Haiti Days 6 &7

Day 6

This morning we woke up to a great surprise!!! A coffeepot!!! Mariot, one of the Haitian program managers, was able to find and purchase a coffee pot. This made the morning run so much smoother and we all enjoyed two cups of coffee. Perrine came into the kitchen and said because it is Thursday, merchants lineup outside the walls of our compound to sell different things. We were able to go out to the streets to see if there was anything we would like to purchase. One Nurse at a Time, the organization that gave us a scholarship requests that we bring something back from our trip that they can use for their auction. It is how they fund scholarships for future volunteers. I will only have my carry-on luggage on the way home so I could only purchase things that would fit. I was able to get some beautiful paintings on canvas that I can frame back in the States. Some of the other girls bought beautiful wood carvings, a tea set, metal work, and traditional Haitian clothes for their kiddos. I figured it would be a small reminder hanging in the house of the beautiful people I met here and also give some money to the community.

After we were finished shopping we went on to our different morning activities. Megan and Winter went to mobile clinic, Jessica was assigned to the hospital and I was at the house finishing checking off the midwife students on NRP. My first group came and they were so prepared! They must have gone home and practiced and studied with each other because they were on their A-game. There were only 7 students left to check off so I had quite a bit of down time between the groups. Edison, my translator, was helping me with creole phrases. I went to the bookshelf in the kitchen and found a creole book. He sat with me for hours helping with the pronunciation. It was so helpful to be able to look at the words and have him continually say them to me. I was so grateful that he took the time to help me learn! To take a break I went back into the house and made mom/baby kits. They are given out to the mothers that attend their appointments at the mobile clinics after 36 weeks. They consist of a receiving blanket, an outfit, a hat, a pair of new underwear, a cloth diaper with pins, and a pad for mom. Such a small little kit, but Sheily tells us that they are gold to the mothers that receive them because many do not have the funds to buy more than one outfit for their new baby.

The girls returned to the house and we all ate lunch together. Jessica tells us that she thinks our ICU mom had a stroke at some point yesterday or last night. She is unable to move the entire right side of her body and cannot swallow at this point. This poor lady could not go through anything else!! She then told us about her lab values. After her first transfusion, they took her Hbg/Hct. An average Hbg/Hct in a pregnant person is around 12/36. AFTER her transfusion, so these numbers are higher than before her Hbg/Hct was 3/6. I did not even know that was possible! I really hope that they are able to turn this lady around but I think we are all fairly certain about what the outcome will be at this point. We then receive some other news from Sheily. The little boy that I talked about earlier that was in the ICU next to the woman died that day. We only knew about it because he was infected with Diphtheria. The hospital is now having anyone who came into the room go to the hospital to receive a vaccination because they are trying to prevent a Diphtheria outbreak. Luckily, we are all up to date on our vaccination because we had to be to travel. This is why we are so lucky that we have access to vaccinations in America. Many here are not vaccinated because they cannot afford them. This 7-year-old little boy died because Diphtheria overtook his airway and he could no longer breathe. Again, my heart is broken here.

This afternoon Megan and I went to the girl’s orphanage. Stecy ended up staying with us and playing with the girls. The girls range in age from 4-19 and there are 87 of them. There is one woman who works there and takes care of the children. She is so grateful that we are there to play and the little girls are a little hesitant at first. After we start playing and laughing their personalities come out and they can’t get enough of us. They crave physical contact. I think I had six girls hanging on me at one point. We play hot potato, Simon says, duck duck goose and a few other games with them. After two hours, we can see a storm rolling in and we don’t want to get stuck. We promise that we will come back and bring nail polish because they were all amazed by my chipped pink nails. There are so many little things that they are amazed by, especially my blonde hair. We hop on the motos and head back to the house. Providing the children here with a little physical contact, smiles, and laughs have been some of my favorite times here. The people are so warm and kind. We are literally celebrities in their eyes. When we came back to the house we ate dinner. I am grateful that they cook for us but last night I was not overly enthused about dinner. It was some sort of soup with vegetables and goat mixed in. I ate the vegetables and some of the broth and then had some turkey jerky back in our room. We had to finish putting together Matron kits for tomorrows training so we made an assembly line and whipped out 50 more kits. They consist of a pair of gloves, umbilical cord ties, a blade, a chux pad, a bar of soap and gauze. The matrons are given new kits every month based on the amount of deliveries the did the month prior. It is a great way to ensure clean supplies are being used throughout the central plateau region of Haiti.

