Whirlwind Week

Last Saturday I picked up 23 people at the airport, and with the couple already here, we had 25 guests. They were scheduled to work in several parts of the city as well as Jacmel and les Cayes.

It was a very productive week for sure and came off as planned. We provided a CME class on spinal cord injury to a group of 35 nurses and nursing students and will be repeated this week as well. This group also has been surveying Haitian nurses for a research project and the team has reported some very bright nurses working in a number of settings. Its worked out very well so far and been well received.

Yesterday I picked up 13 more people to add to our mix of guests from Canada and all over the US. So what to do and where to put all the heads that need a bed in a house that holds 30...We managed to get 4 new beds delivered friday night (after the storm) and got extra beds set up in 2 of the offices temporarily- guests in both rooms enjoyed the semi private rooms offered to them.

To distract from the potential chaos of having so many people here, we chose to add to it by having a traditional Haitian troubadour band come play and plenty of beer and coke. The team prepared spaghetti and garlic bread with brownies & ice cream for dinner.

After the band left, we had a rousing game of pool volleyball.

The plan worked well!

Friday afternoon, Al and I were sitting in a meeting on the back patio area of the Seiph Office when we watched an extremely fast moving cloud approach us- much before we could react, we were buffeted with seed pods flying in all directions. We all grabbed our chairs and ran inside and while sitting there witnessed a couple of trees fly through the air much as the house in Wizard of Oz did before crashing to the ground.

I started calling all our groups scattered in all areas of the city and made sure all were ready to return home as soon as storm passed and it was safe to do so. We had contact with everyone but the trip home for all was almost a 3 hour adventure. We've had word of major damage at some of the tent cities and witnessed downed trees, downed billboards, wires and see the wrathful impact of a sudden unexpected cyclone. We in Haiti are grateful that we've not had to deal with an actual hurricane.