Travay

Travay (Work)

Today and Monday have been very exhausting, but highly productive days for the Gadyen Dlo project.  Yesterday, Santho and I walked around the neighboring communities and tested various water sources for coliforms.  These are the bad bacteria found in water that indicate there is pollution present caused by some sort of fecal contamination. Santho proved invaluable yet again because he knew how to work the GPS device better than I did, he was our primary photographer, and he opened and held all the little water vials for me—Oh, and he was the only way I could communicate with everyone in these villages!

  Larivyè (the River)

We tested water from 5 main sources of water that people around the area use every day for drinking (and cooking, bathing, and cleaning).  First, we tested water from one of the pumps, which only gets turned on three days a week for a select number of hours at a time.  Next, we tested the river water, a little way upstream from where the canal system begins (see picture above).  Then we walked down the road, through some banana fields and to a popular spot along the canal (below).  Despite the lack of smiles from everyone but me, these guys were all super friendly, laughing, and nice to me the whole time we tested water there.  A lot of Haitians that I’ve met so far just don’t seem to like smiling for pictures—even though they are enthusiastic about the photos.

Next, we walked across the dam and over to Do Digue, where by some amazing good luck we ran into my little darling friend Islan, who walked us the half mile or so up the river (and through it in some places) where there is a little spring, and most people in Do Digue get there drinking water.  It was just the tiniest pool of water, that I would never have noticed on my own, but it was pretty awesome to see the water shooting up from the sand and rock bottom.   The picture below is Santho, Islan, Islan’s best friend (I feel terrible, but again, I cannot remember her name right now) and I standing right above the spring.  And, yes, that’s a goat (“Kabrit!” the girls kept reminding me) on the hill above us—they are roaming around EVERYWHERE.  

Finally, we walked back down to the “coke” lady’s little shop (again, coca cola, but that’s just how we refer to this little tiny neighborhood spot to buy soft drinks) and bought a bag of water to test.  All around the streets you can see litter from empty little water bags (they are slightly smaller than the sandwich sized ziplock baggies) that many people buy to drink—kind of like bottled water here in the States.  The rest of the afternoon, we had more Gadyen Dlo new employee water training, which was also exhausting but productive.

Today, Santho and I spent the majority of our time in downtown Arcahaie, making color copies and laminating a variety of safe water visuals for the new Gadyen Dlo guys to take with them around their communities, and new badges for them to wear (I think they wanted to look even more “official” as they went around to various homes).  I know that doesn’t seem like it should be so hard, but I assure you, the process of printing in color, making copies, and laminating these things took about 5 hours, 4 different shops, a taptap ride, and more money than you would think.  But, I am extremely pleased with how successful we were ultimately!  And, with all the time we spent waiting around for people to find supplies, and let machines cool down, etc., Santho and I had a series of very productive Kreyol lessons.

Stitches, Vicodin, & Rooftop Yoga

Stitches, Vicodin, & Rooftop Yoga: Sunday at Mission Matana

 On Sunday, Liz, Abbey, and I decided we would take the day “off.”  We determined that we should start our day with a little yoga after our long hard work week.  And, we thought, where better than on the roof of the guest house we are staying in?  From this roof we have a panoramic view of the ocean in front of us, and the mountains all around behind us—it is really incredible.  Despite starting the yoga before it was even 9 am, this roof top session quickly gave new meaning to “hot yoga.”  It was at least 90 degrees (F) and in direct sun.  Still, it was invigorating, peaceful, and we’ve decided this will be our Sunday morning tradition from now on.  Best of all, the kids who live on the hillside behind us were LOVING this free entertainment and started trying out some postures themselves—note the downward dog in the picture below.

After the yoga, a big breakfast, and several hours of computer/email/blog/Skype time, we remembered two tasks from our week’s to-do list that we hadn’t yet completed.  1) Take a bottle of unused Vicodin pills (donated from someone’s family in the US) to a woman who is dying of cervical cancer, and 2) remove stitches from a toddler’s stomach and scrotum.  Writing about it now makes it sound a lot weirder than it seemed at the time… Seeing the 80 year old woman who had a full Foley catheter and was in a lot of pain was really difficult, but it felt good to know that she’d get a tiny bit of relief from the pain pills; while feeding the adorable toddler fruit snacks and holding open his squirming legs for Abbey to remove his post-hernia operation stitches (from the most delicate of areas), was just something I’ll never forget. 

Obviously, I do not have pictures of either of those two interactions, but I’ll leave you with a picture of Liz, Abbey, and I getting a coke in “downtown” Arcahaie last Saturday.

Friday: Part 3

 Part 3: Gadyen Dlo Employee Training

After getting back to Matana, we had to grab our computers and head back down to Petersen’s house, so Liz and I could conduct our new employee water training.  The day before we had found some training materials that use pictures to help explain the hydrologic cycle and how waterborne diseases are spread through human and animal excrement in waterways, lack of hand washing, etc.  And, I had simplified and translated to Creole one of my Gadyen Dlo powerpoints from last semester to show the boys and use for this training.  I was so worried that when I was explaining the way that bacteria, passed through water is responsible for much of the diarrheal diseases affecting the people here, that they would essentially be thinking “duh, everyone knows that.”  Instead, it was the opposite, and the best moment for me was when Petersen and the boys started to understand that the purpose of adding Gadyen Dlo solution to the water, was to kill the “mikwobs” that Liz and I had been talking about for the past two hours.  

The new Gadyen Dlo employees from left to right: Santho, Watson, Rolax, and Petersen.

While my practicum was originally supposed to be to evaluating the Gadyen Dlo system as an up and running program, a few days before my trip I learned that the former employees had all been fired because they weren’t actually selling Gadyen Dlo to the homes, or recording anything, etc.  So, that was why it was necessary for us to do this training, and we have about 2-3 more training planned for early next week.  In order for me to evaluate how well our trainings are going, I asked them to answer a few questions before the start of our day’s lesson, and then I’ll ask them the same questions on Monday to see how their answers differ.  Examples of the questions we asked: “Why is it important to treat water?” and “List all the ways you know of to treat water.” 

After the training (which ended up lasting around 3 hours) and was very exhausting in part because we are not sure how accurately our translator, John (sitting next to Liz), was translating.  Another factor was that Santho, my translator from the other day (moto riding) was also there as one of the employees, and doing his own translations for Watson and Rolax.  And, just overall it was incredibly difficult trying to teach the concepts of waterborne diarrheal disease to people who have grown up thinking you get sick because “God willed it” (or someone sent a curse to you or your family) not because of mikwobes (microbes is the best general translation to mean bacteria, pathogens, germs, etc).  BUT—that being said, this was one of the coolest experiences of my life, and the times when I could see that they were understanding, and that it actually made sense to them that not washing your hands after elimination, then going in and cooking dinner could spread mikwobs to your family, was indescribably rewarding for me.  

So, when we were done, we bought everyone a cola (or a beer if they preferred), and then had a mini-dance party (Petersen turned on the generator for music).  This was on Petersen’s beautiful, private, patio (that's where the pictures are all from).  The best part was that whenever we'd look towards the main gate, several little tiny hands would shoot up from underneath the metal and wave to us—apparently the music attracted an audience of petits (kids).  It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Friday: Parts 1 & 2

Friday

This will probably be one of the more memorable days of my Haitian adventure, and probably my life.  There were really three parts to the day, and each one was totally different than the last.  Two were pretty great experiences, but unfortunately, the first part was one of the most upsetting things I’ve witnessed. 

