photos and update

Haitian snake oil

HI EVERYONE I am having a frustrating time with blogging, please bear with me, I don´t now whether you have received multiple copies of an entry that I can´t seem to brighten the print on so it is basically illegible.  Please excuse the nuisance.  I am going to carry on because now I am over a week behind in entries and I have wasted hours trying to fix the last one.

I am so heartbroken to hear bits and pieces about the storm, aching for NYC.  Our few days of flooding is nothing iin comparison to this blitz.

Oven

finished product, great when warm with some strong sweet black coffee

My notes in kreyol, sorry can´t turn them around

Last night I slept in the clinic residence and was awakened at 6 am for another birth.  This one, although another first baby, went quickly, I am watching and helping, learning the routine.  The next episiotomy will be mine.  Most women get pitocin to hussle the contractions, speed up the birth.  The nurses act as midwives, confident, skilled, compassionate and joking away as we slide on the mix of blood, betadine and amniotic fluid that misses the big bucket.
The clinic was bustling this morning, several wounds to sew, a crazy girl came in, another case of kout wanga or being possessed by a spell someone cast, as I explained in my last entry that you most likely could not read. Her family had tied her hands in front of her so she couldn´t hurt herself or anyone else.  We had run out of IV valium, so I gave her promethazine to help her sleep and my translator, an ardent evangelist, advised her to go to church.

Psycho photo from my bike, shot by mistake

A bit difficult to get a history on this woman who was a deaf mute that nobody  knew

Me and Jeramy studying kreyol and english, respectively

baskets for catching fish

Fresh catch drying in the sun on conch shells

Love truck

several days lost in el ciclon

Hello  all yee faithful how are you???  Hopefully weathering the storm ok now that it is your turn.  I am posting my meanderings over the last week while out of contact, starting 10/25.  Thanks for the love, Louise

A woman came in yesterday who had been beaten up by her husband (he's in jail).  She was wet and covered with sand and dirt, hair totally wild and she was super bug-eyed, "Night of the Living Dead," each eye going in a different direction while having the closest thing to a real seizure as I have ever seen.  She was contorting her neck in a scary bizarre position, people were holding her down and the little emergency room was packed with family and rubberneckers.  Pulse normal, pupils equal and responsive, moving all extremities, a few nasty bumps and bruises, maybe a fractured arm.... Dr Demonsthenes, a 30 yo intern from Port au Prince who is working with me, sharp as a whip and a face of a 15 year old mumbles humbly to me, "um, you know, the Haitian people (pause), she is having anxiety.  We will let her stay here for a while and see if she calms down."  But others explained that she 

must have been cheating on her husband and he put a kout wanga, or spell on her.  She ended up staying for several hours and still did not calm down after getting hosed off in the tub for cholera pts (see photo) and IV Valium.  Her parents decided to take her across the border to get checked by dominican docs.  Demosthenes later explained that Haitians frequently don't trust their own doctors or hospitals and often seek something beyond their border, if they have the means. 

Woman with the kout wanga getting washed off in the cholera tub

Today it was raining for the 3rd day in a row, the sideshow of the hurricaine that passed between Cuba and Jamaica.  I've been drenched repeatedly riding around by bike and motorcycle.  Few people come to the clinic because they are deathly afraid of going out in the rain and getting sick.  "Cholera will come back with this weather" they cluck.  But today we had a birth which took many hours, the mother's first.  Since 6 am she lay naked and splayed out on the sickly pink colored plastic birthing table in 90 degree humidity as we fanned her madly with an old medical file and tpped on her belly like telegraph messengers gone mad, to help promote contractions.  "Mezanmi!!!" she would hollar.  The cranky nurse who used to sleep on her desk started slapping her inner thighs to get her to open up and bear down with all her might.  We're all cheering "puse, puse, l'ap vini," (push, push, its coming) and sure enought she did after 7 hours of pushing.  In the States she would have had a C-section before the morning coffee break.

