I’ll Be Your Person

The past few days in Haiti have been like the calm around two thirty as we sit down for lunch, followed by the swell of rain that always arrives at just about three — wonderful, challenging, sobering, and heart-filling.

While in Hinche, I have met many people who reminded me of people at home.

Like the intern with the brown curly hair and sparkling personality of my sister,  the midwife I worked with on Monday with the same sensitivity, intelligence, and wide smile of my mother, and the bright eyes of the girl at the orphanage who flashed the face of one of my six year old campers last summer in my mind.

I love the variety of our human family, but it’s comforting to draw on our similarities. It’s a gentle reminder that home can be anywhere, and love transcends languages. 

And there have been some experiences that have taken me back to being gone on cross cultural.

Like listening to another language fill my ears all day and hardly take in a word, drinking endless amounts of Coke, and ending the day with messy hair, dusty feet, and full stories.

Then, there is so much that turns back into nothing I have seen before.

As we ride on the back of moto’s to get to mobile clinic, I see endless houses that I wonder how they are strong enough to stand.

Poverty in Haiti is not in pockets. It’s everywhere. 

On Tuesday, I spent the morning at Azil – a feeding center/chronic care facility run by the Sisters of Mercy.

I spoon fed three year olds who looked about the size of an 18 month old. Their lethargic eyes barely held open as they solemnly opened their mouths for me to give them small bites.

While feeding, one little boy sat in front of me crying out his tired little lungs. I placed him on my lap, in an attempt to soothe him. He very quickly calmed down and rested one little arm around the back of my neck. It seemed all he wanted was my physical touch.

The sisters serve so many children at Azil making it essentially impossible for each child to receive the amount of physical touch they need.

When it was time to head out for the day, I placed my friend back down and he began to wail and my heart ached. How badly I wanted to go back and hold him – to offer him some more of me, more of my time.

Another piece of the day required starting IVs in the littles for rehydration. This is a fairly traumatic experience for them to be stuck with a needle in their tiny hands. As the nun would place the IV, one of us would be what my profession deemed the child’s “person.” We held their bodies still as they squirmed, gently rubbed their head, and whispered small words of reassurance that they had no chance of understanding.

As the nun placed an IV in one little girls hand, I stood at her eye level to draw her attention away from the needle. We locked eyes and just as the fattest tears rolled from her eyes, mine did the same. 

It was an overwhelming moment of need. There is just so much of it. Everywhere.

In front of me was this sweet two year old, malnourished and in tears, with no understanding of what was happening and no family to be there for her.

But this moment offered a new insight into my nursing role.
Be their person. 

When no one else is around, I’ll be your person.
I’ll hold your hand.
I’ll comfort you in your pain.
I’ll change the dressing for the burn as long as your arm.
I’m there and I’m yours.

When I stood to leave for the day, after the feeding was over, I suddenly noticed my very urine soaked scrub bottoms from my little’s wet diaper and I thought I would probably never be so happy to smell of baby pee.

For a few moments, I was his person.
And there was no where else I’d rather be.

 

— Lydia