In Haiti tragedy, InterVol worker finds hope
Joey Leary says he has a new appreciation for philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous line: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
On Jan. 12, Leary, a volunteer with Rochester’s InterVol relief organization and Notre Dame University’s Haiti Program, attended a conference at the Hotel Montana in Port au Prince. When the final speakers failed to show, he left 45 minutes earlier than expected. A short time after, he and other volunteers were driving near the presidential palace when a mob of 50 to 75 men poured into the intersection throwing rocks at nearby vehicles. Stunned, they stopped momentarily as the ground began to roll. The buildings right ahead of them collapsed. Had he not left the hotel early, he surely would have been killed or trapped when it collapsed; had he not encountered the mob, he would have been crushed by the buildings he and his friends saw falling in front of them moments later.
Leary, 23, is a 2009 graduate of Notre Dame who will start med school in September. He volunteered with the Haiti Program as a student and connected with InterVol through the organization’s founder, Dr. Ralph Pennino, the chief of plastic surgery at Rochester General Hospital and a Notre Dame alumnus. At Notre Dame, Leary also learned Kreyol, and improved his language skills by spending time with ordinary Haitians over the last several months.
In an interview this week and in journal entries he e-mailed to me, Leary described the terrifying and harsh realities of the days after the quake. He had been living in Leogane, about 18 miles from Port au Prince, where the Notre Dame program is housed. After the quake, he and some friends made their way to Leogane on foot, under cover of darkness, worried that a tsunami might hit or that violence and chaos might develop.
In Leogane, they soon went to work at the FSIL School of Nursing, doing what they could to care for long lines of victims.
“Not only were they horrific injuries,” he says, “but they were horribly contaminated” with mud and debris. All the volunteers could do was scrub the wounds and bandage them with the available materials.
There were people with crush injuries, broken bones, gaping wounds. Many were in shock. Others screamed for help and didn’t believe Leary when he tried to explain that he wasn’t a doctor.
Leary returned to Rochester last week and is now back at Notre Dame working on the school’s Haiti Program. “Haiti will be a part of my life,” he says. “It’s like I had a tattoo (of the island) on my arm. I can’t forget it.”
When he finishes medical school, he hopes to return, at least from time to time, “when I can put real tangible skills to use.”
Leary is, like many other InterVol team members, full of energy, hope, compassion and commitment to change. In this and so many other tragedies they experience on their travels, they see the possibility for building a better world.
In that, there is hope for all of us.
