A Much Needed Day Off=Seeing a New Side of Haiti…

After a busy week with the general surgery team from Hartford CT, Harry, and Dean Sackey in clinic (more on that later) we planned a trip to a hotel at Courmier Beach, about an hour away from Milot (or what is now called home). We left after breakfast and headed out, packed tightly into our favorite ambulance, with our favorite driver- Monsieur Tattoo. The ride from Milot to Cap Haitian is paved- which is a rarity in Haiti. Because it is paved, every car, motorcycle, and trucks takes it as an opportunity to go as fast as they can, avoid speed bumps by swerving around them, and pass as many cars as possible (don’t worry Mom, it sounds worse than it is). The ride through Cap Haitian was eye-opening. Streets are lined with trash, houses are half-finished, and cars pack the little alleys. In the middle of this appeared a pristine building that really came out of nowhere- Harry thinks it might be city hall. (Pictures of Cap Haitian are included)

Leaving Cap we drove up and down a mountain side on a bumpy dirt road, we probably would have been complaining more about the bumps if we weren’t distracted by the beautiful views of the beach that we are heading to. We arrived at the hotel and immediately upon entering, you felt like you were in a completely different country. We quickly set up on the beach for a full day of reading, eating, swimming and most importantly, napping. It was great to get away for a day to clear our heads from a very busy first two weeks and of course be entertained by the plethora of French men in tiny speedos (picture provided) and a wedding with a variety of musical performances (best song definitely went to a "singing" of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You")


Before heading out on our beach adventure we said goodbye to the CT surgery team and Jim. It was sad to see them go and we can’t thank them enough for everything they did for us. The surgery team was so willing to teach us and invite us into all of the surgeries they performed all week. Harry is also a surgeon so in total there were 3 surgeons performing operations throughout the entire day. The memorable surgeries that we saw included: hernia repairs, a double mastectomy, duodenal web repair, skin grafts, an appendix removal that ended up actually being GI Tb, breast mass resection, an ectopic pregnancy removal, and the removal of an ovarian cyst that was the size of a melon (wow, typing that out made me realize how lucky we truly were to have the opportunity to observe all of them!). Thank you again to Harry and the CT team for providing us with that opportunity and for sharing your knowledge and guidance throughout the entire week.

We were also sad to say goodbye to Dean Sackey on Friday and Jim on Saturday morning. We had a great time shadowing Dean Sackey in the adult clinic and have many memories from the week. She was a great mentor and helped to advance our projects further. Jim was with us from the first day so it definitely will be weird without him around. He set up two trips out to different communities, networked with many of the doctors in the hospital to set up shadowing experiences, and was always there to guide our projects in the right direction. Thank you so much for everything. We welcomed two new faculty to Haiti this week and are excited to work with both of them in the upcoming weeks. Steve Cohen- Sophia and I’s PI- is our public health professor who has been so nice to take a break from work and come help set up our project with us. Dr. Don Green is a family medicine physician who we are excited to shadow in the adult clinic. There are going to be three different sets of volunteer groups in the next week (one is over 30 people) so things will be busy. Eric is currently abiding strictly to rule #5 knowing that with the larger numbers, there is less food and thus a new rule was made. Rule #6- Always be the first one to dinner.