Such a Small World...

As everyone here and at home knows, I go through stages of terrible homesickness. The group here in Haiti has been really great about helping me get through the bad parts of some days and the wonders of technology have allowed me to talk with family and friends throughout the trip. Unfortunately the internet is not always reliable so skyping is sometimes hard and those stretches without it are usually the worst. Every day I look at the bracelet that my little brother gave me and remember that even though I am not with family and friends, they are still supporting me and I try to enjoy my days here because it is such a great experience. Anyways, Friday was one of those bad days until I walked out of the bathroom and saw two familiar faces sitting on the couch, I was shocked. Before leaving Connecticut my friend Megan told me that Chrissy and Claire (two girls from CT that play college soccer at Princeton and Dartmouth) were traveling to Haiti and I should look try to get in contact in them. I honestly didn’t think it was possible that they would be coming to the small town of Milot and didn’t get a chance to check in with them before leaving. Although I am usually shy when new people show up (about once a week) I decided that I would ask what they were up to and if they needed anyone to show them around after I got back from the hospital. As the words came out of my mouth I started doing a triple take because I couldn’t believe they were really sitting there. Turns out that Chrissy’s older sister Jess lived in Haiti after graduating from college and lived at CRUDEM for a year and a half. I looked pretty silly asking them if they needed help getting around the place- Jess knew everyone and everywhere to go just fine.

From then on my Friday did a complete 180- I headed back to the hospital to help Eric, Spencer and Alex finish up their community health agent training. I have been so impressed by all the work that they have done with to help train the community health agents and Friday was fun because Andrew and I got to help out by teaching how to take a blood pressure. It will definitely take a few more sessions for them to correctly take a blood pressure but it was great to see how excited they were to learn. They asked really great questions and were engaged in the whole training session.

In the afternoon I went back to the hospital to work on my project with Sophia. We have had a really hard time getting our surveys done because we have not been given a female translator to work with. Because our surveys are about very personal women’s health issues it is essential that we have a female translator because even talking about these issues makes women embarrassed so it is almost guaranteed that with a male translator they would not answer many of the questions truthfully, thus skewing our results. Because we haven’t been provided a translator, Sophia has found nursing students that speak French and Creole and can thus work with her to translate back and forth. Our surveys run smoothly but just take a bit longer. Sophia usually asks the question in French, the student translates into Creole then the answer back to Sophia in French who tells me in English and I write it down. Although I am only a scribe in the whole process I have begun to pick up phrases here and there and can sometimes understand what is being said. Overall, the entire process has been extremely frustrating but has tested my patience and has taught me a lot about what it is like to work in a global health setting when some things are just out of your control.

The day ended with one of my favorite activities in Haiti- soccer with Haitian boys. Jess, Chrissy, and Claire were heading out for a run so I caught up with them and joined. We stopped to show Chrissy and Claire the soccer field and within 5 second little boys had kicked us over a ball. An hour later, it was dark and we still had a little over a mile to run home. Playing soccer with the little boys was so much fun and people always end up crowding around to watch. It is amazing how fast they are, how much energy they have, and as we all learned- how much better traction is when you are not wearing running shoes (we all fell multiple times and everyone watching laughed very hard). Our run home was pretty terrifying at points because you couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of you and the road has potholes everywhere but we made it just in time for dinner. After dinner I learned about Chrissy and Claire’s awesome two weeks here and all things they had seen and were going to see for the rest of this week.

Saturday was another beach day. We had planned to go to Labadee- the Royal Caribbean stop in Haiti but as we were heading there we got a call saying that we couldn’t go so we headed back to Cormier beach- the one we went to last time. We went with a pretty big group- the six of us joined Chris-an RN that is a leader of CRUDEM and staying until September, Briony- Pediatrician from UK that is here for 3 months but sadly leaving in two weeks, Sarah- a girl working on an HIV project in Cap Haitian that Briony met when she came to the hospital to look into the HIV clinic’s records system and as we learned she went to college with a few of our Tufts classmates at Harvard, Dr. Chu- the new Tufts member who is a family physician in Cambridge, Ben- Dr. Pearlmutter’s son who is here for 2 more weeks with us (see picture of him sleeping with what looked like a broken neck), as well as a group of people we invited from the hospital who have helped us along the way. Two translators- Lele and Tanner (in picture with the sea urchin) have worked in the adult clinic with the doctors from Tufts as well as with the boys on their training sessions and BP clinics, the nursing student who has translated for Sophia and I, as well as John- a guy that works in the prosthetics lab and is close with Chris. They seemed to have a great time so it was nice to be able to say thank you for all the work they have done for us in the past 4 weeks. An important result from the beach day was Andrew losing a card game that we play 3 times in a row and thus having to complete a dare of our choosing. It was decided that he had to sing to Fifi (the cook) before dinner for an entire minute. He didn’t do it last night so he has a three day limit, we will keep you posted about how that turns out. Today we head back out to all help Eric, Spencer and Alex with another BP clinic. Our countdown has officially begun so I will post it here, 19 days left- I am sure they will be as great as the first 4 weeks and filled of more adventures and great experiences.

I also decided to include some random pictures from the trip that I haven't had the chance to post...