The Chico Enterprise-Record
When Mike McCarty decided to help with earthquake relief in Haiti , he thought it would be a significant way to give. He didn’t imagine he would get so much out of it himself.
“It really rocked me, opened up my eyes to a whole lot of things. It helped me realize how much we have,” he said, of living in America.
McCarty grew up in Palermo, where he has lived most of his life. His wife, Tippi McCarty, died in 2006, and the loss for him was devastating. He dedicated his experience in Haiti to her.
McCarty passed out food to hundreds of hungry people at a refugee camp. He helped with medical care broken bones, children with serious scabies. He helped build a clinic for pregnant women, and run a small pharmacy. For nearly a month, he did whatever was needed.
Supplies were sparse. Volunteers sterilized used bandages.
“Until you see it and smell it, until you see the amputations and flattened schools you really can’t imagine it,” he said, recalling his experience April 13 with the Enterprise-Record.
“I’ve been to Mexico and Costa Rica. I’ve seen poverty. But what I saw in Haiti was like nothing I’d ever seen. This was grinding poverty, and it was that way before the earthquake.”
McCarty, an emergency medical technician, quit working to care for his wife before she died.
He left for Haiti Feb. 13, and returned to California March 9. He arrived just weeks after the 7.0 earthquake that struck Jan. 12. With his EMT background, he volunteered with Grassroots United, a nonprofit, nongovernmental agency.
He worked with clinics, mobile clinics in outlying areas, hospitals that served the general population, pregnant women, and people in refugee camps.
“I worked in Jacmel, south of Port au Prince. I remember 900 feet of women lined up along one side of the road. They were waiting for rice and beans,” he said. Men lined up on the other side of the road, but were not given food. Women were supposed to share with them, and their families.
In one village, it took two hours by car to get clean water. “But most people had to walk and that took four hours.”
McCarty took the time to become aquainted with Haitians. “The people I met impressed me. One woman was a nanny for a 6-year-old boy and when the quake hit, she covered his body with hers ... She saved him, but she blessed us and thanked us for being there. Most people realized we were there to help.
“There were so many people who had lost entire families. I went to an orphanage ... There was a 7-year-old boy with a thousand-mile stare. He was completely in shock ... People were just lost. I saw a lot of people in shock.”
Twice, McCarty had reason to be worried. “There were only two times I felt threatened. Once, when a second earthquake hit. The second was a ‘tap-tap’ ride. People there drive two speeds: As fast as you can go, and stopped. When they pass, they just honk and go even if it’s on a blind curve. I was numb during that first ride.”
He described “tap-tap” rides as an answer to inadequate public transportation. People with cars and pickups charge a nominal fee to transport others. It was common, he said, to see a pickup’s cab and bed loaded with people.
McCarty lived with other volunteers. “All of us were so diverse, we shared stories. We adopted a cat and some baby goats. And we had a dog.”
He said roaming pigs ate the overwhelming amount of garbage, and it was understood they helped keep the problem under control. “The last day I was there, I finally saw a garbage truck,” he said.
McCarty found the Haitian people appreciative and kind. He never saw looting, but knew there was lawlessness. He encountered people dissatisfied with the Haitian government.
“A local artist, a wood carver, made a paper mache statue. It had one eye closed to the people’s misery; one eye open to money and greed.” McCarty said many Haitians felt their dire conditions have largely been ignored by their government.
Outside the refugee camps, which were grim, the living conditions of Haitians were also pathetic. “Some were in tents, but many were living in shelters made of plastic and cardboard, put up with sticks. When the monsoons and the hurricane season starts, they will be slammed. The people know what’s ahead.”
He said Haiti faces a long road in terms of recovery. “But by the time I left, I could see change happening. It was good to see people start to get organized.”
As for McCarty, he also is getting organized. He plans to renew his EMT certification and work as a field captain on a summer fire crew. Then McCarty will plan a second trip to Haiti. “It’s worthwhile on so many levels.”
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