Thursday, January 21, 2010

Hope for a little girl.

Good news. Shenika is a little girl who had been so badly injured that her doctor said to survive she would need treatment abroad. Someone saw that video on the news and arranged for transportation of Shenika to Santo Domingo. We don't know yet how she is doing but she has a fighting chance now. However her doctor gave names of four other children who need to be transported.

St. Damien hospital now has a separate unit functioning outside. There is no space inside. Doctors from Dominican Republic are attending to patients with critical injuries and open wounds outside.  I see a lady who calls me over, she smiles, recognizing me from a Haitian movie I was in. She calls me by my character's name 'Dao.' I ask her how she is. "I'm not doing well," she says, she lost 15 members of her family in one house. She was the only survivor, rescued three days after her home collapsed.

Port au Prince is totally destroyed. I drive past several Government buildings that have been completely leveled and are deserted. At the University I come across a man pleading with a rescue team to go into the building because he just received a text from someone inside. It's too dangerous to attempt a rescue, they say. They want to help but can't.


At Hotel Montana one of the best hotels in the country where a lot of the top UN workers died whilst attending a meeting on January 12th, when the earthquake hit, I see bodies still being recovered. The owner Nadine Cardozo-Reid was rescued from the building after 5 days.

The Upper part of Petion Ville isn't badly damaged. There is electricity. At Munchies restaurant  food is being handed out for free, up to 900 plates a day.

I deliver some rescue/food kits to the NPFS orphanage in Tabarre. Just before getting home someone calls my cell phone, an old friend. She and 200 people are sleeping outside in Petion Ville Delmas 105, and it has started raining.....

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