The Epidemic of Despair--February 2016

 

The Epidemic of Despair--February 2016

Jean Wendy--Photo by John Carroll

I have often wondered if my posts about Haiti are worthwhile. I am sure some friends and family of mine don’t read my posts. Are the posts too political or do they make them feel uncomfortable? Do they feel there is no hope? What am I accomplishing when THEY won’t even read or comment? Or like it? Or share it? Maybe not much.

I recently posted a photo about a blind and deaf toddler named Jean-Wendy as he lay in the dirt alone in a refugee camp in Anse-a-Pitres. And I described a baby from his camp who died needlessly of shock from cholera in the adjacent river bed very near Jean-Wendy.

Should I have not shown Jean-Wendy in his misery? Should I have not written about either of these young refugees? Should we not know about them or the thousands of other people of Haitian descent who have been evicted from the Dominican Republic during the past year?

Is this worse than showing the photo of the drowned three-year-old Syrian refugee boy named Alan Kurdi? His pathetic lifeless body was lying on the beach and was seen by people all over the world. He and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe last year by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Alan’s death and his photograph made international headlines and the wider refugee crisis immediately became “an issue”.

At what point to do we cross the line (or is there a line?) with exposing the hardships of the Jean-Wendys and the Alan Kurdis?

This week’s New England Journal of Medicine has an article, “The Hell of Syria’s Field Hospitals”. It is written by Dr. Samer Attar who has volunteered in Syria during the past few years.

Dr. Attar writes:

“What do we tell the family whose daughter died coughing and choking on her own blood? The bleeding wouldn’t stop; the blood pooled on the floor. No matter how many lines and tubes we placed, we couldn’t save her.

“How do we console the father whose 13-year-old son’s skull was blown open above his right ear? When I saw the boy, his exposed brain was covered with gauze and his eyes were swollen shut. He winced and grimaced now and then in response to pain, but he did not last very long.”

Paragraph after paragraph in Attar’s article are like these two. Are his words too graphic for us, his readers, as he describes the carnage from unguided barrel bombs unleashed by the Syrian government on its own innocent children?

The Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince is destitute, dirty, and dangerous.  And it is home to thousands of people caught in the massive problem of urbanization. Should I not photograph the slum or write about it?  Should the problems of the Haitian slum be hidden? Is this topic all too messy for social media? Do we not want our ’friends” seeing this atrocity in real-time?  Should suffering in the slum be hidden or should it be shared?

In my opinion, horrible poverty makes people make horrible choices. Should I not show photos of babies who have been abandoned by their desperate mothers in Haiti’s slum? Six-month-old babies with wrinkled skin and listless faces—is this too much for us to see? But if we don’t see their pain how are we to know? And if we don’t know poverty, and more importantly its causes, poverty gets a free ride once again.

Photo by John Carroll

How about barefoot black men covered in sweat, acting as mules, and pulling unbelievable weight on their backs through Haiti’s hot streets to make a few pennies? These men and their labor are very painful to look at but should they not be seen? Should we not know about them or Haiti’s unemployment rate?

Should I not show breast cancer eating away the chest of Haitian women because they don’t have basic health care? Should you not see their eyes telling you they hurt and are dying without effective pain medication? Should I be the only one that sees this patient and have to hide this atrocity in my heart?  Does this patient have anything to teach our world or is her pain and death just to be invisible? Can we learn anything from her demise so fewer women have to suffer in the future?

Ferna and Mom, 2006 (Photo by John Carroll)

Ten years ago there was a baby girl named Ferna at a hospital in Port-au-Prince who had a correctable congenital heart condition. She had been examined by multiple Haitian and American doctors. But no one did anything practical for Ferna. And she died. Should no one see her mother as she wailed in despair at her daughter’s death. Should this not be known? Should Haiti’s lack of medical infrastructure be hushed up?

Ferna's Mom--2006 (Photo by John Carroll)

Should I not post Jackson Jean-Baptiste’s handwritten letter to the nuns at OSF begging for his life after he was refused care by them? Is this too hard for us to see our Catholic Hospital in Peoria turning their back on dying Jackson and many others like him? Are we too busy to know about this? Or can there be other reasons for not wanting to know?

I clearly remember presenting a slide show at a hospital for Haitian Hearts. The idea was to raise awareness as well as funds for Haitian children who needed heart surgery. During my presentation, I looked behind me and an administrator was sitting at the end of the table looking ninety degrees away from the slide show. He could not force himself to look at my slides of suffering Haitian kids who needed their hearts operated. After the presentation he told me that my slides were too graphic and advised me to tone them down in the future. I found this amazing but his reaction made more sense later when he was caught attempting to divert money away from these very kids.

But maybe the crooked administrator was right in a way. No one gets excited in an epidemic of despair.

I look at Haiti’s problems as solvable. But there is no chance at solving a problem if we don’t acknowledge and document that a problem exists. My challenge and my goal is to embrace the reader and not cross the line which moves with each person. Despair is a victory for hate. I don’t want to make it easy for despair to win.

 John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org

7 thoughts on “Epidemic of Despair?”

