Against all odds

I stayed up too late last night just talking to Rosite and Camille, as Rosite left this morning. They arrived on Thursday with a patient from Chicago. This patient received a severe spinal cord injury in the earthquake, and against odds of survival was flown to the US for treatment. Now 7 months after the quake, she had made it quite clear that despite continued low odds, she wanted to come home. Rosite, a Haitian nurse and Camille, a specialized nurse in spinal cord injury brought her back to Port au Prince. She will be in the hospital for just a few days longer-hopefully until her home can be prepared and family trained how to care for her. She has a lot more than rubble to manage for her survival. She has very little function and control from shoulders down. She will be dependent on family and friends for each and every need. Imagine that where you live. The resources that would be available to you. Most likely you would have a motorized wheelchair to get around. Ramps, no steps. Accessible buildings. You might even have a special bed.

Camille will be trying to locate a bed frame for this patient so the mattress the family set up can be taken off of the broken cinderblocks. It'd be scary to see a motorized w/chair try to get around the rubble, the sidewalk vendors, the traffic, the potholes, and dodging motorcycles and cars.

Rosite is a Haitian nurse that grew up in Haiti. She told us some of her stories- as a little girl she had a restivek for a play companion and they are friends to this day. She had 10 brothers and sisters and her father had 8 more children with his other 'wife'. Her father donated property for a hospital not far from Les Cayes that I hope to visit soon. She was here right after the earthquake for 2 weeks and returned again in June for a week. I look forward to her next trip to Haiti for sure. She is a delightful woman.

We had a fun weekend. Al, Deb, and I found a store that is like Target with a large variety of items and relatively inexpensive. I bought a few things for the guest house but mostly just looked. Later in the afternoon, I drove Deb and Al home to their apartment in Petion-ville and back home to the guest house. Jorel really enjoyed having a chauffeur instead of being the chauffeur and seemed so surprised that I could drive. I can manage to honk, pass and not hit anything as well as him. I will bow to him when it comes to knowing the city and the shortcuts! It felt good to be able to have this bit of freedom, a bit of control. Now I'll just have to work on getting a car!

Today was spent pretty much poolside, relaxing and listening to the thunder rumbling over the mountain. It looked like it we would have a raging storm but while there was the thunder and lightening, the rain was relatively light. We've had reports of 3 hurricanes but so far nothing is headed our direction.

Storms on Horizen?

The team from Chicago left this morning and the final team member from the Vancouver, British Columbia team also left. The Chicago team split into two groups, one group of 4 went to the southern peninsula area of Fond des Blanc and Les Cayes while the other 3 stayed in Port au Prince to work. All had a pretty successful week.

With the announcement that Wyclef Jean would not be allowed to run for president, word was out among the NGO's that their might be manifestations however nothing materialized. Maybe they will wait until Monday or tuesday to make their 'statement' fas a fas to the government during the busiest time of day; blocking traffic and disrupting morning commutes is surely going to get them noticed and the attention of the electoral commission. The list of candidates came out very late Friday night and there is just 15 or so names on the list. Michael 'Sweet Mickey" is one of them. This is about half the nubbier that ran in 2006. There is at least one woman but since I haven't seen the list, I can't say more than that. Our hip hop duo candidates are down to a hip now.

We had a pretty decent storm on Tuesday late afternoon. Thunder, lightning, wind and rain...I'd rate it about a 4 out of 10, mostly because it only lasted about an hour Still I had dirt and water deposited in my office. I took a video of it for 2 minutes. If it will load, I will post it. There as been a few rain showers through the week but nothing nearly worth mention. But with hurricane season, you can't look beyond the horizon - we still have to be vigilant to all kinds of storms.. whether its by mother nature or in the hands of the people in the way of manifestations. Stay tuned.

a view from my desk which is a little messy this morning but I have a goal of decreasing the clutter today. It sometimes appears as if a cyclone hit it!

The view from my office..
The collection corner- everything collects here including a map of PaP, files, first aid kits, crayons, an umbrella, bungi cords, my computer bag, pills someone left, printer paper, mosquito coils, licorice, artwork, duct tape.....another storm ravaged area. Really it looks like the tide rolled in a left a deposit.
across from my desk in another corner is a collection of wheelchairs, boxes of kitchen sets for discharged patients from SCI unit, A large wrapped bags of 200 mosquito nets, and miscellaneous other items stuck there. I can't blame a storm on this corner.
Gracie is almost 6 months old. She comes into my office to nap or see what is going on...she is a happy puppy, likes to play and chew and unfortunately nip your ankles when you walk. She knows better than to bite me but still in the puppy stage, she forgets quickly, unfortunately for my ankles. or my heels. or my fingers....Deb calls her shark. She likes to hang out in the kitchen, hoping one of the staff will drop some treats for her.
Playground on Delmas 33, somedays its full of happy children and a joy to watch them having some playtime. It always makes me smile.
Hmmm, who thinks Body Perfect is the gym to join?
On Saturday we took a drive to Croix des Bouquets area to buy some plants for the pool patio area. Unfortunately, on Saturdays they close at noon. the man in charge was kind enough to give us a tour of the farm although I certainly didn't ask enough questions. It is quite a large beautiful farm and very unexpected. They have all sorts of plants and trees and its called Great Harvest I think. Quite like something you would see in the states.
They have a tilapia and koi 'farm' as well with about 6 tanks filled with fish. Obviously filled as this picture indicates... They also have chickens-hundreds of them. The babies fill one shed and the hens another. They aren't very good looking and I tried not to think about this too much. I'm not ready to give up eating poultry or eggs. For this reason, I'm not posting any pictures of them. Again, I'm pretty sure it is no different than a poultry factory in the US.

