Photo blog: The hike to Capiat

Capiat is a mountain village scraping the clouds above Montrouis, Haiti. It's perched on an icy spring that bubbles like crystal, irrigating acres of vegetables and breadfruit trees.

Last Thursday, I made the 4-hour hike with a team of missionaries from Alabama. It was strenuous, but breathtaking.

Here's a photo blog of our journey up the mountains and into the mountain oasis.

It was perfect weather for a hike. We left at 10:30 am, as tropical storm Emily threatened to thrash Haiti's southern coast with heavy rainfall.

The sky in Montrouis was a delicious blue. We set out on a road steep road leading to Capiat.

Horses, donkeys and goats graze nearby, with no owners in sight. As I panted with the ascent, I fought the urge to try my luck at bareback riding.

After 45 minutes of hiking, we made it past the first village and onto a bridge with an amazing view. One of the missionary women took my photo -- hope you're happy, Ma!

Taking photos was an excellent way to chug water and catch our breath. The road took a sharp turn skyward after this point, the most tedious part of the hike.

As we climbed higher into the mountains, the coast reappeared and shimmered behind towering palms.

We reached some farmland on the outskirts of Capiat. My Keens were muddy and kept sliding off my feet as the road narrowed into a rough trail.

Nearing the summit, we walk through more irrigated farms and a new perspective on Haiti's coast.

We reached Capiat. Families gather along the cement constructed waterways directing the fresh water spring down the mountain.

Men and women gathered to wash clothing, bathe and socialize under breadfruit trees.

Children from Capiat poured out of the village to stare at our team of blancs and Canaan kids.

Whitney (left), me (center) and Rebecca, part of the Birmingham missionary group, cool off in the deliciously frigid mountain water.

The missionary women visiting Canaan posed before some of us (daringly) submerged ourselves in the icy oasis.

I was incredibly happy to have made it. Capiat mean't that the the rest was downhill from here...

The sky was getting dark and it started sprinkling. We decided to leave, fearing tropical storm Emily was finally done brooding in the ocean below Haiti.

We passed more horses and donkeys tied up next to the road, while little kids peeked out of small houses and called out for candy.

I was amazed at this donkey, weighed down but walking ahead of his master. Most of the time, I see donkeys refusing to budge while their owners whip them on the side of the road.

It was a relief following the road downhill after a strenuous ascent.

The rusting roof of a house peeks out from behind a cornfield. 

A tiny house is engulfed by the mountains.

From the mountains, we could see the tip of Gonave Island.

A stunning photo of the coast and the dazzling water of the Saint Marc Channel.

As we neared Canaan, more horses munched. As I once again considered a bareback ride to carry my tired body home, a man popped out of the bushes and startled me.

All signs of a storm disappeared, and in the last leg of the hike, we were able to see the distant Massif de la Selle (left) and Gonave Island (right) on the horizon.

As the Canaan kids and fellow missionaries made it back to Canaan in Montrouis, it felt amazing to be alive and exploring this beautiful country.

Thanks for hiking with me!

Foreigners at Pierre Payen Hospital: Mamba babies and medical specialists

Scuttling, scraping daggers on the tin roof. The rats are active again. The sound makes me cringe and uneasily eyeball the cracks in the cement walls of our tiny house.

It’s a cool, mournful evening after the first rain in a week.

I feel stressed out today—this week has a sense of urgency, especially as my time left in Haiti dwindles. The clinic is in serious need of an organizational overhaul, and not just for supplies and storage. The staff is incredibly busy, but without an administrator, it is not operating efficiently. I’m praying it will get better, because today reception turned away several sick babies and elderly people. The doctor was home in Port-au-Prince with a cold, leaving only two nurses to see all patients.

There is a team of American doctors and Canadian nurses visiting the hospital in Pierre Payen until Sunday, including a pediatric urologist and orthopedic surgeon.

Caroline and I have a lot of time to pay to Haitian waiting rooms.

