By Tim Plaut, MD
August, 2008
“God Bless you for what you do.” “It is amazing that you folks do this.”  “Those kids get so much out of what you do….” I hear these types of quotes frequently from folks who know about my trips to Haiti with Asheville’s Mission Manna.

I have been to Haiti four times now, with medical groups from western North Carolina, on mission trips that focus on hunger and providing medical care for children in the region of Montrouis, about 2 hours north of Port au Prince.  At first it was an adventure, a chance to “do some good” and explore a country that I had never seen.

Sure, I knew that Haiti is a poor country but having grown up in Appalachia and traveled the world while in the Navy, I had seen poverty before. I had seen kids with stunted growth before in Tunisia, North Africa, while helping build a school as part of a US Marine Corps good will mission.

But I had never seen kids dying from simple hunger up close before. I had never imagined the sight of a child scooping water with his hands out of a refuse filled ditch, while a donkey urinated in the water he was drinking. Who in America can imagine a “tradition” called Te, where the mother mixes spice in a dirt cake to feed her children at bedtime to quell pangs of hunger?

The first time I came home after a week in Haiti, (which, by the way, is a mere 2 hours by plane off the coast of Miami), I was so angry at the unfairness of it all that my wife had to ask me to stop telling the kids not to complain, to settle down, to in effect “get off my high horse” and live happily with the life I have here.

If it was so bad, why do I continue to go and look forward to the next trip as soon as I get back? I think everyone who has made trips like this and continues to do this type of work ask this question of themselves.

On the way home, our group arrives back in Miami en route to North Carolina. We all share a kind of high, a quiet appreciation for a job well done. There is a discussion of certain cases we saw, remembering the tragic and reflecting on the good. And it never fails, eventually someone says something like, “I think I got more out of this trip than I gave.” This gift is hard to describe but we have all felt it, an inner sense of calm. An enrichment of the soul. A return to the basics.

We go to Haiti with the idea that with all we have here in America, all the blessings and gifts we were lucky enough to be born with , that it is time to give back. There is a conscious choice to leave our families, sacrifice a week’s worth of income, and spend a large amount of money to go to a sometimes dangerous place to help people we don’t know.

We do it because we can make a difference, however small in this big world of ours. We see many of the same kids every time we go, keep records on their growth and health status, provide AK-1000 and provide worm medicine and vitamins to each child we see, usually between 1,000-1,200 per trip. We do it because we can; in America we have the resources, will and determination to help the poorest of the poor. We volunteer and head out on that first trip to the unknown with the gusto and zeal of conviction, conviction that we are blessed, lucky, and it is time to pass our gifts on to less fortunate folks… and the next year we come back.

We return because of the love. Love for these incredibly dignified people, who persevere though drought and famine we can only imagine. Love for the children who start out so afraid of these white people but quickly trust us because their parents do. The love that develops within our group, the volunteers from America and Haiti, that carries us up the mountains when the tap-tap breaks down and we have to hike in. And mostly, the love we are given. Each trip brings more hugs from friends we have made and the kids who remember us from last year. It is a basic human need to be appreciated and we leave Haiti feeling fulfilled.  For all the sacrifice we make on these trips, the Haitians sacrifice more. They make sure we are fed, when they have nothing to eat. They make sure we have a place to sleep (like a church in the mountains), when they sleep on the dirt. They make sure we know how much we mean to them. I just pray that they know how much they mean to us.