In many isolated regions of rural Haiti, a single accident can become a life-threatening event simply because access to medical care is distant, costly, and uncertain. Filoma’s story reveals how fragile life becomes when survival depends on long journeys and impossible choices.

Filoma is 46 years old. She lives a remote area about six hours from the clinic. Since the death of her husband, she has cared for her seven children alone. She survives through farming and long, exhausting trips to the market — journeys that require hours of walking followed by a motorcycle taxi she can barely afford.

One day, as she was returning from the market, she climbed onto a motorcycle taxi already overloaded with four passengers and bags of provisions. The road was in good condition, but the weight was too much. The motorcycle lost balance, slipped, and crashed to the ground with everyone on it.

Filoma hit the ground hard. Pain exploded through her arm, her abdomen, and her entire body. She could barely move. A man passing by lifted her onto another motorcycle and brought her to the clinic. The ride was agonizing — every bump in the road felt like a knife piercing her injuries — but she had no other option.

When she arrived, the nurses immediately took her into emergency care room. Her wounds were serious, her body bruised and in with pain. She needed daily treatment, dressings, and constant supervision. But returning home was impossible. The six-hour journey back would have caused more pain, and she had no money to pay for a motorcycle taxi every day.

So she stayed with a niece who lives near the clinic, leaving her children with others , leaving her home, and her fields — because healing, in her circumstances, required sacrificing everything else.

Filoma says that God saved her life that day. In her mind, the accident could have easily taken her away from her children forever.

Stories like Filoma’s remind us how vulnerable rural families are, and how essential it is for them to have a clinic that remains open — a place where their only chance of survival can meet them at the end of long, painful roads.