first impressions

 

This photo represents a lot of how I’m feeling about Haiti – this was on the wall just outside the MTI guesthouse in Port au Prince (PAP).  Beauty and danger/horror existing together.  The positive way to look at this, I guess, is to say that the horror couldn’t eradicate the beauty.  But it’s also possible to say that the pretty hides the danger beneath…Hmmm…..

I flew into PAP without trouble on Sunday.  The trip from the airport to the MTI guest house was my introduction to a way of driving that makes Mexican drivers appear calm and reasonable!  Forming your own lane, passing in the oncoming traffic lane, motorcycles playing chicken with other vehicles, pedestrians maintaining their place on the street with barely inches from traffic, but resolute in not giving an inch… And the tap taps are amazing – extremely colorfully decorated vehicles about the size of an extended van, but with more people packed in than one would think possible, and with many also hanging off the back.  How the population isn’t decimated from traffic incidents alone is a wonder to me, as is the fact that there aren’t more people who have lost feet or legs to close passing vehicles.

After passing a pleasant evening at the guesthouse (where there was actually AC – a false hope of what accommodations would be like in Les Cayes) and getting to know Dr. June Hanks, a professor of Physical Therapy at the U. of Tennessee, Chattanooga, we flew on a UN helicopter to Les Cayes on Monday.  The UN airport is busy with small cargo planes and large helicopters doing “humanitarian flights”.  I was glad for being on a helicopter as it was a smoother ride and afforded photo ops that would have been more difficult on a small plane.  This chopper was large – not like the small transport choppers I’ve ridden before – and had everything written in Russian with later added English inside.  A Red Cross nurse was also on the flight with us, and there were supplies that were dropped at another location before we got to Les Cayes.

At first glance, this area looks much like some villages/small towns I saw in Tanzania with ramshackle shops of corrugated metal and other cast off materials close to the road, and the road alternately paved but with monster potholes, or dirt and difficult.  Again the traffic is a contest with multiple players, though I’m not sure who’s the winner other than you win if you make it to your destination without you or anyone else being maimed in the process <G>. 

In city of Les Cayes (the clinic/hospital is in a small area outside of Les Cayes called St. Simon), there are people milling about everywhere with little that they’re doing – unemployment is 80% here.  It would seem that there could be some work, if there was money to pay for it, as there is a hill of rotting garbage on the street outside the market.  The “super market” pales in comparison to a small convenience store at a gas station in the US.  Meat is scarce, even chicken.  Goat is common.  Figuring out costs in a store is complicated as sometimes it is in “gourdes” and sometimes in “Haitian dollars” which is actually just a concept/construct as there is no such bill or coin as a Haitian dollar.  It’s equivalent to about 5 gourdes if I’m understanding correctly.  Since I don’t really know how to ask how much something costs in Creole nor would I understand the answer, this is only a problem in wondering what the numbers on items mean.

Creole is relatively speaking, an easy language, but for me, I keep ending up speaking Spanish when I get into situations where people are speaking Creole.  But interestingly, who would have thought that my ability to speak Spanish would be a good thing for while I’m here?  Marvin and Carmen are a prostatist/orthotist  and a PT from Nicaragua.  Marvin speaks English and some Creole, but Carmen only speaks Spanish and rudimentary Creole, and is feeling lonely and apart from things.  It’s been fun chatting and joking in Spanish in the evenings, and this has been a blessing to Carmen.

Now to work – things are starting slowly as the doctor who speaks English decided to go on vacation right now.  I have seen a few people in the hospital in consultation, and one woman from the Bernice Johnson Home which is a place for rehabilitation and occupational training of women with physical disabilities.  There is a young woman there with a strange history of generalized weakness with onset 4 years ago – she has never seen a doctor for this but is now confined to a wheel chair!  I’m trying to set up a cyber-consult with a neurologist friend to try to figure out what’s going on with her and if there’s anything to do. 

There’s also a young girl in the hospital, Esperanza (Spanish for Hope – don’t know why her name is in Spanish) who was abandoned at the hospital by her family several years ago.  She has massive hydrocephalus (water on the brain) with a hugely enlarged head that she cannot move, and  overwhelmingly delayed development of the rest of her, so that she is essentially an infant.  It’s too late for a shunt to change her outcome and to reverse her developmental losses/delays.  But even worse than that is that no one holds her or plays with her or provides real human contact except when changing diapers and feeding.  She lies in a bed under mosquito netting looking out at nothing all day long.

The hospital would never pass accreditation in the US.  There are 8 rows of beds, about 50 beds in all, men, women, children all mixed together.  I’ve never really seen anything done by the nurses, and I have yet to see a doctor in the hospital.  I examined a young child with a question of a febrile seizure, and had a huge crowd of family watching (and translation by the man in the next bed as he’s lived in the US – HIPPA violation for sure <G>), but not a nurse other than a visiting US nurse to be seen.  Treatments seem to consist of IV fluids and medications.  I’m told there’s an OR there, but the GPs are the only ones there, and they do amputations and pins in fractures…Seeing the ward, I’m not sure I want to see the OR.

This has been a long post, but I wanted to set up the scene of where I am and my first impressions so that as I continue to write during this month, you have some idea of the context.  Thanks for reading along this far.  Please continue to keep me and this work in your prayers. 

Thanks for participating in this journey to this point.

Cindy

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