After the earthquake in January, the American Refugee Committee, a non-profit based in Minnesota, started helping earthquake survivors receive medical attention and get settled into emergency resettlement camps. The camp we were working in is called Camp Hope, based near the very small village of Fond Parisien. The camp is home to about 1,700 residents.
Another organization called Love a Child, which runs orphanages for Haitian children, very generously donated the land to house the camp, and is now donating land and resources to help build permanent housing for the camp residents.
Immediately after the quake, Love a Child let the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative set up an emergency medical center on their property. Most of our patients were originally treated there by HHI doctors. HHI has a few remaining docs, who shared our living spaces, doing patient care and training a camp nurse to provide continued care after they leave.
Most of the people in the camp lost loved ones. Many of them are handicapped. All of them lost everything they had.
In September Carol and I returned to Camp Hope. Because the intent of physical therapy is to work oneself out of a job, we were discharging patients who had made sufficient progress to be on their own. One of the most rewarding things about making this site is looking through older photographs of our patients, photos from February or March, and seeing how far our patients have come. Haitians are very strong, very determined, and very resilient. It was an honor to help them heal.