1. Gail Grady

2. says:

3. June 16, 2016 at 11:25 am
   John, as always I find your words spot on. I feel strongly that pictures are the only way to truly expose the injustices our Haitian brothers and sisters face day in and day out. Our words are not sufficient. No words can ever depict the suffering, the anguish, the sweat, the despair. Just as no words can capture the joy, compassion and love of these people either.
   Those who can’t look at your pictures do not want to look. They are not ready to go where they’d need to go after seeing. They are not ready to do what they’d need to do after witnessing the atrocities. Their hearts are hardened. So we are faced with the task of lifting them in prayer, for God alone can open their hearts and minds. You, my friend, have cracked their armor.
   Reply

1. Mary Lee Dorough

2. says:

3. June 16, 2016 at 10:01 pm
   Gail, you said it so well in your response to this blog! Have been going on medical missions for 13 years. Sometimes there are just no words…no words.
   Reply

4. Diane Vespa

5. says:

6. June 16, 2016 at 5:54 pm
   John – I think you moderate appropriately. It is what it is. People are so unaware of what is taking place just a few hundred miles from our shoes. Maybe some day it will begin to sink in. I have never felt any of your photos or words were over the top, and if so, so be it. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Let's try to bring more and more people on board to help financially and spiritually. Thank God for everything you and Maria do. You are one of the few blessings in their lives. As always, we are here for you. Some day I hope we can host a heart patient.
   Reply

7. Phoebe

8. says:

9. June 17, 2016 at 2:07 pm
   North America needs to look at what is happening in other places like this. It brings enormous and essential perspective suffering. The epidemic of despair is actually in North America. The “problems” over here have become so chronic that mental psychoses and pathologies have completely taken over our social systems. We now have legal “rights” to practice things that will end in suicide. By you unveiling the reality of what goes on in Haiti, people in North America at least have the fleeting opportunity to climb out of themselves for a moment to consider that maybe their focus is a little off. So, thank you. Keep writing please!!?
   Reply

10. David Way

11. says:

12. June 26, 2016 at 11:04 pm
    John, thanks for your post. We need to see and hear these kinds of stories. But let me answer some of your questions – even if they may likely have been rhetorical. “Are my photos and writing too graphic? …Is the reader paralyzed into doing nothing? …Are we too busy to know about this? Or can there be other reasons for not wanting to know?” I’ll answer in a roundabout way – sorry if I ramble. After the first few trips I took to Haiti I found myself starting to become very cynical and jaded to American society in general – so much materialism, so much self-centeredness, so many petty concerns, etc. I saw some of the suffering in Haiti (though not to the extent that you’ve experienced) and I became upset with people here in the US and their “problems” to the point where I had this rather condescending view of how we as Americans have no idea what suffering is. But to cut to the chase, as I eventually learned to reach out to people here in the US as well as in Haiti, I came to realize that I can’t look in the face of a woman dying of cancer and say that she doesn’t know what suffering is just because she lives in America. Even wealthy Americans wail in despair when their children die despite having the best medical care in the world – is their suffering any less intense because of the size of their bank account? I’m under no delusion that there’s not a difference between Haiti and America – certainly, the scale of suffering is much greater in Haiti and the magnitude of completely preventable tragedies is disgustingly high. But to get to those other reasons you asked about… Many Americans I know are nearly overwhelmed by all the things weighing them down (whether petty or true struggles like cancer or the death of a child). A song I’ve heard played on the radio sums up the condition of many people I know – some of its lyrics are “I’m tired, I’m worn, my heart is heavy from the work it takes to keep on breathing… my soul feels crushed by the weight of this world.” People are overloaded with tragedies – both in their own lives, the lives of those around them and all the images like those of Alan Kurdis and Jean-Wendys. Many of these people do help others in various parts of the world in various ways but each of us can only do so much and after that, at some point you simply have to shut out things beyond the scope of where you can have a direct impact or it just becomes too much to handle. The song leads into the chorus with what I feel is the heart’s cry of many people today: “So I cry out with all that I have left: Let me see redemption win, let me know the struggle ends… I want to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life and all that’s dead inside can be reborn, ’cause I’m worn.” Yes, we need to hear of the problems out there and we need to see some pictures to get the message across but I can’t help but think your message would have greater impact if you blended in more of the good along with the tragedies. You showed the picture of the wailing mother whose child died – but where is the picture of the mother rejoicing that you helped save her child? You show the kids who are starving or abandoned but where are the ones someone found in this condition and were helped into a better life? So many people feel so beaten down that they can’t endure much more tragedy being put before them. So maybe make the pictures of the tragedies fewer in number and try to always balance them with pictures of the potential hope available. I’ve only sporadically checked in on your blog because I have so many things I read about Haiti and elsewhere so maybe you have balanced your message overall but I’ve read at least some of your posts and come away rather glum. That’s not all bad because sometimes I’m apt to overplay the good that I see being done in Haiti and start to deceive myself about the scope of the struggles there, but more people are likely to follow if you shorten the focus on the struggle and put greater emphasis on the hope – we need to see the despair to be spurred into action but we need to see some success and some hope so the despair doesn’t make us block it out. Thanks for the work you are doing – I too believe that Haiti’s problems are solvable and I hope (perhaps foolishly) to live to see the day when many of those problems are gone!
    Reply

1. John Carroll, MD

2. says:

3. June 30, 2016 at 8:06 pm
   Dear David,
   Thank you for your heartfelt comment. I agree with everything you wrote.
   Best,
   john
   Reply

13. Wanda J Martinelli

14. says:

15. July 1, 2016 at 6:21 pm
    Dear John, Who knows more than Someone like You, the terrible things that are going on in Haiti? Pictures are always better than words even though they are hard to see. Don’t stop sending them and God Bless You for all you do!
    Reply

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Jean Wendy 2016 (Photo by John Carroll)