when it rains, it pours

Dropped Kevin back off at the airport this morning :(


I'm very happy that he came down and so glad he got to experience what its like to be in Haiti... but now I'm very sad he's gone. I went to work after the airport which was fine, but then Yvenson left to go get some lunch and I decided to stay and continue sorting some donated supplies. So it started raining... then pouring... then the wind picked up... and as luck would have it, pelting the rain through our open warehouse door. I was off in I-miss-my-boyfriend fantasy land, so it took me a little while to realize that the rain had formed a little lake at the entrance to the depot. I ran over with the broom and pushed most of the water out the door before it got to the supplies. Then, I went to close the warehouse door. I took a university-level physics series and yet I cannot figure out why that door opens so easily but is so damn hard to close. Of course the rain is at the perfect angle to get me drenched while I struggle to pull the door closed. It takes me probably a good thirty seconds to move it three inches. I gather my strength for another big push and the new puddle that has formed makes my flip-flops slide all over the concrete floor. Eventually I got everything worked out and managed to close the door most of the way. As I was walking out of Francisville, I was actually very thankful for those stupid flip-flops because I just walked right through the gigantic lake that forms behind the security gate.


I came home and watched the new episode of Glee to cheer me up (so worth it, even though i-tunes charges $3 an episode). But then I got an email about how bad the security situation has become. It already can be frustrating because we don't always have cars and even if we do its only safe to go certain places at certain times of day. But I've always felt fine walking between our different buildings St. Damien-Francisville-FWAL-St. Luke. However, that changed today and now its not going to be an option for a while. Not only is it going to effect our work, but its hard because there aren't really any good solutions. Living in U-district I always felt like I knew what I needed to do to be safe, but here it's a lot harder to know what to do. We're all going to have a meeting on Sunday to discuss some options.


So I was pretty bummed out about the whole day, not to mention a huge storm rolled in and it started thundering and pouring again. I felt like curling up and continuing my pity-party, but instead I went up to go see the babies. I'm so glad I did. When I walk in, I can see the moment of recognition in their eyes and they get this huge smile on their faces and it makes me so happy that I dragged myself out of the house. I fed Yvens and Lubin, then Marco and I took Secours on a walk in his stroller. Then we put Yvens and Lubin in the wagon and Marco and I pulled them around. Eventually I put all the boys in the wagon and we did a few more laps, with a stop outside the oncology window to say hi. We went back to the room and the boys played with blocks while I held some of the little babies. Anyways, it was a great way to cheer me up and distract myself for two hours.


I didn't write at all this week since I was busy enjoying my time with Kevin, but last weekend we got to go on a Port-au-Prince city tour. It was great timing since Kevin was here and really fun for me because I hadn't seen most of the national landmarks (or really, what remains of them.) Working in Tabarre and having our patients come to us, you start to forget about the conditions that people live in and how big an impact the earthquake is still having on people's lives. A lot times people here make jokes about the earthquake, but when you see the National Palace just completely crumbled with one of the most violent tent cities formed right in front of the gates, it makes you realize how real this still is.
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what was the Catholic National Cathedral of Haiti

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National Cathedral of Haiti

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view through the gates at the National Palace

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National Palace

Quote of the day:

JS: "Don't you think we should wash the purple lent cloth before putting it back?"
SK: "Nah, I mean the bodies were wrapped and frozen for a while, so I'm sure it'll be fine."

rookie mistake

Really, I should know better. Can you guess what my mistake was? If you've spent some time in Haiti, read through my last blog post (past all the spider freak-out) and you'll probably catch it. For those of you who live in the blissfully efficient first-world, here it is:


"Tomorrow we're getting a huge medication shipment and hopefully picking up some drugs we purchased... should be an eventful day!"

Famous. Last. Words.

Let me preface this little rant by saying that this is not commentary on any particular person's work here or even our organization as a whole. Things like this just happen here. So... three weeks ago (ya, really.) we needed to place a medication order. However, because we are not officially registered as a hospital with the Department of Health (we're in-process) we still order our medications through St. Damien's. Well, we didn't turn in our request on time, so St. Damien sent their request without ours. Fair enough, they're already doing us a favor and the we didn't get our act together. So, we had to wait for them to receive their medications before we could place another request. Fast-forward to last Thursday, we make our first trip to Promess to pick up our medications. However, we have to count the entire order and by the time we finish, they are closing so we need to come back to make the purchase. On Tuesday, we have our check and hop aboard Mr. Toad's Wild Ride from hell. Instead of a cute little buggy we are in a maternity cage. No that's not a typo, we have a maternity cage... sometimes its easier to not ask questions. We survive the cage and get to Promess with our check made out to 'Promess'... silly us. We are turned away, get into a fender-bender driving home (the cage gets by unscathed, obviously) and resolve to do better next time.

Which brings us to today. New check made out to the correct organization? Check. Official-looking manilla folder? Check. Other required paper that somehow appeared in the pile? Check. My very intelligent coworker who is wise to Haiti's ways, looks over this new paper and realizes it requires a signature, which we promptly get from our administrator. We return to Promess, thankfully not in the cage. Get told off for handing the lady a closed envelope. Get lecture about the necessity of first opening the envelope. Whatever. The check passes inspection and we are sent to door number two. We hand lady number two our papers and she's looking over them when lady number one comes running in, saying we don't have this new paper. I really think we've got her at this point. Yvenson pulls it out of the envelope and I am smug. Then... our downfall. "M'ap tcheke signature." Of course since we're ordering through St. Damien, we need one of their administrator's signature not St. Luke's. We promise to get the signature and come back later, for our 4th visit. She tells us their computer system is down, so don't bother. It is now 10am.

We repeat totally ridiculous run-around to get correct administrator signature from St. Damien. It is now 12pm. Lunch time. Best part of the day. With each bite of spaghetti, I regain my patience and realize that it's no big deal to try again tomorrow. This is my first time placing an order with Promess, so next time I'll know exactly what needs to be done.

After lunch, I'm on to the second medication shipment that is supposed to be arriving from Germany at 3pm. We've been working on this order for the cholera treatment center since my first week here. I double check with reception that our customs guy picked up his forms that I printed for him. Yep. Call customs guy at 2pm to remind him the flight is coming in at 3pm. He remembers. I smile. But he doesn't know which airline or the flight number. Nevermind that it is on every single one of the 54 pages I printed for him... my stomach is full, so I am patient and tell him again. I tell him how important it is that we get these drugs soon because we have been out of them for quite a while now. He says that there are a lot of forms to fill out and there is no way we'll have them today. Perfect.

So there it is, my curse for having assumed that I would have two shipments of medications coming in today. I got caught up in the excitement of finally having a great supply of meds for the hospitals. Don't worry, Haiti put me right back where I belong. But the day got better eventually. Probably an hour after the final disappointing call came in, Crawford from Operation Blessing came over with a box of goodies from a volunteer group and they brought me a STAPLER! I know a stapler doesn't sound exciting to you, but imagine doing your office job for the past two months without a stapler. Seriously, I dare you to go one day without your stapler. You will be folding corners and making tape-disasters until you're blue in the face. It's not like Haiti doesn't have staplers, there are plenty of staplers here. But there is just so much to do, so many urgent places for money to go, that to take the time and effort to get a stapler ends up seeming like the ridiculous option.

AND WHAT IS WITH THE COLOSSAL BUGS LATELY??? I just took down a monster cockroach. Nothing I love more than some creepy-crawlers right before I climb into bed!

I think this is what they call the end of the honeymoon stage...

AHHHHHHHH


I had just opened my internet when I look up and there is a gigantic spider crawling on my wall. Not like any kind of Washington or California spider, I'm talking Caribbean monster spider. Ivy tried to take it down with some raid, but the spider was unfazed. I ran over to Joanne, Bridget and Kathleen's for backup and as we were all running back over, we hear Ivy pounding the wall. We all get inside and the spider had been trying to crawl up the wall, so Ivy pounded on the wall to shake the spider back down. I have never been so thankful for flimsy walls. After everyone came in and we determined that it wasn't a tarantula (ya, it was that big... just without the hairy legs) Joanne got it in some toilet paper and threw it outside.


Now I am back sitting in my room... terrified. A mosquito just flew by me and I had a total spazz out. Not cool Haiti.


Anways, what I was going to write about before the spider invasion.... barely seems relevant anymore. Okay well we have an American surgical team here doing cleft lip surgeries at St. Damien. Cleft lip surgeries are good because they require minimum follow up and there is a much lower chance of complications, which is good because the team only has a short amount of time here. Anyways, in traditional American-hospital fashion, they've been bringing the kids in and out of surgery in their beds. Well, you should have heard the kids in oncology talking about this! They had been watching people coming and going from sal balon (the balloon room) all day and they could not believe the kids were in the beds! Normally, moms carry their children through the hospital here, so it was a big deal that these kids were getting pushed around on their beds. So funny what entertains these kids. I guess it makes sense cause the kids in oncology are just sitting around all day and there's only so much they can do to entertain themselves.


