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.

Little Girl Friends

I must admit I was pretty distracted on our village tour the first day by the following of little girls who accumulated as we went.  I think it started because I was trying to practice my Creole and asked one of the girls who was eyeing me as I was walking past her family’s hut what her name was.  (She was also darling and reminded me of a friend I have in Iowa City, Leara.)  Her name was Islan, and although I’m normally terrible with names, that one stuck.  I said “Au Revoir Islan” as I was walking away, and I think that was the spark that ignited our fast friendship.  She started walking with me, then a few of her friends follow suite; and soon they all started helping me learn Creole by pointing at things we’d pass and trying to teach me the word.  Some words were easy, like sheep is ‘mouton,’ and cow is ‘bef.’ The best for them though was teaching me the harder words, as they really got a kick out of my mispronunciations—sometimes giving them giggling fits that lasted minutes.  They also really enjoyed touching and commenting on my hair (if I’d known more Creole I would have told them something like “oh, girls, this ain’t nothing compared to my little sister’s locks”).  I really fell in love with them though when they started holding my hands as we walked (especially grabbing my hand to stabilize me whenever the road was steep or especially rocky.)  At some points on the walk, Islan (14), and her 13 year old best friend would be on either side of me holding both my hands; and then Manize, the most precious 7 year old I’ve ever seen, would just hold onto the back of my shirt, or even put her little hand on my hip as we walked, I guess so she could be physically linked into our little group too.  Towards the end of our walk Manize told me she loved me (in Creole of course, but luckily one of the other village kids that joined the group knew enough English to translate).  Amazingly I knew an appropriate-ish response in Creole: ‘Eh ou mem tu’ I said, meaning something like ‘and you also.’  Islan and co. were definitely the highlight of my first day in Haiti. 

Days One & Two

It’s hard to even start typing this blog because I already have done so much in the past two days that I feel like I’ve been here a week at least.  I think a bullet point list of activities will cover it best right now:

Day 1

• Arrive in Port au Prince Airport at 8:10 am yesterday, breeze through customs, and get into a tap tap with Chris, and Elain (I cannot be held accountable for spellings of any names in this or any future blogs) who is one of Chris’ good Haitian friends.
• Visit Elain’s family to see their new house, his adorable wife and young children.  The 3 year old has had a rash for a while and Elain wanted Chris to take a look at it.

• Head to the home of some of Chris’s American friends who live here doing medical work (and raise their 8 children, 4 biological, 4 adopted), to pick up some medical supplies from a storage unit they let CHI use.
• Pick up Rigan on the way, a former employee of CHI who is still very interested in working on Community Health Worker programs in different communities.  His English is incredible.

• Arrive at the house (they had two beautiful mastiffs) and spend the next hour or two sorting through medicines to bring back to Mission Matana.
• Take the tap tap back through Port-au-Prince up to Arcahaie and arrive at Mission Matana.

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• Meet Liz and Abbey, the two other Americans who will be here the whole time I am. More on them later.
• Go walking for several hours around the nearby villages for a full tour of the latrines which are still being constructed; the river, canal system, and dam; the decrepit road which needs major work to be functional for vehicles; and crop irrigation system.
• Best part of the walk for me was the little girlfriends I made—I think they deserve their own post though—soon to follow.
• Home to dinner at the mission (lots of great stories of the happenings from the last month told to us by Liz and Abbey), then a skype conference call with a fellow CHI’er, and then to bed.  (Oh, I did end up having to pack back up and switch rooms with Chris around 9 pm because we discovered my door did not lock.  Well it locked, but the door frame could very easily be pulled off the wall, definitely not leaving the room secure.)

