(The following is excerpted from an article written by Janet
Papenfuss on her trip to Haiti doing speech therapy. The full article and photos can be found in
the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration quarterly newsletter published
the week of October 21, 2013.)
Serving people in a Third World Country through Peace Corps
volunteering has been on my "bucket list" long before the term
"bucket list" was ever coined.
Since the age of 18 (yes, that makes it a 40-year old dream), I have
felt the call to do things, and to go places out of my comfort zone, and to try
to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate-and by doing so, to
make a difference (or even changes) in my own life. So you can imagine my
excitement when I stumbled upon an article in one of my professional journals
requesting speech therapy volunteers to go to Haiti for Global Therapy Group,
an organization founded by an amazing physical therapist, Donna Hutchins,
following the 2010 earthquake.
The founding of this group is a story in and of itself (I
invite you to visit the Global Therapy Group website and click on "Donna's
Story").
After reading the story, I laughed, cried, and literally
jumped up and down. By the end of the
day, I contacted Donna, filled out all the paperwork, committed to a month of
service, booked a flight, and arranged for all the immunizations I'd need.
By the next day, I had arranged for a house and animal sitter. I had recently renewed my passport and had
just received my tax refund, so that went to fund the trip. I also discovered that, by some small
miracle, my home mortgage was actually paid a month ahead! Now how did THAT happen?
Things came together so quickly and easily that I knew
deeply it was God's plan for me.
The feeling I carried inside me up until the day I left was
so uplifting and positive that I felt like I was floating or being carried by
Holy Hands throughout my days. Even when
my family, friends, and the U.S. Embassy website reminded me that Haiti is a
very dangerous Third World Country, I was not deterred- not even a little
bit. The clear message was that this is
what I am supposed to do, and if something negative happens to me there, that
also is God's plan for me. Before I
left, a woman I knew only slightly couldn't believe I was traveling to Haiti
alone, and offered to go with me and stay for three days just to make sure I
was in a safe place. She is a nurse and
had been there multiple times. Again,
proof of Divine providence.
I like to think I made a difference in some of the Haitian
lives I touched, but as is so often the case, I was touched so much more by the
people I came into contact with. I have
never been around a more patient people.
Since we could not get the concept of "appointment times"
across, the people who came to our clinic would wait to be seen, sometimes for
hours in the heat. There was no such
thing as a waiting room, much less a sign stating, "If you haven't been
seen in 15 minutes... , " as we have in our clinics here.
There is a pride and dignity of appearance that is important
to Haitians, no matter their impoverished living conditions. In spite of the heat, rubble, dust, and
garbage in the streets, our Haitian patients arrived clean and in clean
clothes, and some of the little girls in what appeared to be communion
dresses. If when waiting the children
became dirty while playing or eating a snack, their mothers had a change of
clothes for them before they came into the clinic. I mention this because it seems so
incongruous to me-most people do not have running water, much less a wash
machine, and even the wealthier people do not have hot water (my host family
included). Shoeshine boys and "car
washes" (hoses attached to a barrel of water) are seen every hundred feet
or so along the streets or roads, in the middle of dust and rubble. It seemed a pointless endeavor, but for the
Haitians, is very important, and somehow they arrived at their destinations
clean and put together. I, on the other
hand, could never quite look as good.
I know that this was not simply something to cross off my
bucket list, because I'm going back.
I'll be carrying this bucket with me until I can't carry it anymore!
