A letter from Cindy Corell serving in Haiti
July 2014 - A Needless Death Is Immoral
Has it really been a year? In many ways I feel like I’m still learning my way around. In other ways, though, I feel like I’ve been in Haiti all my life.
But one thing is clear. Most of what I’ve learned has come from being wrong. Yep. Wrong. Incorrect. Try again. Pa korek. From my Creole to my stumbling around cultural mores to thinking I know how to get from one place to another. Nope. Wrong again.
The surprising part? I’m OK with this. Don’t misunderstand—it’s a process. It’s frustrating. But trying and failing and trying again has been good for me. I am learning so much. It’s about letting my ego relax so I can add more vocabulary, more skills, more knowledge. My life is filled with wonderful teachers, from patient colleagues to supportive supervisors to my cheerful and loving friends and “family” here. The beat goes on.
When I am speaking in Creole, my friends correct my words. If I use the proper words, they correct my pronunciation. When I tell my driver I’ve been to a certain place before, he shakes his head and says, no, that was another place.
On the positive side, when I am right, I hear “Bravo!” Once Paul Sinette, the woman who cooks most of my meals, told me she wouldn’t come to work the next day. She said, in Creole, that her mother’s brother had died. “Oh,” I responded in Creole, so quickly that I didn’t realize I’d comprehended the language, “your uncle died?” “Bravo!” she called out! “Bravo, Cindy!” It took a few minutes to realize she was not happy that her relative had passed, but that Cindy finally understood her!
Moments like that have crystallized my time here.
Relationships. Getting beyond the cardboard cutouts of our preconceived notions, our natural stereotypes on which we rely until we are immersed in a culture. Sharing laughter and pain with others. Listening. Understanding in new ways that people can only relate to those with whom we share stories and trust.
It takes a long time. It takes a lot of simply being wrong and graciously remaining patient enough to be corrected. And through this process, I’m better able to recognize what is right about the situations I find—and what is wrong. In any new situation, I do my best to reserve judgment, to be careful with showing my reactions, to study the surroundings and sounds and words and expressions. I can do more harm than good when I give in to my natural instinct, which is to determine a problem and rush to “fix” it.
That was the situation I found a few weeks ago when I was visiting some friends from Virginia who were here on a medical mission.
I live in Port-au-Prince, because that is where my work is based. My primary job here is as companionship facilitator with a network of Haitian agricultural organizations. My work is through the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s initiative Joining Hands. But when I first arrived in Haiti in May 2013, I traveled to Cherident, a small village in the southern mountains. I lived with the Celestin family in Cherident, learning Creole and Haitian culture. And Cherident has in many ways become my hometown.
In early June of this year I returned in order to visit members of my home church, Tinkling Spring Presbyterian, which sends a medical team to Cherident just about every year. After lunch at the guesthouse that day I returned to the clinic, and like always, there was a crowd on the porch. That’s where a staff member of the clinic registers patients, then they wait to be seen. A visiting pediatrician examined the children and an ophthalmologist from Virginia performed vision tests and handed out the appropriate reading glasses. The clinic physician, Dr. Nesly Catolin, saw adult patients. But something was amiss in early afternoon. The crowd was quieter, even quieter than usual. A woman was lying on a stretcher on the floor at the far end of the porch. Members of her family had carried her to the clinic from their home three or four miles away. Several doctors at the clinic had already looked at her. All the doctors agreed she needed to be in a hospital, but no one made any arrangements. So she lay there on a stretcher on the floor.
I sat at the far end of the porch; the rest of the chairs on both sides were taken up by patients. One by one, the volunteers all went back to work. Who was with her? What was her name? What was the plan? Was there a plan? Everyone I asked said the same thing. She needs to go to the hospital. And because they had other patients, everyone went back to work. I didn’t know what plans, if any, had been made to take her. Something was very, very wrong.
Her name is Yvette, her family told me. The baby had died. She had no husband. Yvette was in her 20s, but she looked older. She wore a simple dress and a white, finely crocheted scarf around her head. Her eyes were open, but it was difficult to tell what she could see. When I knelt close and spoke her name, she looked at me. That’s when I felt it—this mélange of emotion that’s hard to describe. I was angry, confused, terribly sad, and on the edge of feeling helpless.
But I wasn’t helpless. There was a vehicle at our disposal. We could take her. I started asking questions and making plans. A few minutes later my friend and our driver, Lucson Celestin, had backed the Nissan Patrol into the driveway of the clinic. They lifted Yvette into the vehicle. Her mother sat on one side of the seat, and eventually Yvette rested with her head in her mother’s lap. In the cool of the air-conditioned vehicle, her face relaxed. Her eyes closed. I knew then that she was resting. We drove the hour’s drive to Leogane in 45 minutes. We left her and her family at St. Croix Hospital.
Yvette died eight days later. I wasn’t surprised she died. She was dying when I met her, and she was dying when I left her. But I questioned later my role in all of this. Right? Wrong? After much prayer and conversation with others, I’ve concluded what was wrong was that this young woman died. I don’t know all the details, but I know that a young woman was too late for medical care to save her life. Any number of things could have caused this—transportation issues, a lack of money, the simple lack of knowledge of when to seek help.
I do not mind being wrong. But to watch a needless death is more than wrong. It is immoral. It’s the kind of wrong that must be righted, and if I can’t make it right, I can shed light on the circumstances. Yvette’s death already has sparked a conversation with the church that sponsors the Jean Wilfred Albert Medical Clinic in Cherident. It is our fervent prayer that her death will not be in vain. One of our three critical global issues for World Mission is addressing the root causes of poverty, specifically as they affect women and children. Delving into the conversation of why Yvette lost her life after giving birth, we could identify many reasons. And each of those reasons demand action.
It is my heartfelt prayer that this story of Yvette’s life and death is an impetus for change within her community, and within Haiti.
And from this, the work goes on. It is good work. It is hard work. And without your constant support, financially, physically and most of all, through prayer, we could not do it.
For all of that, I say mèsi anpil (many thanks).
Cindy
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 48
Read more about Cindy Corell's ministry
Blog: A Journey Across Haiti http://thelongwayhomeblog.org/
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