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UNY completes a successful medical mission trip in Vieques, Puerto Rico: Article 2 of 3

October 23, 2018 / By Pastor Sharon Rankins-Burd

Editor’s Note: A 12-person team from the Upper New York (UNY) Conference went on a mission trip to Puerto Rico, on the island of Vieques in Sept. Team members included seven people from Fly Creek and Schuyler Lake UMCs in the Oneonta District as well as three additional medical staff from the Northern Flow District. Drs Sylvia and Marv Reimer of Watertown, NY led the team. On Viequez, the mission team was housed and staffed a medical clinic at the United Methodist Church in Esperanza. Some members of the team also had the opportunity to work on home reconstruction alongside a team from the Midwest. Below is an article by Pastor Sharon Rankins-Burd of Fly Creek UMC and Schuyler Lake UMC.

We recently returned from a work trip to Vieques, one of the smaller Puerto Rican islands. From the first glimpse of the main island through our airplane windows, to the parting hugs and kind words from our new friends, this trip was filled with discoveries and adventures.

The island of Vieques is small: four and a half miles wide, 20 miles long. According to year 2000 census data, more than 9,000 people lived on the island then. Today it’s estimated something close to 40% of the population left the island after Hurricane Maria in September 2017.  Abandoned homes and cars, and concrete pads swept clean of walls sit side by side with homes wrapped in blue tarps awaiting new roofs or windows, and homes that have already been restored. Money is part of the issue – some households cannot afford the cost of replacing a roof, or of hauling away the debris that sits piled in the alleyway or at the road’s edge. One of our bus drivers told us that there remain 60,000 homes across the Puerto Rican islands needing repair one year after Maria. Recovery is a lengthy process.

We stayed in Esperanza, a community along the south shore of Vieques. There’s a convenience/grocery store there, and a restaurant or two, but many of the small hotels that face the beach were damaged or destroyed and are not yet rebuilt. Portions of sidewalk were washed away. A low railing that separates the road from the beach was damaged in several places when large coconut trees were sheared off or uprooted by the powerful storm. In the days after Maria, this main road was impassable. Not only had the ocean surged by several feet, it left behind mountains of sand. But today the signs of life and hope are unmistakably present: like spring flowers poking their heads up above the snow, businesses are repairing and reopening, and tourists are returning. A newly painted sign along the road that links Esperanza to Isabel II reads “Esperanza se Levanta.” Esperanza Will Rise.

Our work team of 12 was joined by another crew of 15 from Neosho, Missouri. Among us we brought four doctors and five nurses to staff a medical clinic in Esperanza and conduct some home assessment visits with a local case manager. Over the course of the week they saw 87 patients, many in their own homes.

The other 18 team members took turns providing support for the medical clinic or working to repair homes across the island. One team poured concrete to repair the second floor of the Iglesia Metodista de Esperanza, and later in the week replaced a metal roof on a family’s home.

Another team painted the exterior of a recently repaired house.

A third group worked on what had once been a two-story home, but the storm swept the second floor away, and what had been an interior floor now served as a roof, but the damage left cracks that leak when it rains. The team cleaned and then sealed that roof, and also worked to clean the first floor where now damp concrete continues to fall from the ceiling.

Every place we went, we were accompanied by locals hired through our agency as translators, drivers, or in the case of construction, as job foremen. And every place we went, we were greeted warmly, made to feel welcome despite language barriers, and thanked profusely for our presence and our assistance. One homeowner sent the workers back to our dormitory with fresh-picked star fruit and flowers from her garden. A clinic patient brought avocados. A neighbor delivered papayas. The Methodist church pastor connected us with people he knew in the community from whom we could purchase meals or fresh fish to cook ourselves.

We were so grateful for our local guides. From them we learned so much about the people, the island, its history, its resources. Through their eyes we saw the community’s resilience. On many of the home visits we conducted we witnessed the strength of the community. The government may be failing them. The Puerto Rican medical system may be insufficient. But the bonds of community, born of a shared traumatic experience and lifelong care and concern for one another, shines through. Vieques’ greatest asset is her people.

“What do the people here need most?” I asked one of our translators.

“For you to keep coming, to keep loving on us,” she replied.

In Spanish, Esperanza means hope. By our presence, by our skills, by our financial and material gifts, we were bringers of hope to a people in need.

Esperanza se Levanta. Poco a poco.