We woke up earlier than usual to rally the moms of babies in the Medika Mamba program requiring extra medical care. It was hotter than ever, and even with the raspy air conditioning, the truck reeked of sweat.

I hardly notice the smell anymore, this pungent perfume of hot bodies. But today it made me pine for ice water and a swimming pool… And some Febreeze.

Perre Payen Hospital has a homey guesthouse and a large, well-constructed facility with high walls and breezy ventilation. Once we were admitted past the guard at the iron gates and thrust among waiting patients (some sitting, most standing, but all cramped in the hallway clutching their files), a nurse arrived to sort the babies to specialty doctors and therapists based on their needs.

The hospital examination rooms were roomy, but sparsely supplied, painted in the surprisingly antiseptic hue of yellowing newspaper. The orthopedic doctor had only an exam table, a wheelchair, basic orthopedic wraps and an x-ray machine. The urologist had an examination table and a packet of sterile gloves, seeing patients behind blue surgery drapes pinned above the doorway like flapping laundry.

The foreign staff walked fiercely from room to room, hair frizzed and sweat rolling. It was funny to watch them move while Haitians patiently waited, falling their faces with manila envelopes containing scribbles of their insides and histories of their pain. More than once, I was grabbed and asked to translate. I am sorry I had to refuse them. I am trying to hard to wrap my brain around Creole, even with my French language background.

James is a 13-month-old with an ectopic bladder. His condition requires multiple specialized surgeries to repair his bladder and reconstruct his genitalia. He lives in Sous Bogne, the little community below Canaan, and in a previous post I talked about my visit to his home with Katie my first week in Haiti. He has been rejected from two hospitals in the states already for lack of funding, especially because he will need a lot of recovery time and after care following his surgeries. As the pediatric urologist examined him, we were told nothing new… except that he is at the perfect age for surgery and that his condition is treatable. The doctor said it will be almost impossible to treat him in Haiti, and offered his contact information for his hospital in Nebraska.

Please pray that James’ surgery will be accepted and covered by this doctor’s hospital. He will need to stay in the states for a while, accompanied by someone from Canaan because it will take months for his mother’s birth certificate to be found in the Haitian national archives. James needs the surgery now, and Haitian time is slow time. I wanted to throw up my hands and scream when the doctor explained the specific microscopes her needed for an effective surgery and recovery.

Haiti doesn’t have this type of medical care readily available, especially not for babies in poverty.

A little girl, Gueraldine, has had severe joint malformations. She was discontinued from the Medika Mamba after failing to gain weight, but she’s still scrawny and malnourished. After she fell in February, her wrists began to jut abnormally, which was formerly diagnosed as untreated breaks.

The orthopedic surgeon who examined Gueraldine today gave some clarity—it’s a congenital condition, and the x-rays revealed missing bones in her hands and wrists. The doctor and physical therapist were able to mold her two removable splints out of casting. It was painful to watch the baby scream as they pushed her angular wrists into normal positions and wrapped them tightly. However, it was a relief to learn simple stretches the mother could perform to aid in proper growth and development. Plus, the baby doesn’t need extensive surgery, which was a relief to the mother and us—less letdowns and hoop jumping this way.

The Haitian doctor Jean Robert was expecting a pediatric cardiologist to be with the team of Americans, so the 5-year-old requiring heart surgery for her defect was turned away. She’s been waiting for 2 years now to see a pediatric cardiologist with the means to operate in Haiti. Unfortunately, the specialty equipment is difficult to come by, especially for short-term doctors and surgeons.

Since the team does have a general doctor to see all the patients that don’t fall into the available specialty categories, there’s another baby at Rousseau with a chest and lung malformation will still need to be looked at, although our hopes of specialist treatment are dashed. After the Mamba mobile clinic Wednesday, we’ll be bringing the mom and the x-rays we obtained in St. Marc to wait once again in Pierre Payen.

Waiting, waiting and more waiting. It’s so difficult for me to sit still and accept that this is how life rolls in Haiti.

People die waiting.

Caroline and I vented with M&Ms and danced the cha cha with some of the younger girls, Magdalena and Jessica. It was my first genuine smile of the day, besides entertaining the babies in the sticky hospital heat. Thank you to chocolate and my fiesty Haitian friends.

It’s only 8:30, but I want to just lie in bed and decompress. I need a massage, but I'll settle with some IB profen for now. The mosquitoes are munching.

Before the storm: Medika Mamba and mountain hikes

There’s a tropical storm, Emily, hours away from making landfall in Haiti. It could turn into a hurricane, so Canaan has been storing drinking water and positioning rain barrels and old oil drums to collect rainwater, and checking the cisterns for any leaks. 

I’ve taken clean water for granted. Water is a daily discussion at Canaan, and a few of the boys’ chore are solely to clean the water tanks and filter water for consumption. It’s a luxury to have drinkable water delivered straight to your faucets, or any water for that matter. In villages with a single well or water pump, women crowd with paint-crusted buckets and stained bleach jugs to catch precious drops, hauling them miles home on dry, fumy roads.

With all the work it takes, I am grateful for rain to fill our buckets for showers. And until then, I'm praying for the families living in the tents and shacks to weather the storm with ease.

Mamba is in full swing, and the past two days have been hectic with the missionary team and Mamba researchers from Georgia. I have sensed some of the Haitian mothers’ apprehension with the amount of Americans peeking in on exams, procedures and watching the rusty gears turn in our tiny rural clinic.

Each week, word of the Medika Mamba program spreads like pond ripples in the villages sprawling across Montrouis. I felt stressed as the new admissions to the malnourishment program crammed under the shade of sparse willows, packed in CESANOJE’s hallways and spilling into the consultation rooms.

We saw close to 50 patients and checked about 15 potential cases of malnourishment. I had my face between my knees with exhaustion in the heavy heat between patients, wondering how the mothers could bear waiting in the breezeless afternoon.

Some of the babies were shaking with hunger or thirst after waiting since 6 am for the consultation. One boy had a 104 fever and was crying feebly as I poured medicine down his throat, too weak to swallow.

It was difficult to feel enthusiastic when most of the babies seemed to be sick and loosing weight, or staying the same. Most of the babies graduate in six weeks or less, but out of all the enrolled babies, we had zero graduates Tuesday.

We did, however, readmit some of the children into the Mamba program— babies who graduated plump and vigorous 3 months ago, but now whittled back down to malnourishment.

Discouraging.

There’s a science to the Mamba. We can predict like clockwork—a well-researched bell curve—with how much weight babies should be gaining with proper feeding of the Medika Mamba. With my translator, Jennifer, I was able to demonstrate proper feeding (allowing small spoonfuls for the child to eat slowly, or mixing the thick Mamba with clean water) to help prevent vomiting with the babies. Many of the mothers had been force-feeding their child, and causing them to become ill and refuse the Mamba.

There were a couple patients who improved, and I did feel joy in giving mothers praise for their progress. Graduation from the program is a source of dignity and empowerment for the mothers as well—a contrast to the emotions of shame and avoidance we often see in those new to the program.

Malnourishment is as much disease as it is stigma.

Three women, public health researchers from Atlanta’s Moorhouse School of Medicine, interviewed mothers in the program to see if or how their breastfeeding habits changed when their malnourished babies were given Mamba to eat.

I’m really looking forward to their findings, although I was skeptical at first. Many of the babies are cared for by women other than the mothers, so we had to figure our which moms qualified for the study. In addition, many of the mothers had stopped lactating or stopped breastfeeding before the baby reached 6 months, when other foods can be introduced to supplement. This caused the malnourishment in the first place.

It’s awesome that Canaan will have a study that’s relevant and informative for others advocates of the Medika Mamba program to follow. I’m considering coming back for some research myself, focusing on the re-admissions to the Mamba program.

For the mobile Mamba clinic in Rousseau, I arrived with a nasty headache. I forgot my Excedrin at Canaan. One of the Haitian doctors, Dr. Guidson, saw me clutching my head and brought some migraine pills. I ended up sleeping, knees curled up to my nose, on a lopsided hospital bed while Caroline and Mis Joanne saw patients. With the tropical storm looming, many of the mothers stayed at home. My little power nap was magic, and I felt great around noon when the hospital closed, in time for the jarring drive back to Montrouis.

When Caroline and a couple visiting from Kansas City, Josh and Rachel, made our daily 2-hour hike up the mountains, we ran into groups of Haitians riding horses and carrying spades and shovels. A little girl followed us all the way back down, begging for candy and our (empty) water bottles.

A teenage boy attending English school in Montrouis asked me for my phone number, tagging behind me for the last 20-minute stretch of our hike. He was incredibly pushy, resolute and undeterred by my age. He’s the fifth Haitian male to ask me for my phone number, and wouldn’t accept no for an answer… even the fact that I don’t have a Haitian phone, and emptied my purse to prove it.

Perhaps it’s cultural for the men to approach a potential female interest with frustrating tenacity.

I can’t believe I have two weeks left in Haiti. Tonight I sat on the cistern at the top of Canaan’s hill—an enormous, panoramic view of Montrouis. It felt incredible to share prayers and stories with Americans conscious of Haiti’s needs and who share my love for this island. The team cooked cake and brownies for the Haitian staff, and we stayed late singing, playing guitar, and watching one of the babies, Marlucia, dance across the cafeteria table with every strum.

Rambling update: Beach bugs, graduation parties and swiveling hips

I'm rubbing red eyes as I type this blog, courtesy of my shower—a concoction of concrete cistern rainwater and a cap of bleach to sabotage microscopic vermin. There’s still no running water at Canaan since the second generator, the clinic's main power line, came to a sputtering halt last week. The big generator is still broken down, and all of Canaan has been operating sporadically from a small gasoline-powered generator.

Lack of running water has helped me appreciate every precious drop. Conservation is key. Thunderstorms have washed my laundry the past few nights, and that water has been preserved to flush the toilet and wash hands. There’s no such thing as single-use water, except perhaps for drinking.

The water business has hardly has put my spirits down. I feel so grateful to be in the company of my new Haitian friends. It's funny how living and eating together knits cultural gaps.

A team of 11 college-aged missionaries from Alabama arrived Saturday, two couples arrived Sunday, and three women conducting Mamba research arrived today, which has livened up Canaan with new faces.

With new arrivals, the Canaan kitchen has been running on almost constant generator power, which means meat and veggies have been added to the rice/beans/pasta repertoire. It's so nice to have refrigeration! The influx of variety has elevated my mood to an all-time high here.

What can I say; I'm a guiltless foodie.

Canaan spent all Saturday preparing for the high school graduation party of Rose May, a Canaanite who came at age 15 after living in domestic child slavery. She started her ABCs and plunged into English.

Just 7 years later at age 22, she was cheered by all of Canaan and her guests in her cap and gown, proudly clutching her high school diploma. I hope I can share more of her incredible story in a later post.

Caroline and I started off Sunday with an hour-long hike up the mountain behind Canaan. We passed a few families with babies enrolled in the malnutrition program, and women who I had talked to while taking vitals at the clinic. They called out to us like old friends.

It’s charming how the longer I’m here, the smaller this island becomes. Between the bustle of market and the serenity of the coast, there are welcoming faces and skinny limbs waving Bonjou. A walk a morning here does more for the soul than body.

Church was fun, despite the heat. One of the babies started fussing in the service, so I scooped him up and he immediately sank into sleep on my hip, drooling as his head slid onto my chest. Haitian church is vocal and active, and he miraculously dozed as my hips swiveled to hymns and the flies hummed.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the orphanage kids love Justin Bieber with ferocity. I left my iPod unmanned on a cafeteria table, and before I could say "baby," a feisty 13-year-old Thadjina had scrolled down to the "J"s in her hunt for Justin Bieber songs.

While I don't have any Biebs in my iTunes library, I did have a song my brother Justin wrote after a rough break-up. The table filled with preteen girls who picked up the chorus of his song after a few refrains, entranced by the fact my brother was an artiste with the Biebs' namesake! The girls demanded to see photos of him, and once I showed a picture of my twin with long, side-swooped hair, they unanimously agreed he looked like Justin Bieber.

Whenever I see Thadjina, she'll sing me part of the song, "How could you be like that?" and giggle like it's our private joke. 

Hear that bro? If my iPod circulates anymore, you're on your way to becoming a new heartthrob.


We went with the Alabama team and a truckload of Canaan kids to a private beach just outside of Montrouis. The water was absolutely delicious and boyant --a summary of this past weekend at Canaan. 


However, while I sucked the salty nectar through my pores and thought how lucky I am to be in Haiti, I was stung by a tiny jellyfish-like water bug on my chest. Robin and a few of the others were stung -- apparently the beasts multiply when it rains. I still have a painful rash trailing a couple inches on my breast. 

There’s been plenty to celebrate. Tonight was Caroline’s birthday, and we had a great night at one of Montrouis’ resorts—Moulin Sur Mer. It was great to decompress after another day of thorough clinic cleaning and chipping away at the massive inventory project I started 3 weeks ago.

I feel blessed and ready to sleep. 

Haitian parenting, gender roles and the story of dimples

Since noon, a tropical storm has perched its horrible, languid self over Montrouis and buried Canaan in somber grey. It’s the kind of idle day I long for at home. Staying indoors, reading, taking naps. But in Haiti, it’s miserable not being able to get out and explore.

Especially when it’s Friday when work is finished, and the beach is a 15-minute walk down a mountain.

Since beach-destined paperbacks and my iPod’s indie rock genre were re-routed to my bunk bed and absorbed most of today’s boredom shockwaves, I’ll share a few things I’ve been saving up.

Last week, we drove a mother and her 8 mo. old daughter to St. Marc for an X-ray. Tired bodies crushed together in the truck, cramped with our mobile Mamba clinic supplies.

Haitians stuck out their thumbs like hitchhikers or waved at us with both arms as we passed, asking for a ride in the empty truck bed. Younger children jumped in as it bumped along, some naked and careless and not bothering with any gestured formality.

The young mother breastfed her daughter and shielded her baby’s eyes while the truck lurched up and down the mountainside. After working the Mamba clinic for the past two weeks and seeing so many young mothers or female caretakers detached from their children, I was struck by the tenderness of the gesture. Cradling the tiny girl’s head under her breast, clucking softly to the baby, and of course the willingness to cram herself in the truck alongside strangers to drive to a far-off hospital, seemed almost beyond the call of duty for the typical mother.

Affection is often treated like it's impractical.

My first week here, Elsie told me a “good” mother provides enough food for her children to live without starving; that’s all that’s required to meet that guideline. I refused to believe that can be true, at least not entirely.

She told me a story about a young missionary woman who went to the beach and saw a Haitian toddler alone. She played with the child while the parents watched not far away. When it was time for the missionary to leave, the parents emerged and, seeing the young woman absolutely adored the child, put the baby back into her arms and asked her to “keep.” Shocked, the young missionary refused.

However, the next morning, the parents arrived at Canaan with the child dressed neatly in her best clothes, clean and perfumed, to ask the missionary to, please, take their child. For real. To keep. The parents had discussed it seriously all night and decided they wanted to give their baby to the missionary. They did not love the girl, and knew she would be better off with someone who did. Once again, the missionary refused – she couldn’t just put a baby in her carry-on back to the states – but Elsie said it was a lesson in Haitian parenting.

