One day after Spanish class, I noticed a posted sign in the office at Languages by Nicole that read, "Welcome back, Nicole!" Nicole Rogers-Provencher, the owner of the Upper St. Clair school, was on the phone.
When she hung up, I asked her where she had been. She took a deep, trembling breath, her eyes took on a look of love, and she said, "Haiti."
This is a story she shares with Dr. John Mikulla, an ophthalmologist in Forest Hills.
John, whose daughter was being tutored in French by Nicole, asked Nicole to help him learn some French in preparation for a trip he was planning to the Hopital Albert Schweitzer, which was founded in the '50s by Larry and Gwen Mellon.
"I had become interested in going on a medical missionary trip," he said. "I asked Nicole if she could help me, and she said, 'Hey, I'd like to come.' "
On March 8, they left, accompanied by John's son, Brian, with five duffel bags stuffed with medical supplies and 450 pairs of eyeglasses that John had solicited from companies that donate such things.
At the airport in Port-au-Prince, their bags were confiscated. The group was told they didn't have the right paperwork for medical supplies. They would have to head for the hospital in Deschappelles without them. John managed to get some surgical and exam instruments out of the bags.
Nicole said they were concerned that their purpose was being foiled, and she worried that the authorities at the airport would sell the medical supplies.
"There we were, with men with guns, and there was this one guy," she said. "I was scared, but I locked eyes with him, and I said, 'We are here to do eye surgeries to help your own people see. It could be your mother or your children, or you.' "
It was a three-hour trip to the hospital without their baggage.
Finally, on Thursday, just days before they were planning to leave, they were summoned to return for the supplies. Everything was intact.
In the time they had, John and a Haitian ophthalmologist performed a dozen surgeries. The local doctor was devoting time to the hospital from his base in the capital, and the hospital asked John to mentor him, and to come back again to continue the relationship.
"I didn't know what I was getting into," he says now. "But it was something I had always wanted to do, and I will do it again. My surgery I did there was surgery I did 20 years ago, everything by hand, removing cataracts like we used to do."
They saw people with tumors that bulged from their eyes, tumors that would require treatments that were not available anywhere in the country.
John said he felt his presence evoked unrealistically high hopes from the people who were waiting to see him, many of whom had to be turned away each day.
It was as if, as an American from the United States, he was a sort of superman. If being unable to help everyone was frustrating for him, Nicole remembers the joy of one Haitian man who put on a pair of glasses and began gasping and laughing with delight.
It was something like a miracle.
"He was holding out his hands, as if seeing them for the first time," she said, shaking her head slowly. "It was a life-changing experience for me.
"Even now, sometimes if I turn my head, I see Haiti, and I am wrapped in the air there and the sounds and the smells and the light."
When I asked if she wants to go back, she said, laughing, "Tomorrow morning?
"What I do for a living is to make people more open to other cultures and languages," she said, "but now I feel completely reborn, that even though what I've done was an absolute drop in the ocean, for me, what I was given in return was the ocean. I fell in love with the people, with their pride and their strength.
"When you see that, then there's nothing in your life that cannot be overcome. And it was just one week."
At a time when so many people are talking about heroes in war, I am thinking, too, about heroes in peace.
Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com and 412-263-1626.
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