Violence in the Slum Post author--September 2015

John-Wood's Mother--September 2015

Why was this young Haitian mom crying today? 

Was it because her 4 month old baby named John-Wood was sick? No, I don’t think so. Haitian moms from the slum are used to sick babies.

This mom had brought John-Wood to pediatric clinic today saying that for four days he had fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and a cough. These complaints are usual and customary in our clinic in Cite Soleil.

When I examined John-Wood he definitely was not as active as he should have been but he did try to smile at me on one occasion. He was febrile and his left lung was full of rice crispy sounds which sounded like pneumonia. He was also moderately dehydrated from his gastroenteritis. 

I explained to his mom that John-Wood needed to be hospitalized because he was quite ill. She shook her head “yes” while I quickly  wrote the “Fiche de Reference” to a well known children’s hospital in Port-au-Prince.  She agreed to take him by public transportation to this hospital. Her quick agreement made me happy and she seemed like the type that would do this. I stressed the importance of taking John-Wood today and not tomorrow due to his age and the severity of his condition. She agreed.

A while later,  while I was packing up to leave clinic,  I looked up and this mother was standing in my office doorway looking frantic and crying. She was holding John-Wood. I asked her what was wrong and she said that someone had stolen his towel that she had wrapped him in to carry him through the slum and to the clinic. 

These towels are important because they help protect infants from the sun, dust, exhaust, and stares of others. She said that another mother  had stolen it.

I quickly looked in my office and it was not there. The towel was missing  and mom was distraught. 

Gary Haugen’s book “The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence” delves into great detail the enormous toll that violence reaps on the poor of every society. 

Hagen explains the types of violence the poor feel every day which paralyzes them and helps keep them poor.  They usually do not have the help of the local police and quite often the police work against them. 

John-Wood’s mother did not get raped today in Soleil. She did not get beaten up. She may have had to pay the local gang leader a little extra for stolen electricity to light up her one light bulb in her hellish shack. But her babies wrap was stolen in clinic today and that was tearing this mother up. 

Haugen writes:

“But, the world overwhelmingly does not know that endemic to being poor is a vulnerability to violence, or the way violence is, right now, catastrophically crushing the global poor. As a result, the world is not getting busy trying to stop it. And, in a perfect tragedy, the failure to address that violence is actually devastating much of the other things good people are seeking to do to assist them.

“In the lives of the poor, violence has the power to destroy everything— and is unstopped by our other responses to their poverty.”

Another mother seeing the obvious distress in front of her kindly gave a  clean white towel to cover the very ill John-Wood as his mother finally carried him out of the clinic and into the filthy streets of Soleil. This kind act helped dry her tears.

John-Wood and his mother are definite victims of many violent acts here in Soleil…some are just larger and more destructive acts than others. 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org