Detachment is a survival mechanism. Show someone else’s baby love, she warned, and they might just try to give their child away.

But there are exceptions for everything.

Single mothers make up the bulk of Haitian family units from my experience in Montrouis. Women of some relation raise the children, commonly older daughters or grandmothers, while the mothers are at the market during the day, bartering and selling. Fathers are absent from the picture, some working their cattle under the banana trees, some in odd-jobs in Port-au-Prince, while the kids grow up.

The women at Canaan hired to take care of the babies at the nursery are my age. Early 20s. No experience with children. Yet they’re living like many Haitian women that age— 24/7 single moms.

It’s been rare from my experience so far, but there are some fathers actively raising and loving on their children. For example, every week, this adorable Haitian dad proudly totes his all-pink bundle of a 5 mo. old girl. The baby’s mother died shortly after giving birth of infection. Malnourished and sick, she was enrolled in the milk program at CESANOJE – open to infants under 6 months who do not qualify for the peanut-butter based Mamba. This dad, however, took all responsibility of child rearing. The baby’s finally alert and putting some chub on her little cheeks, only months ago hollowed with starvation.

Most of the “orphaned” children at Canaan are actually just motherless. Many have fathers or older siblings that live in Montrouis and the surrounding towns. But without a mother, the family unit crumbles. Just this week, a father asked us to take his little boy and presented us with his mother’s death certificate.

Dead mothers make orphans. Dead fathers make hungrier bellies.

Working at Canaan, I’ve noticed distinct gender roles. The men are laborers, in charge of maintenance and construction around the orphanage, clinic and school. The women do the cooking, the cleaning, and all the laundry. None of the men here do their own laundry, not even the boys in the orphanage – the girls inherit that chore. Ironically, the women at Canaan hold the powerful leadership positions when it comes to leading incoming missionary groups and negotiating donations with non-profit relief agencies.

Even the clothes here are gendered. Men wear pants and jeans, while women wear dresses and skirts paired with Ts and the occasional tank top. Some of the bolder 20-somethings wear tight Capri pants. I’ve never see shorts, except on hairy white legs of missionary men and on young girls chasing through slums of Port-au-Prince’s.

Just yesterday, Doctor Jean Robert and I were sipping our black coffee after breakfast, when we received a call. Without a goodbye, he shoved his dirty dishes in my direction and walked off, leaving me fuming. Was he handing me his dirty dishes because I was a woman? Everyone took care of their own dishes and did their own washing, and I pointed this out to the doctor later that day. He seemed unruffled, and I decided to resign myself to cultural norms. If I didn’t pick up his dirty dishes, one of the overworked Haitian women would have to do it.

Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow without resentment.

The gender distinction is particularly interesting when Caroline and I are on Mamba duties. Two white woman driving through town to pick up food is met by laughing men, partly in surprise and more in rude amusement, following us in a herd as we load up the 50 lb sacks of white Texas rice and pinto beans. Women, in our festive skirts and poker faces, carrying our heavy loads to the truck bed while they shake their heads and grin as if to tell us, this ain’t no women’s work.

Cute Haitian Folklore: The Origin of Dimples

The Haitian doctor working at CESANOJE (nickname for Canaan’s community clinic, Center de Santé Nouvelle Jerusalem), shared with me some cute folklore: The story of dimples.

When Haitians talk about dimples, they also point to their lower backs, where the spine curves into the buttocks.

To get dimples, a mother has to push her fingers hard into her baby’s cheeks and lower back during those formative days. Then, voila! Dimples. If someone doesn’t have dimples, their mother either didn’t take an active role in the dimple making, or push hard enough.

Every time I see a Haitian with dimples, I can’t help but smile and imagine a mother’s fingers prodding the cheerful indentions.

Mango guts, melon cores and chunky Mamba thighs

Posing with the fruit purchases... so happy!

