To Haiti, with duffel bags of medical supplies

Photo by Colin Soper

Whitney Night, a volunteer with the Tallahassee Haiti Medical Team, holds a young patient.

The first time he returned to the United States, after spending a week in Haiti last December, Colin Soper knew he had to go back to the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

“Going back home was bittersweet,” he said, explaining that the people he worked with are still living in abject poverty. “The rampant poverty, lack of infrastructure, and hardships of every day life that these people gracefully endure, are astounding, inspiring, and heartbreaking. Words cannot do it justice.”

Soper, 23, a former resident of Audubon and graduate of Holy Saviour Elementary School in Westmont, visited the village of Dumay, Haiti, as a volunteer with the Tallahassee Haiti Medical Team. This month he is going back and will be there from June 17-24.

Six times a year, the Tallahassee Haiti Medical Team organization sends a team of volunteer doctors, nurses, EMTS, medical students, nursing students and others to staff a medical clinic in Dumay. Open for a week, the clinic and its volunteers provide medications, vitamins and other medical supplies to 100-150 villagers of all ages.

The team gives out basic items such as soap and Tylenol, while also treating more serious issues such as hookworm and malnutrition.

For the most severe cases, patients may be sent to a hospital in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, or even to the United States, provided the team has raised the necessary funds.

The staff also provides a bowl of rice and beans to the children of Dumay and its surrounding villages. For many of these children, it is the only meal they will get that day.

After graduating from Holy Saviour, Soper went on to St. Joseph Preparatory School in Philadelphia and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., majoring in neurobiology and minoring in fine arts. He currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Soper said his first visit to Haiti was a culture shock, seeing homes in the rural farm community that were made of little more than sticks and mud. Surrounding Dumay were winding roads, mountains and forest, and Soper saw that countless homeless villagers had erected tent cities.

Preparing for his upcoming trip, Soper is learning Haitian Creole, the native language. As well, as volunteers have to entirely stock the clinic with medicines they buy and bring themselves, he is packing multiple duffel bags with medical supplies.

The Tallahassee Haiti Medical Team hopes to build the Dumay Regional Medical Center and provide training grounds for future medical professionals. The organization is also in the beginning stages, of creating a project that will provide water purification devices to Dumay, and its surrounding villages.

For more information on the Tallahassee Haiti Medical Team, go to www.myhaititeam.org