This past week I went to Gonaives with two other nurses. We had planned on going from house to house treating the people with flood related sores or infections. As you can see from this photo, many of the areas were still flooded four weeks after the hurricanes ended. This was not the worst part. Almost the entire city of approximately 300,000 people was under three feet of mud that had washed down the mountains. All the buildings, houses, stores and had been left with the mud after the 14 foot flood waters receded. So many people were not in their homes anymore. They had either died in the flooding as most Haitians cannot swim, or they had moved in with someone on higher ground or had left the city completely never to return. This city is lower than sea level and there is no where for the flood waters to go.

A typical side street in Gonaives. You can see the path that the people have trodden down on top of the three feet of mud. What you see piled up on the sides is what people have shoveled out of their homes and businesses. The church where Pasto Juanito Genada has a congregation of over 200 people is totally covered in mud over two feet thick. The floodwaters went up to the rafters. Here you can see the pastor with his little girl Devine Grace. More about the pastor in my next update.
This truck was almost totally buried. Walking through the mud filled streets we saw this scene over and over again. It may take a year to remove all the mud from everywhere. Right now they are removing the mud out of the buildings but there is nowhere to put it. The take it out in wheelbarrows and dump it out into the streets which are already piled high on both sides with the mud from other houses. The second night we were there it poured rain for about an hour or more. The rain will go to the lowest point so those houses with all the mud removed are now filled with water.

The building here is an orphanage that houses 27 children. These children are looked after by Pastor Genada and his wife Rose. The floodwaters rose above the roof and all 27 children went up on the little hut with the tin roof and stayed there for two days in the rain without food or water. Two of the children tried to swim to the church for help. They did not make it to the church but survived by spending the two days and nights clinging desperately to tree branches in a tree nearby the church. They soon realized that no one would be at the church which was totally underwater except for the roof. These children are now taken care of for the time being by Christian Light Ministries in Port Au Prince.

Instead of walking door to door, Pastor Genada organized three clinics in three different areas of town. There we treated around 400 or more women, men and children. The ailments ranged from pain to infections, wounds, puncture wounds from walking without shoes, mumps, scabies, fungal infections to pregnant women looking for any prenatal help they could get. We soon ran out of certain medications. These medications were all donated by Sheri Fausey from Christian Light Ministries.

Skin infections were the worst in the third clinic. Most of the children had scabies and this little child had a bad case of scabies as well as infected ringworm. We were able to treat this child with antibiotics and an anti-fungal cream. There were also many people, children included with urinary infections. A lack of clean water added to this problem. Many of the people waded hours in the contaminated flood waters until they got to a place where they could get on higher ground.

On the way back to Port au Prince from Gonaives, we came across about six United Nation trucks. They were giving out bags of rice. The people were lined up for miles in order to get a precious bag of rice. Some have not eaten much in weeks. Everything inside the houses including food, clothing, utensils were all washed away. You could see some people salvaging cups, cooking pots, sandals out of the mud and washing them. Anything that could be dug out, washed clean in the muddy waters would be laid on the mounds of mud to be sold again to the few people who had money to buy.