Plaisance

Plaisance is not an easy place to reach nor is it an easy place to live. Once you leave the paved highway, there is a long punishing ride on a rocky mountain road, followed by about a 3 mile hike up into the village. Plaisance is so remote, it is very difficult for people to get health care of any kind and it is very costly to bring up building materials for cisterns, latrines and schools. As a consequence, health and nutrition here are poor, and infant, childhood and maternal mortality are high. Most people make a living by raising subsistence crops, by cutting the few remaining trees for charcoal and by going down the mountain to sell goods at the markets or to look for work in and around Port-au-Prince. But the people here are survivors, and courageously continue to hang on in an area hit hard by recent hurricanes and the earthquake of January 2010. All that remains of the local Catholic church is a single wall that the parishioners are able to anchor tarps off of to create a basic shelter that now serves as their chapel and school and provided a space for us to set up a clinic.

Over 800 patients were treated in April 2010.  Despite their hardships, the people here struggle on with an amazing sense of dignity and, with classic Haitian hospitality, they were eager to help take care of the medical group in any way that they could.

We cannot forget these people.  They too are our brothers and sisters.

Dr. Tom Ritter, a dentist from Baltimore, spent part of his first trip with Friends of Haiti here. His "office" was a dirt floored, roofless corner of a cement block building. When it rained, a tarp had to be erected over him. Dr. Tom happily pulled teeth all day long and relieved many a toothache.

The spring in Plaisance where we joined the people of the area for showers.