Our visit to the General Hospital

None of us were doctors.  We all knew this.  Maybe we have been so hardened by mainstream media, that what we saw did not move us.  Maybe without words, we just knew that whatever we saw when we walked in to that hospital would be beyond our control, and there was nothing we could do to fix any of the children, but pray that they would be okay.  

Thinking back about the children I did not photograph, the baby with the exposed brains, or the child who literally looked like a skeleton with skin- with flies swarming its tiny little body, I can only think about the Serenity Prayer.  

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."  

You know, the prayer that is always prayed at the end of any Alcoholic Anonymous meetings that may be portrayed on television, well I wholeheartedly believe that that prayer applies to our visit to the General Hospital in Port au Prince.  

Our mission upon going to the hospital was to pass out diapers, formula, bottles, and clothing to mothers in the ICU, and the mothers waiting for their sick children to be seen.  We visited three different buildings, beginning with the ICU and expectant mothers.  There we saw some of the tiniest babies you could imagine, all with their families near by, and doctors keeping a close watch.  Then we went to two wooden buildings across the street, where women would bring their sick children in hopes that they would get help.  There were women   sitting on the ground, and in chairs with their babies waiting to get a bed, and possibly an I.V. of fluid, and other women lined up in rows next to filled cribs with crying sickly children.  Once these women had their children in cribs they would be seen by a doctor, and in turn given a prescription to be filled.  Once the prescriptions had been handed out, most of the mothers would just stand there and wait, because barely any of them had the money to go get the prescriptions filled. So Mona went around collecting prescriptions from women at random to be filled, and took the prescriptions to the Pharmacy, and then we waited.  And waited.  

Soon a woman in a bright yellow top came out of the dark wooden building wailing, and crying.  She had a piece of paper in her hand, and she said in creole that her baby was dead, and that she had to take the piece of paper to the morgue so they would know to come and pick the child up.  This happened once more while we were sitting there waiting, and who knows, maybe we had taken their prescriptions to be filled, and it was just too late.  I can not say.  

We did what we could while we were there.  And although our offerings were not permanent, and probably didn't save any lives, we accepted the little change we tried to make, and the serenity to know that bad things happen to everyone, and there was nothing more we could ourselves could do but pray.