This is a Personal Touch, a chance to check in with ordinary people making an extraordinary difference in the world. I’m Rebecca Cressman, and today we’re joined by Deseret News reporter, Scott Taylor, who just returned from Haiti and Port-au-Prince. I imagine Scott, that as you’re back, you have all kinds of images still in your mind. What was that like for you to be—you were there almost eight days in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake?
A: That’s right.
Q: What was it like for you?
A: It was touching; it was humbling. It was a little frightening at times, just because of a lack of security and a lack of basic necessities. Sometimes, when we don’t know where we can get water or food or electricity. That sounds more severe for me than it was personally, but I saw that in others who were there with relief and rescue attempts and certainly among the Haitians themselves who are homeless and without food. It was a reminder of all the great opportunities and advantages and blessings that I have, that we have here in America; and a reminder, too, that we have to take advantage of what we have. I went down to Haiti with a group of LDS Church sponsored doctors and nurses that specialize in critical care and general trauma and orthopedics: surgeons, doctors, and nurses, and watched them use their talents and their abilities to offer some healing and some aid to critically injured patients. So I came back very humbled, very touched. Even after a week, ten days, it’s hard to forget a lot of those images and those feelings still linger.
Q: When you talk about the images, one of the articles I read, you had been filing stories from Port-au-Prince as you were down there, was one in particular which talked about how you witnessed true religion in action. And you described what it was like outside of a Stake Center of the LDS Church, which had been converted into almost a tent city. Would that be accurate where you have homeless families that have now all lived together in this semi-compound and that you were watching them even in the most challenging times support each other and try to keep each other safe at night?
A: Right.
Q: And in the midst of this, what was that like for you? Were you also sleeping in the compound as well?
A: No. I was prepared to if necessary. The church sent all the doctors and those in the group, there were 20 of us, they sent us down with what they call survival bags with tents and pads and blankets and meals. We were really uncertain where we would be staying. They made arrangements for us to stay at a small compound with a friend of the LDS Church in Haiti—he and his family are non-members—but we stayed there. And so we had access to electricity there. We had access to a place to sleep on the ground. Some of them stayed in a small guesthouse with mattresses on the ground. I was outside. Others in tents. So we had it fairly good ourselves, which was good. The doctors need to be rested and taken care of so they can provide service each day. But you asked about the meetinghouses. I went to, I think, three different meetinghouses, LDS meetinghouses in Port-au-Prince. The meetinghouses are inside gated grounds. They have to be gated for security. And then the gates actually helped provide order and a sense of community as they served the shelters after the earthquake. And every time we would pass through these gates, my breath would be taken away because you would have this beautiful, spectacular meetinghouse and then totally surrounded are two or three dozen tents, just camping tents, four-man tents, that we see that the Church helped provide, and then others on blankets, under blankets, under tarps. Nearly every square foot of the meetinghouse grounds, and these were nice grounds with grass lawns, something you don’t really see much of in Haiti, but well-manicured for Haiti grass lawns. And then so much of the parking lots, the small parking lots, the sports courts outside—they had little basketball courts—and the driveways were filled with people sitting on chairs, sitting on blankets. They estimated there was about 4,000 members total at six or seven of these different meetinghouses throughout Port-au-Prince. And yet they were very orderly. They were very organized. I remember the first night being there after dark and watching church leaders walk amongst the tents and the blankets just to check and make sure everything was all right. I remember watching and listening to one of the priesthood leaders going around this small community leading prayers by bullhorn and leading the members in singing hymns. It was very touching. If I could share another experience: one, the first night at the meetinghouse they called Centrale, the Centrale Meetinghouse, and another one a few days later at the Petion-ville Meetinghouse. I remember being up there watching the doctors, the American doctors, interact with a local Haitian woman who was a pediatrician who was helping treat wounded people up there as well. And soon after we arrived, here comes a couple of armored Humvees, U.S. Army Humvees, with the mounted guns and everything and soldiers and they pulled up to the gates and asked to be let in, and here comes a sergeant and several soldiers coming up asking for, “Whoever is in charge,” saying that, “We’re here to see if you need any help in quelling violence or disturbances here. There are so many people.” I almost wanted to laugh out loud because I never saw any challenges. I never saw any disturbances at the meetinghouse properties. When the sergeant was told there wasn’t any problems on the ground, he turned around and called out to somebody who backed up an army supply truck and quickly got Haitian men to form kind of a bucket brigade line from the truck into the meetinghouse and the men helped unload this army truck that was loaded with extra food and water to be used. I overheard the sergeant say, “This is really funny.” First of all, they were impressed with how orderly and how quick the Haitian men responded. Of course, you had a lot of church members among the group who were helping do this. But he said, “We’re really impressed at how quick and orderly and organized it is.” And he also kind of quipped, he said, “If this was the Middle East, we would be watching the men order the women to pass all the supplies in.” The other thing I remember about the meetinghouses is how clean they were inside. They didn’t have the people going in to the building a whole lot. Perhaps if they needed to plug in their cell phones to charge, they might run an extension cord out but the buildings were very, very clean. The leaders, the members, made sure especially any time members went in.
