I learned a few days ago that cruise ships will dock on the
lovely beaches of Northern Haiti, but the stop will be labeled as “Hispaniola”
(the island that combines Haiti and the Dominican Republic) instead of Haiti –
possibly as a way to make you feel like you’re not vacationing in the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere?
The theme of sleepiness began on Friday morning. Shelley and I spent the morning at the
nutrition center, as we have been doing, but the atmosphere seemed
different. The center was much more quiet
than usual partly because there were less children as there were earlier in the
week (potentially because their mothers cannot taken them to the center because
they have to work, or do not have the energy to make the often very long walk
in the heat). The other reason was that many of the children had fevers. Many had visited the hospital the day before,
where they are able to be seen by a doctor free of charge if they are under age
5. However, the medication that they
need is not free, and parents often cannot pay for the drugs. So some of the children at the center on
Friday had no choice but to be sick – unmoving, burning up, especially in this
summer heat. It was a bit of a
frustrating morning for me – standing around in my scrubs, not being able to
help these kids, not knowing how to have a real conversation with the
mothers.
We didn’t take any excursions are go on any lengthy hikes
this weekend, just spent a lot of time on the porch here on the compound! Exciting weekend nights consist of cards and beer
and music playing on our iPods J During the days, none of us have to go to
clinic, we don’t have any more IRB paperwork to do, and we don’t have any
research data to analyze yet, so we have the weekends to relax for now. I do remember previous Tufts volunteers who
came to Milot talking about how you could get a little stir-crazy from the down
time around here. Milot is a very small,
quiet town, and we end up spending a lot of time on the compound, basically on
the relatively cool porch. Some of the
others are already getting a bit of cabin fever, but I’ve kind of been enjoying
the peace and quiet. I’ve spent a lot of
time reading (just finished Little Bee), and while I have that instinctive
guilt that I’m not being productive, I remember that I always crave the chance
to sit outside on a nice long, warm days and read all those books that I’ve
been putting off forever. The other nice
thing about having the porch and the free time is that we’ve been working out
every day! This is something that I NEVER
do when I’m overseas. I’ll work out once
every two weeks MAX, because I’m hot and lazy. But here, we’re waking up at
6:30 am to go running (excluding me, I am not down with that) or do some
strength training on the porch. I
brought a set of Yoga DVDs and have been organizing afternoon hot yoga sessions
(since it’s 95 degrees outside anyway) on the porch. Our participants have been growing every
session!
We’ve been here 12 days now, and we’ve already seen many
people come and go. There are the volunteers
from the US, UK, or elsewhere that come for 7-10 days at a time, and we’ve also
already had 3 faculty supervisors come and go to supervise the med students at
the hospital. We’ll see like old birds
as the weeks go by. We just got two more
ladies in our bunker, medical residents from Port-au-Prince, so we’ll be
getting a little more crowded!
Especially since there’s only 2 bathrooms for 30+ people.
We’re supposed to have a barbecue this evening for one of
the volunteers’ birthday. So when they
say they’re getting fresh chicken for the grill, that means they’re bringing in
live chickens to be slaughtered here on the compound for dinner. The guys persuaded me to watch while one of
the med students did the honors of cutting the throat of one of the chickens
with a blunt knife. I watched from 40
feet away, reluctantly, and had to shield my eyes at times, especially when I
caught a glimpse of headless chickens flapping around in circles on the
ground. I guess if I’m going to eat it,
I should see this part of the food preparation as well.
Well, time to feast and get ready for another big week
ahead!
:)
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