An Emotional and Unsatisfying Ending...

I guess one could make the argument that I shouldn't be posting this here in such a public forum. But I think with carefully chosen language I can say what needs to be said in a diplomatic enough way so as to tell what is an important story without offending anyone.

As those of you who have been following our travels here in Haiti during the cholera outbreak know... we have been escorting a team of experts from the ICDDR,B (a team from Bangladesh with years of cholera expertise). They arrived on November 15th and their commitment was that they would stay till the 7th of December. They would remain supported by our Project HOPE team of staff and volunteers in terms of lodging, meals, security and transportation throughout their entire stay. Their role was to assess the cholera situation on a number of country wide levels, perform training where needed and collect cholera sample for culture and sensitivity.

The trip was going very well even though our travels had been somewhat hampered by the election events and political unrest and the occasional riot due to the cholera epidemic. The team was making a huge impact with their training and expertise at every site they visited to include 5 major cholera treatments centers and hospitals. Their lab personnel had been accommodated at the national lab in Port Au Prince and were getting their necessary work done. All of the team's needs were being met and they seemed satisfied with their work and the outcomes of it. We all believed they were making an impact and were pleased.

Having been invited here by the Haitian Medical Association (AMH) one of the members of the AMH asked the ICDDR,B team to attend and help sponsor a conference for the AMH and other partnering organizations to review the team's findings and recommendations re the cholera epidemic... a much needed wrap up to the work they had done here. Without such a wrap up to bring closure to their visit and review there findings it negates one of the very purposes of them being here.

That said... the Project HOPE side of the team had started to hear rumblings that the team wanted to redeploy home early because of concerns about safety surrounding the Haitian elections... but the date of this important conference was in a state of flux due to the availability of an appropriate venue and having to work around election events. Without going into the minute details it became clear that the team was not only going to redeploy early but they were all going to leave without leaving appropriate representation from their team to present at the conference. Initially the team seemed unwilling or unable to articulate why this was. They were presented with a heartfelt and impassioned in person plea from a representative of the AMH but to no avail. They were unwilling to budge from their stance due in large part to their leader who seemed to lead by dictatorship and not democracy. I know if the individual members of the team, whom I liked very much, had felt like they had a voice there would have been more than one team member that would have stayed.

Each of these individuals is well thought of in their field, were well thought of as people and experts by the Project HOPE team and worked hard for Haiti while here. But to leave such a mission so prematurely without the appropriate closure having been asked by the AMH and others to stay I believe is an injustice. The leader of this team in my personal opinion, and it is only that, had his own agenda from the start and in the end didn't speak for the entire team.

Having worked this hard by their sides on behalf of helping Haiti navigate through this cholera crisis, their first ever, it is heart wrenching for this to be the end result. It was a slap in the face to the team that worked so hard to support them, it was a slap in the face to the AMH and to Haiti, and it was a slap in the face to Project HOPE. For an organization whose mission it is to help in times of cholera epidemics in the most austere environments world wide it was quite shocking to have them leave so abruptly without any well founded grounds to do so... shocking indeed...