ARTICLE - MIAMI HEAT

Annuelle St. Jean had her left leg amputated below the knee after the earthquake. She now lives in the Adventist refuge camp in the Delmas 31 area. Saturday was a special day for her. It was the day that she went to the University of Miami/Project Medishare Tent Hospital to get fitted for her prosthesis. She also got the opportunity to meet members of the Miami Heat basketball organization and showed off walking on her "new leg" for the first time. They gave her a flag as a memento. Sunday she visited us here at Coram Deo. You can't even tell she has a prosthesis when she stands. Pray that many other people like Annuelle will be able to receive artificial limbs through the efforts of the University of Miami and Project Medishare. Following are a couple of articles about the Miami Heat visit and their efforts to help.

HEAT'S TRIP TO HAITI IS HARROWING, HOPEFUL
(Sun Sentinel) - By Ethan J. Skolnick

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — So what will be the easiest to forget?

A baby, born at 30 weeks, nestled between Erik Spoelstra's forefinger and middle finger? The mothers trying to hand over their children? A former soccer coach's first sprint on his prosthetic?

Because it sure seems like it has been too easy, for too many, to forget Haiti.

"Many of the people who were here, the weeks after the earthquake …," Alonzo Mourning said Saturday afternoon at the Project Medishare field hospital. "They're gone."

That's why the former Heat center was here, again, for a seventh time since the Jan. 12 disaster.

That's why the Heat sent a contingent with him, one that included Spoelstra, former guard Tim Hardaway and broadcaster Eric Reid. That's why some Dolphins alumni visited a month ago, distributing tents at this same field hospital. This is the best of what our sports organizations do, considering their unique position, their ability to mobilize the masses to aid those enduring the worst of circumstances.

As people are in Haiti.

Still.

So that's what we came to see Saturday…what we were no longer seeing nightly on CNN. The trip started at Miami International Airport, with a flight with Heat personnel, plus other media, doctors, nurses, volunteers. One hundred minutes on a Vision Airlines jet, followed by a five-minute bus ride, past guards with machetes, to the field hospital where Project Medishare, solely on the strength of donations, has treated more than 20,000 patients and conducted more than 5,000 major surgical procedures since the earthquake.

This is where you'll find a cluster of large tents, including one in which as many as 170 staffers and volunteers at a time try to sleep off 12-hour shifts, often in the presence of mosquitoes and tarantulas, sometimes after receiving IVs to treat heat exhaustion, sometimes without a working generator, sometimes for a week…sometimes for much longer.

"Those are my heroes," Mourning said. "Those who sacrifice their lives and their time to come over here and make sure the lives of others are better."

Like the life of Wilfrid Macena. He was a soccer coach. A wall fell on his leg. Project Medishare estimates that up to 4,500 Haitians lost limbs as a result of the earthquake, matching the American numbers of the entire Vietnam War. The amputees also lost their standing in Haitian society; there's a stigma against amputation; you must have done something to anger the spirits.

But this 25-year-old doesn't look like he could anger anyone, or anything.

Not with that smile. And it only grows as he springs back and forth and back again, on the wooden boards that serve as a bridge over the rocks between the tents, on the prosthetic that pokes out of his denim shorts and fits snugly in his New Balance sneaker. It's enough to inspire others, and thus earn his keep — Project Medishare has hired him as an occupational therapist.

"I never thought I would walk," Macena said. "Then I tried and tried and then I walked."

So maybe, with help like this, there's hope that Haiti can at least crawl again. It would help if Project Medishare's pleas for federal funding — or Mourning's pleas for a private benefactor to bankroll a permanent critical care facility for the entire Caribbean — are heard. There's only so long you can do so much with so little. Just enter the crowded pedriatics tent, made bearable only by cheery children's drawings. To the left, behind just a flap, the ICU. In the back, the operating room, its few tables built on crates.

Privacy, sterility…in Haiti, these concepts seem like fantasy.

Misery, however, always has its place.

Rudy Gay, the Memphis Grizzlies forward, made the trip, as well as a companion, Ecko Wray. A mother handed Wray her baby.

"I thought she just wanted me to hold it," Wray said.

She wanted Wray to have it. Other women on the tour experienced the same.

"You feel so bad, but what are you gonna do?" Wray asked.

You notice. Maybe you give. That's what the Heat, ShelterBox, Target and City Furniture did Saturday. The Heat presented a $25,000 check to Project Medishare. The other entities provided shelter and goods. Then, saluted by two locals waving a Heat flag, the buses left, traveling on a rocky road for a couple of miles. Security concerns wouldn't allow the buses to go further. They went plenty far enough. Past what passes for housing — rows of tents and tarps practically stacked upon each other. Past the armed U.N. presence in Land Rovers. Past dozens of people with sleeves dangling at their sides. Past what were surely remains under rubble.

Through the makeshift alley markets selling ratty clothing and obsolete technology.

Finally, through the gate into the Bernard Mevs Project Medishare Center. Once a hotel, it became a hospital, then went bankrupt. After structurally surviving the earthquake, it can now be a sanctuary. Saturday night, after this tour, Project Medishare began moving patients from under tents to under the hospital's real roofs. The four buildings will soon have second floors, and room for 90 beds.Those buildings already have Hurricanes colors (orange and green), fitting because the University of Miami gives so many people to Medishare.

"You guys are working miracles, man," Mourning told the contractor. "This is progress. This is beautiful."

This is Haiti.

This is unforgettable.