The Longest House Call

It took 1.5 hours to make the 700-mile trip from Miami, Florida, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The trip from Port-au-Prince to Les Cayes, approximately 110 miles on a paved road, took 4 hours. After spending the night in Les Cayes, we embarked in our four-wheel-drive vehicles on the 50-mile, 5-hour journey across the mountainous spine of Haiti's southern peninsula to the coastal village of Pestel. The next morning, a Haitian captain took us in a wooden sailboat to Anse St. Marceau, Au Basse, and Z'Etoit. These villages, just to the east of Pestel, are accessible only by boat. It took 50 hours to travel the almost 900 miles to Z'Etoit, our furthest destination.

We were visiting Haiti as part of Project Medishare. Miami, Florida, has strong ties to Haiti because of its well-established Haitian-American community. The University of Miami has several Haitian-American faculty members and students and a strong commitment to volunteerism and community service. After the embargo on Haiti was lifted, concerned physicians and nurses formed Project Medishare to provide medical equipment and supplies and to establish educational exchange programs to revive the health care system of the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

In the mountains of Haiti, there are few distinct villages. The people live in homes constructed of thatched and woven palm fronds, spread throughout the countryside and connected by footpaths. Almost all of the children we passed on the road showed signs of malnutrition: red hair and swollen bellies. The …