Thursday, November 26, 2009
Shelly Sims, administrator of the Caldwell County Health Department, will leave in January for her 11th mission trip to Haiti. During her previous visits, she has battled rodents (note the native-built rat trap), taken care of the nation's residents and never missed a chance to hold a Haitian baby.
The rutted road leads to a place of primitive quarters, suspect water and epidemic illiteracy. What it lacks in electricity, it makes up for in rodents.
Shelly Sims saw Haiti the first time a decade ago and suspected she would never return. Then, she went back nine times.
In the outback of this hemisphere's poorest nation, barely 600 miles southeast of Florida, the nurse's annual missionary work tires and replenishes her in equal measure. She distributes medicine abroad and brings a message home.
"I just feel fortunate every day for what I have," Mrs. Sims says. "Life is good."
And, she adds, "Life is not just about us."
Administrator of the Caldwell County Health Department, Mrs. Sims goes to the Caribbean each January and helps conduct a clinic in which she sees about 1,500 Haitians over a 10-day period.
The ailments run to the rudimentary - headaches, fevers, stomach upsets - and the remedies can mostly be found on pharmacy shelves in the United States. But, as Mrs. Sims points out about Haiti, "There is no Walgreens, and there is no money."
With an interpreter alongside, translating the native mix of Creole and French, she gives out baby medicines and lots of vitamins. The Lake Viking resident rounds up supplies through kindnesses of her church (Gallatin First Baptist), friends and family members.
As Mrs. Sims lends her expertise on health care, others in the missionary group - insurance agents, construction workers, retired teachers from across Missouri - help build and educate in the picturesque but undeveloped countryside.
"Most of the people that go are like me. They're working people," the Northwest Missouri woman says. "It's just a motley crew that goes and does this."
Her own leap came after an unsatisfying mission trip to Mexico in the 1990s. A native Missourian who married a man from this part of the state, she contacted her pastor, wanting a different opportunity to better match her training. The minister pointed her to a group with a Haiti mission.
That first trip proved too eye-opening. The conditions surprised her; mere rusticity would have been an upgrade.
Despite their poverty, the people treated the American guests royally, always lodging them in the rural town's best structure (still open to the elements) and harvesting a goat to celebrate the visit. The locals fetched water for the travelers, saving them a four-mile walk.
The nocturnal crawling things made no accommodations.
"I've learned to get along with tarantulas," Mrs. Sims says. "The rats, I still don't get along with."
The nurse's battle against rats became a point of camp camaraderie. She came home to Missouri thinking Haiti would be a one-time trip. She recited this belief for the next eight months. Thus, when Mrs. Sims got a letter from the mission group asking if she wanted to return, the nurse said yes.
"Once you get hooked up, it kind of burns in your heart that you've got to do more," she says.
On the trip in 2006, Mrs. Sims helped deliver a baby. An OB nurse during her earlier work life, she had been in on other births, but never in such stark circumstances. No scissors, no clean rags. Too many people in too small a room. "I was kind of giving the old hip bump to get them to move over a little bit," she recalls.
The Haitian woman asked the American to name the boy. Mrs. Sims chose Daniel, the name of her husband and her son.
In Haiti, the boy could expect to live 59 years, with an 80 percent chance of being poor and only a 55 percent chance of being able to read.
"I love America more all the time," Mrs. Sims says. "You have to go see some of these other countries to realize that."
Come January, the nurse heads to the western reaches of Hispaniola for the 11th time, to bunk with women on cots downwind from a privy, to endure hours of bumpy truck-bed travel, to forgo privacy, to do a small bit to solve bigger problems. When Mrs. Sims says "life is not just about us," she means God directs people to service, often in places away from comfort.
Her return to Missouri, after a flight in which other passengers note her aromatic traveling party, the nurse will enjoy the warm water of a shower, morning coffee at the ready and news at the touch of a remote. It is reason enough, she says, for gratitude.
Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.
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LibertyOrDeath says...
I agree completely that international travel is good for the American for all sorts of reasons.
What I don't understand is why people continue to live in an environment that serves you no purpose. They have no sustainable food or energy resources.
So I ask, why?
Sam Kinnison had a remarkable take on this...
Instead of shipping all this stuff to barren lands why don't we opt for moving trucks instead of food trucks and move the people to where the food is!
If I chose to live in a desert, would you guys eventually get sick of sending me food and fuel in the name of aid? I mean, why do I continue to live there if I can not sustain there?
These people are 600 miles away - they are essentially an importer. They offer not much to the world or the United States other than a "place to see."
So why not just make it a resort or stop sending these people money and food. They cannot pay their debts, just as we can't.
If I couldn't pay my light bill I'll be damned if I'm going to lend money to my neighbor to pay his. This is absurd.
They cannot self-sustain, therefore, just as Wall Street heard it, they should be allowed to fail. If they'd like to come to the States I'm sure something can be worked out. I don't mean that "right now" because of the economy we can't do this - we shouldn't be doing it period. Wasting money in times of boom and excess is just as irresponsible as wasting money in times of economic hardship. Typically, when one enters such hard times it usually opens their eyes to all of their frivilous ways and those ways generally change. Ask your grandparents. Ever helped grandpa straighten nails after pulling them from old lumber? Waste not want not.
It makes no sense to throw any goods or services down a deep and bottomless hole. In fact, I take it as an insult that my grandfather had to retrieve used lumber from dumpsters to make it on his own, yet we help these other countries build anything they want.
Was my grandfather not good enough to have been helped? He wouldn't have taken it because he was capable, just as these people are, of taking care of himself and his family.
Yep, let's continue to be the world saviors while our own Americans are left to fend for themselves.
Freakin' priceless.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life. What are we doing besides making them easy in their poverty? Talk about the ultimate welfare abuse.
Can anyone really make the argument that we are truly helping these people or hindering them in the long term?
November 26, 2009 at 8:12 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
singlemomof3 says...
Lod, you are unbelievable. This woman is doing something that she has been led to do. She gives of herself in a way that others couldn't even comprehend. You tell her its pointless and that its a waste of time....just unbelievable!
November 26, 2009 at 9:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
longarm45 says...
Yes, it is wonderful what this woman & others have done! BUT we should also recognize it is a waste of time! We should look for ways to HELP Haiti to cure their problems, not just bandaids!
November 26, 2009 at 10:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
LibertyOrDeath says...
Singlemom, will you engage in a conversation about this?
Here's my point (and this can be made about a LOT of well-intentioned Americans)...
What does Haiti possess that can drive them from their position? Do they have anything to manufacture to boost their GDP? Do they offer any services that can boost their GDP? Are they capable of sustaining just themselves with their own agriculture? Are they capable of educating themselves in their own country and to benefit their own country? Do they have the resources (material, manpower and education) to build their own infrastructure?
DO you see what I'm saying?
It's no different than this Afghanistan thing. Okay so now we're there, we've bombed the crap out of them, no what? We have no exit plan.
While I think it's noble what this woman chooses to do, I must be brutally honest and say you are pissing in the wind if the Haitians can't eventually take care of themselves. If we're working towards teaching them what they need to be able to sustain their own country then good. But even after they learn these things, do their immediate surroundings allow them to put to use the knowledge they have gained?
There is nothing there - why do you think the U.S. hasn't taken it? I'm not saying these people are worthless, I'm saying they don't even have anything in their own country to sustain them.
That tells me that they are perfectly comfortable in their own ways - which brings me full circle: are we really helping these people by making them easy in their CHOSEN poverty?
This is no different than those in the deserts of Africa.
If you choose to live in an environment that does not lend itself to agriculture or industrialization then why should anyone feel sorry for you?
November 27, 2009 at 7:53 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
LibertyOrDeath says...
Here's a better idea, instead of taking aid to them, why not bring one or two of them back with you, spend a year or more teaching them something they can take home with them to help their people OR employ them to do whatever work you need to they can save their money and bring more family members here. Then they can all go to work, pay taxes and save their money. Then they could take it all back to their country and fund any number of great ideas that would serve to benefit their country.
In any case, you're not going to persuade me if the best response you have is, "she gives in a way others couldn't comprehend."
Just because it may seem nice what she is doing, doesn't mean she is doing the best for them.
It seems nice to give a homeless guy a $10 on a day when you're feeling good. Does that mean the best thing to do for that man is give him money?
C'mon people - we need to think about our actions - even the actions that appear harmless. Making people easy in poverty causes more harm than letting them learn from painfully enduring it.
Why do you think this generation is so freakin' stuck on credit cards? They've never had to learn from it, they never had to live in a world where money was hard to come by. This is not rocket science.
November 27, 2009 at 7:53 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
dalearch says...
My wife told a story yesterday that I had forgotten all about.
She and I were on the Plaza and had just left the Classic Cup where we had Sunday brunch with some friends. We were heading for Tommy Bahama's when a homeless man walked up to me and asked me for a dollar.
When I asked him what he was going to do with the dollar if I gave it to him, he said "I'm going to get something to eat". I pointed at the Classic Cup and told him that he wasn't going to get much for a dollar, let's go in there and I'll buy you a meal.
He didn't want that:he wanted the dollar.
That pretty much told me he had no intention of getting something to eat.
November 27, 2009 at 8:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )