Recently Barco’s Nightingales Foundation provided funding for Erin Marlin and Alana Baron, two amazingly talented nurses who serve on our Nurses Advisory Board, to travel on a medical mission to the Dominican Republic with Hispaniola Mountain Ministries. This blog is dedicated to sharing their stories in words and photos. We are very grateful for their dedication and service.

“The story about this house and who lives there is quite interesting. This house used to be occupied by a family of mother, father, and five children.

However, the father left the family and the mother became ill with breast cancer. After some time, the mother passed away from the cancer; leaving the 5 children in this small home alone with no one to care for them.

Throughout time…people from the community and the church would bring food to the kids and help care for them. The church found the father of these young children and asked him if they could purchase this house from him (for he didn’t even live there), so they could fix it up for the children….and he refused.
After this went on for some time, a young couple decided to bring them into their family and help raise them. This young couple (with assistance from the people of the church) built an orphanage right across the way from the little house pictured here. The children are now living as a family unit with this young couple and their 2 children. It was so incredibly touching to know that there are people out there that will extend their hand and basically “save” these children’s lives by giving them a home, clothing, food, education, and family life.

Meanwhile, the aunt of these 5 children moved into the vacant house. She lives there currently with her children. This house is very small and in poor condition. We became close to the kids that live there now. Their names are Alberto, Antonio, and Jonathan. We saw Jonathan in the clinic for the advice on his polydactyly (extra finger showed). Unfortunately, we were unable to do a surgical procedure while there, but we were able to provide deworming medicine for the entire family and medical advice as needed.
Jonathan, Alberto, and Antonia’s mother invited us into her home where I captured Alberto proudly showing us how he makes his favorite snack of dry oatmeal mixed with sugar and dry milk.

We saw the unfortunate conditions of this home and wanted to do more to help. So, the volunteers gathered up food that they traveled with and we took it over to give to Alberto and his family. The pure joy was very easy to see. You can see me hugging on them in front of their home.
 

These are the 5 orphaned children posing with their two siblings and the young couple that is now raising the 5 orphans that I wrote about. The two siblings belong to the young couple below…they also have another baby on the way….that will make a family of 8 children when counting the 5 that they so willingly brought into their home.  The two girls (pictured in pajamas with pigtails) are the children of Evie and his wife. The other 5 older children are the once to be orphans who now live in a loving home.

 

Lastly, I would like to share another experience I had while in the DR. On our last day of clinic, Michael (the priest that was hosting our trip) took me for a ride to let me experience the closest life to that in Haiti. Since we were not able to get across the border, a lot of our patients were Dominicans. However, there were also some Haitian refugees that we cared for as well. Michael took me to a few Haitian refugee villages where they lived in very unfortunate poor and unsanitary conditions.

They lived in little areas called Betays. A betay was a long building with one roof and many doors. Inside each door, there could be a space no larger than a bathroom here in the United States.

In the roughest of conditions, there were up to 20 people who lived in these tiny rooms. Going into these villages and seeing life up close was extremely emotional for me…for I couldn’t get over the resilience in the community despite their conditions. The children were so happy and loved that we passed out candy, beach balls, frisbees, and nuts. They were happy to take pictures, learn my name, and run free in their areas of communal living.

These are some of the children I was fortunate enough to spend a little time with. I enjoyed handing out all that was in my backpack and to watch how it impacted each and every one of them.

It was an extremely moving experience…one that I will NEVER forget.