Our first investigative target in Haiti after leaving the airport was a new women's clinic made possible through the efforts of many people collaborating from San Francisco to Boston to some wonderful Haitians themselves, including one very cool Haitian movie star.

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On February 4th independent journalist Georgianne Nienaber and I flew into Haiti for a five day whirlwind investigative tour led by our driver and "fixer", Andre Paultre, a journalist's best friend in Haiti. This is the second piece in my series, "Haitian Winter".

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We left you peering out the window of our (Andre's actually) Toyota 4Runner in Part One, in my first return to Port-au-Prince since last May, so hold on, we have a ways to go still to get to our destination:

What has changed since my last trip? One thing you see are more signs of reconstruction, although only the surface has been scratched thus far, and only something like 5% of all the earthquake rubble in Haiti has been removed, if that much. Here is one building going up:

But much of Port-au-Prince and its outlaying suburbs still consists of shanty towns and tents:

But that is not to say that there is not plenty of enterprise in Haiti. In fact everyone has to hustle to survive, so there are small businesses everywhere, whether entrepreneurs have roofs over their heads or not. Indeed, omnipresent open markets are one of the key hallmarks of Haitian society.

And Haitians, it seems, particularly in the metropolitan centers, are always on the go, whether it be by the public taxis called Tap-taps, or by the myriad motor scooters flying out of nowhere everywhere, or as you will see later, by horse or donkey.

Below, several Haitians climbing in or out of a Tap-tap:

There are trucks galore everywhere as well:

It is a wonder that everything keeps running, with so many shortages in Haiti. Well, almost everything:

Now we are getting closer to our destination:

Really close:

Finally, our destination:

This is the refurbished annex compound of nearby, earthquake-damaged Grace Children's Hospital, whose inpatient clinic was condemned because of the Great Quake and later demolished, although, fortunately, the same fate did not befall the entire hospital, which lay caddy-corner across the street behind me as I was taking this picture. Grace Children's was founded in 1967 as the flagship ministry of ICC or International Child Care, and, as the name implies, the hospital specializes in the care of children, particularly the treatment of  tuberculosis (TB), and, because it is so important to children's health in Port-au-Prince, efforts are already well underway to rebuild and even expand it.

Moreover, ICC medical personnel, dauntless of the January 12, 2010 earthquake that rocked the entire city and most of the country, continued to work out of tents on the campus to provide what services they could in any way they could during and after the disaster. And fortunately the hospital's satellites have also continued to function in various ways. What we are looking at above is actually an outpatient clinic, although it too suffered damage. However, generous donations to Grace Children's have helped restore and expand it as well:

Yes, you are reading the words "Hockey for Haiti", and this does not refer to field hockey, but ice hockey. This plaque actually acknowledges an ongoing program set up by the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) and World Vision Canada to help rebuild Grace Children's Hospital. From the World Vision Canada website:

Devastated in the January 12 earthquake, Grace Children's Hospital is one of Haiti's leading pediatric hospitals for the treatment of children with tuberculosis (TB) and other respiratory diseases.

Hockey for Haiti was started by Haitian-Canadian NHL veteran Georges Laraque. Proceeds will help rebuild the hospital, restoring hope, dignity and good health to the children and families of Haiti.

To encourage fan participation, the NHLPA launched an online auction of 140 Olympic hockey jerseys worn by NHLPA members from 12 countries in the 2010 Olympics, including jerseys from Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews and Nick Lidstrom. For more information, visit  http://www.nhlpa.com/Giving-Back/Hockey-For-Haiti/

But we were not here today to look at the outpatient clinic primarily. Georgianne had really come to interview this man, Handy Tilbert, about a new women's clinic half-hidden behind the outpatient clinic:


Meet Jean "Handy" Tilbert

Handy Tilbert is a celebrity in Haiti. Haitians know him for such artistic endeavors as this:


Yes, Handy was the male lead in Barikad, a tale of forbidden love crossing the often strict class and cultural lines in Haiti. This and other films have won him widespread popularity, not to mention adoration from his female fans. He was also assistant director of another Haitian film,  I Love You Annie , so he has been expanding his skills in film-making to both sides of the camera, even establishing his own film studio.

The film industry was hammered by the earthquake. In fact Handy was teaching a class on video production when it hit, forcing him and his class into the street. And at that moment, his horizons began to change. Of course the first thing he did was race to his mother's house in Petionville to check on his daughter and other relatives (his own house is actually in the mountains of Thomassin), and then, after finding everyone and even the house still in tact, he had to strategize. As friend and sometimes employer, freelance journalist Frank Thorp put it in his blog, On the Goat Path :

He quickly thought about his options, figured out his next move, and told his family to follow him.  After the earthquake everyone who wasn't digging out friends or family members was simply looking for a safe, open area to stay.  The medians of streets were filled with people with nowhere to go, so an alternative had to be found.  The golf course at the Petionville Club was the first thing that came to mind.  It was open, safe, and clean, and let's be honest, there's no chance that a building can fall on you while sitting on one of the fairways of PAP's only golf destination.

The family walked the short distance to the course, put down the possessions they carried with them, and relaxed for the first time all night.  Handy looked around, and there was no one else around.  They were the only ones on the golf course, but in just a few days more than 40,000 displaced Haitians would be calling this their home in what is now the largest tent city in Haiti.  They slept through the night, and when they woke up, others had taken his cue and filtered in to spend a night filled with screams and sorrow on the lush grasses that have now been trampled to dirt and mud. (source)

Ironically, this is the same camp that another actor, Sean Penn, became manager of under the auspices of the J/P Haitian Relief Organization sometime later.

