Eastern Iowans still flocking to Haiti to help with recovery, medical needs from quake

A day after the devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake flattened much of the most populated areas of Haiti - killing 300,000 and leaving 1.5 million people homeless - Cedar Rapids native Renee Dietrich wasn't sure what the future held for the small country where she lives and works.

“It's already a really poor country. I'm just thinking we're never going to recover,” Dietrich said then.

A year later, Dietrich said the people of Haiti are settling into a “new normal.”

“There's a phrase in Creole that's been going through my head all this time - degaje (pronounced DAY-guh-ZHAY). Basically, it means doing the best you can with what you have. That's how it is here,” said Dietrich, 41, a 1987 graduate of LaSalle High School and a 1991 graduate of the University of Iowa.

The new normal is recovery, rebuilding, continued poverty and disease. Since last fall, an outbreak of cholera has swept Haiti, with estimates of 3,000 dead and 100,000 infected. Recovery and mission teams continue to help as buildings are slowly reconstructed.

As the anniversary of the quake nears, Eastern Iowans who for years have traveled to Haiti for mission work look to the future and continue to help. For many of them, Haiti has an indescribable draw.

“I started going in 2003, and it really got under my skin,” said Dr. Chris Buresh, a clinical assistant professor in the University of Iowa Department of Emergency Medicine and an emergency room doctor at UI Hospitals and Clinics. “I'd been a few other places - to Mexico, India and other places - but for some reason I just couldn't get Haiti out of my head. Every single day I've been thinking about it; there's something about it that sticks with you.”

Buresh, 35, was part of a medical team that had returned from Haiti just days before the earthquake. After the quake, he immediately made plans to return. Within a week, he and many of those in the initial team were back in Haiti.

“Most of us hadn't even unpacked yet,” he said.

He and his team performed emergency medical treatment alongside doctors from the Doctors Without Borders organization.

Before the quake, he'd been helping to create a health care system in rural areas of Haiti that are inaccessible by road. That work is even more important now.

“A good chunk of the population lives a good five- to six-hour walk from the road, and we're trying to get to those folks,” he said.

He was scheduled to leave Friday for his first trip since August.

Stephen Schmitz, 55, of Cedar Rapids, will make his eighth trip to Haiti later this month and his second since the earthquake. As program director for Catholic Charities, he keeps in touch with the many parishes throughout the diocese whose members travel to Haiti, as well as with sister parishes in Haiti.

He'll be traveling with a medical team as well, but his group will be near Dietrich and the three boys' homes for whom she works.

“The immediate response was kind of like a trauma center,” he said of the initial recovery efforts after the quake. “Since that time it's been a rebuilding process. Now it's a more significant effort with restructuring and rebuilding.”

All of it, Dietrich said, takes money.

Because Haiti is among the poorest countries in the world, all its resources must be brought in from other areas, making them expensive to purchase.

Having more mission workers come to Haiti is a good step forward.

“That's what's going to take us into the future,” she said, “when people can come and see what our needs are.”