PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (ABP) — Nearly a month into an intense and immediate response to Haitians injured and left homeless and hungry by the Jan. 12 earthquake, it still feels like the second day of a domestic disaster to Gaylon Moss, who is coordinating the North Carolina Baptist response.
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The difficult maze of coordinating communications, transportation, facilities, supplies and volunteers that normally begins to sort itself out a few days after a disaster still runs into bewildering dead ends in Haiti — a nation on life support even before the earthquake crumpled its capital.
Moss, disaster-relief coordinator for North Carolina Baptist Men, said Haiti is fading from the public consciousness even as the extent of its rebuilding need starts to become clear.
While the public consciousness is only as long as the news cycle, Moss wants supporters of his group to know they are in it for the long haul. He recognizes it is hard to maintain an edge of eagerness in volunteers who do not know when they will be loosed to serve.
But the only requests for volunteers thus far and for the next month or so are for medical personnel to help in regional or makeshift hospitals. Early volunteers treated many broken bones, amputations and burns — often with no more anesthetic than an aspirin. And often, after treatment, patients could only hobble across the road and lay down in the grass and dirt.
Because of response through the Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship, medical personnel from many states have traveled in the first five groups of medical volunteers from North Carolina Baptist Men.
The fifth team, with 24 members, left Feb. 4.
“Our vision is to help rebuilding in Haiti,” said Moss, who has led disaster relief for Baptist Men for 12 years.
He said there has been “tremendous response from the medical community” to volunteer in Haiti, a response beyond what is typical. “North Carolina Baptists can be proud of that,” he said. “Those doctors have made a difference in those people’s lives in the hospital, no doubt, hands down.”
Ways to help
Moss’ group is asking people to consider a handful of ways to help in the short and long term. First, prayer for the people of Haiti — to pray God will use this disaster to open doors for the gospel and for the safety and effectiveness of the medical teams.
Second, North Carolina Baptist Men is promoting an effort to collect “Buckets of Hope” in which the state’s Baptists fill five-gallon plastic buckets with food staples like beans, noodles, oil, sugar, flour and rice. They’ll be collected at pick-up points around the state Feb. 27 and distributed in Haiti by responsible churches or established agencies.
Gaylon Moss, coordinator of disaster relief and volunteerism for North Carolina Baptist Men. (Biblical Recorder photo)
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Third is giving money to rebuild Haiti. Moss’ group has a reputation as builders. Costs are approximately $2,300 for materials to build a house and $12,000 for a church in Haiti. While “Buckets of Hope” is a great project for individuals, Brunson hopes churches will respond to the bigger challenge of raising money for building materials for houses and churches to make a long-term difference and to open doors to planting new churches in the devastated nation.
Moss’ group has been working with Global Outreach Haiti. Global Outreach is a Mississippi-based relief organization that has been working in Haiti since 1983. The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board has no career-missionary presence in Haiti.
The IMB had a 30-year presence that ended last year. Missionaries who had been in Haiti moved into the Dominican Republic to minister among Haitians leaking across the border to find a better life, but who were running into significant difficulties there.
Global Outreach Haiti’s operation site in Tintayen, Haiti, is about 8 miles from the airport in Port-au-Prince. The organization has been working in Haiti since 1983. North Carolina Baptist medical teams have worked out of the “burn clinic” in Tintayen. “Think in terms of a few rooms, not a hospital,” Moss said.
As with any recovery effort, Moss said, “We stay until the money runs out, the people run out or the project is finished.”
Haiti will never be finished. Moss said Haiti is a “top-tier” disaster, with a “protracted time frame” for aid.
“Within the next several weeks we should be able to solidify our plans for Haiti, which are constantly developing,” Moss said.
With so much need and so many international organizations flocking to help, Moss said North Carolina Baptist Men will depend on “the Lord’s leading” to determine where best and most effectively to plug in.
“We will follow the open doors and opportunities God provides,” he said.
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Norman Jameson is editor of the North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder.