GRAND GOAVE, Haiti (ABP) — The children swarm Tori Wentz as she walks down the street.
Some run up for a fist bump. A few chant, "Blan! Blan! Blan!"
Wentz waves back, smiles and shrugs at the Creole term for "white."
"I'm used to that," she says. In Ethiopia, Kenya and Burma, the children would also follow and chant the local slang for "foreigner."
Wentz, 46, a member of Fredricksburg Baptist Church and hospice nurse in Spotsylvania County, Va., frequently goes on long-term mission trips, traveling the globe to bring medical care to the needy.
Since March 6, Wentz has been in Haiti, staffing a medical clinic for the residents of Grand Goave, a town about two hours from Port-au-Prince.
Wentz, a medical missionary with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, planned to serve in Haiti, as soon as she learned Creole. But the Jan. 12 earthquake sped up that trip by more than a year.
On a recent Wednesday, Wentz walked through the village of Grand Goave to visit patients.
Wentz checks on Carmel Foblasse, who lives in a tent with her daughter, Love Fortuna. Foblasse suffered a stroke a year ago and has lost use of her legs.
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First, she stopped at a large canvas tent nearby where Carmel Foblasse and her daughter, Love Fortuna, are living.
Foblasse has been unable to walk since a stroke last year. Her 29-year-old daughter takes care of her and can't work.
For nearly a year, the mother and daughter begged relatives and neighbors for money to see doctors.
In mid-March, Wentz showed up at their tent. Since then, the American nurse stops by regularly to monitor both women, at no charge.
"She helps me a lot," Fortuna said of Wentz. "She helps me buy medicine. She helps me carry my mom. She goes to the hospital with me."
This day, Wentz is checking Foblasse's bed sores. She's also trying to help her with another basic need.
Wentz carries a toilet seat to the tent.
The mother and daughter use a plastic bucket for a toilet, and this has been especially hard on Foblasse. Wentz hoped to fasten a toilet seat to the bucket but it won't fit.
So she enlists help. In addition to the clinic, a mission team with the CBF is helping build a school and church. Wentz recruits one of the builders, Matt Cayton.
The Ohio missionary came in April for a one-week trip but stayed. He offers to build a better seat for Foblasse.
Inside the tent, Wentz checks Foblasse's vital signs. Her blood pressure, which had been high, is coming down.
"This medicine is working better for you," Wentz tells Foblasse through a Haitian translator.
Within moments of entering the tent, Wentz is covered in sweat. The air outside is like a sauna; inside the tent, it's more like an oven.
Fortuna wanders across the street to sit in the shade of a mango tree. She says she wants to move back into their house, a small concrete building down the street from the tent. The house survived the earthquake but still looks unsteady.
Nearby, two men dig a ditch with a shovel and a pickax, a trio of schoolgirls dressed in blue gingham shirts, pleated skirts and blue hair ribbons walk by singing songs, and a couple of goats lie languidly.
Wentz finishes with Foblasse and walks onto the road. Immediately, a toddler runs over and demands to be held.
Wentz picks him up and the boy's mom shows the nurse a lump the size of a grape under the baby's arm. At the same time, a man approaches with a prescription.
She talks to the mom, then heads back to the damaged clinic building to fill the prescription.
In the clinic yard, a cluster of tents serves as home for Wentz and the builders.
The night before, a thief climbed over the crumbling clinic wall and helped himself to some of the medical supplies. But Wentz didn't notice too much missing.
She gives the man the medicine and heads back out to look for amputees.
In a few weeks, a medical mission team will arrive with prosthetics.
Wentz needs to find patients who could use an artificial leg. She walks through tent cities and stops everyone she sees: a man with a guitar, a group of girls getting water from a pump well and a group of women standing under trees.
She travels rough paths littered with split mangoes, tin cans, plastic bottles, empty bags of Chiritos (fat cheese curls) and excrement.
Wentz stops to play soccer with a couple of young boys. Another child walks by with a kite made of cellophane and sticks. Nearby, a young girl bathes a baby in a large metal bowl.
Wentz finds one woman whose left leg has been amputated above the knee. Too much of the woman's leg is missing, and the prosthetics that are coming won't work.
Wentz turns to Daniel Emmanuel, her translator.
"Tell her I pray the doctors will be able to come back with the kind of prosthetics she needs," Wentz instructs Emmanuel.
Then, Wentz asks, "How do I say, 'God bless you?'"
She repeats the Creole phrase he gives, then walks away from the woman and her relatives.
"They seem sad," she says to Emmanuel.
"Yes, they are," said Emmanuel, who knows the family.
Wentz and Emmanuel walk back to eat a lunch of rice and beans and fresh mango.
Wentz treats Cayton for heat and dehydration, telling him to lie down. But the missionary is eager to get back to building.
He hasn't yet gotten used to the devastation he sees, and Cayton's eyes well with tears as he talks.
"My heart grieves for the Haitians," he says. "And I think, what is enough? How do you fix this? Is there a solution for Haiti?"
He spent the morning at a nearby school — one of few still functioning.
Most parents can't afford tuition anymore, Cayton says over lunch. So the teachers haven't been paid in months.
"But they're still teaching," he says, shaking his head in wonder.
Wentz goes into the clinic's office to work on the computer after lunch.
Gene Genbry, a Spokane, Wash., pastor helping to build the school, watches Wentz walk away.
"She's really amazing," he says. "And the people here just love her. It's something, to see all the kids surround her. They all just love her."
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Amy Flowers Umble writes for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. This story appeared originally in the newspaper May 27 and is reprinted here with permission.