KALAMAZOO — When he visited Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in June, Police Officer Donald Obermesik was overwhelmed when he saw the devastation from the earthquake that shook the country in January.
Compared to his first visit, before the earthquake, “the biggest difference was probably the volume of people on the streets all the time,” said the Portage man, whose Christian faith has inspired him to volunteer in Haiti. “The first time, most of the people had a hut, a house, or some place that was theirs.
“There were street kids, of course, but now there were people who lost virtually 99.9 percent of their belongings.”
Most streets were still impassable because of rubble.
Some things have improved, but not many, said Keith Mumma, national director of the Kalamazoo-based International Child Care, who returned Nov. 3 from a trip to Haiti.
“It’s moving slow,” Mumma said. “Buildings are coming down. Not as many new buildings are going up yet, but land is being cleared for new buildings.
“Traveling around Port-au-Prince, there’s still a lot of buildings that need to come down that have been damaged in the earthquake. It’s hard, because the country didn’t have a lot of funds to begin with. There’s no insurance, so they’re gonna need a lot of international help to get the land cleared and new buildings up.”
Mumma said most of the donations from the U.S. still haven’t reached Haiti. “There’s a great need down there, and there’s a lot of red tape that’s holding the money up,” he said. “There are still about a million and a half people living in tents.”
Mumma travels to Haiti about once a month, usually to take individuals down to show them the work of ICC or to hold meetings with its international board.
ICC has two hospitals and 127 clinics in Haiti, but 80 percent of its flagship facility, Grace Children’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, was destroyed in the earthquake.
“We’re in the process of demolishing that, and we’re in a capital campaign to rebuild,” Mumma said. “We’ve put up transitional buildings. Up until about this point, we were working out of tents on our hospital grounds. Now, with the transitional buildings up, we can get the clinics back indoors and finish demolishing the area in the hospital zone so we can start rebuilding.”
ICC was formed 43 years ago after the Snavley family from Indiana stopped in Haiti while on vacation. They ventured out of the tourist area and were so moved by the children who were sick and dying from tuberculosis that they sold their farm and moved to Haiti with their three children.
They started a clinic, and “kids started getting better, and that little 20-bed clinic in the slum area of Port-au-Prince grew into a 200-bed hospital,” Mumma said.
“Over the years, the treatment has changed for TB, though, where we can do more on an outpatient basis, so the number of beds went down to about 60.”
But the organization has branched out into other areas. “We treat all childhood diseases, we do micro loans, we do literacy programs, we have maternal health programs,” Mumma said. “We have one of the best eye clinics in the Caribbean right now. We branched out quite a bit.”
The staff in Haiti is 100 percent Haitian, Mumma said. But “we are looking for (American) teams, especially of eye doctors, right now to travel to Haiti,” he said. “Surgeons, ophthalmologists, optometrists, pharmacists.
“The eye clinic is run by a Haitian ophthalmologist, but she needs help with the surgery. If people are skilled in cataracts or surgery like that, we have two surgical rooms.”
Providing clean water
Mumma said “the health of the Haitian children is the big goal.”
“It used to be TB was the No. 1 cause of death in Haiti,” he said. “Now it’s as simple as bad water. Dysentery is the No. 1 cause of death.
“On top of all the treatments we’re doing and vaccinations for childhood diseases and the education we do there for health, we’re also partnering with Rotary on supplying Haiti with clean water,” Mumma said. “We’re doing that through bio sand filters.”
Cholera, a bacterial disease that, according to news reports, has recently killed more than 500 people in Haiti, is typically contracted from infected water supplies.
ICC has identified about 125 schools, located near clinics, where the filters will be set up. Each filter will serve about 75 students.
Loving ‘God’s work’
While Mumma has been involved with ICC for 20 years, he was named director two years ago. He then moved the headquarters from Columbus, Ohio, to Kalamazoo.
“I was commuting to Columbus and back,” he said. “I changed it from a five-hour commute to about a five-minute commute for me.”
ICC is independent, but “I go to the Stockbridge United Methodist Church, which is one of our largest donors,” he said.
Most volunteers, such as Obermesik, are drawn by the desire to do God’s work. “You ask, what can I bring to this mission?” Obermesik said. “I pray, ‘Lord you’ve got to guide me and open doors.’ You pray and see where God guides you.
“Keith is an inspiration to me. You watch him work and you see the difference between forcing yourself to do something and truly loving doing God’s work.”
While his first trip to Haiti was with ICC, his second one was with the Minnesota-based Short-Term Evangelical Missions International, and he was accompanied by his oldest daughter, Ariel, a pre-med student at Western Michigan University.
“I prayed a lot,” he said. “I was looking for a medical mission for her and went online, bracketing that time, and came up with STEM.”
They worked in a village in the mountains. “We helped clear land and build a church, and we did work in two medical mobile clinics,” he said.
The roads in the mountainous region were still impassable, so machinery couldn’t reach the collapsed buildings. Villagers had to break up the rubble with sledgehammers, then load it onto wheelbarrows to take to an open road for pickup, he said.
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