Haiti March 2010 Day 4: Dubuisson camp

Half the team left this morning for Cap Haitian to check on our MoM children and the projects there. There are about 30,000 refugees who have migrated up there from PaP and the need is increasing there for medical help and counseling. Our team will primarily do counseling and interactions with our children and families there. The other half of the team stayed here in PaP to finish out our 6 days of medical clinics, pastoral counseling, and clothing distribution. We went back to Dubuisson camp and saw 130 patients. We limited the number due to the fact that we are running low on medications and we wanted to do some prayer walking.

All of the 351 people living in this camp have been displaced from their homes that collapsed during the earthquake. Many are without family members, and are living in the make shift dwellings you see. It is stifling inside. They sleep on cinder blocks covered by sheets. They actually try to cook inside those dwellings, and I can only imagine what would happen if one of them caught fire. The cook what little they have, and today all were cooking the rice and beans we gave them yesterday.

We were able to bring with us baby formula, powder and clothes and blankets. We packaged them up and gave them out to the mothers with the infants they were carrying ,some of them only 17 days old.

In the afternoon after we were done seeing patients, we gathered and broke into pairs and walked the camp with a translator and prayed with each of the people who were living there. Many tears were shed, many hearts were opened. And it was not only them, but us as well.

I wonder if I could endure living like this. I can’t imagine I could. I can understand how they have became almost catatonic in their emotions. Tearless. Empty. At the end of the day however, there was the slightest hint of a smile, a look of hope, and a genuine expression of thanks. They believed they had been forgotten. We came, and proved it not to be so. I only hope that more will continue to come. They deserve nothing less.

In all things give thanks,

David