Carmen Maria Romero was one of the four medical workers in Haiti whose voices you heard in After the Quake: Patients and Healers. She’s a physical therapist who had already been volunteering in Haiti for ten years, and who traveled there last January to help with the relief efforts.
Romero was so moved by the suffering and the resilience of her patients that she decided to quit her job and relocate to Haiti.
She has an identical twin, Isabel Maria. Growing up, they were inseparable. Carmen and Isabel went to the same college and studied physical therapy. After that, their paths diverged somewhat. Still, they had never been apart for longer than a week before Carmen decided to go to Haiti.
Listen to Carmen and Isabel talk about Carmen’s experiences doing relief work, her decision to leave, and how that affected the sisters’ relationship.
Carmen Maria Romero: “These are my rehab educators, local villagers that I trained to make house visits, fit people with wheelchairs, and perform basic rehab follow up. The person holding the cane has two below-the-knee amputations from the earthquake. Here, my trainees are learning to fit an appropriate wheelchair to the patient that has paraplegia and is sitting next to me on the ground.”