Mangos smell rich and womanly under their soft yellow skins, sweet and steamy and damp like fresh mountain rain. Their perfume mesmerized me as I zigzagged through Montrouis’ open market, skirts swishing as women bargained and young boys begged, their hands held open like empty prayers.

After dulling my palate with two weeks of rice, pasta and white bread, the flavor almost choked me. There’s something embarrassingly sensual about biting into a mango, tearing the skin with your teeth. Juices dripped down my chin, and I felt like a child. Or a vampire, sucking zealously on raw flesh.

The texture of a mango is similar to a fine pâté once you get past the stringy bits near the skin. The hard core is a palm-sized heart, emerging from the goopy fruit almost alive, like the trembling meat in an oyster shell. I saw children sucking on the mango hearts like lollypops, leaving the cores smooth and brown.

I had never peeled a mango before, and some of the younger Canaan girls laughed as my fingers clumsily stripped the fruit to keep the precious orange heartstrings intact. The 12-year-old, Marceline, took the mango from me and stripped it meticulously with a knife, peeling it like a sweet potato. Under the swaying tungsten kitchen lights, the naked mango looked and felt like a slimy fist of raw chicken.

Our purchases from the market, minus a couple of mangos we couldn't wait to devour.

Caroline, the full-time director of the Medika Mamba malnutrition program in Montrouis arrived back at Canaan this week from a month-long hiatus. She picked up Creole after only four months mission work thanks to her background in French. I would have been lost without her navigation through the Montrouis fruit venders.

The key, Caroline said, was to play the vendors against one another and let them compete for business. We drove the Mamba truck to the middle of Montrouis to exchange USD for goudes. A bare-chested Haitian man lazily flicked at flies as he did the transaction: 800 goudes for $20 (40 goudes for every dollar).

The market starts on the curb of the winding highway of down-town Montrouis and extends a hair's length from honking tap taps or gestures of high-speed passers-by, filling the market with a stench of diesel. Haiti's Rte 1 cuts through the market's bustle, while a tangle of merchants with massive bowls or cracked tupperware aggressively wander like auctioneers. The more relaxed of the vendors sit under lopsided shelters, displaying everything from glass-bottled beverages to raw meat dizzy with flies.

As soon as we had money, women with huge bowls of melons, avocados, limes, mangos and spiky green and brown fruits I’ve never seen before swamped us. Unable to negotiate in the chaos, with fruits thrust under our noses and rubbed against our skin amid yells of “bon bagay!” (meaning, “good thing!” in Creole), we climbed in the truck and rolled down one of the windows. Caroline bargained ruthlessly, chastising the women as they advertised their wares at twice the street value to us blancs.

When we finally agreed on a fair price, the rapidly truck filled with fruit:

For $5 (US), we bought 13 plump, healthy avocados, picked that morning just miles down the road.

For $1, a handful of fragrant limes. For $2.50 a piece, two swollen and aromatic melons.

For $5, a bucket of mangos, warm from the afternoon sun, that made us drunk and salivating from sweetness.

Total price: $16 US, and we watched as two of the women strutted back home, finally selling all their goods after a long day at the market.

Caroline, Amy, Robin and I devoured the fruit, speaking only with “mmm”s and “ahhh”s.

The avocados need a few days to ripen, but with some garlic, lime juice, salt and pepper, we plan to make guacamole to eat on chips that a missionary team is bringing for us Saturday, per Caroline’s request. We prepared a fruit salad with the mangos and melon, juices marrying in a ceramic mixing bowl and nestled in one of Canaan’s industrial-sized refrigerators. I hope we can stretch it out over all our meals tomorrow, but we put such a dent in the mangos we might be back at market tomorrow.

Today was incredibly fulfilling, in addition to belly-filling. Canaan operates on routine, and I’ve fallen into the predictable cadence as I start my third week in Haiti. Wednesday means Medika Mamba at Rousseau, the rural hospital in the mountains. 

