1977 - Our first year in Haiti

In January (6 months after arriving in Haiti) all the missionaries went to La Pointe on the north coast to our hospital complex for meetings concerning the new constitution for the UEBH, the Haitian mission organization, we work with. At that time the missionaries turned over the work to Haitian leadership and we as missionaries worked under the UEBH leadership structure from that point on. It was a major step in the work here.

DAVID’S FIRST SHOULDER INJURY -- David went with a group of others missionaries out to the northwest on a borrowed motorcycle one day to seeing the progress on a water project being done there. I stayed back at La Pointe with the girls. Late in the day someone came over to the place we were staying to tell me there had been a motorcycle accident and David was injured. He was in a lot of pain when they got him back to La Pointe and our missionary nurses took care of him. Shirley took an x-ray of David’s shoulder and then got out her orthopedic text books and tried to match up his x-ray with a picture in the book. She wrapped up his shoulder and gave him pain meds. The next morning we left to drive down to Port-au-Prince, filled him full of pain meds and started out over incredibly horrible roads and river crossings. We got as far as St. Marc and Martha Straubel gave more pain shots to help him make it to Port. We dropped the girls off with Mom and Dad Schmid in St. Marc. Tom Sykes was on a motorcycle and he drove in ahead of us to contact an orthopedic doctor and we went straight to the hospital in Port. That was my introduction of hospital stays in Haiti. I stayed in his room on a cot and was expected to care for him. I drove to and from the campus to eat and get cleaned up. I hadn’t driven in Port before and wasn’t looking forward to it but Dad Schmid gave me their Green Subaru to drive and gave me directions how to get to and from the hospital. Trust me I paid close attention and remember everything he told me including which intersections were dangerous. For a long time that was the only route I knew in Port. At least it got me over my fear of driving in this crazy place.

The doctor was going to put a pin in the shoulder but couldn’t so they wired it together. That wire broke sometime in the last 33 years. When he dislocated his shoulder and tore the rotator cuff during Hurricane Hannah last September necessitating surgery when we were in the states earlier this year, they took out the pieces of that original wire. .

One of many surprises in store for me in the medical system here besides staying in the room with him was when the doctor told me to go out and buy muslin and other materials so they could wrap the shoulder up and make a sling. Another surprise that when they brought him “liver and onions” for breakfast one day. I knew I wasn't in little DuBois, PA anymore.