It was a fun and adventurous weekend!
Friday night, we started out with our usual cards and beers
on the porch. Then around 10 pm, a
couple other Americans on campus were heading into town to go to a bar, so half
of us students decided to tag along. “Going
into town” on a Friday night in Milot really means walking down dirt roads for a half
mile in pitch black night (no street lights), past people hanging out outside
their houses in the dark, trying not to fall into a side ditch or get hit by the
occasional motorcycle whipping by. We
reached the bar, which was a big dark room with a raised dance floor in the
middle, and empty of people except for the two guys behind the bar. Perfect!
A couple of us took the dance floor right away and I didn’t leave it
much all night – they played some Haitian music and made an obvious effort to
give us some Justin Bieber and other such American classics. About a half hour after we arrived, a dozen
or so local people started trickling in, potentially to observe this curious foreign
bunch dancing so strangely. After a
couple hours of wowing the locals with my killer moves in our semi-private
nightclub, we headed home to get some sleep before beach day part deux.
The next morning, we again piled into a tap-tap (again, a
pick-up truck converted to public transportation), but as a much bigger group
this time. We piled 6 of us students,
our translator/guide to all things Haiti - Lumarc, another American dancing
queen Nadia, and 6 brawny electricians, plus the driver and 3 of his wingmen
into this tap-tap. Needless to say, we
were a little heavy going up those mountain dirt roads from Cap Haitien to get
ourselves over to the beach. After some
tough speed bumps to the undercarriage and puffs of black smoke coming out the
back of the truck, we slowed to a halt mid-hill. I felt very sorry for that truck. We all climbed out and started walking uphill
for a while until it was allegedly safe to climb back in for a couple hundred
feet of downhill. This repeated a few
times until we finally made it to the beach.
It was all worth it for another lovely day relaxing on Cormier Beach. I showed off my beach volleyball prowess
(not), got in some reading and sun, and ate a cheeseburger and fries (I know, I
know – if I didn’t eat Haitian food for every meal every day here at the
compound, I would give myself the stink-eye… In the end, we all realized that
the burgers were the most reasonably priced and filling items on the menu at
the beach). The water was a little less
lovely than the first time, since it was dotted with floating trash that day that flows
in from who-knows-where. Come 5:30 pm, I’m
not surprised that our originally faithful tap-tap driver didn’t feel like
picking up a good 3,000 lbs of human cargo for a second time. So Lumarc called another tap-tap in Milot to drive the hour to
the beach to pick us up. We finally left
the beach at 7 pm, again piling an absurd amount of people into this
refurbished pick-up truck, and again having to jump out and walk uphill when we
reached the slopes. When we finally hit
flat ground, we had 3 men standing on the back of the truck, the wingman on the
roof, a couple in the front, and a dozen in the bed of the truck. About halfway home, it started raining to
make it extra refreshing for the guys hanging off the back. We made it home a little after 8 and I passed out
before 10.
Yesterday (Sunday) was another quiet day on the porch,
except for a quick trip down into the market in town to attract lots of local attention as we haggled for mangoes. The
mangoes and pineapples here are delicious!
The compound is covered with mango trees, but when the mangoes are ripe
they fall and split on the ground – which makes them not so safe to eat
anymore. I keep pitching my ideas of a
giant fish net around the compound, or covering the ground with pillows to save
these precious mangoes. No bites yet.
Speaking of ideas, I feel like we are finally starting to
form some ideas on some recommendations for nutrition prevention and treatment
here. It’s a better feeling than the
first two weeks where I just felt a little lost and overwhelmed as to where to
start and how to contribute to solving the very difficult problem of widespread
malnutrition. But, with ideas, there
still comes frustration and sadness because there will always be things that
you cannot change. Today was an
especially sad day at the Nutrition Center.
Little 16-month-old, 15-pound Jamesley that I mentioned last week, was
in terrible shape this morning. Not only
has he not improved since he started coming to the nutrition center a month ago,
but he has actually lost weight, often refuses to eat, and just let out what seemed like
a couple litres of diarrhea this morning.
I ran back to the compound to grab some oral rehydration salts and bring
them back, but when the diarrhea continued, we (his father, a translator, and
I) brought him to the emergency room. I
was skeptical, since his visit to the hospital the previous week didn’t seem to be very helpful. I returned to the nutrition
center once he was firmly in line to be seen, and continued to chat with the
ladies who work there to learn more about how things work – or don’t work – at the
center. An hour later, Jamesley
returned, only to unleash more out of his weak, tiny body as we scrambled to
clean it up (still to an improvised, mediocre degree) before all of the other
crawling babies got sick. He really needs to be hospitalized and put on inpatient therapeutic feeding, but unfortunately it doesn't seem like that's available here. My only relief
before finally leaving was that he started taking bites of his lunch. But with a new list of prescriptions from the
ER doc that his parents likely can’t afford because they don’t work and have no
money, I just sit – stunned – wondering how this boy will ever recover, and not
knowing what we can do to see that he does.
Tomorrow, we head back into the communities in the morning
for field work, and then we’re heading to a nearby orphanage in the afternoon
to learn about the work that they are doing and spend time with the kiddies. We’re really looking forward to it – will report
on it soon!
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