Part 1: A Fourteen Year Old’s Eye

As we were eating breakfast, Liz told Dr. Abbey that there was a girl from one of the villages who had walked up to Matana by herself this morning, and she had apparently been punched in her face and her eye looked pretty bad.  Abbey went over and took a look, and when she came back I heard the full story.  Her father had been fighting with her and beating her up two nights ago, and at some point started poking her in the eye with a stick.  Apparently, her mother had tried to put some aloe vera inside her eye yesterday, but she walked up here this morning because she was starting to loss her vision out of the affected eye. Unable to do anything in or clinic, we asked Geelynn, one of our Community Health Workers who lives at the mission to accompany her to the hospital in Debuk.  She complied.  At that point, I hadn’t even seen the girl, because I didn’t want to jump up and go see her just because I’d heard that awful story.  I was outside talking with Abbey when she and Geelynn returned from the hospital. The doctor hadn’t even looked at her eye, he had just given her a prescription for antibiotic eye drops, and told her to come back in one week.  Abbey was outraged and finally got the doctor on the phone and he agreed to see her again on Monday.  Because we are not an operational clinic facility during the times when the medicals teams are down here, we only have access to a very limited supply of medicine, and Abbey has actually already given away most of her own personal supply of Ibuprofen.  Luckily I remembered that I had a full bottle Tylenol with me, so we did send her home with 35 or so Tylenols for her headache, and gave her a cliff bar and glass of water before she left.  As deeply sad as it was to just look at her, this skinny but beautiful 14 year old, holding some ice in a rag over her tortured eye, and know the story behind it—the truly heartbreaking moments were when we had to watch her walk away, out the gates of Matana, and back to her house…with her father.

Part 2: Ian’s Group—Team Tassy

On Thursday we started getting emails from one of the doctors Chris and Abbey knows, who wanted to link us up with another American in Haiti right now, Ian Rosenberger.  It turns out he is a founder of this company “Thread” which helps Haitians make money from collecting plastic trash, and then processes and recycles the plastic from Haiti and sells it to American companies to be processed into textiles.  The girls and I are currently SUPER excited about the idea of opening a “branch” (so-to-speak) here in Arcahaie.  Anyway, another little interesting fact about Ian is that he was on Survivor, the TV show some years ago. 

He showed up to Matana in a nice rental pick-up truck with about 6 other people who were down here with him for a long weekend.  Most of them have been friends for close to 10 years, and had met while in undergrad at Penn State.  They told us about their Team Tassy project in Cite Soliel, which is a foundation that “identifies, saves, and then mentors through adulthood dying Haitian children whose access to life-saving medical procedures has been cut off due to poverty, the earthquake, or both.”  They were interested in seeing and learning about what we were doing and seeing if a partnership could be formed (which definitely can and hopefully will).  We then left with them to drive to the surgery center a few miles away in Arcahaie, which neither Abbey, Liz, or myself had seen yet.  Then as we were about to drive back he suggested we all get lunch together, so we went to a nice place along the coast, and I had my first Haitian seafood of the trip (it was delicious).  It was also a great lunch for me because several of the girls on the team had their MPHs, and overall, it was just a fascinating exchange of ideas with really smart, kind, and enthusiastic people, who had great ideas for improving the situation here in Haiti. We did get some group shots, but they are on Team Tassy cameras, so I’ll post those once we get them.  Below just shows where this lunch was.

After gorging ourselves at lunch, we told Ian he could just drop us off at Route one and our Matana road so we could walk the 1.5 miles back up to the Mission.  After about a mile of walking (drenched, and I mean Bikram Yoga drenched in sweat), a mother holding her infant ran over to us smiling and waving.  She showed us his hernia scar, which still had stiches in it…  And, she motioned towards the Mission, letting us know that the CHI surgical team which was here in January had performed the surgery.  She also showed us his extremely swollen testicle… so it’s actually on our list today to hike back down the road with suture removing supplies and take a look at the infant more closely. 

I don’t have too many relevant pictures for these two parts of Friday, so the first photo is of the mountain side behind the Mission, and then the second is of Liz one night when we were walking home from our neighborhood “coke (as in the cola) lady.”

Dr. Abbey and the CHWs

For a little over a year several of the doctors/residents associated with CHI have been starting up a Community Health Worker (CHW) program.  Women from the local communities have been training with the doctors and learning how to provide basic primary care, prenatal care, act as patient advocates and even coordinators of medical care.  Before going “live,” with the girls actually going out into their communities, Dr. Abbey and Liz have been working on a health survey for them to conduct at each home in their designated communities.  This training session was an effort to finalize that survey, and make sure the Creole translations made sense to the girls.  I tried to help by looking up needed terms in our various Haitian Creole/English dictionaries, but mainly just observed the meeting.  It was so exciting to see something like this coming to life, especially after reading so much about CHW programs around the world, and how positive these can be for improving public health of communities, and empowering the women who are involved.  This is really going to be amazing.