A Day in Lèogane

Yesterday our small group of acupuncturists traveled to Lèogane, a small city outside of Port au Prince which was at the epicenter of the January earthquake. It is estimated that 80% of the buildings there were destroyed.

Our first stop was a place called Mon Petit Village (my little village), originally created as a kindergarten for local children. After the earthquake it became one of the sites where neighbors camped after losing their homes. It now has a larger mission: education, housing, agriculture, water & community housing.

In the main house hangs a few paintings by a local artist, one of which depicted the story of Anacoana, Lèogane Queen.

As we all learned grade school, Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain In 1492 on a mission to establish an ocean trade route to India. Grossly underestimating the size of the earth, he instead came upon the Caribbean Islands. We remember he proclaimed the inhabitants if the Americas, Indians, a term still used today for the natives of this island. Once he realized he was not in India, Columbus named the Island and claimed it for Spain. As you can imagine, the locals weren't so hot on colonization, and a number of battles were fought.

And this is where I get to the story of Anacoana. After the death of her brother, Anacoana becomes chief. She is widely revered by her peopled. She decides to try to smooth out relations with the Spanish, by inviting them to feast in her honor. The Spanish suspected her husband of organizing revolts, so they took the invitation as an opportunity to stage a surprise attack. During the celebration, all present were massacred, save for their Queen, who was publicly hanged as a example. The Taino's (as the native called themselves) soon surrendered to the Spanish.

This same "royal city" once again looks like a war zone and the people of Lèogane--literally-- were hit the hardest.

Mon Petit Village has the advantage of lying on aeratable land. In addition to treating the adult & child residents with acupuncture for four hours, we as individuals made a few donations: rice, medical supplies and vegetable seeds to support the agricultural program. Thanks go to my patients for the generous donations.

Later in the afternoon, AWB visited another relief organization, Hands on Disaster Response (HODR). HODR volunteers provide a number of services including physical removal of concrete debris. This is a slow, arduous project in Haiti as it is almost exclusively done by hand. Their website can be found here: http://hodr.org

Wheel barrows are commonly seen being dumped into the street. The piles of broken concrete are everywhere, often blocking the road and preventing cars/motorcycles/ pedestrians from passing. Eventually, government vehicles are supposed to come haul the rubble away, but only once have we seen this during our stay.

At the HODR site in Lèogane, we treated relief workers exclusively. Young adults from all over the world, including some Haitian volunteers, were very receptive to the acupuncture. There were a number of emotional releases: these folks have seen a lot since beginning their work in February. All thanked us for coming.

I also wanted to share with you all this woman's blog: http://originalcreations.blogspot.com