The first two days

ah where to start...


Well, I arrived in Port Au Prince yesterday around 930am and the heat hit me pretty much as soon as I left the plane. Everyone piled onto a little bus that took us over to immigration where there were about 5 stations and 50+ people in each line. Total chaos. Thankfully, Ruben found me at the baggage claim before I got myself into too much trouble with my terrible french :)

The compound is about a 30 minute drive from the airport and I quickly found out that there is no specific side of the road to drive on, its really just whichever way has the least amount of potholes (they should try that in Glasgow!) and you only really pick a side when theres oncoming traffic.

I asked Ruben if we could go to a market later on in the week so I could get a bike, after a good long laugh he told me that we could but that I was nuts to want to ride on their roads and that I wouldn't be leaving the compound much to use it... I'll see how the week pans out but it looks like they're pretty strict about leaving the compound at all. Fortunately for me the kitchen staff are doing a market run on Friday so I'll try to tag along with them for some groceries and maybe get a bike then :)

My bed!

Julia (a friend of mine who was just finishing up an internship with NGOs here) met me at the guesthouse where I unloaded my stuff. I has a whirlwind tour of the 72 (ish) acre compound that includes a couple guess houses, a mission house, an orphanage, a school and the medical clinic. Our lab is just off of that and is complete with walking bars, 2 work benches, a router, vacuum bench and an infra oven :) I met Diana the Coordinator, Mike the Prosthetist who will be here for 2 weeks and Nonu & David the 2 Haitian Technicians.

In the clinic with Mike and Diana

After 2 days in transit and sweating like crazy for the past 2 hours I thought I was about ready for bed until I saw how much needed doing in the clinic so I got to work putting a few things away then draped a poly-pro socket for our patient coming in that afternoon and then helped David who was working on a partial foot insole for a patient we would be seeing today.

Overall, I think the clinic is pretty well organised and so long as you're willing to get creative and be resourceful its fairly easy to get-er-done :)

For lunch we went down to the kitchen where the workers, patients and orphans go to get beans and rice, it was SO good! (much better than was was on offer at the guesthouse which was cheese wiz and "snackwells")

We took a couple plates up to the patients we would be seeing in the afternoon and then headed back to the clinic to finish up the legs for the fittings. Diana told me about the 5 year old girl who we met a lunch and how she lost her leg when was stuck under her house for 5 days. Solida had cried nonstop for the first 3 days but on the fourth day she had given up and went silent. On the fifth day her dad came to retrieve the bodies of her and her brother but when they started breaking up the concrete around her she yelled out that she was still there and they they shouldnt hit so hard!

Solida is brilliant. She was so patient and lovely and even though we didn't understand a word of what one another was saying she was happy enough to wrap herself around me for most he the afternoon while I worked on her leg with the other hand :) Thankfully, David, our technician, was originally hired as translator and he helped me to explain what we were doing to her father. Solida's dad was a real sweetheart and was asking a lot about my family and friends back home. When we managed to get around a few problems he said to me that because of what I was doing he believed that god was white, I was pretty quick to reply that every person has something to contribute and to offer one another and that he and his daughter has shown me the incredible power that lies in the human spirit....

thankfully I was hot enough to play off any wetness on my face for sweat :)



When we finally finished it off and got it on her (with a couple of the socks that were donated from Medalin!) I set Solida down on the ground -the look on her face was priceless. She was standing there with both feet on the floor for the first time since the earthquake! After a few steps holding my hands she was off to explore the rest of the clinic and show off her new leg.



We had a few component and alignment issues with both of the patients which were mainly to do with the the parts we were using (the stock we have is pretty limited) but we managed fine and both left to go back to the patient's sleeping area around 5 to practice and get used to their new limbs.

We headed back up to the guesthouse for dinner (nachos with tvp, beans and heaps of veg) then went up and watched then sunset from the hill behind us, it was all pretty romantic until one of the kids staying at the guesthouse said that he'd just caught a huge tarantula up there an hour earlier...

Today, after a 13hour sleep I hurried down to the clinic with my water bottle and sweat-rag in hand where I was met with the van to take our patients back home. We arrived at Love a Child which is a tent city where many of our patients stay about an hour away. They have a rehabilitation tent there where we casted a 17 year old bk patient and fitted the partial foot insert. Everyone there was so lovely and the kids were handing out high-fives left right and center :)

We finished up there are headed back towards our clinic around 12 and bought some plantain chips on the way while we were waiting for some space on the road (yum!) by the time we got back it was too late to get lunch from the kitchen so we headed for the guest house where I had some of my miso soup with oatcakes and the others had mayo-ey tuna sandwiches :)

The afternoon was spent modifying the cast we'd taken earlier that day and starting to shape a foam cover for a lady in the tent city. Nonu, one of our technicians, mainly speaks creole and French but has been learning a bit of English purely for the benefit of the American prothetists coming into the clinic. I'm not a huge fan of the patronizingly-slow-talking-in-English approach so I jumped right in an started with an apology for my terrible French and a feeble attempt at translating what the prothetist was explaining -which got a few laughs :)

Nonu and David "looking busy" :)

I also got a chance to test out some of my natural remedies for dealing with the elements; the bug spray I made up with neem oil, citronella and eucalyptus, which did ok till I ate a bit of dried mango at lunch (I read somewhere that the sweetness leaches out of your skin and attracts them.... which id say is pretty true, oops), a neils yard sunscreen which seemed to do ok considering how much I was in the sun today and how hot it was and Citradal which a citrus extract meant to help your tummy with dodgy food and water....

Seeing as dinner was bbq chicken and creamy potatoes I opted for some of the fresh lettuce instead. Unfortunately, they usually "rinse" it in bleach water then some other chemical stuff.... I sneakily didn't use bleach or the other stuff then drank a glass of my potion after dinner. I'm sure I'll find out pretty soon if it works but so far I've been lucky enough not to experience any of the "Hatian sensation" :)

Bonswa!