When we got up on Saturday morning we helped to decontaminate the taptaps and then headed for the road with our packs. We managed to get a taptap to a town just outside ofCabaret but had trouble finding any that weren’t “roof seating only” for the ride in. Thankfully a pickup truck that was just driving past pulled over to pick us up ad took us all the way to Susmatla where the orphanage had been moved! Terry and Charlie continued on their way and I met Kenley, Richardson, Maria andRony not long after that. Kenley had been to the Markey and bought bananas and candies for the kids. We stayed for a few hours to check out the new site. The kids look great and the place looks promising!
Richardson Kenley and I headed into PAP via tap tap and managed to get lost (not a great thing to do in PAP as you can imagine) but we found our way to Grassroots ok and settled in with some mangoes and avocados from the market.
Kenley and Richardson left for home about 8 and I was asked by one of the security guards to come along to the club with them. I obliged :) I’m sure you all know the feeling that everyone is watching you when you’re dancing... well dancing there took it to a whole new level! We left with some difficulty at about 2 am (which is apparently when the party is just getting started) and headed through a police checkpoint where the driver was asked to get out, as he was being searched my friend Luchio assured me that they were just making sure he had put on clean underwear today and that it wouldn’t take long. After that all the guys in the car were asked to get out… seeing as I was the only female there I was left sitting alone. Apparently this is quite a regular thing and is mostly just to establish their authority.
I spent most of Sunday with a group called Give Love who are developing composting toilets. A fantastic was to give not only arable land but also deal with sanitation issues! I met Kenley, David and Nonu for a buffet lunch at a local hotel and then later that day I went back to their house in Petionville for a dinner that Luchio had promised to cook. Turns out that Luchio wasn’t quite sure how to make rice let alone a full dinner so I taught him to make a pilaf with what they had in the fridge (apparently he’s been making it every night since)
On Monday after the camp clean up I went out to the market with one of the security guards where we got some spices and rice and headed for his house to cook beans a rice the Haitian way :). He lead me through a maze of homes in the tent city no larger than 1.5/4 meters. We finally arrived at his home (which was made from scraps of wood, tin and tarps. He proudly gave me the tour and then handed me the Pilon. I “piloned” the spices while Jozefput the rice on. He taught me tons of Kreyol while we listened to reggae and waited for lunch to be finished. Lunch was so good!
We hung out there until about 5 when I had to get back to start packing up and saying my goodbyes.
After going through a number UN quarantine checkpoints we finally arrived at our base around 6pm. The base was at a beach house, which was owned by a member of one of the other NGO’s there and was in a town just outside of Saint Marc called Mont-Rouis. Upon arrival we were briefed on the de-contamination procedures and updated on the current situation at St. Nicolas hospital -it was made pretty clear that no one actually knew how many people had been affected by cholera or how well it had been controlled.
Our team was assigned the night shift and initially, they said they had no need for non-medical volunteers at the hospital (and that I would mainly be helping to decontaminate the vehicles and deliver medical supplies to the other hospitals) but I managed to weasel my way in using my kreole skills…
As soon as the door of the bus opened up the strong smell of bleach filled the air. To get into the hospital we had to walk over foam pads that had been soaked in bleach. Each ward of the hospital was in its own stand-alone building; most of them also had terraces both in front and behind. The majority of St Nicolas was dedicated to treating Cholera patients but the maternity ward and surgical ward were still open but separate from where the cholera patients were staying.
It turned out that there was a lot for me to do there. There were over 250 patients my first night all of which either needed constant monitoring of IV’s or top ups on their oral re-hydration serum. I ended up spending most of my time there translating for the nurses and teaching the families of the patients and Haitian nurses about what we knew about Cholera and how to prevent it from spreading. (Kenley and I had quite a heartfelt conversation after my 1st night in the hospital when I told him how his teaching me Kreyol had helped so many other people.)
Many of the patients had “cholera beds”, which were actually just army cots that had a hole cut out from the middle of the bed and a bucket underneath. The families of the patients do most of the personal care in the hospitals here, that includes bringing their own sheets and enough food for the duration of their stay as well as bathing and disposing of any bodily fluids. Cholera can kill a healthy person within 5 hours and is often not caught soon enough, so because of how serious the illness is and the fact that many of the people who were affected were from rural areas most of the families were unable to buy food by the 2nd day.
