June 1998, Petite Riviere des Nippes, Haiti

By Marla H. Thurman

“Sa ou gengen?” I asked the young Haitian woman with the baby in her arms. What’s bothering you today?

I directed the woman to the chair across from Doctor Nellie, for whom I was translating. This felt like the 200th person to pass through the medical mission today in our makeshift clinic in Petites Rivieres des Nippes, Haiti. I was tired. I was sweating bullets in 115 degree heat. To make matters worse, I had broken my arm several days earlier, and, while the pain was bearable, the ache increased with every new patient.

With two doctors and a dentist, we had easily treated 1,000 people in the past week and fatigue was getting the best of me. Hundreds more hopeful faces waited patiently outside in the hot sun, and we still had four days of clinic left. I shook off my fatigue and turned my attention back to the young mother.

As the woman talked, I noticed a certain spark in her eye in spite of her obvious concern for her daughter. The spark invigorated me, somehow. “It’s the baby who’s sick, not the mother,” I explained to Nellie as the Haitian woman spoke. “Seems she hasn’t been eating, sleeps a lot and is pretty lethargic.” I glanced at the baby’s pudgy arms, belly, and legs. “Why does this baby look so well-fed if she hasn’t been eating?”

“She has heart failure,” Nellie said. “She’s drowning in fluid. That’s why she looks plump.” Nellie got out her stethoscope. “My bet is she hasn’t eaten anything but breast milk, ever. And not very much of that.”

As Nellie took the child into her arms to examine her, I talked to the woman and learned that she had walked for two whole days from a neighboring village when she heard American doctors were in Petite Riviere.

Doctors are scarce in Haiti. Good doctors are even harder to find. That was why we had treated so many people in a week’s time. This young woman wasn’t the only one who had walked a long way to seek medical care, but I didn’t think many of them had made a two-day trek.

“There’s nothing I can do for this baby,” Nellie pronounced finally, handing the baby back to her mother. “She needs a hospital.” Nellie sighed. “It may be too late even for that.”

I tried to keep my face from showing my disappointment. I wasn’t going to lie to the mother, but I couldn’t accept that there was no hope for this baby.

“Nellie,” I asked, “can we get them on the bus?”

The bus was our transportation back to Port-Au-Prince and relative civilization. Each time we had a medical mission to Haiti we rode back to the airport in a school bus, primarily so we could transport some of the sickest patients to the hospital nearest their village. The bus held 40 people. There were 12 missionaries. That left room for only 28 patients.

Nellie looked from the child to me and back again. “We can try, Marla,” she said. “But I’m not sure the baby will survive that long, and the bus may be full already. Check with Jack.”

Jack was the heart and soul of our mission, the man who had visited Haiti and fallen in love with her people and had, in turn, drawn us all into his love affair with this third world country. It was because of Jack that so many of us from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, were here treating the poorest of the poor. Most importantly, though, Jack was the guy who filled the bus.

I spoke briefly with the mother of the dying baby, asking her to wait for me, and I went off in search of the man with the roster.

Jack was easy to spot because hordes of Haitian children followed him everywhere. While our doctors treated diseases they’d only read about in books and our nurses tended to wounds, Jack passed out toys. Hula hoops and soccer balls were big hits with the Haitian children, and on mission trips Jack often spent at least a day or two inflating soccer balls for the local kids with a hand pump.

I spotted a white head in a sea of ebony-skinned children. “Jack,” I yelled, running toward him. The sea parted for me. “Jack, I need you.”

I talked to Jack about the baby. I was honest with him regarding Nellie’s bleak prognosis, but I begged mercy for the little girl. “She’s only four months old. Give her a chance to grow up to get one of your hula hoops in a few years.”

“All right, all right,” Jack waved me away. “They’re on the bus. Tell her mother to be here by 7 a.m. Saturday and to be ready for a bumpy ride.”

I hurried back to the clinic. A bumpy ride will be paradise after a two-day hike, I thought. Finding the mother sitting against a wall hugging her child to her breast, I explained to the woman about the baby’s illness, the bus, and the hospital. When the young mother hesitated, I said, “I know it’s frightening to go to a village you don’t know with hardly any warning, but you came here today for help for your baby. Come with us on Saturday and let’s do our best to help your baby girl get well.”

