GRAND-GOÂVE, Haiti (ABP) — Michael Akinboro emanates gentleness. Toddlers sit quietly while he checks their breathing. Babies obediently swallow bitter cough syrup. Not one child who comes for diagnosis fusses or cries.
Michael Akinboro, a Nigerian-born registered nurse from African Evangelical Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Texas, examines patients at a clinic in Grand-Goâve. (PHOTO/ Lauren Hollon)
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As he works, a bare bulb overhead lights the tiny free clinic, and an old oscillating fan in the corner coaxes warm, moist air throughout the room. The thermometer mounted in the shade of the doorframe reads 100 degrees. Shelves piled with bottles of medicine, vitamins and antiseptics line the walls.
Outside, a concrete mixer rumbles as Haitian men pour in gravel and cement mix. They have worked for months to rebuild the Siloé Baptist School, located 40 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, which the massive Jan. 12 earthquake shook to rubble. Workers have finished two classrooms with three to go, while students meet outside beneath a canopy of plastic tarps hung from tree branches. When it rains, the school closes.
Behind the school stands the skeleton of Siloé Baptist Church, the congregation affiliated with the school and clinic. Its roof and doors are gone, walls cracked, the organ a jumble of broken wood and wires and the words a demolir — to demolish — spray-painted across the facade. Members meet in the evening under the classrooms’ tarps, singing harmonies that are mournful and joyful at the same time.
This church, school and clinic complex in Grand-Goâve represents one small area where the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Texas Baptists are partnering to help rebuild Haiti.
Akinboro is a Nigerian-born registered nurse from African Evangelical Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Texas. After six long days of triple-digit heat and a constant stream of patients, he felt exhausted but happy.
“We have been treating an average of about 40 to 60, but the last few days it has gone to about 100 to 120 patients a day,” Akimboro said.
Most cases he saw were different infections, including eye, urinary-tract, skin and upper-respiratory infections — “especially for the children,” he said.
“The cause of the infections, I think, mainly is likely to be the type of water that they take,” Akinboro said. “Also, maybe due to the high humidity, we are having upper-respiratory-tract infections. Scabies, of course, would be waterborne problems. So, it’s really some hygienic problems stemming from inadequate water supply.”
The skeleton of Siloé Baptist Church bears silent testimony to the devastation an earthquake caused in Haiti. The words a demolir — to demolish — are spray-painted across its facade. (PHOTO/ Lauren Hollon)
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Malnutrition due to poverty and ignorance presents another problem in the community. The clinic offers not only multivitamins and power bars, but also education about health, hygiene and nutrition.
“I’ve had to actually sit four mothers down and talk to them about nutrition,” Akinboro said. “And one of them actually confessed to me that she only feeds her 3-month-old child twice a day. I really had to talk to her. But I asked if she has the money to buy the food, and she did say she has access to it. I did ask her to come back after one month so that we can follow up with that child.”
Since the initial health response to the earthquake has passed, the clinic is moving to a preventative-health-care model rather than a curative one, said Tim Brendle, the coordinator for CBF’s recovery work in Haiti.
“We desperately need people who can come and help people with eye problems, dental problems, general practitioners, heart specialists, almost any specialty,” Brendle said. “If we know in advance that you want to come, we will welcome you here and use you to good effect.”
Just beyond the clinic door, the concrete and rebar walls of the new school take shape. Siloé Baptist operates two schools — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Morning students wear school uniforms, but 70 of the 351 children can’t afford to pay tuition. In the afternoon school, 160 children who can afford neither uniforms nor tuition attend class under the tarps.
Students at Siloé Baptist School meet outdoors beneath a plastic tarp since an earthquake destroyed their school building. Texas Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are helping the school — and the related church and clinic — rebuild. (PHOTO/Lauren Hollon)
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Administrator Pascal Ybsens Clanck said the school has had difficulties paying its teachers because of the earthquake and a lack of tuition money from families. Sometimes, he has to turn away students due to lack of funds.
“When we save some money to pay the teacher, then we call on the phone and tell him, ‘Come to school.’ The kids who don’t have school just wait at home because they don’t have money,” Clanck said.
Siloé Baptist Church helps the school financially when it can, but it’s not enough. It costs about $135 to pay for a child’s uniform, school supplies and yearly tuition, Clanck said.
“People in the U.S. can help by sending money to help some students to pay for uniforms, to pay for books, for whatever, and to help to pay those teachers so that we can continue to give this education for the community,” Clanck said.
Clanck was encouraged to see progress made on the school’s new building.
“The school was completely flat[tened] by the earthquake, so now we find some help to know how we can continue to rebuild those classes,” he said. “We have CBF that’s helping us to back up that.”
When CBF arrived in Grand-Goâve, the local church’s crisis committee already was working to clear away rubble.
“I really cannot say enough good about how well the Haitians have participated in the rebuilding of this school,” Brendle said. “During the first two months that we worked here, they worked absolutely as volunteers right alongside our volunteers with no compensation whatsoever. Once we got to the point where we needed to move more quickly we did start to hire local workers, but even those were working at a reduced rate so that there was still the aspect of volunteerism.”
Texas Baptists are sending teams throughout the summer and fall to help finish the school and serve in the clinic, as well as build new homes for church members who lost their houses.
Scotty Smith, associate pastor of Cowboy Fellowship in Pleasanton, Texas, joined a CBF mission team from California and had a chance to build relationships and minister to the Haitian workers.
“They could [rebuild without American workers helping], but then that doesn’t build the relationship with them,” Smith said. “There’s no connection, and if there’s no connection, in the long run you really don’t care. You have to learn to be able to care about the people you’re trying to help…. When you connect, it’s definitely worth it. Definitely.”
“I want to encourage a lot of those who have never gotten their passport before, who financially believe that they could never do anything like this, that if God calls them to do something, there’s nothing that will stand in their way.”
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Lauren Hollon is a communications intern for the Baptist General
Convention of Texas.