Local nurse authors book to benefit health clinic she launched in Haiti
“When I saw what they did for this chicken … these kids don’t get meat, yet they provided this shelter, they treated it like family. I just had to write it. I couldn’t get it out of my head.” SUE SULLIVAN
Local nurse Sue Sullivan isn’t formally trained in writing or business, but that didn’t stop her from authoring a children’s book to benefit a clinic she launched in Batso, Haiti, last month.
Sullivan, a Salem resident, spends her days at Waterford Country School, a private school dedicated to special needs children. But four years ago, wanting a break from the norm, she traveled with HELP Mission International of Pomfret to the small town in the north of the island nation.
Sullivan spent that first trip at the St. Michel orphanage, building a chicken barn and benches for its classrooms. She lived without running water or electricity, and fell in love with the children’s appreciation for one another and the handful of adults they consider family.
She has gone back at least once a year since.
On her second trip to Batso, Sullivan brought basic first aid supplies and traveled beyond the orphanage’s walls.
“People heard and were coming from all over the place,” she said. “I don’t know how.”
Many people Sullivan saw had had strokes or were on the verge, she said. Almost every adult over 40 had dangerously high blood pressures. Some people were having trouble moving.
“I was overwhelmed,” Sullivan said. “I thought, ‘Somebody’s got to do something.’”
Sullivan started working on a business plan. She found a Haitian doctor and a nurse willing to spend time every other week in Batso. She converted a classroom to a clinic space. And she sought donations and other ways to pay for the staff and medical supplies.
It was through that process that Sullivan dreamed up “The Chicken
and the Avocado Tree.”
The book is based on a true story about a tree in the middle of the orphanage. During one of her visits, Sullivan noticed a hinged wooden board covering a hollow at the base of the tree.
Curious, Sullivan asked about the door. She learned the children had requested it because they saw a female chicken choose the hollow as a place to lay her eggs.
Many animals don’t survive conditions in the remote, mountainous region, Sullivan said. Indeed, members of the orphanage told her the chicken survived a rough storm in part because of the shelter they helped create.
“When I saw what they did for this chicken … these kids don’t get meat, yet they provided this shelter, they treated it like family,” she said. “I just had to write it. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
Already uncomfortable as a writer, Sullivan wrote version after version to ensure the language would drive the point home for children without going over their heads.
When that was finished, she had the text translated to French Creole and brought it to Francklyn Metelus, a native of Haiti who pumped out 11 paintings to illustrate the book.
Sullivan then asked her friend Elena French, a graphic designer who handles marketing for Waterford Country School, to put the pieces together.
At the end of it all, Connecticut College agreed to print the book at cost.
“I had this team of people — the names go on and on — that joined me in making this book,” Sullivan said. “It’s a group of people that cares about others, that gave time and money to make it all happen.”
Sullivan said she is running out of copies but plans to get more. She hopes one day to consistently supply the clinic with blood pressure medications — medications a person shouldn’t stop taking once they’ve started.
Visiting Haiti, Sullivan said, is “the kind of trip where you love to go but you love to leave, then you long to go back.”
“I didn’t plan on doing this,” she said. “The first trip was just to do something different.”
But now the clinic, which saw 160 people when it opened June 16, is a reality.
“They had people waiting,” she said. “They had to turn people away.”
To purchase the book or learn more, visit efrench199. wixsite.com/healingforhaiti. Those who want to contribute directly to the clinic can contact the Congregational Church of Salem, which is overseeing the project, at (860) 859-1211 or salemcongregate@sbcglobal.net.