CARLSBORG — Scotty Robinson is supposed to be married soon at the Hotel California in Todos Santos, a laid-back Baja California town.
But he keeps getting called away: first to Malawi in southeastern Africa on Dec. 31, and while there, to a meeting with the Tanzania Red Cross. A levee had broken in that country, and Robinson, a ShelterBox Response Team volunteer, might have gone to work aiding flood survivors.
But at that Red Cross meeting on Jan. 12, a man burst in to whisper news in an official’s ear.
A massive earthquake had hit Haiti, leaving in its wake waves of death, with much more suffering to come.
“You could hear a pin drop,” after this was announced, Robinson recalled.
He finished his nearly three weeks with relief work in Africa, came home to tend to his business, European AutoWerks in Carlsborg, and waited for the next call.
Robinson is a member of the Sequim Sunrise Rotary Club, which like other Rotary clubs worldwide has sponsored and supported ShelterBox’s efforts across the globe.
And Tom Schaafsma, a longtime Sunrise Rotarian, has traveled to Peru, Mexico, Honduras and this spring to Haiti, teaching survivors how to set up the contents of a ShelterBox: a tent large enough for 10 people, plus blankets, cooking equipment and many other necessities.
Last November, Robinson temporarily closed European AutoWerks so he could go to Cornwall for the nine-day ShelterBox Response Team training.
Malawi was his first deployment, a little over a month after he returned from his rainy, cold time in England.
The next summons came in late April: Robinson would travel to the villages outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, where many people had yet to see help in the months since the quake.
He flew to Haiti on May 1 and stayed until May 19, and this week, taking a breather from work and wedding prep, spoke of scenes surreal, frightening and inspiring.
“There is such a magnitude of destruction,” Robinson began. People he traveled with were at times speechless.
“The rubble,” he said, “is piled as high as you can see.”
Just driving through Port-au-Prince “is a nightmare.” The fastest cars win, speeding vehicles wait for no one, and potholes can swallow cars whole.
That’s to say nothing of driving at night through the crime-ridden city, which Robinson said can be terrifying.
Once out of the capital, Robinson joined other volunteer aid workers from charitable organizations around the world, to first go to Miami Field, a sprawling center much like a mobile army surgical hospital, or MASH.
With the rainy season in full force, torrents flooded the roads, triggered power outages, blew out ventilation hoses and otherwise wrought havoc on the hospital.
Doctors and nurses just kept working.
Robinson’s job was to ensure that the ShelterBoxes got from the shipper to their intended destination and were distributed properly, with clear instructions on how to set up the tent and other gear.
Naturally, “everybody wants a tent; everybody wants aid,” he said.
But ShelterBox focuses on those whose lives are threatened, and supplies equipment to them first. That meant he and his co-workers, at times, had to fight their way through obstacles to distribution: disorganization, bureaucracy, cargo limits.
“We kind of go for doing the most for the most. You get in the mind set of: Get people in shelter. Their lives are at stake,” he said.
“I get a little bit direct, when you have people dying, and somebody is dragging their feet.”
More than four months after the earthquake, Robinson said, relief workers are striving to get refugees out of the all-too-often chaotic camps.
“The ideal thing is to get people back to their homes, to put communities back together,” he said.
Midway through his second week in Haiti, Robinson and his compatriots’ car broke down on a rural road.
While waiting for help, Robinson had a chance encounter with a man who would remind him of why he had come.
“We met a pastor of a church,” he said, “that had an orphanage, with 150 permanent residents . . . so we walked there,” to find 150 kids gathering to greet them in the midst of a wholly destroyed structure.
“They had nothing,” said Robinson. “All they wanted was 15 ShelterBoxes.”
He set to work obtaining those, but first the rubble on the orphanage site had to be cleared away and shipment constraints dealt with. While Robinson and his co-workers helped distribute some 1,000 ShelterBoxes, thousands more were held up at the Dominican border due to cargo restrictions.
To entertain the children at the rural orphanage, Robinson got out his video camera, shot some footage, and then showed them in the tiny viewfinder.
The kids loved it; he was instantly submerged in squeals and laughter.
“When you see those kids’ faces, it’s ‘I don’t care what I’ve got to do or where I have to go,'” Robinson said. “Seeing them immediately brings clarity.”
At 48, Robinson is a mix of high energy and endurance. He credits Schaafsma and Jim Pickett, another Sequim Sunrise Rotarian, for motivating him.
“They’re both like Energizer bunnies,” he said.
Pickett, 71, and Schaafsma, 61, have taken the ShelterBox message across Western Washington. Last year the pair brought in donations totaling $64,000 — enough to buy and ship 64 ShelterBoxes — to become the nation’s top fundraisers.
Pickett, a retired school superintendent who’s lived in Sequim since 1993, said he’s impressed with the depth of Robinson’s involvement just four years after joining Rotary. Robinson has two priceless traits, Pickett added: enthusiasm for helping others and a sense of humor.
Still, some ask Robinson why he volunteers with ShelterBox, and why he endures the difficult conditions that come with the work.
All he can say is: If you have to ask, you probably wouldn’t understand.
Robinson’s fiancee, Ethelyn Greenstreet, gets it. The pair have been together eight years.
After joining Rotary, “I wanted to do something more,” Robinson added. “Little did I know.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
