washday and other activities

Laundry day in center Anse-a Pitres

Last Sunday I decided to stop being a princess and do my own laundry.  This created quite a spectacle as you might imagine, as everyone in this town assumes blans yo (white people) have maids at home to do everything for them.  But I was surprised by the complexity of the routine.  You head down to one of the raging canals that run off the mountain above town and zig-zag through every neighborhood.  People wash themselves there, kids play, and that is our source of water for the house (I drink from a sand filtered vat).  You bring 3 big pans, your kids and a little chair to sit in.  You step into one of the chilly canals, being careful because its slimy and slippery underfoot.  What a rush during the heat of midday!  You fill the pan with water, being careful it doesn't pull you and itself down the canal with the force, and then you scrub each piece of clothing with a yellow bar of soap.  Rinse each piece one by one in the canal.  Sometimes you have to run after a escaped pair of undies, catching it 30 feet down the street.  By now most of the kids in the neighborhood are watching you, rippling with giggles.  You fill another big pan with fab and repeat the process.  For white items you use the third pan, mixing fab and bleach, letting it sit for 20 minutes.  Then rinse and soak for a few seconds in indigo, a blueing that apparently really gets those whites bright.  You gather up your stuff and your little chair, and head home to hang the load.



 



The beach of the maleconcito of Pedernales

There isn't much good to remember about Hurricane Sandy which ripped through here a year ago, but I was amazed this year to go down to the beach in the Dominican border town where I enjoy the luxuries of running water, TV and internet, to also find the beach that had always been covered with impossible stones for barefoot walking, was covered with a lovely, thick layer of sand for as long as the eye can see.  These fishermen bring in red snapper, eel, conch, lobster, crab and plenty more.  The maleconcito is dotted with trailers that put out their own tables, chairs and domino boards and play a version of "battle of the bands" as they blast music from their own sets of megaspeakers.  Fantasic way to end the day: cold beer, soft breeze, brilliant sunset, ka-ka phony....

Haitian fishing nets made with floaters from old pieces of flip-flops

He WAS born yesterday

I'm enjoying working back at the clinic this week, picking up where I left off 6 months ago and seeing a usual mix of pregnant women and runny noses, anxiety reactions, dizzy spells and a few VIA (cervical screenings) in between.  There is no doctor here for the next week or so - we are an army of sisters holding the fort.  Yesterday a typical Haitian country girl went into labor and was groaning the usual "mezami,"  "manman mwen," "bondye" (wow, mama, good God) when I heard her clearly say "shit, man!" several times over.  Who says America is not a great exporter??  Her water broke early and it was stained with meconium, or baby poop, which is not a great sign.  We could not hear the baby's heartbeat as she labored along, although with no 02, incubator or possible chance to have a caesarian, you truly just "let God."  The baby came out not breathing and we sucked gobs of brown-stained secretions from its little nose and mouth, feet and hands looking liked they'd been dipped in "indigo."  Miss Leana, the nurse with most experience (over 20 years, I guess), gently took the helm and began pumping its tiny chest a few times with her fingers and then flexing its little body back and forth as if making it do sit ups. 5 minutes of this, as well as the upside down hanging and tapping its feet, and you see the results!

 





Jeanne doing "depistage," or visual inspection of the cervix with acetic acid (VIA)

I'm encouraged about the progress of my grand plan to teach VIA to several of the clinic staff in Anse-a-Pitres when I return next spring.  With the help of other sister organizations that are doing this around the world like Grounds for Health and Basic Health International, I have begun to collect some materials in kreyol, French and Spanish and think about a curriculum that will work here.  The people here are excited to learn and now Jeanne has done almost 50 herself.  She will be the supervisor of the project once people are trained and the equipment is provided, and will make sure that at least 1000 women will be screened each yera at each site.  My goal is to teach it in three major posts in this rough, remote rural district; Anse-a-Pitres, Thiote and Belle Anse over the next two years.  Many of you have helped make this a reality - avek lanmou, Louise 

Making contact

The open air Pedernales cinema has known better days

Bonjou mwen zanmi yo ,or 'hi friends' I returned to this foresaken bordertown a few days ago, feeling stragely at home, far less stunned by the heat, noise, absurdity etc that hits an innocent where it hurts when he first arrives. Many old friends and familiar places, and always, the delicious 'fria' or ice crested Presidente beer at the end of the day to help me study war no more!

My Hunter Thompson imitation

I still feel a little 'pants down' when I am in the heat of the battle, trying to speak in both spanish and kreyol, mixing them up incomprehensibly - except to my Darling nurse Jeanne who understands me in any language except english - at the same time that I am trying to be an efficient, sympathetic and competent health care provider. Sweating piggishly! I went up to the mountains with Jeanne to do some cervical screenings for the last 2 days, as we had been invited there the last time I was in the región. We caught a ride up there in a CARE vehicle, and the driver, a friend of Jeanne )who knows everyone), floored the thing, 50 MPH over the road of heavy rock, a nice new jeep getting beaten like a criminal, spitting stones the size of cantelopes in its wake.
 

Your CARE dollars going to a good cause

We made it there in good time but the clinic there is under construction so we had to set up in a little community center across the Street. Apparently the community health worker did not really do her job alerting the women, because no one knew we were coming, so we had to scramble to find someone to walk around town with a megaphone, which had no batteries. So after paying a guy for the batteries and sending him on his way with incentive pay, we were in business. We saw 15 women up there and I had plenty of time to spend teaching the technique to Jeanne, who will eventually be the supervisor of the cervical screening Project when I hand it over to the Haitians after the trainings over the next year. Banane is a funky, grimey town. The only thing I really like about it is its river and surrounding canyon which is gorgeous, a 5 minute walk out of town. I took a dip in the super swift current at dusk. I needed to get ready for a klonapin night, where I was sharing a lopsided matress with gray sheets in a tiny filthy house with 8 other people. One of them was this 11 year old boy with Down's who walked around butt naked and was fascinated by everything I did and had. He mumbled incomprehensibly and danced provocatively with the pole on the front porch. Thank God I had a headlamp to stumble my way over the mounds of broken cement block in the front yard. No electricity anywhere. Anyway, I slept like a baby. The next day the ding-dong that I paid to walk around with the megaphone apparently left town without finishing the job, so only 5 women came yesterday.


I get frustrated and disheartened when people do nothing to help themselves as a community. The lack of that spirit here comes in painful pulses, interspersed with inspirational, tireless giving. My friend Peter, with whom I live thinks that all Haitians need to find God, because otherwise they are not good people by nature. Hummmmm. Right now there is a lot of unrest between the borders. Apparently the constitutional tribunal of the DR just finalized a case that strips citizenship from offspring of non'residents, even if they were born here, or their ancestors were born here, trickling all the way down to when their original relatives entered illegally. This brings back ugly images of the time of Trujillo. laws from 1929, when thousands of Haitians or those dark enough to look like one, were slaughtered. There's a great article that Vali just sent me, Aparteid in the Americas. Are you Haitian?. http://www.myriamchancy.com/apartheid-in-the-americas-are-you-haitian/ I understand of course that you can not let rivers of poor, needy, unemployed, illiterate people with their 10 children flow freely across the border and get free services from the DR that suffers from its own poverty. That's why Peter and I have these philosophical conversations about how Haití can help itself become a better place to stay. We and the rest of the international community, my my My camera charge quit before I got to Banane. I hope to send a bunch of photos in my next chapter. Many, many thanks for all the help and interest you have offered. I always tell my women patients that their sisters in the US sent the service. bye bye, Louise