Night music

Its been much harder to write and update my blog this time. Maybe because its so all consuming- emotionally, physically and mentally but as hard as it has been, I'm happy to be involved in every way. The connection I have here is stronger than ever. Listening to everyones story tears you up but to hear them say "It's Life"

Sunday morning in Ayiti

Bon jou, Bon jour and Good morning all~

I woke early and listened to the sounds around....mostly the birds and as the morning light grew stronger more and more voices in the distance. Occasionally a rooster is crowing now but the dogs are sleeping. Kitchen staff made coffee so I can sit and write while the team is still sleeping, sip my coffee and enjoy the peacefulness that I remember from last year. Its not the new reality but surreal that it seems so. People are trying to move on now...you can see it in the streets but when you look in their eyes there is a haunting sadness that breaks your heart.

Everyday I wish I was equal to 10 people to make things better. 10 Bill Gates, 10 engineers, 10 construction companies, 10 heads of state, 10 somebodies to make it better.

My team arrived in entirety Saturday...everyone meshing well and filling the house with new life.

Some have been here before others for the first time. All are ready to get started. Today will be unpacking, organizing and sorting the more than 50 bags and bins they brought with them of supplies from meds, to orthotics to soccer balls to tents and more tents to food (and some cookies for me) and hygiene kits... The ti moun- all the neighborhood children arrived en masse to greet (and overwhelm?) them...they handled it fine.

Thanks to all the support from home, from our co-workers that may have to work a little bit harder because we are here, our family members who may worry a little bit more about us (we are fine and will take care of ourselves) and our friends who give us unconditional love for what we are doing.

Bon bagay....

well, theres a title for you.
I had clinic open today by myself. Its started out with cleaning and banaging 4 of the little ragamuffins from the shanty town that have been coming around. Everyday they they help us carry our stuff down to the tent clinic, they play wildly all day on the pet carts or hang around until end of clinic and help carry everything back up. Then they line up and get a chewable vitamin and the past few days a small cup of milk mixed with instant breakfast. Today there were 16 of them and my sweet little girl was missing- her mom came and took her home this morning because she thought they were too wild. (sometimes they are). But today they were all very orderly and I know Mark and Marco and Lars will probably not believe me. They helped me unroll the tent sides to drain out the rain water and roll them up again. After clinic we unrolled them again in case it rains. (I wonder how many will try to sneek in and sleep there after dark).
I saw about 12 patients though some of them were there for therapy. Some I'll have come back on monday when Dr. Darla is here but mostly just needed some tylenol, ibuprofen or benedryl.
One of our stroke patients lost his son just prior to the earthquake and his son was in the morgue waiting for burial when the quake buried him, another son was injured in the quake and subsequently died from his injuries. He was so sad, he said he felt like he would explode and then he cried. After therapy, he brought his wife to meet me. We hear these strories everyday. My heart breaks for everyone of them. They have such sadness in their eyes.

The staff worked very hard today to prepare the guesthouse for my team's arrival beginning in the morning. Four people arrive Friday, 13 +1 arrives on Saturday.

For dinner tonight I had accra!!! and banan pesay!! and poul and tomatoes and lettuce AND not a single grain of diri or bean insight! BON BAGAY! Tomorrow night I am getting macaroni and cheese au gratin and bbq poul!
A bottle of Corona, a episode or season of Seinfeld and pistache for snack...like I said Bon bagay.

Message from Haiti

I don't even have a fun title tonight. The final 6 people of the group I arrived with departed this afternoon...though they haven't actually left yet they were told to be out at the Miami tent by 5 pm. It's a bit quiet around here tonight....in terms of team members. I still hear plenty of dogs barking. The crickets are noisy after a bit of rain this evening. With many of the property walls damaged or down, there is much more traffic noises noticible. I have a few staff members here so I'm not alone. They shut the door from the hallway to the kitchen - not sure what that was about. Tomorrow they will have to get some cleaning done as my team begins to arrive on Friday- 4 of them, and on Saturday about 11 or 12 more will get here. I hope. American Airlines has said they are resuming flights after a month plus of cancelled trips.

We've done a lot of preparations to get ready for the team to arrive. With water and power established and internet service restored, we can manage quite well. We've been eating a lot of rice and beans - a version slightly altered each day.
We've been fortunate to have laboullie (pardon my spelling of this) but we call it sweet wall paper paste. but it tastes good and sticks with you for awhile.
ha...no pun intended. Susan Bales and I washed dishes for hours yesterday, cleaned cupboards and put things away. The guys have been patching up cracks and holes in the walls in preparation for painting the house. My team members will really appreciate the high ceiling areas!


I've also had enough of the MRE's. I'm very empathetic to service men around the world- I didn't eat that many and don't care to eat many more. We've had different variations of rice and beans everynight for 3 weeks now...we've occasionally had piklees, and some form of meat- beef, or pork, or spam (?), cliff bars and occasionally bread and pasta with speghetti sauce.

TomorrowI'll make plans for my team, be over - whelmed with neighhood kids begging for something, maybe do some wound care in our tent clinic. I'll do some inventory in our little mushroom house. I'll post some pictures this weekend. Angel is bringing my laptop.

For now I'll listen to the roosters and the dogs, and all the other night noises....

Back in Port au Prince

We finished our work in Fond des Blancs st Bonaface Hospital about noon, had a bite to eat and caught our ambulance ride back to Port au Prince we arrived at the outskirst of downtown about 4:30 pm and our driver decided he did not want to be sitting in traffic so turned on the siren and away we went dodging in / out of traffic like mad dogs. I was holding 2 dozen eggs on my lap and bounced off the seat...landing on back packs and legs but didn't break any eggs..

