A personal note from Ackermans on the flooding in Haiti (28 May 2004)

Dear Friends,

 I guess you have noticed that Haiti is again in the news.  It has been raining nightly for the past several weeks now and during the past week, and especially this past Saturday and Sunday night the intensity increased a great deal.  We were awakened frequently during the night to the sound of intense thunder and rain.  Although we have seen more rain during short periods in Haiti I can't recall anytime when the intensity lasted so long.

On Monday morning I questioned if I should even go to the clinic since I knew that we wouldn't have much of a patient turnout.  Since many of my patients have to walk for long distances over mountains I knew those that were sick would most likely just stay at home and suffer with their problems rather than try to make the trip to Prospere.  I did eventually go, picking up Edin, my nurse, on the way.

The picture you see is of a stream of water that runs just outside Port-au-Prince.  I was amazed at its size and force.  If any of you have ever seen the video that we made in 1997 you may recall the small stream that we used to have to drive through in order to get to Prospere.  Well, this picture is of that stream.  I have never seen it in such a shape.

The rest of the trip to Prospere was fairly uneventful until we left the "hard" road and turned onto the back roads that lead to Prospere.  Although the roads were passable, the long term rain had made the travel much more difficult.

On our arrival at Prospere we found basically what we had expected:  nobody.  We did eventually see five patients that morning but most of our time was spent talking with the people in the village about the devastation that they had been experiencing over the past couple days.

Probably my most memorable moment of that morning was while standing outside the clinic and being very quiet, being able to hear the roar of masses of moving water coming from about a mile away where the only thing I had ever seen in the past was a dry riverbed.  This day it was not only a riverbed but also a killing stream.  Later that day I was to find out on the internet that that stream along with many others in our area had overflowed and caused many floods and mudslides in a number of communities in the Prospere area.  It seems that the worst devastation took place in Jimani, the border city, just on the Dominican Republic side of the border and about 10 miles from Prospere and an area called Fond Verette, a Haitian community about five miles from Prospere that had been basically wiped out by a mud slide.  Since then we have learned of another town in our area where the entire town is still under mud.  The last death estimate I have heard of both the Dominican and Haitian people is approximately 2000.  Yesterday they started to bury those dead in mass graves to attempt to prevent an outbreak of Cholera.  I'm sure the numbers from this devastation will continue to rise as the days go by.

And the rain continues but thankfully it is not coming down with the same intensity as this past weekend.

Please be in prayer for these families that are living through another very difficult time in their very difficult lives.