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!