Q: And so you almost found that those meetinghouses, the centers, the church centers, were calm in the middle of the storm, the chaos that was occurring as the community was trying to immediately take care of its most urgent needs.
A: Exactly. They were physical sanctuaries and shelters. They were spiritual sanctuaries where they held meetings on Sundays. They had meetings there the first Sunday after the earthquake. They were also medical sanctuaries as this group of American doctors and nurses set up these makeshift clinics inside the classrooms and would shuttle people inside to treat them and bandage their wounds and give them medicines.
Q: I was touched that you wrote about, because there were so many people staying on the meetinghouse grounds, that you were touched that you were watching people really rise to greatness. You described one man who worked all day as the security guard and yet would come back at night to the meetinghouse grounds and walk the grounds at night just to make sure that the people around him were safe. And that you were watching returned missionaries, young men and young women in their twenties, rising up and trying to give support and succor. So those are the images I guess that are still in your mind? You can hear the cries and the concerns of those people who lost loved ones but then it’s overshadowed by the good that you remember?
A: Well first of all, we didn’t get down there until a week after the initial earthquake. And so a lot of the mourning and a lot of the visible and audible suffering, I anticipate had happened in the first day or two or three had subsided, and so people had settled into a coping mode. And yet, I was impressed with their patience, their resiliency. From what I could tell, it was an attitude of, “Hey, we’re all in this together. Let’s make the most of it in cooperation and reaching out.” So watching the members who could speak some English, particularly returned missionaries or college students, help the doctors as translators in filling out forms for their review, even simple things. I remember one night watching a little 13 or 14 year old girl take a broom and just sweep the open areas of the driveway and parking lot to make sure everything was tidy. I mean, just seeing that and knowing what had gone in the past week to ten days and knowing the challenges of everybody being together, and here’s this young teenage girl sweeping the parking lot because she cared for the facility and wanted to do something. It was very touching.
Q: Before I let you go, Scott, because our time is a little limited and I so appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to share with us what it was like for you to be there on the ground and what you witnessed and what you saw. You talked about how you traveled down to Haiti with a group of medical professionals who were brought down by the LDS Church. And many of those physicians and nurses from humanitarian organizations around the world are still there and down on the ground right now trying to provide aid. Was that for you something that was life changing? Did that change your perspective when you saw people who were leaving immediately the comforts of their home and being in some ways airlifted right into chaos? Did that touch you as well or did that give you added perspective to the terms we use ‘brotherly love’ or the thoughts we have about how important it is for us to take care of one another?
A: Well, let me just answer that with an example, an individual I wrote about one day for the Deseret News. The woman’s name is Liz Howell. She is a nurse practitioner. She works for the LDS Church and humanitarian services. She goes about across the globe providing neonatal resuscitation techniques to medical people and the trainers to help them learn how to save babies’ lives. When I saw she was on the list to go, I said, “Liz Howell, that name sounds familiar.” I did a quick Google search and found out that she was back in the Washington, DC area in 2001, with her husband Brady. He worked at the Pentagon and he was one of the nearly 200 individuals that were killed in the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. And Liz was in the news quite a bit in the aftermath of those attacks and she went through the mourning and suffering. And then just before the 2002 Winter Olympics, she was selected to be the torch carrier to take the torch onto the south lawn of the White House to pass it on to President Bush, and the story was retold and he was very touched by her story, her experiences. Well, she decided shortly after she lost her husband that she would go from a medical profession with a lot of opportunities into an opportunity to provide humanitarian care. And so I wrote about her being down in Haiti giving care. If you remember the hymn "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief", who talks about trying to raise the sufferer up and yet it was an opportunity for this individual who gave care, in this case Liz Howell, to help bind her wounded heart as well. And so everybody went down there with some needs and were able to fill some of their own personal needs, and they reached out and cared for others.
Q: Taylor, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, not only to the Deseret News and Mormon Times but with us here on a Personal Touch. And we anticipate you’ll have an opportunity to return to Haiti and we’ll look forward to reading what else you have to share with us about the experiences of that community as the cities and the families and the nation tries to recover after such a huge event. Thank you so much for joining us on this week’s edition of a Personal Touch. And we want to also ask you to check your email next week to find out who else like Scott Taylor is making a difference in our world with a Personal Touch. I’m Rebecca Cressman. Thank you for joining us.
End of interview.
