Helping in Haiti

Donna at the Port-au-Prince airport under the Haitian flag -- just hours before the earthquake strikes.

Outpatients wait in line for X-rays and lab work at the mission hospital where Donna volunteered.

Donna, far right, and Alyson meet with doctors from Samaritan’s Purse upon their arrival. They are talking about the need for lab work and the sterilization of surgical instruments.

One of the many signs on the streets pleading for help.

An injured girl recovering in the mission hospital.

Patients and family members are squeezed into one of the women’s wards at the mission hospital. They have to supply their own blankets.

It was supposed to be an eight-day missionary trip to Haiti to teach local women how to make mats from plastic bags.

But the earthquake struck just two hours after Donna Thiessen’s plane touched down in Port-au-Prince. Donna had a new mission — to help the island country recover from the mass of death, injury and destruction caused by the Jan. 12 quake.

Donna, a Laboratory Technologist at the St. Catharines General Site of Niagara Health, had left the airport in the island country’s capital and was on her way to the Baptist Haiti Mission in Fermathe, about a 45-minute drive away in the mountains, when the quake struck. Although her plane from Canada had landed on time in Haiti, her small group was delayed at the airport for a couple of hours while awaiting the fourth member of the group to arrive.

“We were right in town when the earthquake hit,” says Donna, a 58-year-old resident of Vineland and member of St. Ann’s Community Church. “It felt like all four tires of the vehicle were shaking. Then everything just started lifting up. Buildings ahead would just go down in a big plume of dust. I was looking out the window and nothing was in focus because everything was moving.”

“People looked like they were dancing and jumping but what was really happening was they were being thrown up into the air,” says Donna. “Some people were screaming and moaning, and others were putting their hands in the air and praising God they were alive.”

Donna and her group, including her friend Alyson Stephenson of Smithville, arrived at the mission that night and began contributing to relief efforts first thing the next morning.

Food, water, medicine and supplies were all under ration at the mission. It was unknown how many people in the area had survived the quake and needed help with basic needs. Donna and Alyson straightened out the hospital supply warehouse and then went to work making up bags containing toothpaste, soap and a washcloth. They gave out plastic tarps for use as shelters as well as pillow cases filled with rice, cornmeal and bulgar wheat.

The 100-bed hospital at the mission quickly turned into a 300-bed hospital, as residents brought seriously-injured family members, friends and neighbours for help. Many required limb amputations and other emergency care. The hospital consisted of four big wards: separate men’s and women’s wards, a maternity ward and a ward for children.

“People were on the floors, in the hallways, outside,” says Donna, who as a Laboratory Technologist with Niagara Health System works in the Pathology Department of the St. Catharines General Site, processing, cutting and staining tissue samples.

She shared her expertise in the Haitian hospital lab and helped serve patients rice and beans.

There weren’t enough plates to feed all the patients, so they would serve them in intervals, washing the plates as they went.

Aid to the mission hospital flowed quickly and included the arrival of three doctors, truckloads of healthcare supplies, including splints and gauzes, and a water filtration system, all thanks to Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief agency based out of Calgary.

Funerals were held daily at the mission church.

In Haiti, Donna was able to communicate daily by e-mail with her husband Jake and her three grown children, but she was unable to leave the mission property for personal safety reasons.

Aftershocks went on for days and nights afterwards, leading people to sleep in the streets. “People were terrified of going into buildings. They were afraid buildings would go down.”

Safely back home in Niagara since Jan. 20, Donna attended the Hope for Haiti fundraiser held at St. Catharines Collegiate recently.

The sponsor of two children in the impoverished country, she had hoped to visit them in January but was unable to due to the earthquake. She doesn’t know if the children survived and is trying to find out.

Donna often thinks of the suffering and challenges the people of Haiti continue to face following the earthquake. She wishes she could have done more and hopes to return to Haiti for a fourth visit in the future.

“These people were poor before but at least they had a roof over their heads,” she says. “Now they don’t even have that.” «