Handy, with his own movie studio destroyed, found himself initially working for the ongoing NBC News crews covering Haiti as their "go-to guy" - driver, translator, "fixer", and a man who seems to know everyone in Haiti, rich or poor, important or everyday. Eventually, however, he became more and more involved in straight-out humanitarian relief work, until he is now the director of the new women's clinic we had come to investigate, and he was eager to show us around this new addition to the annex complex.

The first thing Handy did was show us around the outpatient clinic a bit on the way back to the women's clinic. Here is the waiting room:

And in the rear is actually a 40-foot shipping container that has converted to a small children's clinic. Amazing what you can do with shipping containers, as you will continue to see!

Here are two of the staff at work at the front deck:

Handy next led us back to the actual women's clinic in the rear, a bit small, but a needed addition to heathcare in Port-au-Prince. It has only been open since November, with an official inaugural ceremony following this past December:

If you look more closely at the side of the container directly in the rear, just beyond the awning, you can see the acronym C2C:

In front is one of the women's clinic staff. The acronym beyond him and to the right, C2C, actually stands for Containers to Clinics , and there is a story here, because Containers to Clinics is actually a Boston area-based (Dover) nonprofit whose mission is to transform used shipping containers into mobile medical clinics and then ship them off to areas of the world in dire need of such innovative services:

The ubiquitous shipping container--there are an estimated 20-plus million containers worldwide that are out of use--lends itself to sustainable, modular adaptive reuse. In 2009, C2C developed a prototype with the pro bono help of San Francisco--based architecture firm Anshen + Allen and modular builder Stack Design Build. The resulting L-shaped mobile clinic, made from two containers with footprints of 8 feet by 20 feet each, includes two exam rooms, a waiting room, diagnostic lab, and pharmacy.

"The clinics are designed as a kit of parts--so that they can be shipped in several different configurations" depending on end user needs, says Ryan Campbell, associate and senior project coordinator at Anshen + Allen who spearheaded the design effort. Sustainable features in the upcycled containers include operable doors and windows that provide natural ventilation, while solar-powered fans draw stale air through wall vents. An overarching fabric canopy shades an outdoor courtyard as well as the containers themselves, which are coated with highly reflective paint to further reduce heat gain. In each unit, an inverter stores energy for use during power outages--common in rural areas and disaster zones--and a backup generator ensures continuous operation of water pumps and lights.

While C2C relied on donated materials that were selected for their durability and cleanability in order to finish the first batch of interiors, Campbell hopes future versions will incorporate greener flooring and wallcoverings. In addition, future models may be modified to run on renewable energies such as solar or wind power. Every unit, however, will continue to have a backup generator for medical equipment and storage refrigerators. (source)

After the earthquake hit, C2C actually decided to sent the prototype itself to Grace Children's Hospital, with plans to send two more of these to Haiti later. Glad to see that my old home town, San Francisco, named after that great channel of healing love, St Francis of Assisi, could lend several of its businesses to this suddenly East Coast-West Coast humanitarian enterprise.

Clearly you can begin to see the L-shaped clinic design in the above photos, but now let's take a closer look:

Above we see Georgianne to the right taking notes as Handy, on the left, answers questions while Andre, back toward us, listens on. The 20-foot container on the left with the large red cross is the OBGYN double examination room, while the container to the right is the lab and pharmacy. Since this is later in the day, the patients, who would be waiting on the blue benches beneath the awning, have already been seen.

Let's step inside each container now, starting with the one on the left:

As you walk in, you are immediately in the pharmacy, where two of the medical staff are awaiting the next patient or prescription order:

In the next room is the small but well-equipped lab:

Stepping outside, we move on to the examination container:

We are now inside the large exam room; behind me is a smaller, more private exam room that I didn't happen to get a photo of:

This is the OBY/GN specialist, Dr. Yvon Justin, graduate of the State University of Haiti. He and Handy explained to us how they had been initially seeing 35 or so patients a day, but now they are beginning to treat 40 to 45 patients a day.

Handy, now standing, and the doctor also explain that in an emergency, they are actually equipped to deliver a baby. 

A closeup of Dr. Justin:

Back outside I found another 20-foot container, donated to the clinic by Americare, this one strictly for storage:

And a really self-sufficient clinic would be incomplete without its own medical-waste incinerator:

This beige edifice, the incinerator, was donated by UNICEF to the MSPP, the Haitian Ministry of Health, who in turn donated it to the clinic.

The women's clinic tour basically over, we beat a slow retreat back to the outpatient clinic as Georgianne, who has her own notes on all this, continued to ask Handy questions, stopping as well to talk to several of the patients sitting in the outpatient waiting area, before we finally said our goodbyes to one of the Handiest guys in Port-au-Prince, Jean "H" Tilbert and headed for the parking lot. It had been inspiring to meet such dedicated people and to know that life for Haiti's women had been made a little better through hands across the ocean working in tandem with the talented hands of local Haitians:

and back out on the crowded and colorful streets of Port-au-Prince:

Authors Bio:
I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not a pacifist, nor do I believe in peace at any price, which is no peace at all but only delays inevitable conflict. There are times when the world must act. Planetary consciousness is evolving, but there are many retrograde forces that would drag us back down.

I have also written one book, a combination of poetry, photography and essays entitled "Post Katrina Blues", my reflections on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans two years after Katrina struck. Go to the store at http://sanfranciscobaypress.com/ to purchase. And I also have a blog called Plutonian Mac.