Total destruction. Flattened buildings everywhere. Tent cities made of sheets. Hospitals without water. Beds full and no room for people. Women on sheets on the hallway floors. Women in labor yelled at to go away because there was no room for them. No electricity. No light. No doctors at night. No emergency cesarean sections. Not even life saving medications.
The conditions were surreal and horrifying.
“Mwe regret sa yon timon ki mouri”, we learned to say. Translated this means, “I am sorry your child has died.” We said it over and over again.
What we saw and continued to see through the next two weeks in Haiti changed our lives.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and we saw poverty there that was more desperate than anything we had ever seen.
We also saw the beauty and strength of the Haitian people.
We envisioned a birth center with running water, lights, medications, and enough midwives and beds to care for those in need.
We came home and got to work, and MamaBaby Haiti birth center was opened in November 2010 in Northern Haiti.
At MamaBaby birth center we give FREE care because we work with families who are living in a poverty deeper than anything we can fathom and we NEVER want a mother to choose between feeding her child and having a safe birth.
MamaBaby Haiti does over a thousand prenatal appointments a month and attends over a thousand births a year, providing safe passageway for moms and babies.