Day 2

• First moto ride (of my life).  As nervous as I was, it was not only super fun, but I felt pretty safe.  And, as weird as it sounds, sitting between Santho, (my translator, creole teacher, and good friend after today) and the moto driver, not holding on to anything (and yes, sorry parents, no helmet) I felt really secure.  I also heard that moto drivers are extra careful when they are transporting “blan,” and I definitely experienced this to be true today.
• The trip was so I could go into town to exchange money, buy a phone sim card, and get some internet card minutes—and also get over the hurdle of my nervousness to leave the mission without Chris or the girls.  Santho and I were fairly successful on these errands, and I am just so glad to have gotten to know him, had him with me, and very excited that he will be my translator and companion doing the water surveys in the coming weeks.
• Next, Chris, the girls, Santho, and I went into the village to visit with Peterson, who is now going to be running the Gadyen Dlo program.  He was awesome.  And, he drove us around in his tap tap the rest of the day.
• We went into Debak to visit a hospital to make connections there for Abbey and the next time there is a CHI clinic team down here.
• Then, onto the coast road, Route 1, and went to Kaliko, the resort. We went there so Chris could introduce us to the manager, a Canadian former Olympic wrestler, who invited us to stop by anytime during our stay.  We also wanted to talk to him about real estate around Arcahaie because we’ve come to the conclusion that getting CHI it’s own “office” type of space may be slightly more productive to our projects and causes than always staying at the Mission.  We’ll see what happens and I’ll explain more about this at some point.
• Next, we head home, after stopping by a former clinic patient on our way.  Most memorable for me was meeting the patient’s brother, who was a 50 something year old Haitian who had lived in the US for 25 years.  He ended up telling us about his 19 children, “some with white women, some with black, some in Haiti, some in Florida, some in Minnesota.”  Oh, and that he’d be into the clinic next month for his hernia.
• Then home for more beans and rice, and a nice early night so we can get up early to see off Chris L

It’s the Journey

The most stressful part of most trips for me seems to be the preparation (i.e. making travel arrangements, organizing my life enough to leave it for a period of time, arranging care for my animals, packing, etc.).  And, I think that is why I got sick this weekend.  Although, I do think the exposure to germs I got sitting in a hospital waiting room on Friday—to get my rabies titers checked (to see if I have immunity following the vaccinations I received last year before India), definitely didn’t help my stressed out immune system.  Anyway, I’m happy to report that right now, my main lingering symptoms are nasal drainage and sinus pressure. 

               One of my favorite concepts I learned about in undergrad (in communication studies) was about how our society’s dominating focus on the “destination” results in the loss of some of the most important life experiences, because we aren’t able to actually be mentally present enough in the moment to have them.  Well, for some strange reason, I think traveling in my state of mental fatigue due to my cold actually forced me to focus on the journey more than the destination.  I was so sick and medicated, all I could do was focus on the exact moment I was in—and it was unexpectantly enjoyable.

               Despite the fact our flight out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was delayed 2 hours, and resulted in us missing our flight in Chicago (we were so close to making it we literally watched the plane back away from the terminal); and, then not getting into our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale until 11:45 pm (we had to get up at 3:30 am for our flight to Port-Au-Prince); I actually was in a state of calm elation, that has only recently died down a bit.

               The final leg of our journey this morning, literally a trip into a completely different world, started when we were boarding our flight to Port-Au-Prince.  I’ve never seen such blatant racial profiling, or any full-fledged person and belonging searches for that matter going on IN THE GATE.  (Not at the gate, I mean in the little tunnel bridge you walk down that connects you to the plane.)  Not that the situation in P-A-P was much better… Though, I think there is no need for me to go into greater detail than saying that I have never gotten through customs with such speed or ease.

This is one of the beautiful views from the plane as we begin our decent into P-A-P airport.

               As I write this post I am sitting in my room of the next 5 weeks.  Behind me, up into the mountains, I hear a few dogs barking intermittently and the comforting songs of insects; much like the sounds you might hear on a summer night in the Iowa country side.  However, to my immediate left, I hear as clearly as if there were no wall separating us at all, the non-stop singing and chanting of the other ‘Mission Matana’ residents.  It’s 11 pm, and I’m just starting to realize how completely my life has transformed in the past 19 hours I’ve been awake.

               I have much more I need to write, but need my sleep much more.  The picture I’ll leave you with is the view from my bedroom door right before I walked down to dinner tonight.  You have to look at the picture as a whole, a bit down the hill and at the horizon line, but that’s the ocean, and Anse-a-Galets (the island in cove).  I can’t wait for tomorrow—and for this incredible journey to continue…