PICKENS—While in Haiti last month with a medical emergency team, Ron Duncan saw plenty of devastation caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake on the island. But the one thing he will probably remember most are the eyes of a special little boy.

“We called him ‘Superman’ because he was wearing a Superman t-shirt,” Duncan said. “He had a fever of 106 degrees, and you could tell that he was terrified of the lady who was giving him a shot. He looked over at me and his eyes seemed to say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to help me here!’”

Duncan gave held the boy, prayed for him and gave him water.

“After a while the medicine and the water began to work,” Duncan said. “His fever dropped to 102 degrees.”

Duncan began giving the boy small cups of Gatorade.

“He must have drank a quart of that stuff,” Duncan said.

The boy waved to Duncan when he left the aid station. Duncan said he was blessed to have the memory of the boy’s smile instead of the distraught look the child had when he had arrived at the station.

“The little children are what you don’t

forget,” Duncan said.

Duncan, the director of missions for the Pickens-Twelve Mile Baptist Association, led the third of four medical relief teams sent by the South Carolina Southern Baptist Association to tend to the victims of the Haitian earthquake.

Duncan said the devastation to the island was tremendous.

“Everywhere you look something was destroyed,” Duncan said. “Some five-story buildings suddenly became one-story buildings.”

Death has a distinctive smell, Duncan said. He has experienced the smell several times during his years a foreign missionary. But since he arrived several weeks after the major quake hit, most of the deceased victims had already been moved.

“I only smelled death one time,” Duncan said.

“It was near the Capital building. They say that a lot of their politicians were still inside the demolished building.”

Duncan and his group stayed in a building provided by the Florida Baptist Convention, which already had a strong missionary program in Haiti before the earthquake. The building was one of the few with little damage from the quake.

“But across the street was a two-story building that a two-year-old never came out of,” Duncan said.

Rescue workers had put up signs at the scenes of most of the demolished buildings, Duncan said.

“On the left the number who had died there was listed,” Duncan said. “On the right, the sign listed the number who had survived from that building. It was pretty common to see buildings where 20 had died and nobody survived.”

The suffering in Haiti goes further back than the earthquake, Duncan said.

“In any third world country, you’re going to see poverty,” Duncan said. “We saw a lot of children who were suffering from malnutrition long before the earthquake.”

Duncan’s group saw 571 patients while in Haiti and had 20 people make a decision for Christ.

In addition, a chaplain spoke with 75 people individually during the week to provide crisis intervention.

“Talking about what has happened is a big step toward recovery,” Duncan said.

The first team the state Baptist convention sent dealt mostly with emergency situations, Duncan said. His group dealt more with infections and malnutrition.

After several more weeks of medical aid, the state convention will begin sending teams over to help with reconstruction, Duncan said.

“It will take at least two or three years to recover from this tragedy,” Duncan said.

Duncan was proud of how many relief workers on the state’s teams were from Pickens County.

“I believe that more people from Pickens County went to Haiti to do relief work than any other county in the state,” Duncan said.

“I know that my team had nine people, and seven were from Pickens County.

Duncan said he felt mission work was rather simple in concept.

“Everybody in the world had the same needs,” Duncan said. “We just need to show the love of Jesus wherever we go.”