The last two days were a different pace and tempo, likely because I am gearing up to go home. We spend most of the morning seeing the last team off and cleaning the bedrooms to prepare for the new team. I am disconnected from this team; they are all old friends and I make small talk and try to be helpful but there is not much to do. They are still running around trying to figure out what to do, where to start, and finding their rhythm for the week. It’s amazing to watch them and remember that only a few days ago I was glued to the wall watching the chaos and trying to figure out if I would ever be useful or helpful. I know what they feel. It’s exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Things are different down here.

With all my free time I am able to spend some time with our interpreters for the week, who I am sorry to say have not had as much of a spotlight in my posts thus far. They were absolutely critical to our successes here and I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. They are twenty-somethings just like me.  who were fortunate enough to learn English from a missionary or from time spent with family or friends in the US. They, to the best of their ability and beyond my expectations, translate our questions about pain and instructions on medications. They teach us words in creole that we forget daily and they laugh and remind us countless times. We have become friends.

As I speak with them I learn some of their stories. Spellcheck won’t allow me to type most of their names, but they are all amazing. They flirt with each other, share stories of their children, ask us things about life in America, and they tell their stories. A girl tells me she is saving for medical school so she can help her people. “They do not understand how to be clean and stop infection,” she says soberly, “they will listen to me because I am one of them.” Another boy is the interpreter for the operating rooms and I make him change into scrubs so he doesn’t wear street-clothes in the OR. I pat him on the back and tell him he looks like a doctor. He laughs, but on our way out the door I catch him looking at his reflection in can the mirror. He pauses and for a second I think he imagines what he could be. I tease him that day and poke my head into the OR and ask if he has everything under control. He asks the surgeon if everything is OK and the surgeon salutes him. He grins and gives me the thumbs up. He feels important.

A twenty-two year-old Haitian man about my height is my favorite. He is always smiling and he tries to make everyone laugh. He is also the only one who will translate the stupid things I say when I tease the Haitian nurses, as most of the translators have stuck to translating the medical stuff we say. He and his girlfriend had a son together, an infant, that he lost in the earthquake. He sleeps on the ground in his village underneath a tree. I give him all the t-shirts i brought with me and a pair of North Carolina basketball shorts, he stares at the ground and stammers and tries to ask me for something and I ask him if I can help him more. All he wants is a tent, something to keep the rain out. I give him some cash and ask if it is enough and he says he can buy two tents with this. I hug him and I say I will see him again.

My heart breaks for him and for all the people of Haiti, as their current fight for survival consists of finding shelter, and tents are the only thing they can afford and the only thing that is practical. There are thousands of tents in the city, crammed together in claustrophobic clusters of filth, noise, smoke, and despair. The UN and military presence here helps provide some security and prevent complete anarchy, but no army can stop the stealing and raping and kidnapping that happens in those tent cities. No army can stop the rain, as the season for tropical storms looms in the not-so-distant future and those tent cities will literally be washed away in ankle deep water. Hundreds and probably thousands more will die from disease as the rain turns the filth into a cesspool. They will die slowly, they will suffer, and national attention will be diverted to somewhere else and nobody will watch CNN and cry. Some of the artists in the city have been carving wooden bells that I learn signify the cry of the poor. It makes no sound and is barely noticed unless one sees it with their own eyes. It is a fitting symbol.

I dont think I have painted a grim enough picture of Haiti, and honestly most of my pictures I upload to my computer and delete, because they will never come close to describing what it really looks like. I  have seen hundreds of amputees, many of them children. I saw a toddler with both of his arms amputated just below the elbow try to hold a lollipop between his stumps and cry out of frustration, and drop it, try to pick it up, and sit down and cry more. A pediatrician I met in the tent hospital downtown told me she has to take Ambien to sleep at night and she has only been here 3 days. She told me one morning she woke up to find something to drink and tripped over a bundle of sheets outside of the neonatal tent. She unwrapped the sheets to find a dead newborn. She said he must’ve died days ago, maybe someone left it there for them to treat but never told anyone.

A pediatric nurse from Boston shows me a pile of rubble where yesterday they uncovered three hundred bodies. He is cynical and sarcastic but good natured. “I guess that’s where that smell was coming from… but I haven’t showered yet so who knows.” The pile of rubble was a nursing school. Every where you turn in the city there are spray-painted walls and pieces of cardboard that say ‘Help,’ a child is asking for your shoes, a person limps by with grossly disfigured limbs, and you smell the filth and burning trash.

But I’ve seen good and inspiring people, Haitian and American. I have seen children laughing and playing and enjoying life with casts on both legs. These people have joy and hope and a strength that has carried them through unthinkable conditions for generations and while this may be the worst yet, they are spirited.

I am excited to go home, I miss it. But I will miss this place and hope to see my friends again. In some way, this has changed me, and while I do not fully know how and to what extent, I will soon. And I hope to come back or go somewhere else to be changed again.