Dousman...

Meaning “slowly” or “gently” in Creole, which has become the word-of-the-day every day here in Milot.  It’s not only the rule for dancing Haitian-style, but also the theme for everything we do here. 

Speaking of dancing, we had to get just one more night at the roofless club yet again on Tuesday night, right before the med students left.  A friend had arranged an “American Night” as a send-off for the med students, where they said I could bring my Ipod with American music and they would play it for us.  However, our American classics are not quite dousman enough for the local regulars, so we settled on an American song after every two Haitian songs.  We could tell that the locals were cringing at the sound of Bon Jovi and Carly Rae Jensen – and couldn’t wait to return to the slow rhythm of their own music – but we were still able to squeeze them in (along with some Montel Jordan and Springsteen) and own the dance floor.  Before we headed out though, we announced our group superlatives, in which the guys decided the awards for the ladies and vice versa.  And the winners were: Rose – Best Techie Timekeeper, for fixing computers as only a MIT grad can and being extremely prompt to meals; Julian – The Poetic Justice Award for mastery of the English language; Shelley – The Blankest Award, so that she may choose her own superlative at will; Logan – Finest Undulation of Pelvic Girdle; Amelia – The Chick Magnet Award; Alec – The Shirt Monster Award, for meriting rights to toplessness; and me - #1 MOM :)

And then there were two.  The med students have flown away and things seem to have gotten much quieter around here.  We miss them, although on the plus side, I have since been mistaken less often for Rose, the other Asian.  We’re looking forward to reuniting the Tufts in Haiti family on the flipside!  They moved Shelley and I out of the chicken coop to make room for some incoming nursing students, so we are now in our own little room – I call it the honeymoon suite.  We have our own sink and a table to put some of our stuff! 

Shelley and I have since been focused on trying to get lots tiring data collection and field work done – going to surrounding villages, through Milot, and to the hospital’s peds clinic to make as many babies cry as possible.  Just a couple more days of aggressive field work before we wrap up the dirty work and move on to the other hard part this weekend – data analysis and report writing. 

The weekend was quite relaxing, mostly spent around Milot except for when Nadia, Shelley, and I ventured into Cap-Haitien on Sunday.  We took a tap-tap in to the city to take a stroll through the big, hectic, sensory-overload outdoor market.  I love going through outdoor markets everywhere I go. We then went to a hotel to send out emails (since we’ve had no internet on the compound or hospital grounds for almost a week – I’m borrowing a broadband key right now) and cool off in a pool after some long wandering around Cap to find the hotel.  To get home from Cap, you have to leave before 7 pm or so (when the tap-taps stop running), walk a mile or two to find a tap-tap going your way (where the first mate hanging off the back is yelling “Milot Milot Milot!!”), then wait a while in the truck sauna until the first mate is able to pile at least a dozen people in. 

  

Every day since the med students left, Shelley and I have been checking in on a patient that they were following, going by her home in Milot to see how well she is recovering and report back.  She had a massive surgery procedure on her entire leg, and the surgeon here says that Shelley and I get to help remove the staples on Friday! :-/ 

An orthopedic surgery team came over the weekend and brought some wonderful gifts – infant formula and a plethora of feeding bottles designed specifically for babies with cleft palates.  Shelley and I studied a DVD on how to feed cleft palate babies with different types of bottles on Sunday night, and then Monday morning we were able to bring the formula and a new bottle to Rosie at the nutrition center.  We went through the new instructions and the formula with the mother, and watched the baby happily chug down her first serving of formula (she must have been so hungry) using the specially designed bottle.  We’ll have to monitor her closely every day to make sure she is on the right road to recovery, but she has an enormous amount of catch-up ahead.  It makes me wish I could stay longer to watch her hopefully get better. 

Just about one week left in Haiti – and so much to do!