With interpreter's help, Harborview reaches out to Haitian community

What is the right word for pain in Creole? Martine Pierre-Louis wonders. The word "misè" is used to mean the hardships connected with poverty, but that doesn't begin to describe what Haitians have suffered since the Jan. 12 earthquake, she said.

" 'Trauma' is going to be a new one to introduce," she said, "if we can find something that means a great pain, a communal pain, a communal loss."

Pierre-Louis, director of interpreter services and community house calls at Harborview Medical Center, has been a Haitian Creole and French interpreter for more than a decade.

She moved to the U.S. as a teenager 35 years ago, leaving behind a large, extended family in Haiti. An instant after she heard about the earthquake, her emotions traveled back to her loved ones and her childhood home.

She hasn't been getting much sleep, and she suspects that other members of the Haitian diaspora are having the same problem.

"Literally we are traumatized thousands of miles away," she said.

Pierre-Louis has been thinking about the longer-term challenges of putting the country back together. She is working with a team at Harborview to prepare information and services to help survivors of psychological trauma, translating the material into Creole and making it suitable for Haitian culture, whether in Seattle or in Haiti.

"She's a tremendous person with a big soul," said Dr. Marie-Florence Shadlen, a former Harborview physician and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Shadlen met Pierre-Louis at St. Therese Parish, and the two worked together at Haitian Health Allies, a project Shadlen started to help AIDS orphans in Haiti.

"I think she is kind of the rock for her family," Shadlen said, "and is involved in helping her community in Seattle. She actually knew more Haitians than I knew existed in Seattle."

Many here in pain

Pierre-Louis' first aim is to help people in the local Haitian community, many who have lost loved ones in the disaster or have at least one person in their families who is still missing, she said.

"It's important to talk about what people should expect as this is still emerging," she said, "how to talk with kids about what has happened, and ask is it actually helpful to spend 10 hours a day watching CNN?"

She also hopes she can contribute information and resources that might help other groups working in Haiti.

"Haiti will need all of the good energy and resources and time that donors can give," she said.

Haitians living abroad transfer more than $1 billion in annual remittances to Haiti, almost half of the country's national income, according to a World Bank estimate. More than $560 million has been donated to U.S.-based nonprofits for relief work in Haiti since the earthquake.

With so much interest, energy and willingness to help, she asks, "How can we harness that in the long run once all of the bodies have been cleared and all of the people who can be saved have been saved?"

Pierre-Louise was fortunate that her family survived, but the immensity of the tragedy haunts her. "What I keep saying to myself is that one lifetime is not going to be enough to grieve," she said. "I know that no matter when I die, I'll still be grieving this."

Shadlen echoed those sentiments.

"For the last two weeks I've been paralyzed, feeling such grief and helplessness," she said. "I'm having trouble sleeping just trying to figure out what can I do."

People in Haiti have a kind of dignity that makes it difficult to accept so much outside help, Pierre-Louis said.

"There's a sense of self that we feel — at least I feel — is lost," she said. "There's a sense of loss so great we feel we're losing ourselves. It's a fear."

At Harborview she has found solace in working with people from all over the world, "people who have experienced their own national tragedies," she said.

The program Pierre-Louis directs offers outreach to various ethnic populations in the Seattle area to communicate with the hospital about their health needs and practices.

Valued intermediary

In times of crisis, it's essential to have someone like her with "a personal knowledge or understanding of a community who can translate the needs and concerns back and forth," said Debra Gussin, associate administrator for ambulatory care at Harborview. "This is a good example of how that works best."

Since the quake, Pierre-Louis said her co-workers have shared more of their own stories of living through war and disasters.

"I work with these colleagues daily, but for them to let me know that they also have had the experience of devastating loss and that is something we share, for me it's just one example of the amazing kindness I've experienced."

She's also been finding more Haitians in the community than she ever imagined, estimating there are somewhere between 500 and 1,000 in this area.

The week of the earthquake, she got a call from a nurse at the King County tuberculosis clinic. "She said, 'I'm from Haiti. I'm a nurse. Can we talk?' When she came over, she gave me a hug that lasted such a long time."

Pierre-Louis is a founding member of the Society of Medical Interpreters and the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. She also sings Haitian lullabies.

In the face of disaster, familiar culture may be a balm. She has contacted a storyteller friend to help with community workshops on trauma. "Storytellers and artists in Haitian culture are the folks who have a way of making us hear something we're not quite ready for," she said.

It's important for people with ties to the country to take good care of themselves, she said. Because in the future, "we will each be needed to step up in one way or another to serve Haiti."

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com