For the patients that didn’t have any family of families with multiple members who were sick the quality of care was much less.Myself and 2 of the other non medical volunteers took it upon ourselves to give those patients some extra attention and went around making sure everyone else also had enough blankets to cover themselves. I began giving many of the ones in critical condition hand and foot massages to help ease some of the pain and helped to bathe them to give the families a break.
One of the men I was tending to was all smiles and when asked how he was feeling he would always reply that he was doing well. It was apparent that he had other medical issue but it wasn’t until I was bathing him that I noticed his high temperature. It turned out that he had malaria as well as cholera. After he started his treatment for that his recovery became obvious and he was up and about and walking out by the third day.
On the way back from the hospital I would talk to David who was one of the other translators for the nurses, he told me about his view on healthcare and how to better understand the way the Haitian nurses approached the situation.
Over all it was incredibly challenging for me to be at the hospital. I struggled with the callous manor of the visiting nurses and the lack of dignity the patients were given. It was heart wrenching to see how arrogant the visiting nurses were towards the Haitian nurses.
One lady came in on my second night there that was in critical condition, the nurse was convinced that she wouldn’t make it through the night but by squeezing her iv bags and giving her antibiotics she managed to pull through. When she came in she looked so thin and lifeless but as she became hydrated her face and body completely changed shape and by the 3rd day she looked beautiful and was once again able to drink on her own.
The difficulty with having visiting nurses is in the maintenance of the standard of care. By the 2nd day the hospital had the set up a renal ward to help manage the patients who were having kidney problems due to an excess of water –meaning that some patients were given too much and nothing was documented or monitored so it went un noticed until they were showing signs of renal failure.
My last night in the hospital there were much fewer patients and many of the newly admitted were actually the family of the patients we had seen earlier in the week. After a long swim an a sleep I woke up around 6 to be picked up by David (on a motorcycle) to go to the market. It was nice to finally have that freedom from fear that was so much a part of the compound life and illuminated a whole other side to the Haitian culture. One of the local churches had music playing while a man spoke into a megaphone, he was talking about how to prevent cholera and explaining the symptoms. After the market we went for dinner and listened to Davids friend’s band play kompa music.
The outbreak had been down graded and many of the medicall teams were leaving so there was no need for Terry Charlie and I (2 other the other non medicals). We decided that we would spend Friday catching up on sleep (we all averaged about 3 hours a day that week) and to make tracks for PAP on Saturday.
So, there's been a bit of a change of plans here. I ran into a few problems last week with some of the work I'd been doing at the orphanage and have now relocated to Port Au Prince.
My best explanation is that among other things, I'd been asking too many questions about the compounds involvement and I was working with a UN organisation (UNICEF) which made a few people at the top very uncomfortable. Needless to say the director gave me an ultimatum...
To put it simply, he wanted me to break off the relationship I had developed with Madame Lucien, put an end to my contact with UNICEF and limit my activities at the compound which would only allow me to go to the guesthouse and clinic (meaning I would no longer be able to see Kenley or even go down to the orphanage on site).
I'll write more on that later, but after careful consideration I opted to leave the compound...
On the way to PAP
I arrived yesterday at Grassroots United which is a Burners Without Borders project in Port Au Prince. They've got a really sustainable approach to aid work which includes distributing medical supplies, sustainable buildings & power (they've got an Earthship here! ) and a tool sharing program. The base itself is powered sustainably, has compost toilets and reuses everything including grey water :) Early last week they had put a call out for any medical people in the area to come help with the Cholera outbreak so today I'll be going to St. Marc to help out here for my last week in Haiti.
My new home
It was pretty tough leaving everyone behind at the compound but they were all so understanding and helpful. One of my friends came in to PAP to drop me off to make sure it was safe and to see where to pick me up next weekend as a few of them are planning on coming in to take me to a local beach.
