Santo Domingo. – It’s been seven nights since Claribel Núñez hasn’t slept at home in the sector Los Mina, and instead spends the dawn hours in the Contreras hospital pediatrics ward as a volunteer to attend four Haitian children victims of the January 12 quake, and she’s their only companion.

She leaves her seven year old daughter to a friend’s care to help other children need who her. Like Claribel, in each room of the pediatrics ward Dominican mothers, some with hospitalized children, as is the case of doctor Arceniega, who during the nights alternates from caring for her young with other Haitian children who are alone, because often their only relative is a man, who cannot enter at night.

Joining this group of volunteers who spontaneously formed after the tragedy 15 days ago are six French mothers who live in Dominican Republic, among them Joelle Baur and Marjolaine Rerolle, who go to the hospital during the day to accompany and talk in French with the children who cannot communicate because they don’t speak Spanish.

Another Dominican mother who helps in the Haitian children’s recovery and attention is Claudia Martinez, a volunteer since 1992 in Contreras, where she goes every Thursday to adorn the little girls’ hair with bows, baubles and humectants she herself provides, but now after the quake victims’ arrival, daily goes she to give them food and attend them in other needs.

Nuns and Haitians studying medicine in the country have also joined this group’s voluntary action by cure them, as translators and to bathe them.

Claribel explains that since she doesn’t have a job aside from getting paid for “laundry work” or housecleaning “from time to time” she decided to go to Contreras to see if she could help. Since then she spends days and nights helping four of the Haitian children in the sterilized room.

She says she felt very affected by the quake when she saw all those wounded children, and even more when she learned that many have no parents. She doesn’t speak the Haiti Creole, but she’s been learning some words and feels the reward upon seeing their calm with each gentle pass of her hands.

SOURCE: listin.com.do (Doris Pantaleón)