I had another great day today. I feel like every day I get to experience so much it’s hard to take it all in sometimes.

I started the day at mass in the chapel on the grounds with Father Rick. They lay the bodies of the children and adults who died the previous night in the chapel and Father Rick does a Catholic funeral for them, there were three there this morning. The bodies are wrapped and they each have unique cloths over them that are decorated with crosses and flowers. The one for the little girl was a light pink and had white lace over it, it was very pretty. There was a lot of singing in Creole which sounded beautiful and a Haitian girl, Esther, who works here and is known for her singing was there, so it was a really nice funeral. I had a hard time at one point because the door to the chapel is open and when you look out you can see all of the mothers with their babies waiting to be triaged to come into the hospital. Many of the babies and children are crying because they don’t feel well and have to wait such a long time to be seen. I felt so bad for those mothers because we had someone’s little girl in here, watching her funeral. I was thinking this over very solemnly when I glance outside again, and Sister Judy who is doing the triage, is so frustrated with one of the mothers interrupting her while she’s talking to a patient that she takes matters into her own hands. She is standing facing the chairs that the mothers are sitting in and she reaches between the two, sets her elbow down on the back of the chair, and turns her body to face the one she actually wants to talk to, elbowing out the rude mother. Hilarious.

I had some plans for the mid-morning to afternoon but they changed. I feel like I could start almost every story here with that… “well, I was going to do something, but I ended up doing this.” Anyways Dievrek (pronounced Jevek) drove Ivy and I to Project HOPE to have a meeting in hopes of getting some donated medications and supplies. The meeting went really well, it sounds like they have a lot to give away and we need a lot of medications. Ivy was especially excited because the representative we were talking to said that they had the capability to send us insulin and chemotherapy drugs. I really hope that I can do my pharmacy project well because it could end up saving the hospital a ton of money, money that can be used for so many other things, because there is so much need. The drive to and from the organization, which is in Delmas, was equally as exciting for me because it’s only the second time I’ve been outside of our compound. I saw so many interesting things: a 10 year old boy wearing a “Junior Girls” t-shirt, a man washing a tire in the street runoff so that it would look new to sell, little garbage fires all over the roads, a man selling pills from his random assortment stuffed into a black garbage bag (scary), plus tons of beautiful art. We also passed the Canadian Embassy and the U.S. Embassy, both of which were gorgeous buildings made out a light, shiny stone (how scientific of me) with tall, wrought iron gates surrounding them.  We also took a road home that was up on a hill where we could see all the way over the flatlands and Port-au-Prince to the ocean. It’s surprising how many trees there seems to be, although you can’t appreciate how nice it is because of all the smog.

Before the sunset I went up on the roof of St. Damien’s and took some pictures of the views. You can see the dark clouds in the distance, which produced tons of lightening when it got a little later. I sat in the other room and watched it for a while because it was really pretty. Later, I had my first Creole lesson with Kenson, the director of FWAL. Tomorrow, I’m going to help him study for the SAT’s. He might have wanted me to take an SAT first before he agreed to this deal… hopefully I don’t embarrass myself too bad.

Volunteer area and water tower

View of Francisville, from the roof of St. Damien