http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/755843
This Haitian town is singing Canada's praise
Disaster response team's emotions run high as grateful Haitians turn out to thank them
Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter
JACMEL, HAITI–Members of Canada's elite Disaster Assistance Response Team brushed tears from their cheeks Monday after more than 100 people from this town descended on the team's seaside field hospital to give thanks to the Canadians for their help in treating their wounded.
"It's overwhelming," said 30-year-old Cpl. Cheryl Belanger, a medical technician and member of DART who hails from Ottawa.
"To work all day long with people in need and then to end it with them coming out to thank us by singing in the street, it takes you out of the big picture for a moment."
The Canadians arrived in Jacmel last week when much of the town's population was still trapped in their demolished homes.
Today, survivors of the earthquake that reduced Governor General Michaëlle Jean's hometown to rubble are living in tents in the streets.
On Friday the team set up their field hospital on the pier at the base of the downtown core. From there a team of 40 medics have helped treat hundreds of people, including 240 on Monday.
"Today was our busiest day by far," said Maj. Annie Bouchard, the medic overseeing the field hospital, who has been working with a broken hand.
Four days into a deployment that could last 40 days, the major says DART's medical team is already operating near its limits.
"We can't really handle any more (patients) than what we had today," said Bouchard, a native of Quebec City.
"We need NGOs to open up here to give us some relief. We haven't had any deaths in (our field hospital) yet, but we have seen big wounds."
Many of the first foreign aid workers to arrive in Haiti are now rotating out. As DART members treat the wounded on the Jacmel pier, exhausted aid workers just metres away board ships bound for the Dominican Republic.
"We are tired," said French aid worker Lamotte Quenten, heaving his bag over his shoulder and walking onto a military ship waiting for him and 15 other aid workers who had been on the ground for more than a week.
As the first wave of volunteers begins to leave the crisis in Haiti, the mass movement of refugees from Port-au-Prince is only beginning to take its toll on the countryside.
Jacmel, a town on the south coast of Haiti, is not the final destination for most refugees, but it is on the route to some of the country's more rural towns, where refugees have begun to flee.
Bouchard said her team has started to see patients coming in from neighbouring towns including the capital, which remains a four-hour bus ride from Jacmel.
Last week the road from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel, which passes through Leogane (epicentre for the quake that left the capital in ruins), was closed due to damage caused by the tremors, which tore apart the asphalt and left boulders and debris. Now it is lined with a steady flow of buses and trucks of all shapes, colours, sizes and ages carrying refugees from the capital.
Intercity buses are so overloaded with refugees that they pile onto the roofs. The bare feet of refugees dangle over the back of pickup trucks as they climb the hills (also devastated, not by the quake but by a century of deforestation) that divide Port-au-Prince and Jacmel.
In the capital, the streets were chaotic and crowded, even by this city's standards, as refugees moved en masse for roads leading out. With the port and airfield monopolized by foreign aid groups, survivors are travelling by foot, car, truck and bus to escape the devastation.
The city is quickly emptying to the countryside. The government says 150,000 to 200,000 people have left Port-au-Prince, a city that housed 2.5 million Haitians before the earthquake.
As many as 1 million people need to find new shelter, the United Nations estimates, and there aren't enough tents or safe buildings for them.
As poor as the country is, many Haitians have long made a living as agricultural workers in the countryside. Whether that countryside, which lacks the aid resources of the capital, can sustain the influx of domestic refugees remains unclear.
Canadian DART team medical technicians, Master Cpl. Lucie Rouleau, left, and Cpl. Cheryl Belanger join in a tearful embrace after a group of about 100 people from Jacmel sang songs of thanks to the Canadian team.
LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR