Rah Rah?... I'd rather not

The night before last at the hospital – Stephanie, one of our Haitian interpreters, went out to go talk to one of the security guards, his name is Alex.  She walked out onto the porch and saw him sitting on a bench next to the gate with his head down (that’s about 30 feet away).  But she turned and he Alex was standing next to her. he was wearing white and his skin was pasty and his eyes were rolled back into his head. She screamed and ran inside and sat down and kept repeating Jesus' name in Creole (Jezi Jezi Jezi), and wouldn’t tell anyone what happened until morning. Jessica was trying to get her to tell her what happened she just said pray for me so Jessica did. She spent the night tying to sleep with Naidia because she couldn’t sleep by herself.

I don’t know what she saw, it was late and she was tired she could have just been delusional, but it’s getting close to Easter and with that comes a lot of demonic activity here. 

The forty days leading up to Ash Wednesday some Haitians hold what is called The Carnival or Rah Rah.  It is like a parade but its usually between 1 or 2 till 4 in the morning, here in the capital anyway.  They are celebrating that Jesus died and didn’t rise again.  These are less frequent in the city.  Brittany told me last week she thinks she heard one.  The man chanting and yelling didn’t have a normal voice. 

I talked to one of the guys who was here helping.  He was in a different part of the country then. They were driving back from a Good Friday service and the street was filled with people holding signs and yelling that Jesus is dead. 

This almost brings me to tears, and probably should.

Crule Injustice

Barbie Is PA here at the Heartline Hospital. I copied and pasted her blog so you all can read it. She is an excellent writer and gives a wonderful account of some of the atrocities here. Keep in mind the things she is telling about are not rare isolated incidents, they happen every day here. 


GUEST BLOGGER BARBIE: MORE ON WORKING TO SAVE LIVES

Let me explain to you the anger surging through me as I sat in the back of our pickup truck at 2:00 AM with the limp form of a child draped over my legs.

Travel back with me to 1:15AM.

Whimpering...sobbing....in the gentle, hesitant high pitch of a child. In the distant corner of the courtyard of our hospital, under a tarp. She is trying to be quiet. She knows it is dark in the hospital, and people around her are trying to sleep. Mewing like a small, injured kitten. Tears run down her cheeks. Her legs are pulled to her abdomen. Heat rises off her febrile form, burning. Her lower jaw trembles as a wave of rigors shakes her small body. Blistering fever.

Father looks on with quiet, concerned eyes. He stands above her and watches intently as I examine her in the small circle of light of my headlamp, kneeling beside her cot in the darkness. Her heart is racing. Heat radiates off of her body. I gently touch her abdomen. A small whimper escapes her dry lips and her glassy eyes open to meet mine. Her hand touches mine and attempts to push it away. "Fe mal..." she whispers weakly. "Fe mal..." It hurts...it hurts. I hold her small, protesting hand in my left, and push again gently with my right. Her eyes clench tightly. She sucks in a deep breath and whimpers again. Her belly is rigid. A frighteningly sick child.

"This is very bad..." I whisper to our nurse translator as I administer a dose of morphine. "We need to get her to a surgeon...now."

She had presented to our hospital earlier in the afternoon with high fever, headache and abdominal pain. We tested her for malaria -- which will become epidemic as the rainy season encroaches and the mosquito vectors reproduce in pools of standing water. She was, unfortunately, negative. "Unfortunately", because in Haiti, malaria is a very serious, but very drug sensitive illness which is relatively easily treated when diagnosed. With the easy diagnosis eliminated, the more concerning reared their ugly heads. Typhoid? A severe intestinal illness leading to bloody diarrhea, severe abdominal pain and sometimes intestinal rupture. Early appendicitis? Both requiring a surgeon.

Our pediatrician, earlier in the day, drove with the girl to Miami Field Hospital to consult one of the volunteer American pediatric surgeons. The surgeon evaluated her, and advised that her illness was early, and nonspecific, and that we should watch her carefully, treating for possible infection. This is a common medical practice, even in the United States -- watch the patient closely, and await for the illness to "declare itself" into a specific diagnosis. If it declares, come back immediately.

So, at 1:15AM, the illness declared. Quite vigorously. And absolutely. Intestinal perforation. Millions of small bacteria from the intestines spilling violently into the pristine, sterile cavity of the small child's abdomen. An exquisitely painful and potentially deadly event.

We called our midwife, who lives one street over, and has a truck, begging a ride back to the Miami Field Hospital. Father carried his precious child to the back of the pickup and lay her gently across my lap. And in the darkness of early morning, we drove through the deserted streets of Port au Prince, to the only available surgeon in the city. The heat of her body burned across mine, small moans escaping her lips.

The Miami Field Hospital is located in a series of large tents inside the walls of the Port au Prince airport. It was set up within the days after the 12 January earthquake, and placed to be central and convenient to patients, international volunteer medical providers, and imported medical resources/equipment. From outside, it is a series of giant white tents; inside, a bustling field hospital with a lab, pharmacy, xray, and adult, pediatric and neonatal ICU. It is our -- and much of Haiti's -- only referral center for patients requiring intensive emergency and surgical care, as much of the city's medical infrastructure was destroyed in the quake, and many medical professionals were killed. At present is the last hope of many of Haiti's sickest patients.

At 2am, we arrived at a new entrance to the hospital -- a set of wooden gates recently placed into the concrete wall surrounding the airport. This new, unadvertised, unmarked and solitary entrance to the Miami Field Hospital was luckily discovered by our clinic staff during the visit to the hospital the previous day.

Our American midwife, 20 year resident of Haiti, pulled the pickup truck in front of the gates and sounded her horn repeatedly. The gate was locked tight.

"How can the gates be locked?" I asked. "This is crazy."

She honked the horn again and again, echoing in the early morning darkness. Finally, from behind the gate meandered a man in dark clothing appearing to carry a weapon. A security guard. She honked her horn again. The man did not move.

Our midwife turned to our Haitian translator. "Go tell him to open the gate. Tell him we have a sick child in the truck, and this is a medical emergency."

Our translator exited the truck, running to speak to the man behind the gate. Words were exchanged vigorously back and forth. Finally, he turned and ran back to us.

"He says the hospital has closed, and the doctors have all gone."

I am stunned.

"What? No it's not..." I declare with frustration and disbelief. "No, they haven't left. That's not true. That's crazy!"

Our midwife shares my incredulity. This is obviously a mistake. Just 5 hours ago, the child on my lap was in this very tent hospital, consulting with a pediatric surgeon from USC Los Angeles. A hospital overflowing with patients, volunteer medical staff, and technical medical resources. There is absolutely no way this hospital has closed its doors and evacuated it's staff in the 5 hours since our previous visit.

Our translator turns to our midwife. "You're going to have to show your face," he declares with a mixture of frustration and acceptance.

Translation: You need to show your Caucasian, non-Haitian face. You need to play the White Card.

Our midwife-- fabulous, strong, intelligent, compassionate, wielding a beautiful Boston accent (the other Boston) -- gets forcefully out of the car. She strides powerfully and authoritatively to the gate, and in fluent Creole, confronts the guard.

She advocates. This is a medical emergency. There is a dying child in the car. She was at the hospital earlier in the day. The head surgeon saw her. He asked that she return. We are an ambulance from a Field Hospital. LET US THROUGH THAT GATE.

"No," says the guard. "The hospital is closed."

I can see the top of the hospital tent over the wall surrounding the airport. It is illuminated white against the 2am night sky. It is obviously inhabited and operational.

I am growing furious. I am growing desperate. This is obviously a political power play. And we are the pawns.

I call out the truck window in English to our translator. "What's going on? Does he want a bribe? Tell them I am a doctor and the child in the car is going to die and he MUST let us in."

More negotiation. The whimpering form in my lap is breathing rapidly and shallowly. My hand on her chest feels the fever burning through her thin cotton top, and the wild racing of her heart. She moans.

This is impossible. Yet, it is not. It is, perhaps, exquisitely predictable.

Less than a football field away from our truck sits a hospital full of medical specialists. Volunteers from all over the United States, giving of their time to provide free medical care to this city in its darkest hour. On my lap is a dying child. And between us is a wooden gate, and a man with a gun and a political agenda.

The airport authorities have apparently decided that the Miami Field Hospital, which sits on an unused grassy lot on the periphery of the airport, is an inconvenience. And this week, after the US military handed back control of the airport to the Haitian government, public access to the only emergency hospital in Haiti has apparently been extremely and underhandedly curtailed. Hospital personnel report repeated efforts to obstruct patients' access to the hospital and emergency care - as we experienced on this night. A new unmarked entrance to the hospital, for example. A locked gate, with a belligerent guard. This political stand off -- so detrimental -- drew the attention of Haiti's President, who commanded the Airport Authority to allow patients through the gates and access to the capitol city's only emergency hospital. This was met, apparently, with political belligerence and opposition. And, at 2 in the morning, the power play is acted out. And the order of the country's Commander in Chief is disobeyed. And we -- the patient and her advocates -- become the powerless victims.

As I sit seething in the back of the truck, I evaluate the integrity of the flimsy wooden gate which separates us from the lifesaving hospital visible beyond the trees. It is an absurd barrier of chicken wire and two by fours. I am certain we can crash through it with the truck if need be. My outrage is spurred on by the limp child in my arms. As I plot, I observe that the guard has a gun, and I fear he would be willing to use it. The images of several patients in our care flash through my mind -- innocent bystanders shot when the police fired recklessness into the ground around crowds in gestures of authority and intimidation -- striking bystanders with ricocheting bullets.

At this moment, I am impotent in my ability to help this child. We are at the mercy of this political agenda. An argument over a strip of land superseding the value of a child's life. A metaphor for the consequence of political ineptness and corruption.

I imagine this is how it felt on the night of 12 January, in the hours after the earthquake, when the sun left the sky and darkness fell. When the screams of the injured rang out, and access to medical care was, in a moment, non-existent. Hopelessness. Dying patients, in desperate need of surgeons. And no surgeons to be had.

I recall news reports of patients having amputations in city parks by the light of hand held flashlights...without anesthesia. I recall patients telling grim stories of being taken to the remaining local and overwhelmed medical facilities, lying without medical care, in rooms filled with dead bodies, themselves fearing that they would soon become just that -- another body, to be disposed of en mass in the back of dump trucks visible outside their windows. Desperate acts to save lives. Desperate patients. Desperate providers. Reflecting complete lack of access to care.
In Haiti's time of crisis, hope came in the form of volunteer field hospitals -- such as ours and Miami's. At the beginning, lack of medical access reflected the utter chaos of an unprecedented natural disaster. Now, lack of access is caused, in part, by political corruption.

Hints of such corruption were evident in my first week at our field hospital. Still on the forefront of the medical crisis, relief organizations were stunned to discover their medical and relief supplies being suddenly unexpectedly being held ransom at the airport...many for tens of thousands American dollars. Donated medical supplies and shelters. For the country's injured and homeless. Provided free of charge from the generosity of the world community. To be utilized by volunteers, many of whom had paid their own way to Haiti to provide relief. Flown in by privately donated charter flights and international military flights. At the request of the Haitian government. Held at the airport and not released without the organizations first paying exorbitant and newly invented importation fees. While Haitians slept homeless in the streets of Port au Prince, enduring early spring rain without shelter; while the President of Haiti visited the White House in Washington, DC, asking for relief assistance for his struggling country... lifesaving relief supplies -- tarps and tents and medications -- sat undistributed in boxes at the airport. Our own hospital had its supplies held hostage for weeks -- including medications requiring refrigeration which sat sweltering in the Haitian heat.

And now, once again, the Airport Authority, blocks access to medical relief. In the form of this flimsy gate, and a man with a gun, who tells a blatant lie: "The hospital is closed. The doctors have left."

What will we do without a surgeon, I ask myself as I watch the negotiations. Turn around with this child? Bring her back to our hospital to die of sepsis?

Our midwife and translator continue to negotiate with the man behind the fence. Finally, they return to the truck. The guard, miraculously, manipulates the lock and slowly swings open the gate.

"Okay, he's letting us in," our midwife says, as she quickly puts the truck in gear, taking advantage of the sudden opportunity.

"Wait a minute," I say. "I thought the hospital is closed and everyone has gone home. Isn't that what he's been saying for the past five minutes. What did you do? Did you have to bribe him?"

Our Haitian translator turns to me. "He's letting us in because she's white," he says matter of factly, gesturing to our midwife. "You have to know how to work the system. It's just how things are here."

I am relieved for the girl in my arms, but absolutely infuriated for the people of this city.

"Wait," I say, as we start down the dirt road to the hospital. "Are you telling me that if I were a Haitian pulling up with a dying person in this car, that I would be turned away from the hospital?"

"Yes," he replied, absolutely.

"And we're getting in because we're white people?"

"Yes," he replied.

I am horrified and infuriated by the injustice. But, for the moment, I am grateful for the incidental lack of melanin in my skin which, tonight (and, unjustly, through modern human history), has provided me with this seemingly random political advantage. I am perceived, by the color of my skin, to be someone who has possible political connections to a higher authority, a political democracy, which I can call upon to advocate on my behalf.

And for the local Haitian, who pulls up the the gate tonight with a dying child, without a political advocate? They will likely be turned away.

If you are reading this tonight from the comfort of your home, which fortunately is located in a representative democracy -- perhaps one of the wealthy first world nations which, through your tax dollars, has provided disaster relief to the nation of Haiti -- I ask you to advocate for those who are less powerful than yourself. Use the representative government that you are so fortunate to have peacefully elected, and which politically advocates on your behalf. Contact your congressperson or political representative, and ask that the government of Haiti be held politically accountable for properly managing their international relief; ask that further relief be contingent upon allowing that relief resources be accessible to its people. Ask that relief supplies be released to organizations on the ground helping their injured and homeless. Ask how your tax dollars are being spent, and how they are being managed, in this crisis.

And of course, because you care...you perhaps would like to know the rest of the story.

So, we drove the remaining distance down the dirt path beyond the gate and pulled up to the front of the great white hospital tent. Father took his whimpering child gently from me and cradled her in his arms as we walked together from the truck, exiting the tropical Haitian night, and entering the front door of the still-bustling field hospital. Immediately, we were greeted by a doctor -- in fact, a board certified pediatric surgeon from Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. He gladly took her back into his care.

I guess the hospital wasn't closed after all. And, apparently, all the doctors had not flown home in the five hours since our last visit. I guess it was all just a simple misunderstanding.

Barbie

The health care professionals with Heartline are not just treating patients, they as well are fighting to save their lives.  Often it is a fight not just against injuries and sickness but also against a government that lacks social consciousness or a tunnel vision politition, or a mindless gate guard or someone looking for a bit of money to allow you to pass through a gate or open a door to get to those that can offer life saving medical treatment

Tents, Bathrooms, and Aftershocks

                Yesterday, Byron took Alex, Nadege and I to where Nadege's mom has been staying so that we could level a spot for a tent for her and set it up.  Her mom is a paraplegic and has been for 5 years.  She uses her arms to move herself around.  Even if she had a wheel chair I think it would be useless to her on the streets around where she lives.  They are too steep and too uneven, I had to watch where I was walking or I'd fall on my face.  Finding a flat place was hard; the roads here are just a maze. Byron said he would probably get lost finding his way back, he didn't. I think he was just being dramatic and giving Nadege a hard time.

                Byron needed to do some shopping so Alex and I told him to do it while we were working and save time.  We picked a spot and started digging a mote around the tent so it wouldn't flood when it rains, hopefully.  We built up part of the spot so it was mostly level. Then we set up the tent. There were a bunch of people watching us.  One guy who was completely ripped started trying to order me around and tell me how to do things. I was not about to take that from someone who was sitting down and completely capable to do it himself.  I pointed at the pick ax and told him to get to work. Everyone laughed, but he got up and started helping, made things go a little faster.  People here laugh a lot -- I really like it.  It is a lot of fun when people get up and help out, the mood seems to get lighter.

                After we were done I had to go to the bathroom and Byron wasn't back yet and I didn't know when he would be back.  So I decided to be brave.  I asked Nadege if there was some place I could use the facilities. She looked a bit worried when I asked her and I started having second thoughts that maybe I should just wait till Byron came back.  Then I thought about how bad the roads were and decided that whatever the place looked like it was worth it.  She took me to a neighbor's house.  There was a woman giving a baby a bath on the front porch in a bowl.  They showed me their bathroom and it wasn't as bad as I expected.  It didn't smell bad and the house was really cool.  However, there were no doors in the house so all the rooms were open to each other.  The toilet was sort of around the corner but you could still see everything, lol.  Then I realized that there was no toilet paper. I'm glad I realized that before.  I don't really care where I have to go to the bathroom but at least in the woods there are leaves if you need them.  I asked Nadege if she had any and she was like “o yes" and said something I couldn't understand as she hurried away.  She came back with a roll. The toilet didn’t have a tank or a seat it was just a bowl.  You flushed it with a bucket of water, it worked pretty well. I thanked the women profusely and went back.  As I walked around the corner who should be there but Byron. Of course.

                Clifford (the guy that I told to get to work) wanted to show us his house.  We walked through the gate and he proudly presented us to his wife and pointed at the baby in her lap and said "that's mine" with a big grin on his face.  There were a few boys running around that followed us in to the house.  He moved some heavy stuff out of the way of a door and brought us into a room that now had a nice view.  The wall on most of the side of the house had fallen off and there were big rocks in the room.  Clifford told us that when the earth shook his baby was in there and possibly someone else (it was hard to understand at times).  He told us that he ran in and grabbed the baby and ran out just in time. I think he is a good dad. I'm so glad, Haiti needs fathers that love their children and will raise them up and not just forget about them.  Nadege has never met her father and I can tell that it hurts her. I don't think that he was ever married to her mom.  Nadege said he left when she was a baby and never came back.

                When we got back to the truck another guy came up to us who had a crutch.  He wanted use to pray for him.  He told us he had a lot of dreams for what he wanted to do.  Like he wants to start an organization for disabled people and that he had been going to "theological school" and studies languages like Hebrew, Italian, and Portuguese. He proceeded to tell us what all of our names mean.  He tried to tell me that Roosendaal meant something other than what it does.  Whatever.  We gave him a ride to his house and he took us inside because he wanted us to convert his dad from Catholicism to Baptist.  We asked him questions about his faith and compared them to his son's.  We all started chuckling because they were exactly the same -- the names were just different.  I told the guy "he sounds Baptist to me".  We prayed for them that they would keep seeking truth and that they wouldn't just believe things foolishly but would Study the Bible and find its truth.  I will keep praying for them.  The son seems to think he knows everything and I'm sure that is putting strain on their relationship.  I will keep praying that if the dad is not theologically sound that the son will be able to point him in the right direction lovingly and not just tell him he is wrong.

                Later that night I made popcorn on the stove for the first time.  It turned out really good and I gave some to a few of the nurses who were still at the house talking after dinner.  Brittany told me this morning that they really appreciated it; that made me feel good. I took my bowl upstairs and took a shower and watched a movie.  I had my head phones on and didn't hear the truck driving past. My bed started shaking and I thought it was an earthquake.  I ripped my headphones off and was at the door with my mouth open ready to scream at everyone to get out of the house when it registered and realized that the house was not shaking. It took me less than two seconds to get from my bed, when things started shaking, to my hand being on the door knob.  I laughed at myself and went back to my movie.  While eating dinner one of the women said that there was an aftershock then. I don't feel so stupid now.  It's nice to know that if an earthquake happens my body will run out of the house voluntarily without me telling it to.

Things to pray about

*That the Haitian government will get their act together and get a place to move the "tent cities" before the rain starts getting too bad.  It rained two nights ago and it was really bad.  People were getting swept out of their "tents" and thrown down hills. And that rain wasn't even that bad I was told.
*That the Haitian people will gain some sort of work ethic and realize that the only way they are going to get Haiti out of the mess its in is by working.
*That people would start caring about each other and have more respect for themselves.  The people here often don't need to live in the dirt. They could clean their houses, and some of them do. You can tell which ones care and which ones don't.
*We are starting a Kids program and I have no idea how to do it. We are going to be playing it mostly by ear.
*That I don't get malaria--I forgot to take the stuff to prevent it on Thursday
*For Brittany, one of the girls I'm living with, she can't sleep at night.  She was here when the earthquake happened.
*That the last two adoptions go through. It will take God intervening to get them to their adoptive family. Brittany is their adoptive big sister.
*David is testing positive for HIV, we are praying that it is just his mom's and that it will go out of his system and not hurt him. He is five months old.
*All of the women who work here as nannies or maids have lost their houses and some lost their whole families. All have lost friends.  I don't even know how to pray for them except for comfort.

Crushing bricks

   The dogs woke me up around 4 this morning, I was about ready to mussel them.  They finally stopped barking at 6:15.  Now they are all sleeping and I'm awake. I'm tempted to start banging pots around them. "Vengeance is Mine I will repay says the Lord" --- I would find it interesting to know what kind of punishment God would give a dog if He did.

    Yesterday I took a sledge hammer and started the impossible job of breaking up all the fallen bricks in our road so they don't pop the tires.  I had only been doing it for about ten minutes before I was literally drenched in sweat. My clothes were soaked.  One of the patients from the Heartline Hospital came over and wanted to help me.  He has an IV in and had a knee surgery so I told him no, but he could watch.  The Haitians often stand around and watch us work.  I never quite understood why, I thought it was just 'cuz we are white.  The guy from the hospital went back after a while.  Not too long after he sent his brother and his friend over.  They wanted to help too so I let them.  We took turns using the sledge hammer and I went and found a shovel.  The three of us worked at it for quite a while.  I gave one of them my gloves because it looked like his hands were hurting him.  I was very impressed with both of them. Ali couldn't really use the hammer so he moved the bigger rocks around so we could smash them easier.  I think he is about 16 or 17 years old.  The other guy (I can't remember his name) is 17. He was trying to teach me creole while we were working.  3 little boys came over and started helping by moving rocks.  Sometimes they would want the hammer. I let them try---it was so cute to watch, I think they were all under ten. After a couple hours, two more guys came over, they did the normal Haitian thing and just watched.  Except once when one of them tried to crush some rocks  I laughed out loud.  I think they were both older than me.  I took the sledge back and showed them how to do it.  They started talking in Creole and I couldn't understand anything they were saying, but neither of them tried again.  Occasionally one of them would kick a rock out of the way or move one for us.   Matt, one of the American guys, came over and offered to help.  I gave him the sledge.  His hands started bleeding not too long after so I fetched him some gloves. Apparently, I have more callous than the average Joe.  We made a lot of head-way until we started talking about Jesus--then we got way too distracted and took lots of  guff from one of the doctors for it.
     I'm a tad sore today.  One of the ladies that clean our house found me this morning and expressed her amazement that I had gotten up so early because I had been working so hard the day before.  I was a little confused because I don't think 7:30 is early.  She explained that the only other girl that she had ever seen work hard was Tina (she came with the Ecola group, I came here last year with her brother Sam).  She said that she works harder than any Haitian that she knows, but she could never work as hard as we had.  She told me that Haitian girls never lift a finger to do anything and her boys hardly ever do either.  Same with her husband.  I knew that Haitians in general had a bad work ethic, but I didn't realize it was that bad.  I always assumed that if they had something to do and the tools to do it they would. Apparently not.  I hope that I helped instill a work ethic in some of those boys.  They will need it if Haiti can ever get out of this hole it is in. The three little boys looked like they genuinely wanted to work hard, that was very encouraging.
     While I was working with them I also lectured them on how to talk to girls.  I told them that in America girls would think they were rude if you "kissed at them" and said a lot of the things they say down here.  They were all very surprised and asked what they could say.  I told them that if you just say hi then that would make them feel special.  They asked me if they could tell her that she had beautiful eyes.  I said they could if they had already been talking to her for a while. But I told them that they shouldn't if she really didn't have beautiful eyes because she would know they were lying.  I think it sunk in because I could tell they were all thinking about it.

Rain

                I took a break from painting today and watched David so that Brittany could sleep.   I started making the bracelets for the camp we are going to start for the kids in the tent cities and in the neighborhood.  I need to make 60 of them and I’m about half way there I think.

                We are having a thunder and lightning storm right now and its like someone is literally dumping buckets of water on us.  This is the type of rain you need to raise your voice to talk over.  I can't imagine what the people in the tent cities are going through.  It doesn’t matter if you have a tarp over you if you are trying to sleep in a foot of water or mud.  I feel guilty for sleeping in a queen sized bed with fans and bug spray and clean water.  I might sleep on the floor tonight I don’t like lightning and my bed is next to the window. 

There is a large crack in our ceiling and one of the rooms is flooding -- it's about an inch deep. I don’t think it will come into the rest of the house because that room is falling off the house so its lower.

Things are just so odd here and they don’t even phase you.  Part of the house is flooding, no big deal.  Part of the house is falling off, no big deal.  There's cockroaches in the fridge, whatever.  My room is covered in ants, yum protein.  You can walk past a room in somone’s house and a woman is in labor, that happens everyday.   The roads look like dry riverbeds, don’t yours look like that?  The list goes on.  I’m going to have a problem coming back to the states if I think this is normal. 

The hospital

                Yesterday John and I finished painting the pool and got a lot more done on the girls house.  Nick’s finger is healing.  He ran it through the table saw on Monday while he was repairing chairs.  It has been the source of much laughter.  He got seven stitches, and I have not heard him complain once. I am  quite impressed.

I slept most of the day today.  Last night I helped with night shift at the hospital.  I learned a lot. Jessica, one of the nurses, taught me how to administer antibiotics through an IV that was already set, and I watched her pull staples and she had me tape up the scar.  Just being around her you learn things because she will explain everything to you.  I enjoyed myself immensely .  Beth, the pastor’s wife, Came in in the middle of the night to get one of the doctors.  Beth is a midwife student and delivers babies often.  She had brought a young woman who was having her first baby to a hospital to get a c-section because she was having difficulties.  The doctor there was horrible and mean to this girl. I will not go into details because they are to graphic.  Beth said he was treating her that way because she was poor, and that he seemed to get enjoyment out of it.  She told me that she had never seen anything so cruel before.  The medical staff there would not let the girls husband in and told him that they would have him removed if he tried to come in.  (they have a no visiting policy)  Beth ended up leaving because the doctor promised her that they would do the operation.  But later she got a call from the girl’s boss, the girl had called him because the medical staff had just left her there and gone home without giving her the c-section.  Beth got the doctor and they dressed up in scrubs and tried to look official so that they could get the girl out again and try to get her to another hospital. They were able to, but the other hospital made them trade the C-section for two normal births, one of which ended up having the same problems as the other girl so they had to take her back to get a c-section.  The first woman is back at our hospital now with her baby where we can look after both of them. 

I wrote this on Sunday

                Yesterday John woke me up at six to paint the pool some more.  I was really out of it I’m not sure what came out of my  mouth, it was probably not completely understandable.   We did the second coat of light blue in the pool.  Then I went with Shelly to take David, the little 5 month old who is being adopted, to get his blood drawn for a test.  I held him still while he screamed as they were trying to find his vein.  They had to stick him at least three times before it worked and even then they hardly got any blood, the nurse said it was enough though.  They were not using gloves, that weird-ed me out.  As soon as they were done I turned him around and held him.  He immediately stopped crying and laid his head on my chest.  I got to feed him and make it up to him. I don’t think he hates me.  The whole ordeal took about 15 min I think. 

                When we got back to the house I went over to the clinic to help for a little bit.  Jen the doctor put me to work putting together hygiene bags.  When I got back John and I went and started painting the skirt around the pool a darker blue. It got to dark to finish, I'm hoping to finish tonight.

                We had 20 extra people for dinner (that makes about fifty people).  We had ham, beans, salad, apples, mangoes, and cheesy french bread.  Someone told me it was 104 degrees that day with the humidity. 

                Went to church this morning.  We drive through the city to get there, so I got to see a lot of the destruction.  It was very surreal. There would be three buildings sandwiched together and the one in the middle would be destroyed and the other two still standing.  There were a few large buildings that still had the main cement posts standing and a spiderweb of re-bar cris-crossing between them. And then there was a pile of rubble under that.   I saw that a lot of people were living on top of what was left of their fallen houses.  What struck me though is that it didn’t seem odd to me, it was just life.  I thought about the differences between here and the USA and you cant even compare them. Its like they are just two different places not connected with each other in any way.  I Cant really explain it to you other than when you are here nothing seems odd, but if you were to hear about it when you are in the US then it would seem terrible.   Take the roads for example.  I didn’t even notice them, they were just roads.  But then I remembered what roads at home looked like and realized that if these roads were there no one would drive on them.  I have a hard time walking down them.  The main roads are paved but all the one going through the neighborhoods look like washouts on a logging road.

                 Church was good.  We had it outside the building. I'm not sure if it was because they are scared to go inside or if there is another reason.  I Stood at the back.  Skinks kept running past, it was rather distracting.  Pastor John taught on how things could be good or bad.  Like how blocks that make up your house can protect you from rain or heat but they can also crush and kill you.  Your words can build up others or destroy them.  He has an interesting way of preaching.

Black, Red, White, Green, Yellow

Today was a wonderful day.  Last night I couldn’t sleep because it was far too hot.  It finally cooled off around 2 am, but then we got up at 5 to paint the inside of the pool, and then we decided it was too dark so we went back to bed for another half hour.  When we actually read the labels on the paint cans we found out that you need something to mix with the paint to make it adhere to the cement.  Of course we didn’t have that so we brain-stormed on what we could do instead.  We ended up finishing priming the stairs going up to the roof of the girls house.  I went back to bed and slept till 11 something. 

                When I got up again I went down stairs and was confronted with about thirty kids in the front of the house.  Shelly told me later that the UN people had been grilling her about how they were running their orphanage and how  they take care of their kids (there are only two left) so she showed them around and took them to see the hospital , which they seemed to be impressed with.  They asked her if they had any Haitians working in the hospital, there was one.  I think she did a good job at convincing them we were legit.  So anyway, when she was on her way back to the house a bunch of the neighbor kids and kids from the tent cities ran up to her and asked her when they were having camp again and if they could have it today.  They had done a day camp once just to give the kids around something to do, because all they do is just sit around there is nothing to do.  Shelly said she couldn’t turn them away and invited them in.  She gave them milk and cookies while she and Brittany decided what to do with them.  Brittany has been staying and helping here for quite a few months.  Her family is adopting the last two kids in the orphanage.  One is a little HIV baby that they are hoping will end up not actually having it. Hopefully it's just left over from his mom.  He is the most cutest darling thing ever.  The other is a 2 ½ year old girl, her name is Melody.  When I came down, they had the kids all coloring, and were trying to figure out another craft for them to do.  They decided on doing the wordless book but having the kids make bracelets.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s the gospel  explained with colors.  Each color represents something having to do with the gospel  and has a verse to go along with it.  Black is for sin, red is the blood of Christ, white is for when the blood of Christ cleanses us and we are made new, green is for our spiritual growth in Christ and our growing in our relationship with Him, and yellow represents heaven and the streets of gold.  

                Brittany started getting the supplies ready to make the bracelets while I went to look for Bigeyes to translate for me (his Haitian name actually means Big God--it's what Shelly told me but we say Bigeyes for some reason, I don’t know why, but it sounds cool with the Haitian accent.)  I found him and he said he would translate.  It was much easier than I thought it would be to go through a translator.  Anyway I was sort of put in the place of teacher, its amazing the things you end up doing that you have never done before.   I have never presented the gospel to more than one person or two at a time, nor taught kids, I always thought I was bad with them, and I have never spoken through a translator.  I told them the Gospel  using the beads for the bracelet as a guide, it was so easy, and they all just sat there and stared at me, if they started to loose interest I would do something more dramatic with my voice and make eye contact.  I didn’t think any of them would listen to me but I was wrong.  When I was done I asked if anyone wanted to start a relationship with Jesus.  There were at least six that did -I was so shocked- I forgot to count.  So I prayed for them and had Bigeyes translate it for me.  I asked God to show Himself to the children and that He would help them in learning about Him and having a relationship with Him, and that He would help them to go out and tell others about Him.  Could you guys pray for that as well?  Haiti is a broken place with no hope, the only hope that most of these kids will ever see is through Jesus and really that’s the only Hope worth anything.  I’m not sure If those kids fully understood everything we said but I hope that this is a seed that will grow into something amazing, I have faith that it will.

                We fed all the kids after they had made there bracelets and we sent them home with power bars and this peanut butter stuff that I think the world food program gave us.  John, Nick, Bigeyes, Tina and I walked the kids home. Some of them invited us to see their house and meet their family.  It was a tad awkward  because I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t understand what they were saying.  I finally started asking questions.  I asked is that was their house (I pointed to a big concrete structure that would have been amazing if it had been finished, most houses here are not, its just concrete no doors or windows and all open. I have no idea what they do for plumbing.) The woman that I think was some of theirs mother explained that it was someones who might be in America. I got the impression that they didn’t know.  I thought that was interesting because they were in the same walled in area.  She took me to see her house.  It was attached to two other rooms and I'm not sure if they owned all of them or if other people lived in them.  The best way to describe it was an apartment; there were three rooms with the doors facing the front and one of the rooms was theirs.  The room was about ten by ten.  It had one bed sort of, a table, and a shelf thing.  It was nicely painted and very clean, but when I asked her who all lived there she said they all did.  I don’t know if she misunderstood me or if I misunderstood her, but there were at least 9 or ten people outside that I believe she was referring to and I have no idea how they would all fit in there while sleeping and what they would use for blankets, I didn’t see any.  I'm hoping I misunderstood but I'm afraid I didn’t. 

                After we got back we discussed what to do with what happened today.  It was obvious that God orchestrated that.  We are thinking about  doing camps four days a week to reach out to the kids in this community.  We don’t know exactly how to do it because there is no structure in Haiti and it took 6 of us to handle thirty kids today, after Wednesday next week there will only be four maybe.  What do we do if more kids want to come than we can handle?  I know God already has it all planned out and he has it under control.  Please ask God to help us know what to do and where to go from here.  While we were making dinner, I worked on Melody to try to get her to drink water.  She fell a while back and cut up her chin and her lip pretty good and now it will not heal.  They are cleaning it three times a day with peroxide and have her on antibiotics, but it is still very swollen and looks infected.  Shelly said that she thinks her body can’t heal it because she won't drink.  She is two and a half and I think I got her to drink maybe two ounces in 5 hours.  I was able to feed her a half a sandwich though, but that doesn’t help with dehydration.  I think it might hurt or be difficult for her to drink because her lip is wide open and swollen and still bleeds.

                We cooked tacos for dinner tonight while Andrew and John painted the pool.  I learned to eat guacamole. I found that if you don’t look at it, it tastes better.  I successfully killed a cockroach last night, that was yummy.  O I forgot to tell you that I got to go buy bread for the first time (yesterday i think, the days are running together). That was fun for me, I love learning how to do new things.  I carried it on my head like a Haitian.

More paint

I got up at 7:30 this morning.  People here think I'm crazy for getting up that early, I chuckled under my breath.  Shelly showed me the ropes today and then went and took a nap, she is so tired.  So is everyone else who has been here a long time.  A lot of the volunteers look glazed over like they are about to fall asleep standing.  I went to the hospital to meet people and see how they were set up.  I offered to take nights shifts occasionally  to relieve people.  Five of us took turns scraping the paint off of doors to repaint them.  We had to take turns because it was too hot to work strait through the day.  I swept the pool and some of us are getting up at 5am tomorrow to paint it so we can put water in it.  I will probably be everyone's alarm clock.  Shelly and I cooked dinner and it was so good, we made Fettuccine Alfredo and Turkey Pot Pie.  It was by far the best Alfredo I have ever had.  

The fights and the first day

I wrote this last night before I went to bed.

  

        Everything when smoothly getting here.  On my layover in Dallas, I realized that I had forgotten a mosquito net.  I texted Laurel Clay because I thought she would be back in the states by then (she and others from Ecola had just spent spring break where I am staying).  I said, “guess what I forgot” her response was, “Mosquito net? Tampons? Sunscreen?” And I answered with mosquito net.  She asked me where I was now, I told her Texas and her response to that was “Wait, Dallas?” It turns out the Ecola team was laid over in the same airport I was in. So Laurel sent  Dave Duff, the director, over with a mosquito net.  It was such a huge blessing and encouragement to see God work even the smallest thing  out.  It was also encouraging to see Dave and talk to him a bit before my plane took off. 

          While I was sitting there, talking to Laurel on the phone I notice a woman crying on another bench, It looked like she had been crying for a long time.  After I got off the phone she came over and asked if she could use it. I said, “of course!” and handed it to her.  She was trying to call her husband but he didn’t pick up. As she handed the phone back to me I asked if she was ok.  She, of course, said no.  I asked what was wrong, she told me she was getting a divorce.  So I asked her if she would like to talk.  She said yes and started to spill.  She was so hurting and confused and didn't know what to do, I felt so sorry for her.  She was leaving her husband because he was verbally abusive and he had told her that he didn’t love her and told her to leave.  He apologized for it but she said he never changes.  I believe it was said in anger and without thought.  She also thought that he was probably cheating on him.  She said she didn’t want to leave him and she still loved him so much and she really didn't understand why, because he was so mean, but she still did.  In April it will be their 4^th year anniversary.  She wanted to know what I would do in the situation.  I told her that I didn’t know but that I wouldn’t want to leave because I Believe God made marriage to last forever, and that was something that was very important to Him because he made it.  I was having a hard time not crying while I was talking to her, she was so lost it just broke my heart.  She told me that she had tried to changer her mind and go back to him but the airlines wouldn’t change her flight and she was on her way back to her family in Florida.  I asked her if her and her husband had gone to counseling and she said that they hadn’t because he didn’t want someone else running their relationship.  I told her that it would be a good for her to get away form him for a time and that might help him realize what he is doing to her and might make him want to change, especially since they wouldn’t change her ticket any ways.  I said that people can change and there is always hope.  I told her to keep trying to get him to go to counseling but to go back to him soon and while they were away from each other to talk and to try to reconcile things.  I should say that she was blaming herself for a lot of it and said that it was partial her fault.  I was thinking that she thought that she deserved to be yelled at by her husband but I'm not sure.  Either way the situation was not good.  She wanted to call him just to tell him that she was safe and where she was going.  When Dave came with the net she called again and he answered the phone.  They talked for a long time.  I heard her tell him that she had decided not to divorce him and that she would come back but she didn't know when.  She told me after that he was crying a lot.  I asked her if I could pry over her and she seemed relived and said yes.  So I did, in the middle of the airport and started crying. We got on the same plane but I didn’t see her after that.  Please pray that God would restore their marriage and that God would change and work in both of there lives. Her name is Rebecca.

                I spent my 7 hour layover in Florida. I hid in the bathroom for most of it and slept for about 15 minutes.  I got to Port au Prince this morning and Andrew and a guy named John picked me up at the airport.  We took a taxi (not a  ) to the place where I will be considering home for the next 7 weeks.  I helped prime a set of metal stairs that the Ecola group had made to go to the roof of the girls house (there are two orphanages one for the girls and one for the boys, the boys house is now the Heartline Hospital).  I got a tad sunburned while doing that, sorry Alanna, I will try to get rid of my inevitable farmers tan when I get home before the wedding.  We ate lunch and some of us took a nap.  I was out immediately because I have gotten a collective 3 hours of sleep, maybe, in the last two days. And some of that was just  10min sessions on the planes.  They woke me up for dinner, witch was very good I might add.  I saw Naudia for the first time tonight, it was so nice to see her again.  Last time I came we became good friends. If you look on my Facebook there's a picture of us together and I'm helping her read her Bible.  She was just as exited, if not more, to see me. We couldn’t stop hugging. I'm going to go to bed now and try to catch up on my sleep, there is a lot to make up. 

Going

The closer I get to leaving for Haiti the more I’m realizing how much God has orchestrated my going.  He put it on my heart to go back to Haiti in September. I ignored this at the time just thinking in was my own restlessness from being home and not being in school.  I was working two jobs at the time and needed to pay my parents back for sending me to Bible school last year, and had a boy friend that I was trying to cultivate a relationship with.  When December came around things in my life started to get a little heated.  My boyfriend and I broke up (we are still great friends) and I felt like God was telling me to quit my job, so I did.  But then the main reason that I though I was suppose to quit for ceased to become a factor so I went back to work for a week and felt like crap the whole time. Like working there was completely the opposite of what God wanted me to be doing. I felt like I was blatantly disobeying God even though the reasons why He wanted me to quit were gone.  It didn’t make any since to me; why would God tell me to quit a wonderful job without another job lined up when the economy is going bad?  It seemed foolish.  But something that I had been thinking about since the end of Bible school and something that my boyfriend’s dad had mentioned to me in August kept bugging me.  It was about living in faith and learning how to do it.  You cant learn how unless you try it.  That was something that I thought was important to learn because, in my life here on earth I want to be able to follow God wherever He takes me so I can be used by Him to the fullest.  It would be impossible to do that unless I was able to step out in faith.  Like the little kid that has to trust that his dad will catch him when he jumps off the diving board.  So needless to say I quit again.  I decided to spend the month of January rebuilding my relationship with Jesus.  By the end of December I was an emotional wreck and my dad was worried about me, so he told me not to feel like I needed to pay him back right away for school, he said he’d rather see me sane.  So that plus ending our relationship and quitting my job opened up the possibility to go back to Haiti.  I had mentioned something about it to Andrew Tluchek earlier in December and began praying about it.  I was thinking maybe about going there in the summer to help with the English camp they do.  Two days before the earthquake hit Haiti I had decided to start preparing to get ready to go.  When it did hit I spend a good portion of that evening crying and in prayer, It seemed that this was what God had had planned for me to do. He already knew the earth would shake and He wanted me to go help.  I spent the next two weeks praying about it and got ahold of Andrew to see if his parents would want me to help them in Haiti where I went last year.  He talked to them and they said yes.  So im going.