Arrived in Haiti!
This morning, we woke up at 4 am to get ourselves back to
the airport to catch a 6:30 am flight to Cap Haitien (on the northern coast of
Haiti) on a tiny plane. This airline
check-in desk was hidden down a small hallway in the arrivals section of a
terminal, oddly enough, where we had to weigh our check-in bags, carry-on bags,
and ourselves to make sure we weren’t too heavy for this little plane. Then – surprise – no security check! At 6 am we walked out to the plane, only to
be told to go back inside because our plane did not have a pilot. So we waited an hour and a half before a
pilot showed up to fly our plane. [Though
just not having a pilot show up wouldn’t be totally unusual in these circumstances,
apparently we did have a pilot who fell while trying to climb up the baggage
belt for whatever reason, hit his head, and was sent to the hospital in case he
had a concussion.]
3 hours later, with a new pilot, we landed in Cap Haitien! Just a super tiny building for an airport and
one landing strip. Customs was very
easy, though your bags must be very lightly checked by a group of ladies, for
which you must of course pay them $2.
The hospital sent a van to pick us up, piled all our bags on top while
the 7 of us plus 5 others piled inside.
The road to Milot has recently been paved, making it just a smooth
20-minute ride to the hospital compound.
The volunteer quarters are great – no AC but we’ve got mosquito nets in
our shared rooms and free beer and soda in the fridge! Plus, we get three Haitian meals a day!
Driving to Milot, this area of Haiti is very reminiscent of
Togo (where I volunteered 3 years ago) – the temperature, stray goats and chickens, motor bikes
everywhere, store fronts with bright French lettering, Christian messages on
taxis. This area in the northwest is
also beautifully lush and green, unlike the rest of Haiti to the east (towards
the DR border) and south of Milot, where it has been mostly deforested. There are lovely hibiscus trees and mango
trees everywhere and adorable little kids – the little girls wear lots of big
ribbons in their hair for school.
After we arrived, we took a tour of the hospital
grounds. This is one of the best hospitals
in Haiti. They have some very impressive
services (such as a prosthetics lab sponsored by a university in El Salvador
that is training Haitians online to become lab technicians) and creative uses of
donated materials (such as cargo shipping containers that have been transformed
into an air conditioned pharmacy). The
hospital is funded by CRUDEM, a US-based Catholic organization. Its staff is all Haitian (all super nice),
with visiting specialist doctors from the US traveling through year round to
supplement the local staff. I think we
are the only group that stays more than just a couple weeks, so I’m looking
forward to really getting to know the staff here.
It is a little overwhelming to have a good handle on all of
the things we have to do while we are here, but I keep telling myself that we have
lots of time to figure things out and get our research and nutrition data work
done. I’m just too tired and
discombobulated to start that tonight!
So after a great sleep tonight under a mosquito net, hopefully I’ll wake
up with the energy to tackle some ethics review board project edits and
research!
:)