The young mother agreed. I explained to her how it was vital that she be on time for our departure on Saturday. Any delay in leaving Petite Riviere meant we would miss our flight home, so no delays were allowed. If she wasn’t there by 7 sharp we would not only risk being late into Port-Au-Prince, we would have a wasted, empty seat on the bus.

Tears in her eyes, the young mother thanked me. I leaned over and hugged her gently. “Until then,” I said in Creole, kissing the baby girl’s pudgy hand, “I will pray every hour.”

I kept my promise. All day and all night for the next four days I prayed for that woman and her child. Though the mission team saw literally hundreds of patients in the clinic in two week’s time, I felt a special thrill of hope for the ones who made it onto the bus. I wanted this baby to survive and keep the spark in that young mother’s eyes.

For the next few days I continued to work with Nellie and the others in the clinic. We saw patients with malaria and kidney stones, hernias and elephantiasis. Mostly we saw overworked men, women and children who had probably never had enough to eat in their entire lives.

When Saturday arrived I was relieved. I loved the people of Haiti. I loved the beautiful view of the ocean and the smell of the salt air from my rooftop bed in Petite Riviere. But a hot shower and a cold Diet Coke beckoned to me from across the ocean.

I packed up as best I could with my broken arm, aided by my fellow missionaries. Once I was dressed and ready, Miguel, a young Haitian boy, magically appeared to carry my bags to the bus.

As I stepped outside into the morning air, humid even as the sun was still hidden, Jack approached me.

“Your lady came and left a message for you,” he said.

“My lady?”

“You know, the lady with the baby,” Jack said. “The ones I put on the bus for you.”

I was alarmed. “She left a message? What do you mean she left a message? Where is she?”

“She’s gone,” Jack said quietly. “She walked home to tell her parents that she was taking the baby to a hospital. She didn’t want them to worry.” Jack sighed. “The baby died the night she got home. She walked for two more days to get back here just to tell me I should give her seat on the bus to someone else.”

I sat down on the ground, stunned, and began to sob. That poor baby girl had never had a chance. Nothing in life was fair! How could this poor woman walk her feet off – and all for nothing?

“I’d like you to meet Herve.”

I looked up and there was Jack, standing with his hand on the back of a teenaged boy. The boy had a huge splint and a bloodied bandage on his arm, but he was smiling at me with huge, beautiful white teeth.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and stood up. “Bonjou, Herve,” I said, extending my good arm to his. “Komo ou ye?” How are you?

Herve, grinning like a madman, assured me he was very well, thanks, as he pumped my arm up and down enthusiastically.

“God has smiled on me today,” Herve said in Creole. “Last night I was told there was no room on the bus for me. I thought today the Haitian doctors would have to take my arm.” Herve’s smile warmed me. “Then this morning God sent an angel to tell me there is now room on the bus. I can go to the hospital. They will make my arm like new.”

I knew the angel Herve was referring to was Jack.

As we got on the bus, healers and patients together, I thought about how everyone has something to give. Whether a person comes from a faraway land to nurse the sick, or whether a poor man heals a saddened missionary with his smile, we all have something to offer.

I thought of the young mother. She had walked two days in her grief, after losing her baby girl, just so someone else would have her seat on the bus. She had given the most important gift of all.

I wondered if the spark in her eye had died with her child. No, I realized. No one makes a two-day hike in the midst of such grief without some kind of spark. I realized then that I had never asked the woman her name.

“Jack,” I yelled to the back of the bus without turning around. “The young mother? Did she tell you her name?”

“Her name is Kado,” he yelled back.

“Kado,” I whispered, as the bus bounced over potholes.

I laughed a little, shook my head. The irony was too much. “Kado” is the Haitian word for “gift.”

“You were appropriately named, Kado,” I said quietly. “God watch over Kado,” I prayed. “And over us all.”

Marla H. Thurman lives in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, her hometown, with her two dogs, Oreo and Sleeper. She has published numerous reflections and articles in Sage of Consciousness Magazine, The East Tennessee Catholic, The National Catholic Reporter, InSync Magazine, and more.