Well, I never got to send the above entries because the internet has been down for a few days now due to the storm.  The dominican phone I have is not working either, but the Haitian cell provider is, kudos to something working better here than in the DR!  The howling wind and sheets of rain come in paroxysms, about 30 minutes apart, giving you hope that things might clear, but WRONG, back it comes.   Its so odd to be in a big storm without knowing anything about it - its strength, where it is headed,  its name - no persistent weather channel updates 'round here beyond just looking outside; its raining, it stopped, sky is deep gray, now its getting brighter, wind is slamming doors and window around, things are quiet and calm.  waves in the sea today are super high, you can hear the surf a mile away; We went down to the beach this morning to see for ourselves.  They needed to pull ashore this tremendous wooden ship that they use to transport people and cargo from Ansapit to Jacmel, so they placed seaweed under it and raised it up on some pathetic looking logs.  With the help of 40  men and women who pulled ropes  tied to the boat's bow with a series of rhythmic heave-hos, sure enough they advanced it tug by tug to higher ground.

Boats ready to go the 7 hours to Jacmel in happier times, several were ruined in the storm

More kreyol - grate tet - to wonder,  ponder, literally to scratch your head
Fwod - fraud
Pa chat  - to sneak around (to act like a cat)

fotos and more stories

Jeanne giving a talk about HIV prevention in the clinic.  There is no testing available, we have to send people to Pedernales -$$$.  The latest infection rate according to the UN is 1.9% of the population between 15 and 49

Beds are empty in the cholera tent.

Rode and Muscadin in the nurses office.  Now there 6 capable nurses with organized schedules and the obligatory whites.  When I was here before there were only 2 nurses, one who mostly napped at her desk,even though there was a cholera epidemic outside

My examining room.  We are using body bags from the cholera epidemic to cover the examining tables, which I didn´t realize until I turned it over and noticed the big long zipper!!!  I am writing my notes in kreyol now, thank God I have been seeing only 5-10 a day this week.

The door to my bedroom at Peter´s house

The outdoor shower feels great on a day when temps reach the high 90s.  The neighbors 15 feet away put on great music - boleros, salsa, bachata, merengue - to add rhythm to scrubbing

Here´s the squatter, brand new and clean as a whistle

Natalie and Rosmaris, Peter´s sister and stepdaughter that live with us.  They share the same bed.  Rosmaris, who is three, feeds herself as delicately as the Queen mother.  I have a book of kreyol children´s stories that I read to her.

Natalie getting coiffed by a neighbor in our jarden

Ezrameyel, Peter and Sylphan´s 14 month old antchoutechoute or wild little monkey who gets into absolutely everything

Rosmaris waiting for dinner last Sunday - rice, beans, fried chicken, yucca, "sauce."  Very special because of my arrival.



Let´s talk about food.  This morning for breakfast I had some spaghetti floating in a thin red sauce with a few light green peppers.  Good enough, especially with strong sweet black coffee, served on the porch of my domicile.  I bought 5 little bags of home roasted peanuts on the street on my way to work that tasted great with my second cup of sweet mud when I got to the clinic (another upgrade from last time).  Then around 1:30 Sylphan delivered my lunch - yanm, which is more like a fibrous potato, again with the light red sauce, this time accompanied by a fish skeleton for flavor, decoration maybe? Tasty enough but I was done after a few bites because it is hard to have an appetite when it is a breezeless 98 degrees.  However the sweetened, watered down natural orange juice she brought me is a godsend.  Tonight on my way home I bought some pen or white hamburger looking rolls, fresh baked in a home oven, still hot.  For dinner we shared 3 of the rolls between 7 of us, with labouyi or porridge, made from cornmeal, milk, cloves and vanilla.  Eating is a family free-for-all with no one having their own specific plate, however I play defense in hopes that Ezramael´s grubby mitt (haha gotcha Romney) won´t approach mine.

Things I have learned to do:

Ride sidesaddle on a motorcycle when I am wearing a dress

Drink a 40 oz beer, a Dominican fria grande, freezing cold by myself in less than 30 minutes, still on my feet and ready to roll onward.

More witchcraft:

    The other day a neighbor brought her 2 yo child over to be checked by me because he had a little scar on the left side of his neck.  I was trying to understand what the problem could be because it just looked like a well healed wound from long ago.  Sure enough, I later found out that when the chuild was only a few days old his mom found him one morning in a little pool of coming from a neck wound.  Outside the bed she found drops of blood leading out the door.  Do you believe in vampires?

      Peter started talking about zombies again when he took me to his cornfield.  When i asked him if he is worried that people will steal his corn which is ready to harvest, he said that often you see zombies standing in cornfields, watching them for their owners.  It seems they are most used for the boring-ist of jobs.  Pete also said you always see zombies in Haitian factories, and also for some reason in the drugstore.  You can tell they are zombies because their voices are always very nasal, sort of like a snorting.

Some new favorites in the kreyol lexicon: 

Blofe  liar

Twompe  deceive

Zengzeng  bother

Gaga  simpleton

Fizi  firearm

These Haitians are tricksters by nature.  HOllywood should do some recruiting here.  Yesterday evening I happened to drop by the clinic and this teenage boy came panting in, totally out of breath, looking just like he was having an asthma attack, being held up by 2 family members.  I asked his sister if he had asthma and she said yes.  So I immediately gave him a nebulizer treatment and even though he was still heaving heavily his lungs were perfectly clear.  I thought hummm, he was burning hot, 104.5 degrees.  20 minutes later he´s in bed with an IV, positive for malaria, resting quietly.  I wasted time and a nebulizer treatment because I did not recognize his dramatization of the fear he was feeling - my bad!

N'ap ale anko ( here we go again)

Bonjou tout moun anko - Hi from Haiti to everyone that is interested in continuing the ride or jumping on the bus while it¨´s smoking up the hill!  I got to Pedernales, in the Dominican Republic on the border of Haiti, about one week ago.  Although I had done my best to prepare by word of mouth that I was coming, and was told last February while making a brief visit back that I was most welcome, what appears is often not at all what is, especially veiled by the cultural smokescreen.  I was received politely last Thursday, but told by the chief doctor of the clinic (LaMartine) that he would have to meet with his staff to see how they feel about me starting.  He said he would get back to me the next week!!!!!  Wow, enough fire to hard boil an egg in this gringa´s boiling blood!!!  Wait in this dusty cowboy town for who knows how long for who knows what?????  I took a few deep breaths and nodded in agreement, circled around the health center to meet everyone.

 Things have changed considerably since I left mid-March of 2011.  The non profit organization, Batey Relief  Alliance (BRA), with which I was allied last time I was here, had not succeeded to take over operations of the then woebegone clinic.  Although contracts had been signed between BRA and the Haitian Ministry of Health, hands shaken, press releases sent here and there; in the end there was some kind of power struggle and BRA was sent packing.  Today things look considerably cleaner, better organized, more manpower, everyone dressed in startched white, including me, the only person sweating bullets in this uniform in 90 degree heat with a ceiling fan that only reaches 1 on the scale up to 5.  I got the greenlight to work the next day, after meeting with the head nurse who knew me well and couldn't understand why I wasn't starting right away.  So she got the wheels rolling andhere I am back in the knack, sewing up lacerations, seeing babies with high fevers, funny rashes, pregnant women, people possessed by spirits and writhing in paroxysms of pain like in an old fashioned grade B horror movie.  However I am feeling content with a little more kreyol under my belt and understanding the routine much better than last time.  By the way, although the cholera tent is still standing out in the backyard, there are no patients now and haven't been for some time.

I am staying in Haiti with my translator and his family- no light or running water, but it is kind of like camping in luxury.  His wife does everything for me - she cooks cleans, washes my clothes, she even followed me into their rustic shower to help me bathe until I told her it was not really necessary.

I'm sorry if this blog is a little helter-skelter, I have to reenter the DR in order to have wifi and I am attempting this on a i-pad, so the curve is a little high.  I am going to try to post some photos