Yesterday I left Port-au-Prince to investigate other potential hospitals and sites for Team Broken Earth. It involved 6 hours in a car driving through winding bumpy roads. The horn, I have come to realize, is more important than the brakes or transmission in a car in Haiti. Everyone communicates with the horn. It’s an amazing […]
To spend a day at Port-au-Prince’s Bernard Mevs hospital is to see people suffering the worst of the worst – things like enormous tumors, horrible strokes, malnourishment to the extreme. But a day in the northern village of Bord de Mer Limbe is to see where the worst takes root. It’s a place without running […]
I’ve left Port-au-Prince and arrived in a small village in the Bas Limbé region of northern Haiti. I’m with a Newfoundland-based TBE team that will provide basic medical care in remote villages over the next week. It’s about an eight-hour bus ride, or a 30-minute flight plus 90-minute bumpy beautiful drive to get here from […]
“Help me! My baby fell off a tap-tap and his leg is broken!” The story – a common one in Haiti – is, this time, not real. The “baby” is a plastic mannequin of a toddler wearing navy blue sweatpants three sizes too big and missing an arm; his “mother,” a tall blond Canadian pediatric […]
This is a place where the unfathomable is often the everyday. This morning, we woke to news that a five-day-old baby died in the pediatric ICU during the night. He was a tiny thing who was supposed to be one of the first surgical patients of the day. One of our docs put his head […]
First, do not harm. A saying I’ve heard countless times. Today, I saw firsthand how difficult that can be. I arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday, travelling with two Calgary-based plastic surgeons, Christiaan Schrag and Duncan Nickerson. They’ve taken the week off from their busy practices to join Team Broken Earth. They’ve left young families to come […]
I don’t spend a lot of time reflecting. That mindset is usually the first casualty of a busy schedule. But every now and then, as time rushes by, the universe reaches out and stops you in your tracks, gives you the gift of a single moment of realization. Despite the pleasure of receiving awards for […]
It’s been a long week in Port-au-Prince. I am super excited to get home and see Allison, my kids and take a long, long shower. We have only a few hours left here and it truly has been another amazing experience. The team just gelled as they always do in these crazy circumstances, and all […]