Reporter's notebook: Bittersweet return to Haiti

DISPATCH - Marlie Hall: Every visit inspires me to find more significant ways to try to uplift the millions of destitute people in Haiti--of which I could have easily been one...

TheGrio Staff

Jan 14, 2010

Visiting Haiti is always bittersweet. As a Haitian-American, there is nothing like the colorful sights, tropical sounds and familiar tastes of a culture all your own. But on the other hand, the extreme poverty and general lack of even the most basic human needs, like health care and clean water results in me heading back to my home in New York with a very heavy heart and a very light suitcase. I always give everything away, even the shoes on my feet in some cases. Every visit inspires me to find more significant ways to try to uplift the millions of destitute people in Haiti—of which I could have easily been one.

WATCH MARLIE HALLS REPORTS FROM HAITI BELOW

[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=dOC5_FXU_ec&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=34_jAKIaqcI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

But now in the wake of the worst disaster Haiti has ever seen, I don’t think there will be anything sweet to go along with the bitter. I am now in neighboring Dominican Republic preparing myself mentally for the deadly devastation that I will surely find in Haiti. I have been there many times before and even covered stories there. In 2008, I reported on an American medical mission in a remote village in the Southwest called Sassier. It’s an area so remote, there is no electricity, no running water, no real roads and no health care of any kind. As a result people there often die of very curable and preventable illnesses like gastroenteritis or an infected cut. Even then it was heart-breaking to see sick children suffering, mind-boggling to watch emergency surgeries with makeshift instruments by flashlight and traumatizing to know that there are some who are too far gone for even the best that Western medicine has to offer.

I know that what I will soon experience in Port-au-Prince will be much worse. But regardless of what I encounter, I have made the same promise to Haiti that I did back then. I will tell your story.