On the night before she was scheduled to fly down to Haiti to help in a clinic there, Kristy Schmicking took a break from packing and had dinner with her family at San Vito Restaurant.
The owner, who knew of her previous trips to places like Guatemala, jokingly asked, “Hey doll, where you off to this time?”
Kristy’s mother, Emily, always joked about her daughter’s travels – even though her daughter’s career path in international public health made her immensely proud.
“She is always packing and unpacking,” Emily said during a recent interview – a fact that local merchants like the owner of San Vito knew well.
But this time, the owner grew very serious and handed Kristy a piece of paper.
“He told her to write down the things she needed that would help the people there,” Emily said.
“They have nothing, so they fall back on prayer and each other, and I saw whole families singing together and smiling through it all.” – Kristy Schmicking
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San Vito was not the only local business, either. A & E Clothing, Little Food Café, J & J Nails, Dittmar’s Pharmacy, Jerry’s Drug & Surgical Supply, Baby Barn/Young Expressions, Dr. David Optometry, Mediterranean Restaurant, and Dr. Benedetto all contributed to the effort. The students at All Saints Academy even held a fundraiser to help her as she served on the Haiti Relief Mission in Jimani, Dominican Republic, along with about 20 people from the tri-state area.
According to her mother, Kristy isn’t a self-promoter.
“She’s very reserved, and most people don’t know all the things she does,” Emily said. “But she makes me very proud.”
Educational globe trotting
A graduate of Cornell University, Kristy hopes to attend the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and her trips are geared around getting experience in order to pursue a career in the study of infectious disease.
Originally from Bayonne, Kristy said she always wanted to get involved in the field of medicine, and public health – which involved research. At school, she was also inspired by anthropology and other cultural studies, and found that she could blend her interests in her current career path, which would involve public health in a developing country.
She heard about the aid trip to Haiti by word of mouth. An employee at Novartis Pharmaceutical, a co-worker told her that the Foundation for Peace – the head of which is Dr. Ken Culver, the top Oncologist at Novartis – was organizing a relief trip to Haiti. The group was already established in Haiti and Dominican Republic, which share the same Caribbean island.
She and the other volunteers flew down in late January to help out at a clinic on the border of the two countries for a week, Kristy said.
Last October and November, she had worked at a clinic in Guatemala which provided care in a very poor area. So she knew on some level what to expect when she got to Haiti.
While she found similarities, Kristy also found differences, in particular, the way the people of Haiti reacted to the disaster.
“I was expecting the worst,” she said.
On the site of El Bruen Samaritano, a makeshift hospital was established near the border town of Jimani – a logical point of crossing for victims unable to find care in Haiti – which was inundated with people seeking medical treatment within days of the earthquake.
And in some ways, she found the disaster she expected, especially after arriving on her first night to find no electricity. But she also found a remarkable power in the people, a joy in the midst of disaster that allowed them to call upon their faith and their families to overcome the worst.
“The whole ward was singing and chanting,” she said, describing the people as “very religious.”
An awesome faith
“They have nothing so they fall back on prayer and each other, and I saw whole families singing together and smiling through it all,” Kristy said.
Kristy and others often worked 12 to 16 hour shifts. Along with assisting in the pharmacy, Kristy also helped to separate and organize medical supplies that came in by the truckloads.
“They were coming in from even the smallest countries like Ecuador, countries you wouldn’t expect to send anything,” she said.
She found herself working side by side with doctors and nurses from around the world, often providing support to patients and their families or assisting in treatment and wound care.
Helicopters would transport doctors, patients and medical supplies to other nearby sites numerous times a day, she said.
The day she arrived, 10 critical patients were finally airlifted for better care on the U.S. Navy ship, The Comfort. She recalled the birth of healthy twins that day. During her stay there, she also spent time at the refugee camp at Love a Child Orphanage in Fond Parisian, which served as an organized tent city to provide longer term care and rehabilitation for the injured and displaced.
Some moments simply amazed Kristy, such as seeing a small boy whose arm had been amputated playing soccer with his friend, or the simple joy on the face of a small girl who just received a coloring book or a mother who just got a blanket.
“The Haitians are lovely people who are strong, resilient and deeply spiritual,” she said. “They were never short on smiles or gratitude for the smallest of deeds.”
Although she said the Haitians face a difficult road ahead, she believes that with global support, they will rise again, stronger than they were before.