Joy in Leoganne

Leticia Martínez Hernández / Photo: Juvenal Balán

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti.—Fidel was born in Leoganne. He was brought into the world by Haitian Dr. Rodez Montumaire, who affirmed that the baby was born healthy. However, more than the specialized language of the doctor, Fidel, with an energetic and persistent wail, was making it known to everyone that he was here in the world in full force.

His mother, Clotilde, was still panting when she announced that she had decided to call him Fidel. It was her way of expressing her thanks for such good care, she explained. She knew that her doctor had studied in Cuba, so to whom other than Comandante Fidel could she be grateful for having had her baby.
We Cubans who were witnesses to that birth in the field hospital, shared her joy, and felt again for our country. Not only did Clotilde and Fidel transport us to our longed-for land, but the skill of Dr. Rodez recalled for us the unlimited professionalism of medicine taught in Cuba. "On call at all hours, we attend to seven or eight births every day. Last night I was sleeping when they called me urgently. A mother was waiting at the door of the field hospital and the baby’s head was already showing. I managed to catch it in time, and both are safe and well today."
Rodez, the only obstetrics doctor in the Leoganne field hospital, speaks a very intelligible Spanish, suspiciously fluent! To my journalistic insistence, he confides: "I’m married to a beautiful woman from Santiago de Cuba, Idelis Machado; I have two little ones there in Cuba, Carlos and Liss Mariam.
So, you’re a Cuban now!
No, I’m Haitian and Cuban as well."

LEOGANNE HOSPITAL
Leoganne commune is 30 kilometers south of Port-au-Prince. On January 12, the tremors there were very strong. Hundreds of buildings have collapsed, one of them, the university center, is now converted into three slabs one on top of each other.
The Cuban doctors have likewise reached that piece of flattened land, with a field hospital. Its director, Dr. Jorge Balceiro, explained that the center began to function on January 16, and although it was somewhat precarious, it now has 42 collaborators. He comments, still shocked, that on the first day they had to perform 17 amputations; it was very sad, the chaos was total. "Now we have a brigade with specialists in internal medicine, intensive care, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, anesthetics, orthopedics, and a rehabilitation team joined us a few hours ago.
"We are seeing around 1,000 patients daily, including those attended outside and in the hospital. Diseases are beginning to move toward infectious-contagious pathologies, above all in children, with diarrhea and respiratory problems. We are still attending to the consequences of traumatism, people are coming back to have their injuries and amputations dressed.
The field hospital services, set up with excellent technology, consist of an emergency room, operating room, pre- and post-operative care, hospitalization, a clinical laboratory, radiology, ultrasound and sterilization.
When we arrived, a recently fitted rehabilitation room revealed a large quantity of modern equipment. There, David, Angel and Luis Rafael, three young physiotherapy and rehabilitation graduates, were beginning to attend to the patients, before having recovered from their journey here.
PSYCHIATRY AS WELL
The mental health of their patients is a constant concern of the Cuban doctors. Fears and psychological traumas from the earthquake of 7.3 on the Richter scale which, according to researchers, was 35 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atom bomb, are becoming more and more visible.
Balceiro, a psychiatrist as well as the hospital director, says that the Haitian people are seriously affected. Many are suffering from high degrees of anxiety, others are depressed, or have significant dissociative disorders. They are afraid to enter places with roofs, and are still terrified by aftershocks.
"As the days go by this situation is going to worsen because reactions to bereavement appear. Initially, people do not have a perception of the fact that they have lost everything, and when they realize that, acute depression appears.
There is a lot of concern for the children, Balceiro says. "If you observe them you can see that their games are a bit violent, there are very restless and irritable and cry frequently. That is the way in which they are revealing psychological damage."
A team of Cuban specialists have arrived in Haiti to attend to those reactions, headed by Dr. Cristóbal Martínez, director of the National Child Psychology Group, for whom it is vital to restore to those children their games, schools and recreation, all lost as a result of the earthquake. The island’s doctors are also beginning work directed to that end.
THE CAMP, A FEW KILOMETERS AWAY
As if to leave Leoganne with our joy complete, a Venezuelan flag directs us to a field full of large tent homes. Among so much devastation, the Simón Bolívar camp is currently being mounted, providing shelter for close to 2,000 people, in what was formerly a terrain full of sheets to protect homeless Haitians from the sun and night dew. Today, all of them have a better Alba (meaning dawn and related to the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America).
Under an intense sun, hammering tent pegs into the ground and raising within minutes the huge tents, we find dozens of young Venezuelans from the Haiti Joint Task Unit, led by Comandante Víctor Guerrero, all of them wearing army uniform, but without any weapons, a unique image in the Haiti of today: "This unit was created on the instructions of our Comandante Chávez, we arrived with 150 military troops and our mission is to construct camps for those affected."
Guerrero explains that the tents house up to 30 people, with an average of four families in each. They are also providing camp beds and bedclothes. The tent city is also to be equipped with food and water and sanitary services.
Medical care is guaranteed by the youth of Battalion 51. Among them is Juan Carlos Lara from Táchira, who explains that they were the first Venezuelans to graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba.
But the projections for the Leoganne camp do not stop here. Four new tents being raised now are to serve as literacy classrooms and will be supplied with electricity for televisions and videos. Cuban teachers are to arrive at the Simón Bolívar Camp with primers in Creole and a maximum of will.
The flaps of these field homes will possibly be raised on Wednesday for all those who want to learn to read and write. Granma daily will be there. It is more than likely that then the joy of Lionel, Jean Luis and Jeannette will be greater when, in addition to a roof, they will have the possibility of studying.