Arrived back at property with a few noted changes. The drive way was cleared. Water pipes repaired in road. Saw city power on as well. Cosmetic work started in guesthouse. Most of team left today - well their flight is supposed to leave at midnight tonight. There is 6 of us here until Wednesday when 5 will leave and I will wait for my team to arrive on Friday and saturday.

well I think I better take a shower or i will get voted off this island.
maybe tomorrow I will tell some of the stories....

Haiti continued....

As we are preparing to leave Fond des Blancs, I will take one last internet opportunity.
Four of us came to this town to do some rehab teaching...nursing and therapy for spinal cord injuries. This hospital was designated to receive this type of patient from the US Comfort- the ship hospital sitting out in the bay doing surgeries. At one point they had 678 patients with their family member on board. St. Bonaface was chosen mostly because there just wasn't another hospital bed to put these patients to make room for more.
They have rec'd a total of 9 patients but only 4 are sci.
We will head back to PaP today....

We arrived via the 82nd Airborne to our property in 2 trucks. We had a big tent- 50 x 18 that the guys erected in about an hour. Our temporary clinic was in place. We surveyed the damage with tears in our eyes, greeted staff with even more tears of happiness at seeing our friends.

Seven of the 9 buildings were down and unusable. The guesthouse appeared to be cosmetically damage only, a fact confirmed by at least 9 construction workers and several engineers.

Another small house on the property was undamaged as well and we call it the Mushroom. It is a small round house- ( if it had been available last year when I stayed for 6 months I would have felt like a queen). We now are using it for our pharmacy and depot storage for all of our supplies.
It will be a bit crowded but will work for now.

The building we called the Castle is complete rubble- hard to believe it left such little impression.
The villiage next door sustained damage but not nearly what I would have expected.
We had our first clinic on Saturday and saw about 185 patients...it has trickeled down in number since. Possibly most of our patients are from the neighborhood but with a few of our former patients (pre-quake patients) starting to come in for therapy.

Lars and Cory, construction extrordinerre, was able to get power connected, get temporary water reconnected. The first few nights we slept outside which was very pleasant. We chose to return inside to sleep in the guesthouse to help the staff feel more comfortable about going in.
They will not go into the kitchen- the stove was pulled outdoors and they are cooking outside. Our dining tables are outside -
Not sure when they will feel comfortable about being inside although they at least come in for short stints to clean.

Lars got the grounds keepers and a few others working on the rubble and clearing the road. This has to be done to do proper repair of water pipes.

Kevin the water truck guy came and brought us a tank- 3500 gal of water. It was quite scary as they had to back the truck out of the drive way - no way to turn around at the time. I was afraid they would drive off the bank. Pouchon is good driver though so no problem.

Up until I came to Fond des Blancs we were having rice/ beans and some kind of meat for supper. Since here, we have had our main meal mid day- beans and rice, even some goat. For supper one night we had hard boiled eggs, tomatoes and potato salad and leftover goat/ beans and rice. last night we had potatoe salad and cheese and bread.

For breakfast, corn flakes, raisens and milk. Bon bagay.

Last Sunday we went up to Kenskoff and Fermathe to visit Wings of Hopes new home. A nice big house of several levels. There former home is deemed unsafe for now but they have hopes that it can be repaired. While it was several levels, it was all ramped so moving kids was easier.

After that visit, we went to the hotel Oloffson for lunch. That old hotel held up pretty well, surprisingly. We had sandwiches and hung out for awhile before heading back to the property.

We have had news teams/ reporters coming in off and on- I guess I was on CNN but have not seen it - just have been told i looked fabulous with my dreds and slinky body... well that was my dream, I'm sure reality was more likely a wild crazy woman.

Everyday we see old friends. Everyday we listen to the stories of the day of krazee. It breaks our hearts. But everyday we see the perseverance of these proud people. Their city and palace and government and country might be in rubble now but the people will find a way to survive. Just like they have after the hurricanes. Just as they have after floods. Just as they fought for their independance, they will fight for themselves. They just need a hand up from us.

message from Haiti

My first opportunity to use a computer to update my blogsite....and where do I start?

I'm in Fond des Blancs a small town (comparitively speaking) of about 45000 which includes quite a number of surrounding villiages. We are up in the mountain about a rough hours drive from main highway to Les Cayes. It is roughly 70 miles from Port au Prince according to one person (I would have said 50 as I was told Les Cayes is 60 miles) We are halfway between Jacmel and Les Cayes according to the map and it took 4 hours to drive here from the UN compound where we caught our ride in the St. Bonaface hospital ambulance.

To go back a bit, we arrived here 2 weeks ago today well tonight. A Healing Hands for Haiti group of 11 'hitchhiked' a ride with a group called the Utah Hospital Task Force. This group chartered a flight to bring docs, nurses, construction, translators, and support along with medical supplies - total of about 120 people. We arrived in Port au Prince at about midnight (with about a dozen pizzas for payment to the 82nd airborne), unloading about 10-12000 # of supplies. We finally got to camp about 3 am, a soccer field of tents. We didn't get much sleep- Angie and I were sharing a tent and about 30 minutes into bunking down we were swarmed by mosquitos- I think we had a neon sign above our tent flashing "fresh meat"! It turned out we weren't the only one with the sign.

Nothing but hurry up and wait this first morning- something we should be used to but we were anxious to get out to our foundation. Finally mid morning the 82nd airborne got the big trucks over and started loading up. It was a sobering drive through the city - the imagination can not begin to comprehend what we were finally seeing. Buildings - many of my landmarks were nothing but rubble. Seeing buildings buckeling and tipped, the rubble piled in the streets. Tent cities in any open area. Tents made of sheets, cardboard and tin, as well as real tents on occasion.

We see people cleaning, sweeping, vendors selling a few things along the street. Its a start towards returning towards living again.