away and the villagers trek for hours every day to collect water in dirty containers only to get sick when they drink it.

The water does flow to the village but as you can see in the photo below - by the time it gets there, it is so grey and polluted you can’t even see the bright yellow jerrycan through the filth.

To be continued…

*Operation Blessing is partnering with Lifesaver to help distribute the world’s first ultra-filtration jerrycans to communities with no access to clean water. Each 5-gallon capacity jerrycan has a built-in filtration system that can purify up to 5,300 gallons of water. Beginning with pilot projects in Haiti and Peru, OBI and Lifesaver will provide more than 100 of these unique jerrycans to communities in each country.

HAITI – Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital is a 700 bed facility that treats around 3,300 patients a week. It’s a very busy place with an emergency room open 24/7 and where patients line up at the gate at 6 a.m. to wait for an 8 a.m. opening.

Every day about 400 patients show up and at least 30 babies are born there. It is, by far, the largest hospital in Haiti. Emergency and maternity patients are treated free, all others pay 60 cents for their initial visit and 25 cents for each follow up visit. As inexpensive as that seems, many Haitians still cannot afford it, but even the destitute are welcomed.

Today, at the request of the United Nations Office for the Special Envoy of Haiti, Nancy Dorsinville, Eric and I visited the hospital. The purpose of our visit was to assess the broken water system and begin developing a strategy to fix and improve it. During our arrival meeting with the hospital administrator, she asked that we also look at the sewage system, which she described as being “frequently plugged up and smelling very bad in the operating rooms.”

It turned out that the sewage system problem was a much more serious health threat than the broken water system, and has become the focus of our immediate attention.

The hospital complex, built on the landward side of the busy ocean frontage street, is composed of at least a dozen concrete buildings sprawling over a large, walled campus. The grounds are neat with bougainvilleas blooming in massive clusters among palm trees that line sun-baked campus streets.

The sewage and waste water from each of the two or three story buildings is pumped through underground pipes to a central “lagoon,” where it is (supposed to be) treated with chlorine, filtered, and then discharged into a pipe that carries it under the frontage road to the sea. The maintenance chief told us that when the treatment plant was functioning, that the discharge was “clean enough to wash your hands in it.”

But…the system, and all of its filters and pumps, has been broken since 2004. As a result, raw sewage is gravity discharged into the pipe to the sea. Even worse, there is often blockage from un-macerated solid waste, causing all of the toilets and drains in the entire hospital complex to back up and bubble over.

Can you even imagine the stench of waste from over 1,000 patients, as well as hundreds of staff, in a stifling hot place, without flush toilets and drains that work?

Operation Blessing will be tackling these issues with the the Port-au-Prince General Hospital as well as providing water assessment for all 10 General Hospitals throughout the country.

To be continued…

BELLADERE, Haiti – No one knew her name. No one knew her age. But everyone knew why she was there.

As a volunteer at Belladere Hospital began to peel back the layers of a thin blanket cocooning this unknown woman, onlookers began to gasp and place their hands over their nose and mouth as her emaciated body was revealed and her soiled stench spread across the hospital plaza.

Just two days ago, officials from the mayor’s office brought her to the hospital after finding her lying in the street, abandoned and left to die.

She was cleaned and placed in an empty, unfinished ward – soon to be the hospital’s expanded surgery ward.

There were signs of mental illness – but as we crouched down beside her bed, she began to slowly respond to our questions.

“Are you hungry? How can we help? Would you like something to eat?” we asked.

“Oui,” she croaked back after several minutes of coaxing.

Her eyes remained fixed on us – and as we smiled, the corners of her lips curled up into a faint smile. And then came the cries.

There were no tears. Instead, like a songbird preparing to die, she sang out two notes with hauntingly perfect pitch that echoed throughout the empty room for several seconds. Then, her eyelids fluttered and closed.

This woman’s story is a tragic, yet very real example of the poverty crisis in Haiti. For the poor, there is no clean water, medical care is hard to come by, and malnutrition is rampant.

At Belladere Hospital, no one is turned away, but with only 40 beds and a small staff, the burden of caring for the needy grows daily.

“We would like to help everyone, but we just don’t have the capacity,” said Dr. Ralph Ternier, the hospital’s medical director. “We won’t throw anyone out, but there’s a cost and I don’t know how far we’ll be able to go.”

One of those costs is water. For the last two years, the hospital has been without running water. Patients have had to bring in jugs of city water or draw from the hospital’s cistern – neither of which offers clean drinking water.

In fact, the hospital spends several hundred dollars a month purchasing water to fill the cistern and supplying drinking water for the staff.

But in just 2 days, the hospital got a much-needed transformation.

Together with Partners in Health, Operation Blessing installed new underground piping, connected the hospital to the city water line and installed a chlorinator to purify the city water before being stored in a large 30-foot high water tank.

“This is good. This is health. This is life,” said Guy Figaro, the hospital’s dentist, as he washed his hands in the sink for the first time.

We left the hospital that day with bittersweet emotions: Sadness for the unknown woman left clinging to life, yet joy for the clean water now offering health and life to patients and the community of Belladere.

BELLADERE, Haiti – In the pediatric ward of Belladere Hospital, IV stands line the room like lampposts, each one standing guard next to white-barred cribs where infants lay listlessly and parents stand quietly beside.

There is very little talking – except for the occasional coo from a mother wanting to comfort her child.

“Typhoid, diarrhea, another case of typhoid,” says Dr. Ralph Ternier, the hospital’s medical director, as we walk around the room. “All are here because of a water-related illness,” he told us.

Of the average 250 patients seen per day at Belladere, Dr. Ralph estimates that nearly two-thirds are being treated for a water-related illness, some in addition to other diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV.

The problem of potable water in Haiti is not new, yet it continues to ravage the impoverished, the old and the young. Even the hospital has fallen victim to its impact.

For the past two years, the hospital has been without running water. While there is a cistern that collects rainwater on the property, most patients simply bring jugs of their own water from the city or local rivers. But the problem remains – the water is still very much unclean and unsuitable for drinking.

But all of that is about to change.

Thanks to a partnership between Partners in Health and Operation Blessing, clean water is on its way in.

Teams arranged for the hospital’s underground piping to be replaced and connected to the city’s water line. From there, the water will pass through a chlorinator to be purified and then stored in a large 30-foot high water tank.

It’s a small step that will make a big impact for the hospital and its patients.

“When the patients bring in their own water, we can’t ensure that the water is good,” Dr. Ralph said. “Sometimes we’ve had to delay surgeries for several hours because no clean water was available to sterilize the tools. “

Today, as the new piping was being laid, a young mother approached us with an extremely malnourished child in her arms. Her daughter was one year old, but her weight was probably closer to that of a 1-month-old.

We offered her a water bottle, which the infant latched onto and did not stop drinking from until she was nearly half-way through.

It was incredibly overwhelming to see a child so dehydrated and so devoid of nutrition, yet it also gave us a clear picture that a little bit of clean water can – and will – go a long way in helping to create a healthier future for Haiti’s families.