After I hung out in oncology, I went over to see the babies. We did some walks around and I even got out the tricycle for Marco to ride. I think he needs one more day of practicing on it and then he'll be good to do trike rides around the hospital along with walks. Also, Yvens knows how to wave! Yesterday, he sort of did a tiny little wave to one of the many people who stopped us in the hallway, but today he was doing it back to everyone. He still needs a lot of prompting, but I think within no time he'll have it down.


Tomorrow we're getting a huge medication shipment and hopefully picking up some drugs we purchased... should be an eventful day!


Quotes-


Cabrito: "Don't booze and block"

my routine & babiessss

I've finally settled into a routine down here. I'm sure it'll change, especially since I'm taking the time to write it down, but I'm pretty happy with it for the moment. I wake up around 7am and make it over to St. Luke/ St. Philomene by 8ish. Depending on the day, I'll meet with people there for a while to figure out what we need and meet new administrators (happens often enough that yes, this is actually a part of the routine). Work at the warehouse until 1ish, then come back to St. Damien and the volunteer tents to have lunch. Chat with friends before I drag myself back to the hot, hot warehouse for another hour or two. The last two hours typically involve a lot less manual labor and a lot more "Kreyol lessons". That's my professional excuse for sitting and talking. To be fair, a lot of google translating goes on. Around 4pm, I head over to FWAL to play with the kids for about an hour. After that, I come back to St. Damien and go up to the abandoned baby room for another hour of playing with them. Walk back to my house from St. D, take a shower, and feel completely happy that I had such a full day. I'm so tired by the time I get back from FWAL, but I love going to see the babies. Every time I think I'm too tired and I make myself go up there, I'm so happy I did. I'm going to write about the babies that I've been spending the most time with because they are adorable and apparently I didn't do enough talking today...


I guess first I should describe sal pwason (the fish room). It's on the second story in the corner of the non-infectious side of the hospital. There's a big blue fish outside the door which is why it's called the fish room (the other rooms have a mango, balloon, etc). It's nicer to have the symbols, easier to remember and you don't have to be able to read to figure out which room your kid is in. The room is really nice with lots of windows on two of the walls. The walls are painted a Caribbean light blue, and little white boards hang over each crib, with the name of the child in the crib below. There are 12 cribs total right now, and the babies range in age from newborn to 3 years old. They are all children who have been abandoned at the hospital and are waiting for a social services organization, Beni Sociale, to figure out where they are going. Sometimes the children go up to our orphanage, however a lot of times (like now) our home is completely full so the babies end up waiting months and sometimes more than a year, for a more permanent home. Many of the children there are deformed and disabled, and sadly for some children there is nothing the hospital can do to help them and they are there waiting to die. The first time I went to visit the children, was the first time I had to stop myself from crying. It's very, very difficult to see the girl with advanced hydrocephalus or the baby who's joints are all going the opposite way, so her limbs are pointing the wrong directions. With these children, I usually just spend some time standing beside their crib, rubbing their hands or arms, although for some children this only upsets them. There are two older boys with some severe behavioral/mental disabilities and I hope that in time I'll be able to play with them a little bit. The babies I take out of the crib and walk around with, but my boys are who I spend most of my time with.

First is Lubin, a little one-year old with dark eyes and the roundest little mouth. He tends to sit back and watch everything that goes on, but has no problem letting me know that it's his turn to go on a walk outside. He's had a cold for a little over a week now, and when Bridget asked about his breathing, the nurse showed us that he's a cardiac baby. They think that he's a tet, which means our hospital has a program that could potentially send him to the US for surgery, but without a mother or father I think it's almost impossible to get the documents to go. Anyways, today we were playing and he was sitting next to the wall and the next thing I know, he's climbing his hands up the wall and stands up all on his own! I've held him up to practice standing, but he's never been interested in taking more than a step or two. I think he's just a little cautious and the day he decides he's ready to start walking, he'll just do it.


The second baby is Marco who's the oldest, I think about 2 and a half. He's big compared to most of the kids we work with, although I think if we were in the US he'd be about normal. He never talks, although he seems to understand Creole when you talk to him. What he lacks in verbal communication, he makes up for in his expressions. However he feels completely takes over, so when he's happy it is the most adorable thing. One day I was dancing with him in his crib and when I twirled around his entire face lit up and his smile reached his eyes and he let out such a happy shriek. Today, he started copying Yvens, who was doing Indian calls and I was trying to encourage Marco to keep going. I don't know the first thing about speech therapy, but if the kid barely lets out a peep, I'm definitely going to encourage him to be vocal however he can. He loves going on little walks around the hospital, kind of a borderline obsession, and today I decided the Dave Matthew's song, "Save Me" should be about Marco.


