Leogane and Oloffson

Shaun came yesterday- former member of team Portland from Canada, he is working at the Hospital Albert Swietzer in Hinche - a few hours drive north / northeast of Port au Prince. Today he and I drove to Leogane to visit an nursing school with sponsorship from University of Michigan. The director is a Haitian nurse that has worked in US / Canada in many areas of the field. Very impressive and wants a nursing school graduate able to compete at top level of nursing. They just graduated their first class of 13 including 3 male nurses. They will sit for their boards in March.
We talked about how we wanted to find a way to integrate rehab nursing into curriculum with even some physio/ occupational therapy techniques.
Elena and Sharon, you could come down for a 6 week session on rehab nursing - they would house you and feed your very well. Well actually all of you PARC nurses could take turns. OT's & PT's could do a less intensive session...I know Melissa would love it. Healing Hands would then have some specialty nurses to hire for their new Rehab Institute of Haiti.
We visited a hospital called St. Croix that has been closed about a year due to mismanagement but was considered one of the best hospitals in Haiti.
It is a large hospital with 250 beds. Currently it is being used as an outpatient clinic. While we were there, a group from Tennessee was providing care including medical and dental; they told us they had 250 patients waiting by 7:30 am. That is actually when they cut it off. People had being waiting a long time very patiently- we were there about 1 pm.
We left about 2:45 to get home before the worst of the traffic...we were still in the traffic..and got home about 4pm.
The Minnesota team has been busy as well - working in P&O at the clinic and at St. Vincents, in the clinic, at Holy Angel- the support people painted a murial, they've cleaned, sorted, reviewed, held meetings, and more meetings and then relaxed and had fun.. which brings us to tonight...

We are going to the Oloffson Hotel - an old Hotel with great history and featured in Graham Greene's book called the Comedians and was made into a movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and back in the day of Papa Doc Duvalier era. Maybe famous and infamous people have visited the hotel and is now famous for the thursday night party with RAM- a local Haitian band. Shaun and I are going to be tag alongs.
And now I must have a rest- The van is pulling out at 9 pm. RAM is not known to start the first set of music until 11 or 11:30...so it will be a late night tonight.
(I doubt Erik and partners will be there)