When I arrived, I got stuck in and made friends with the security guards using my, now fairly intelligible, Kreyol. After we made dinner I was all set for my bucket shower but when the rain kicked in I settled for an open shower in my bathing suit instead :) and not long after that I retired to my tent to fall asleep to the sound of our chickens and the generators next door.
Earthship
This morning, we had a meeting about all the projects they have on the go right now and the action plan for the outbreak in case it comes closer (which includes sending teams out to the tent cities to educate people on preventing spread and digging emergency latrines). It was incredible to see how organised and efficient they are and how much they're able to get done with such a small team! Quite a change from the compound where it seems to take months to get anything done and (possibly for that very reason) there seems to be a total lack of people who are keen to see it thorough to the end.
At the moment, I'm not too sure what the set up will be in St Marc but if I can, I'll be sure to update you guys on the situation there as much as possible.
Bucket showers!
Being in Haiti has taught me so much about the drawbacks of idle donations -its so difficult to stand back and watch these huge NGO's pour money into luxury housing and beach excursions for the visiting groups. If you're looking do donate and want to find a trustworthy organisation to donate to then its these guys. I can can vouch for them and their work & I have no doubt that you can rest assured the money you give will be going where they really need it. (www.grassrootsunited.org)
Also, if any of you think you might be able to come help and can afford a week or two to come down then now is the time! They really need nurses & emt's for the outbreak but if you're committed and keen to help then there is plenty of need on the preventative education programs and other projects they have.
I spent the rest of Sunday hiking up the hills behind the mission- it was really nice to get out and to something active for a change! The walk up was really beautiful and on our way we met a few people who lived in the hills either tending to livestock or to their crops. Thankfully my Creole good enough now to communicate and show a little confidence too … apparently its voodoo territory up there :)
First thing Monday morning Madame Lucien came into the prosthetics clinic holding Kelly (the boy I made the brace for). His breathing was very shallow and quick, his face was almost white and his body was limp. She casually told me he was sick and handed him to me with a smirk… I ran him up the hill to our emergency room where I was met by Eimear who got him hooked up to the monitor and started him on a nebulizer.
Kelly was on the verge of respiratory arrest when he came in and wasn’t stable until the afternoon but thankfully he came round and because we had a couple of really competent prosthetists in at the beginning of the week I was able to sit in as his mum for the day (as Madame Lucien had actually only come in for her diabetes tests and left immediately after that without saying a word). It turns out Kelly had pneumonia which was thought to be because of an infection in his chest that had gone on too long -unfortunately that same morning a baby who was about 6 months old (but looked like a new born) came in with the same symptoms and didn’t make it.
Needless to say it was a tough day for all of us and when Kelly was able to leave the clinic I took him down to the lab where he slept until we finished work about 6. After that I quickly grabbed dinner at the guesthouse with Kelly, Andrew and Eimear then headed down to the patient tent for the night to stay with two of our prosthetic patients who were spending the next couple nights there. Petit-Frere and Rosemie are both 24 but were too scared to stay alone so we just hung out, they plated my hair and taught me a few words and in the morning we did some yoga together :)
The rest of the week didn’t go as well as we had hoped due to some problems with the new prosthetist who had been retired for over 10 years and was indifferent to the standard of care we were trying to uphold. We were scheduled to fit 4 new patients that week but all 4 left without their legs due to poor fit and other major concerns with socket alignment. I think all of us were relieved when he decided that he wouldn’t be staying the month, especially poor David as the prothetist had been force feeding him beef jerky all week (which David told me tasted like socks haha)
Things at the orphanage have been bitter sweet lately as Madame Lucien has expressed that she trusts Kenley and me so the mission has been encouraging us to go (which means we get vehicles easily) but it also puts us in a really fragile position; we had a bit of an issue last week when one of the young translators had asked a few of the children some questions about food and hygiene. Unfortunately, that got back to Madame Lucien and she was pretty upset about the whole thing.
Thankfully there are some really good things that have come out of all our work there.
Last week I went into Port Au Prince to meet with the director of the residential school for children with disabilities so that we could have Stanley (a boy from Good Sam who is deaf) transferred there. When we arrived they requested we do a test to see how much he could hear. The test was actually just them ringing a bell very loudly behind him and seeing if he responded in any way- not the standard way of doing it but effective none-the-less :)
I’ve decided put my other projects on hold for the moment as most of them depend on other people and won’t be taking shape for sometime. Instead, I’ve been spending heaps of time teaching Kenley (the boy I’ve sponsored) about sustainability and how to start spreading it in his community, which I visited last week.
So sorry that its been a while since my last post!
I've been having Creole lessons almost every night now which has been great but by the time I get back up to the house at night the internet connection is terrible from the storms we've been having.
I'll hopefully have a big update posted by the weekend but for now here's a little lesson from David on how to talk with a monster...
It's been quite a busy week for me here, I've got just under a month to go so any spare time I have is spent either out of the compound doing work at the orphanage or on the computer trying to get support from different NGO's on my projects.
A Tap Tap
I've been working on getting a Prosthetics and Orthotics association started here in Haiti with the hopes that it might help to standardize patient care and encourage the clinics to pool their resources. Hopefully this will also enable them to work more effectively (within their means) and help them to take a more holistic approach to patient care.
On Friday I took David and Nonu into PAP to see another Prosthetics & Orthotics Clinic to do a bit of networking as well as see the clinic's multidisciplinary approach to rehabilitation in action. The clinic is owned by Handicap International but after the earthquake destroyed the building that Healing Hand for Haiti was in they collaborated and have now expanded their care to have 3 full time physio therapists as well as a couple permanent Prosthtetic/Orthotic clinicians and technicians.
After a tour of their huge facility I sat down with one of the coordinators to talk about my idea. Much like us, his biggest concern was that small clinics (like ours) have been working far beyond our means and due to the short term 'vacationing' prosthetists and lack of follow up care there has been a lot of unnecessary suffering for the patients we've seen. Thankfully, he's full support of creating an association in Haiti and is going to help in any way he can... after a vacation of course.
So far I've called on the head of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) for support and have drafted up forms for all of the clinics to fill in so we can gain a better understanding of our individual efforts and use the information to help develop a general measure for the standard of care clinics should be providing. I think the biggest challenge will be convincing all the clinics to join as many of them have their own (business and religious) interests in mind rather than that of the patients.
Port Au Prince
Yesterday was the first day of the mobile clinic I've started for Good Sam orphanage :) it was a prime week to start as I had 2 doctors 3 nurses and 3 paramedics! We managed to give every child a vitamin shot and started up charts for everyone (including staff members) so that we can keep up to date records of them and track any chronic illness or neglect concerns. Some of the logistics are still be be discussed as the coordinator of the compound isn't keen on helping out with it but I think I've managed to get enough of the long term staff on board to make fortnightly or even weekly visits even after I'm gone. My only concern now is in providing long term acute care for the kids and educating the staff on how to identify serious illnesses before they've gone too far.
I've also been working away on my report for UNICEF and have since discovered that in 2008 there was a flood at Good Sam where at least 20 of the children were killed when the river that runs behind the orphanage knocked down the wall in the chapel and swept them down stream. For a few months after that Madame Lucien and the remaining orphans were moved into a building here but after a few months she had had enough and moved them all back to the same place. Needless to say she's well known around here so I've been able to add a few more eye witness accounts to my report... there's still lots to be done though.
I retrieved Jhonny,who is a little boy from Good Sam, in the ambulance on Tuesday because of two severely infected ulcers on his face about the size of a quarter.
I've also learned that orphanages here are run more like businesses and because she owns it and started it herself its highly unlikely that we will have much luck getting it shut down (especially because she is known to have contacts with the Haitian government and has paid them off in the past to get out of trouble). As frustrating as that is I have no choice but to accept it and try to find ways we can work with her to get the result we want. After all its not about her, but about the kids :) The best option, I think, is to take advantage of the fact that she has registered the orphanage with UNICEF (which for her means that she NGO's will support her) and use that to enforce standards of care as well as monitor their incoming donations... who knows, it might even turn out to be a better option than just shutting it down- this project might help to educate the surrounding community on child protection and make it easier for other orphanages to get the support they need as well!
Other than that things are going well, my Creole lessons are going great (I've learned how to hassle the David and Nonu now) and test has been postponed until the 14th :)
First thing yesterday morning David, Rick (the visiting prosthetist) and I went to Good Sam to pick up Kelly. After giving out peanut butter and jam cracker sandwiches we started to get him ready to go. Not surprisingly we were held up when we tried to leave but the resistance didn't come from Madame Lucien but from Kelly himself! He didn't want to go alone, so we (happily) brought Widley back with us as well for some company and to check on a fever and fungal infection in his ear as well as do some follow up as he's not been thriving since a near fatal visit to our ER back in July. Neither of them were all too sure about coming along but like any typical kid they happily kipped out on ride back to the compound.
When we arrived at the clinic Kelly was still fast asleep, so I took Widley up to the medical clinic while Rick finished up fitting one of the above knee patients that was due to back to the tent city in the afternoon. The clinic was completely packed but thankfully Andrew (the paramedic from Canada) spotted us and had Widley seen to as soon as a bed was free.
Kenley and Widley
On the way back down from the clinic I ran into Kenley who is one of the kids who comes to Good Sam with me on Saturdays -he's a huge sweetheart and very kindly offered to help watch them for the afternoon. As soon as I got back with Widley we casted Kelly who had just woken up was still not too impressed with the whole thing but with the smell of beans a rice in the air he reluctantly obliged :)
David and Kelly
Category 4 Radial deficiency
At the orphanage Kelly always hid his hand from us and the other children unless he was using it to eat so when we finally got a chance to look at it a little closer we figured out that the apparent contractures in Kelly's wrist were actually due to the absence of a Radius! This deformity puts the wrist into severe ulnar deviation (you can see it in the x-ray) and accounts for the limited muscle control in his wrist and for his missing thumb.
David filled the cast while Kenley and I fed Widley and Kelly their much anticipated lunch. After a whole plate and a half between the two of them we had to cut them off as their bellies looked like they were going to burst and they were nearly falling asleep after every bite! Then, after a lot of moving about to get comfortable (because they couldn't sleep on their tummies) they both fell asleep on the examination table.
Rick hadn't been out of the compound much all week so I sent him along to drop the patients off at the tent city while I stayed back to finish up with Kelly. The cast didn't need much in the way of modifications as he corrected so well statically but I added a bit of a build up around his ulnar styloid process (so he’ll hopefully not end up with any skin issues there later on) and put a bit of a flare on the proximal end to stop it from pinching when he bends his elbow. After cutting the molding plastic and sorting out the best spot for his new thumb I roughly shaped a thick piece of plastic into a thumb then put them both in the oven. David helped to drape the sheet while I placed the thumb and molded it into a functional position. The power was due to go out within the hour so we hand no choice but to quench it in order to get it ready to fit.
Bribery is not usually my style but the promise of chocolate made the fitting move a whole lot faster and after a little heat out at the distal end and a bit of finishing work on the thumb we embraced the darkened clinic with smiles.
Kelly holding a marker with his fingers and new thumb!
As we cleaned up the clinic and started up the hill a big storm blew in so I made an executive decision that the boys should stay in the spareroom in the guesthouse rather than in the patient dome. Unfortunately that got me into a bit of trouble with the coordinator but with the help of about 20 cooing Texan women who were smothering them with cuddles, I managed to talk her into letting them stay there just for the night. They played and lapped up all the attention from the groups until 6 o'clock rolled around when they got down to business and focused all their energy on stuffing themselves with corn, potatoes and chicken.
After a whole lot more playing and cuddles they finally fell asleep about 10pm... I managed to wriggle my way out of the cuddle puddle for a couple hours so I could made up sandwiches and frozen bananas for today then nestled back in a little while later and didn't hear a peep from either of them til 7 this morning!
The best part was when Kelly asked me to put his brace back on before he went to bed :)
Before yesterday I'd never actually seen Kelly smile to know that he had these amazing dimples!
Once they were finished with breakfast they played soccer and coloured with the teams while Andrew and Eimear got a wound care kit together and I put together some soap, toys and books. All the vehicles were in the shop today so we settled for a the school bus which arrived about 12. The boys said their goodbyes and not long after leaving the compound they were, once again, both asleep on my lap.
When we arrived, all the kids came running out to meet us at the bus and were shouting Kelly's name. He was absolutely beaming and as soon as he had his feet on the ground he was right smack in the middle of the group, proudly showing off his thumb to the other kids :)
Success!
After giving out some frozen bananas (which went down really well) we started up a mini clinic -Eimear worked her way through the line of kids and managed to clear up a pretty bad ulcer and a few other skin infections while Andrew played with the ones who were waiting to be seen.
Later on, while everyone else was distracted by the sandwiches, I sat down with the older girls and tried my best to talk to them to see if we could do anything to help as they tend to bear the brunt of the work there. I managed to get a few things down on paper but the language barrier is still very much there. My creole is getting better bit by bit but not fast enough, especially for them -at one point Ollie said to me with obvious frustration "ou pa konprann anyen" which means 'you don't understand anything'. So, with a huge smile and what little I know of Creole I said that I understand that she has a big heart and a strong mind and a beautiful smile. The girls burst out into uncontrollable laughter!
To be honest, I'm still not quite sure if it was because of my terrible attempt at speaking Creole or my ridiculously cheesy choice of words... in any case it got the reaction I wanted :)
Leaving the orphanage is never easy but today was made even harder as most of the kids were crying when we boarded the bus. Now that Eimaer and Andrew are here I'm going to try starting up a mobile medical clinic for them once a week so that means that there's a good chance I'll be able to pop in to check on them sometime before Saturday.
I’ve not been feeling like myself this past week but thankfully its no Haitian sensation :) I've just been sleeping more than 15hours a day and have also been having some (occasionally funny) balance issues and some (not so funny) pain in my inner ear. I had it checked out at the clinic yesterday and the doctor suspects that its a virus that’s been making me sleep so much (which I’ll just have to wait out) and some sneaky microbes from the shower water that got into my ear which I’ve got drops for.
On that note, we’ve finally got our septic tank and pipes fixed after almost 3 days without showers, sinks and toilets in the staff house. Yay!
This week has been really busy in the clinic so its been pretty tough going trying to keep my energy up but all that training with Nonu and David last week has really paid off and they’ve been doing most of the tech work for the 3 ladies with above knee amputations we have staying with us this week. We also had a little boy come in on Tuesday morning with clubfoot which our visiting prosthetist managed to cast. His foot was pretty easy to correct statically so I took over the modifications for his AFO and got a shiny new brace to him that afternoon :) .... he spent the rest of the afternoon playing soccer outside with Stevensya who is another one of our patients.
She’s 3 and has a congenital below knee amputation which is really long so cosmesis and componentry are pretty hard to get right but we managed pretty well and had her up and walking with a supracondular socket by day 2.
We’ve also had 2 physios in the clinic all week that came as part of one of the teams. It was nice to have them as a couple of the ladies were really struggling with lower back pain and strength issues so they got loads of attention and exercise!
On Saturday I went to the orphanage again from about 10:30 till 6:30, I spoke to Madame Lucien about taking Kelly (the little boy with what we think might be Arthrogryposis or possibly another congenital deformity) with me to the clinic for a couple days so that we can make him a ‘prosthoses’ which will correct his wrist and give him a thumb so he can hold onto things a bit better and be more independent. Thankfully she agreed so I’ll be picking him up first thing tomorrow morning and bringing him back on Saturday which will give me plenty of time to spoil him and feed him heaps of healthy food :)
I also met a couple from Kitchener who are staying for a month and are taking off a year long sabbatical after this all around central and south America then onto NZ. Andrew is a paramedic and Eimear is a nurse so I’ve been seeing a fair bit of them :) it’s nice to have some more fellow Canadians join us!
Since going to the orphanage on Saturday the list of goals I have for my time in Haiti has grown quite a bit.
I’ve decided to focus my time outside of the clinic on finding a way to prevent more children being sold to Madame Lucien (either from families being forced to do this when they can't feed their children or from neighbors selling the local orphans) by going to the areas where they live and seeing that they are fed a good meal a few times a week. Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of red tape to get through and a fair bit of planning involved to make sure it can and will keep going once I’ve left but I’m confident that I’ll find what I need to make it happen :)
I spent a few hours last night gathering toys and making up peanut butter & jam sandwiches so that the mission group going there today could give out some food and spend a bit more time playing with the kids. It seems like that worked out well as I had a few of them come up to me this afternoon saying how moved they were by the children there and how glad they were to have something to give them.
Morgan and I are also looking into ways we can directly help the children at the orphanage by making UNICEF and Amnesty International aware of the issues there but we’ll also need to come up with plan for moving them and a safe place for them to go when its all over. If any of you have any contacts with these organizations please get in touch via email :)
In the meantime, I’ve been reading a really good book called “ The Uses of Haiti” which has a great intro from Naom Chomsky (and is helping me to gain a better understanding of Haiti pre-earthquake) and the mindful travel diary of a Bhante I met while on retreat last summer.
Mes étudiants
Training at the clinic has been going very well so far. On Monday we spent the whole day making a pelite liner from start to finish and then today we spent most of the day going over it again, cutting plastic and draping 2 practice sockets. Both David and Nonu are showing great enthusiasm and understanding of everything we’ve covered, the only thing that’s not going so well is my Creole. In two weeks time they’re going to have a test on making a below knee socket from start to finish and I’m going to have a test in Creole :)
Sorry for the delay in writing! I've not been able to get to my computer much this week between the temperamental power and working a few late nights at the clinic... but on the bright side there are loads of photos :)
Morgan and two of our patients at the tent city
David & Sonya with her new leg
On Tuesday we assessed a couple of patients at the tent city that had been having problems with their prostheses. I decided that the work would be better done back at the clinic so that they could stay over with us for a few nights, be fed and leave feeling good in their new limb. It also proved to be a really good experience for both of them as they’re both fairly new amputees have now become friends :) We ran into some problems with the power cutting out but the major issue was the alignment of Maralines socket and due to limited parts we had to settle for remaking her socket so that we could offset the graceplate to compensate for a contracture she had developed while in a cast (the hospital had cast her leg in flexion!) both are due for a check up in a week when we go back to the tent city.
On Thursday, David, Morgan, Shane, myself and 2 of the sponsor kids joined us for a trip to Port Au Prince so I could pick up some new tools for the workshop as well as print off a manual and have a quick run about the market. It was really busy and heavily guarded everywhere we went -many of the buildings there are still in disrepair and in some parts it almost looks as if the earthquake could have happened just last week.
This is what I bought at the market (in gourdes of course):
Apples = $24.65
Balsamic vinegar = $37.40 Chickpeas= $14.60
Today a group of us boarded the canter to set off on our day trips. While the staff went to the Indigo white sand beach, Morgan, myself and 4 of our child sponsors spent the day at an orphanage in Marseilles giving out food, toys and lots of love.
There were about 70 kids between the ages of 2 and 14 who’s living in conditions are worse than anything I’d ever seen. They sleep outside in the blistering heat amongst fire ants on the crumbled pavement; use toilets that are covered in feces and maggots and get no more than a bowl of rice and a cup of water a day. Every last one of them had a bloated tummy from malnutrition and was desperate for water and food. Every last one of them was riddled with parasites, ringworm and fleas and were covered in all sorts of rashes, bites, abscesses, welts and scars. Every last one of them cowered at the sound of Madame Lucien’s voice.
Morgan read them stories when I handed out stickers and did face painting. We did our best to hand out all the toys and make sure everyone was getting a turn but while I was outside an older girl, who is the child of the one of the staff, took a toy from one of the kids. When he started to cry a staff member snatched the skipping rope out of another girls hand and chased the 5 year old around the yard cracking it against the ground behind him as he cried even harder and screamed with fear. I ran over and stood in the door to block the child in as he ran into the chapel to hide in the group of other kids, she laughed while I stood in front of her and ‘tisked’ me. The child who she was chasing is deaf and is covered head to toe in welts and cuts from being beaten for not following directions (Morgan and I are working to get him moved to a residential school for the disabled in PAP but this will involve “buying” him from Madame Lucien).
One of the other boys who is about 4 has a congenital deformation of his wrist which we think night be Arthrogryposis (a congenital deformity around a joint caused by muscle contractures). He is also missing the thumb on his right hand which makes holding things pretty hard for him. I’ve requested that we have him come in and stay with us for the next surgery week at our clinic but in the mean time I’ll make up a brace so that he can get a start on some rehbilitation. At one point, I was holding him and another boy around the age of 3. The other boy dropped his toy on the ground and just as I set him down to get it he started to cry. Before I had a chance to pick him back up one of the staff forcefully grabbed him by the arm and threw him to the ground, then proceeded to hit him across his bloated tummy with a sugar cane before I could get between them. I scooped him up and moved the two of them back with the rest of the group where they both eventually fell asleep in my arms.
Later on we moved into the chapel, (which whey are only allowed in when we visit and is the only bearable place to be in the orphanage because of the heat) and started hand out the food we had made for them. A fight broke out when one of he children spilled his food on the ground because a staff member tried to take it away from him to eat herself. She slapped him hard across the face and stood over him yelling at the top of her lungs raising her hand again. Morgan stepped in and said (in Creole) that there was plenty for everyone and then gave them both more food. The woman snatched it out of her hand, spat at the child, then stormed out of the room.
Madame Lucien (right)
Madame Lucien and her staff are all very over weight and when they weren’t busy tormenting the children they spent their time drinking bottled water & eating the food donations they received from our mission. (Its common knowledge here that if you leave food or toys behind they will be sold at the market or given to the staff and their children.) The younger children are left to do all of their own washing even though at two years old many of them still cant even walk. Older kids living there are ordered to bathe the younger ones in the fast moving, murky river behind the orphanage just down stream from their toilets.
It was incredibly difficult to leave the children crying helplessly at my feet and so unsettling to step into the canter to find people who had been drinking and who had just spent the day 5 minutes from us eating more than these kids would ever see in a week.
Before leaving for the orphanage today I was saying to one of the interns that sometimes I just don’t know how to put what I’m seeing and hearing into words -this whole experience goes far beyond any explanation I can give. I'm glad that I have the opportunity to see this for myself though and I think its a good chance for anyone reading this to also become more aware of what is going on here in Haiti and to hopefully use it to motivate more positive change in their own lives.
The compound I live in is without power for most of the day, has limited water and tons pre-packaged and canned foods. There are water restrictions in place and if you forgot something at home you probably wont find it here. From what I've gathered so far, this is, to many of the mission groups, much like an unconventional camping experience; one where they are giving up their comforts for a week so that they can “help” the people of Haiti by adding more buildings to our compound, popping in to see the cute little kids at the orphanage and then going off to the beach or waterfall to relax and prevent early onset of post traumatic stress.... For the long term staff this involves going to the beach to relax, have a nice meal and a few drinks once a week. I apologise for the disenchanted tone of this post but all this is made even more frsutrating when most of the people living here feel that they are entitled to have what they do.
Its so disheartening to see teams go from the same orphanage I was at today, where young children are half naked and starving, to lying on a white sand beach while sipping on an icy-cold imported juice and not feeling in any way culpable for the human beings they've just left behind...
They lie under the benches of the chapel to sleep
I'm sorry for the rant but I guess what it all boils down to is that none of us got to choose where we were born or what we were born into. So how is it that we can feel good about going back to our well “decorated” homes, to eat our imported food and waste our clean tap water day after day.
Regardless of whether we're doing that after having spent a week here or after another long day at work...
simply knowing that this is the harsh reality for so many should be enough to stop us from wanting anything but for this to be resolved.
I spent most of Sunday with a group called Give Love who are developing composting toilets. A fantastic was to give not only arable land but also deal with sanitation issues! I met Kenley, David and Nonu for a buffet lunch at a local hotel and then later that day I went back to their house in Petionville for a dinner that Luchio had promised to cook. Turns out that Luchio wasn’t quite sure how to make rice let alone a full dinner so I taught him to make a pilaf with what they had in the fridge (apparently he’s been making it every night since) 
