By Matthew K. Roy
Gale Hull has to close her eyes to escape the nightmare surrounding her in Haiti.
If only she could fall asleep.
Hull, 58, is co-founder of Partners in Development, an Ipswich-based nonprofit that has been working in Haiti since 1990. She arrived in the country 11 days after the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Barking dogs, squabbling chickens and the nonstop hum of a generator keep her up at night. She is trapped, meanwhile, by the mosquitoes that swarm around her tent.
When she just can't take it anymore, she gets up, usually around 5 a.m.
Hull is in Haiti with a small assessment team, including a doctor, nurse, social worker and various other Partners staff members, that her organization sent down to help in the relief effort.
They have opened Partners' medical clinic on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where a single doctor can see as many as 60 patients a day. Hull and a social worker have also tracked down most of the 230 children in Partners' sponsorship program. All have been found alive.
The devastation is overwhelming, Hull said during a phone interview. The quake turned two guest houses Partners used to stay in into rubble. Five people died in one of them, Hull said.
Building after building in Port-au-Prince has collapsed with an untold number of victims amid the wreckage. Giant "tent cities" have sprouted filled with people whose homes were damaged or destroyed. Many people with homes still standing will not sleep in them out of fear of aftershocks, Hull said.
It is tough to get places. Any road you travel could be blocked by debris, she said. A trip to the market can take hours.
There is no electricity and no reliable way to refrigerate food. Everyone on the team takes their coffee black because they don't want to open a container of milk and risk wasting it. Even the filtered water isn't guaranteed to be safe to drink, Hull said.
Breakfast is mangos, grapefruit, bread and cheese. Lunch is an energy bar or peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she said. On a good day, dinner is spaghetti with meat sauce.
The temperature reaches 95 degrees, but it can get chilly at night, especially if you're sleeping outside without a blanket. Hull said she and others recently fashioned some old T-shirts into 25 makeshift quilts for people.
Hull tries not to consider the magnitude of what has happened. It would be hard not to give up if she did, she said. Each day then becomes a series of small challenges to tackle.
At times she is at a loss for words. She recently met two sisters, ages 17 and 18, who lost their home and family.
Saying "I'm so sorry" seems so inadequate, Hull said.
But she can provide some measure of reassurance by putting their name on a list for housing.
"They feel more hopeful, and when they feel more hopeful, it helps me to keep going," she said.
Partners, aided by the thousands of dollars that has flowed to it in donations since the quake, intends to start building new homes within weeks, according to Hull.
She does not know when she will return home to Ipswich. It is a 71รขÑ2-hour bus ride to the airport in the Dominican Republic. Hull said she would wait until Haiti's airport reopens. That isn't expected to happen until Feb. 18, she said.
In the meantime, she wants to be in Haiti to help aid workers new to the country adjust. Hull knows Haiti.
"I need to stay," she said, "more than I need to come home."