Its been a quiet day although I did make an airport run to pick up Fiona, a nurse from England that has been in Haiti since January as well. She first worked in Port au Prince for a number of weeks, then moved to Cap Haitian where she has helped put the SCI unit of Haiti Hospital Appeal in good working order with Haitian staff (with the help of many HHH/ TCHH volunteers) . They have done a fabulous job of caring for the more than 25 SCI patients they've cared for over the months, half of whom have been discharged mostly to the PaP area. The spinal cord injury patients are living and surviving in tents just as all of the uninjured persons of Haiti continue to do more than 7 months after the earthquake.

I've got just one more stack of papers to search through and file and I'll be ready for the week ahead.

No running starts today!

A beautiful morning in Port au Prince and quite warm. I beleive the heat index is higher in the morniings this past 2 weeks since I’ve returned. Afternoons have been dark and stormy, the air heavy with humidity but definately less heat than our mornings. We hear thunder rumbling over the mountains for hours but the threat doesn’t always produce on a daily basis. We have had 3 crashing storms since I’ve been back. The flood of rain water has turned our driveway into what would be considered a 4 legged road (donkey path is how Berny describes it) at home littered with cement rubble and rocks. Our drivers have to ‘get a running’ start when it is the least bit wet. I drove the other day for the first time...albeit, it was only down the driveway. Something very similar to how my kids learned to drive when we went to the farm. Its a baby step but produced a feeling of freedom!

Green story from Oregon

http://www.oregoncitynewsonline.com/sustainable/story.php?story_id=128137994096195900

What will $70 buy in Haiti....

I'm back in Haiti now for 1 week. I'm about up to speed with the work as not much changed or happened in the 3 weeks I was gone. We had some volunteers and guests and Al was more than happy to have me return and take over my job again.

I arrived last Saturday mid day and by dinner time we had doozy of a thunder storm. Lightning struck the back patio and I have to say it was the loudest sound I have ever heard. It didn't appear to have hit anything except that one of the inverters that was the back up power for refrigeration no longer worked. We had to scrounge up extension cords to keep food cold until Monday when our good electrician made repairs.

Also my luggage did not arrive with me due to my having to change flight schedule. Instead of flying into San Francisco to Miami due to weather problems there, I flew to Atlanta. Thankfully, my bags were waiting for me the next day when I returned to airport to pick up to volunteers.

Last night we went out to La Reserve, a nice restaurant in Petionville with our volunteers. Casey and Chelsea were here just for 1 week and it was nice to be able to let them have a bit of respite from their work and see the difference after hours.

Today I went to the store and picked up a few items I thought I needed to have- so for $70 this is what I got: Uncle sam's snak Twists for Gracie (chews), T-bonz for Gracie, Oreo mini cookies, 16 pieces of Laughing Cow cheese, Alpo can food (obviously) , mini Babybel cheese, cotton balls, whole grain cereal, small garbage bags, Starbucks coffee frappucinno's in a bottle, grape jelly, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, nacho cheese chips snack size, bugles snack size. 18 articles $2735 HTG... its not hard to see that a person earning roughly $2/ day would have trouble keeping 1 meal on the table let alone 1 as I spent more money than most people make each month. Out of their $60 they have to pay rent, pay for school for their children, pay phone/ electricity, transportation and food. Something has to give way. Here is another problem now for the families living in tents. Most places now want at least 6 months rent in advance. There are few jobs available and even for the folks working in the cash programs and earn $5/ day are going to have a difficult time to save money to get their families out of a tent.

I can imagine the struggle, even a feeling of desperation that parents must feel to have survived an unimaginable assault of the earthquake to get to this point, nearly 7 months later and knowing there is still the threat of hurricanes looming over their head and shoulders.

But Wyclef Jean, a Haitian hip hop artist long living in the US but born in Haiti registered as a candidate for president on thursday. This will keep the elections and the disaster forefront in the news I think. Certainly the young folks will be rara-ing for him as they did on Thursday all over the city. There are at least 8 other candidates registered - one of which is another Haitian artist named Sweet Mickey. I think this is going to be an interesting few months- hurricanes and hip hop artists.