"I'm driving through the desert I, met a man
Who told me of his crazy plan
He'd been walking there for 20 days
He was going to walk on
For 20 more
Said 'How about a drink or a bite to eat?'
He said "No, my faith is all I need"
So then, save me
Save me mister walking man
If you can"

My third little guy is Yvens. Oh Yvens. He is about 1 and a half and pretty much never stops smiling. He loves smiling, yelling, Indian calling, blowing raspberries, jumping, pounding and all-around being adorable. All the nurses at St. D know him and call him menage mwen (my boyfriend). The only time I ever see him cry is when I have to put him back in his crib to leave. Even though he's got quite a ways to go before he walks on his own, that doesn't stop him from charging full speed ahead on our walks around the hospital, hanging onto my hands completely for support, while his little feet run all over the place. The other day it had rained, so the tile hallways were slippery and he was like a car stuck in the mud with his feet going a million miles a second slipping and sliding around everywhere. He has such an amazing personality and I can tell that he is going to be such a happy person, no matter what Haiti throws his way.


So there are my boys. Except for what the nurse said about Lubin, I know nothing about their families, their medical history... even their ages I'm just taking a guess at. Part of me wants to find out their birthdays, assess their development and work with them. But the other part of me, the part that I'm choosing to listen to, tells me to just play with them and love them exactly the way they are. They aren't my projects, my job. I desperately want what's best for them, but I know that this is out of my control. But I choose to get to know them because they are adorable, precious, beautiful children, just the way they are. And they return every moment of happiness I give them with cuddles, smiles and laughter.

Almost forgot my quote for the day-
Me: "Do you like Lady Gaga?"
YV: "Yes because when she sings she's almost naked"

outside of NPH

Today I got to take a fabulous trip outside of the compound to go see some other hospitals. We went with a director of Zanmi Lasante (Partner's in Health) to the Central Plateau, first for a meeting at Hopital Albert Schweitzer (HAS), then to see the construction of ZL's new hospital in Mirebalais. It took about 2 hours to get to Verrettes, the town HAS is in, then about half way through our trip back home, we stopped by the construction site in Mirebalais. I couldn't put these places on a map, so here's the one I just found on Google images. The Artibonite river runs through the Central Plateau, making water accessible and bringing huge trees, great farming and cholera. The Cholera epidemic is much worse there than in Tabarre (and I assume Port-au-Prince in general) which became evident in our meeting.

The meeting we attended was between ZL which has a Cholera Treatment Center (CTC) in the area and adminstrators for Albert Schweitzer. The meeting was in French (hallelujah- I actually understood everything) and was to discuss the closing of HAS's CTC. Yes, hospitals in Haiti love their acronym's just as much as they do in the US. HAS has completely run out of funding to cover the CTC and confirmed with Haiti's Minstry of Health that they will be closing it down. However, ZL's CTC... wow this is getting way too technical.


Here's the situation: ZL already has patients in their kitchen and staff room to keep up with the amount of cholera patients they are seeing. HAS has about 40 patients a day in their cholera center, but no more money to run it, so all those patients are either going to ZL's kitchen or they won't be treated. Everyone is running out of money and there are still so many sick people.


The meeting was very professional, about 15 of us sitting in HAS's beautiful medical library, speaking in French and trying to balance ethics with logistics about how best to manage the situation. It made me hopeful for what our relatively new organization, St. Luke, can become. But as I'm writing this, another part of me is happy that we just tell it like it is and get things done without the bureaucracy.


Having only been here for two months, I'm torn between feeling frustrated that people are forgetting about Haiti and taking the stance that organizations have to think about the sustainability of their programs. There's emotional and logical reasoning to both sides and when people's lives are on the line it's such an impossible call. How can you be the person that decides that with what little money you have at your disposal, you're going to focus on prevention, when you know that people will die because of it. The Medical Director of HAS, literally has to make that call within the next few weeks.


In lighter news, I started listening to the newest The Script album which is a-mazing! Also I'm going to start writing quotes, because Ivy was reading me exerpts from her quote book a while ago and I was crying I was laughing so hard. So, we'll kick off the quotes with...