You know the pictures that float around social media that some people see certain colors and other people see different ones? Well, we were asking each other what colors we saw and all were in agreement that it was grey and teal. Perrine wanted to know what we were looking at and she said she saw pink and white. All of the sudden she couldn’t believe that we would mess with her and she ran with the phone out to the guard shack and started asking our security what colors they saw. She was convinced that we were just messing with her and needed an outside opinion. The guards were in agreement with us! We laughed and laughed and laughed. Yesterday when Perrine made banana muffins the guards ate them for the first time. They were in love! Who doesn’t love a good banana muffin. They wanted to know how to make them, so Perrine and I sat at the guard shack last night with an ipad and all the ingredients so we could explain to them how to bake banana muffins in creole. It was definitely a difficult translation and we ended up acting out a lot of the mixing and pouring. I love how much she pours into every staff member. She says that is how she learned to speak Creole by sitting with them at night and she has been working with them on their English. We all slowly wandered off to sleep. Good Night!

Day 7

We were all so excited that we were able to sleep in this morning because we did not have to be ready for until 8:45 because the training we were going was close by. Without any alarms going off we were all up and at ‘em before our regular alarms even went off! It was awesome because we were able to relax, sit on the patio, have extra coffee, and be ready to go for the day. We gathered around 8:45 and left for Matron training. The Land Cruiser is back from the shop and we all piled in to go. Our driver, two translators, a midwife, two midwife students, the four of us volunteers and Sarah. We drove for about 15 minutes before we arrived. Training takes place on these beautiful grounds with grass and gardens. We are told that it is where many of the nuns live. Matrons are traditional birth attendants in Haiti. No one can really explain how the original Matrons came to be, but the job is passed down through the family. The Matrons account for 98% of births in Haiti because they live throughout Haiti in different communities. They have no formal training on how to give medical care or deliver babies. They strictly pull off of experience and the “training” from other Matrons. Many are not educated and do not know how to read or write, so it is challenging to teach the Matron class. MFH recognized the need to train the Matrons on emergencies and when it is important to transport women and babies to the hospital. They teach through songs, visual aids and examples. It is amazing to see the amount of Matrons that show up and are excited to share their stories of deliveries. MFH also provides them Matron kits. They consist of a pair of gloves, umbilical cord ties, a blade, a chux pad, a bar of soap and gauze. If they do not have these kits they use whatever is available to them and who knows if it is at all clean. The Matrons are given money for transportation home so that they do not have to pay for moto rides both ways. When the training was over we went back to the house to go to the waterfall. The waterfall is approximately 45 minutes away but it took about an hour to get there because the police training had a graduation parade in the middle of town and there was lots of traffic! The drive to the falls is really beautiful. You drive through the countryside and there are many farms and gardens. When we arrived to the waterfall we knew that it cost tourist $5. There was much confusion between translation and the man at the gate that was taking the money. He was not the typical man who collected the money and there was soon a gathering of local Haitian that we all interested in “collecting” the money. Anyway long story short, after a lot of confusion we started to feel very uncomfortable. We asked our driver to go back to the house and he was will to leave. It is the only time that I have felt uncomfortable in Haiti because the people here are really lovely.

When we got back to the house we explained what happened and the staff felt really bad because they didn’t send a translator with us. They said we would try to go again another day. We ate lunch and relaxed, trying to cool down because it was a very hot day! After lunch Megan and I washed our underwear in a bucket on the patio. It was my first experience with bucket washing and it went quite well! There was not much going on around the house but I saw that Perrine was getting ready to go out. I asked where she was going and if I was able to join her. She was going to check on our ICU lady at the hospital, deliver some letters, and then go to check on the lady we started on blood pressure medications. She said that I could go with her because there was room for one more on the moto. When we went to the hospital the woman in the ICU was awake and able to move her right leg a little more. Perrine did a lot of education with her on the importance of continuing to try to move and to drink water to try to increase milk production. Someone has been at her bedside since the delivery and are very attentive to her needs. We delivered the letters and a massive rain storm came blowing in. We went to on the home visit and saw our blood pressure momma. She was going really well and her blood pressure was 150/80 today. Much better than the previous days. She is such a sweet woman and is so grateful that we came back to check on her. Her older daughter was awake and we played together while Perrine was talking to the mom. We said our goodbyes and left to go back to the house.

We decided to go on a walk in the fields behind the house. As we were walking through one of the villages children began to follow us. They wanted to play so as we were walking, we would turn around and start chasing them. They laughed so hard and would run back up on us! They continued to follow us the rest of the walk. We walked to the river and saw people collecting water, and bathing in the river. We tried to take a group picture because the background was beautiful and the children all wanted to have their pictures taken. We couldn’t smile and be “normal” so we all acted like ninjas. They had the best time with us and it made our walk really enjoyable. After our walk, we came back and enjoyed dinner. It was some sort of potato and chicken dish.

We all got together and played trivial pursuit and heads up tonight. There is such a great sense of community in the house. I am sure that they all get annoyed of each other every once and a while but they are family while they are here. It was a good night and I am looking forward to the weekend in the house with the girls!