HAS Medical Director: "We have 40 beds and 300 people showing up at the door in the morning. What are we supposed to do? It's not like we can just shut the doors."
IK: "You better believe SJ would be there with a padlock."


Me: "Do you speak any spanish?"
JF: "Yes, I can say 'te amo' to a girl... the rest you don't have to speak the language to do it"

red light, green light

Sometimes it's the littlest things that really hit you. 

Over a month ago I had two short term volunteers working with me in the warehouse and we would go over to FWAL in the afternoons to play with the kids. I felt bad subjecting our volunteers to 8 hours of manual labor a day, so I would take them to see some smiling faces for the last part of the afternoon. So the first week of August we went over to play with the kids at FWAL and we taught them red light, green light. We gave a short explanation, the kids didn't follow any of the rules and we all had a blast. I've been to FWAL at least once a week since then, but I went to masses, watched their soccer games, or hung out with the high school girls. Today, the kids remembered playing red light, green light with me! I had been talking with them for a while when one of the boys, Stevenson, came up and said "mwen vle jwe limye wouj" (I want to play red light). Soon all the boys were asking to play limye wouj!  Of course I was happy to oblige and we had a ton of fun playing again.

I can't even begin to describe how fulfilling it is for the kids to remember the game you taught them. Really, who cares this much? It's not like I taught them anything important.. red light, green light isn't even a hard game to learn. But I know exactly why it's so rewarding to me- because I am going to be here to play it with them. When I tell them that I'm coming back tomorrow to play, I can not only keep that promise, but I can come back next week and next month and nine months from now. With so many people coming in and out of their lives, I can be there. I will be there. To listen, to laugh, to play.

the president saw me in my bikini!

That's right... my first presidential encounter and I was wearing a bikini. Luckily I've pretty much been eating one meal a day for the last two months, so it wasn't a total tragedy. Also I'm hoping I had passed the point of being excessively sweaty and was on to looking like I just stepped out of the pool. Probably wishful thinking.


This weekend we got to go to Moulin Sur Mer, a gorgeous hotel about an hour and a half north of Port-au-Prince. On the way up we passed through Corail, a place they tried to relocate tent-city families, which ended up as a big mistake. A couple weeks ago I read an article in Rolling Stone about it, so it was really interesting to see what the article was describing. If you're interested, it's a very good article about why Haiti is still struggling and what has happened with the NGO's here. The author doesn't mention NPFS or St. Luke at all, which is strange because we are one of the biggest NGO's here and have definitely been around much longer than the others mentioned in the article. I'm guessing that the reason is that our organization is facing almost the opposite problem as what is described in the article. After the earthquake, we started program after program to meet people's needs and now that our "earthquake money" (popular term among NGO's down here) is running out, we're having to close programs. It's very frustrating that with all the criticism of organizations sitting on their money that we are unable to get the resources we need. Okay anyways, I intended for this to be a fun post, but if you're interested, read the article.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-world-failed-haiti-20110804


So, we got to the gorgeous hotel which is on an old plantation next to the beach. Basically we spent the weekend swimming in the Caribbean, laying on the beach and eating SO much food.

Beach at Moulin Sur Mer

View from the beach near sunset

Statues in the plantation gardens

Plantation- now museum- complete with drawbridge!

So on Sunday we were soaking up our final hours of peace and relaxation by laying out at the pool after a long morning swim in the ocean. I was listening to my i-pod, eyes closed, when I looked up and saw a ton of police around the pool. Being in Haiti, you get used to seeing groups of men with rifles walking/standing around odd places- the grocery store, the hospital- anywhere really. I've accepted that a certain percentage of the people I encounter during a day are going to have a gun. Although sometimes those people are kind of bizzaro and you hope that no one gave them bullets. Anyways, the point is that there are so many UN troops here, that instead of having a freak out about the huge guns they're carrying, new Dani looks at the arm badge because that has the country flag. So these guys are walking around with the outline of a building as their arm badge, instead of a flag. Eventually I figure out that it's the National Palace, right as a huge group of men in suits walk by. And there he is, Monsieur Tet Kale himself, walking not even 10 feet in front of me. Tet Kale translates literally to 'bald head' but in Haiti it also figuratively means 'nothing to hide' which was Martelly's campaign slogan and not-so-coincidentally he is a baldy. It was definitely the highlight of the weekend and hopefully he gets his act together and elects a Prime Minister and gets school started for the kids so that it continues to be a cool story. And for the good of the country of course.