We had quite a few babies graduate from the peanut-butter based malnutrition program today at Rousseau, and Montrouis Tuesday. I love seeing emaciated babies transformed into giggling bundles of meaty arms and chunky thighs. We document these transformations with photographs, and the difference is astounding.

Graduation from the Medika Mamba program is the difference between shriveled, stunted bodies and those healthy rolls that make me smile. It’s death conquered by vitamins, protein and crucial calories.

Women and babies line up for Mamba assessments at Rousseau Hospital.

Twins get undressed to be weighed and examined.

I am exhausted, though. Caroline led us on a 2-hour hike into the mountains. My sweat glands were on overdrive as we climbed the steep rocky path. Like most afternoons, the air felt smarmy and damp and made my glasses slip incessantly down my nose. Out of nowhere, the mountains in the northeast echoed with thunder, and my sweat mingled with dense raindrops.

It’s so peaceful here, watching lightning blaze in the mountains while the coast is serene, untouched blue.

Haitian bourgeoise and fast food cravings

I lived one night like a Haitian bourgeoisie. It was an interesting opportunity to experience Haiti’s frightening rift between the rich and poor.

It’s the difference between mud and mansions.

We drove into Port-au-Prince Saturday night with Sister Glady to her deceased mother’s home, up in the mountains overlooking a portion of the earthquake-desecrated residential areas.

As we passed through Port, every wall and building is splashed with ugly political graffiti from the recent election, bearing candidates’ names and ballot numbers. The rich residential area was also violated by spray paint, but all the ugly melted away as we pulled the truck behind barbed yellow gates.

The house was gargantuan and stately, two-stories surrounded by curling flowers and bushes. It had elegant windows covered in ornate metalwork, scrolling hearts and crosses painted a lovely shade of yellow.

The stairs and floor was covered in colorful glazed stone with the same smooth texture as bathroom tiles. Every room (the rooms seemed endless, with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and parlors) was decorated in Haitian paintings, hammered metal artwork, and tight woven baskets and vases. The furniture was inviting and cozy under the towering ceiling.

Two of Sister Gladys’ brothers were fixing up the house and were there to greet us. They have been adding bunk beds and accommodations for large missionary groups that come to Port-au-Prince to do relief work and construction.

Like most Haitian households, the windows were carefully positioned around the house to maximize ventilation and airflow. There was a constant breeze that chilled the house in the absence of AC. I love how careful construction can eliminate the need for AC and conserve a ton of energy, especially in a place with notoriously hot weather.

Sunday transformed the city. Port-au-Prince was tamed to easy traffic, well-dressed churchgoers, and crows strolling lazily to the market. There was less honking, less chaos, and a colorful city at ease. Besides a man jumping in the bed of our truck and attempting to steal Katie’s suitcase (VERY unsuccessfully… we had that sucker bound right under a tarp!), the drive was much more peaceful than my past ventures.

We dropped Katie and decided to take advantage of the vacant streets and tour Port-au-Prince by truck. We passed the rubble of downtown, and Sister Gladys pointed out a collapsed third story of a school, where more than 300 children perished to falling cement and earthquake tremors. We drove by the presidential palace, still in ruins and surrounded by matchbox-shaped tents and shacks where the most beautiful park in Port used to flourish.

I remembered a conversation I had with Sister Gladys’ brother, Jean, who was born and met his wife in Port. His wife came back to Haiti after spending 40 years in the U.S., and cried as she walked the streets of her childhood. Cherished memories were replaced by pain and ugliness.

I visualized her tears mingling with the trash and filth of tent city and wished they were enough to make it go away, to heal this broken community.

The English church, Port-au-Prince Fellowship, was a solid reminder that faith can bridge cultural differences. For every foreign missionary, there was a Haitian dancing, clapping and joining in the worship. The band was led by an American man playing guitar, but backed up by an all-Haitian band: 4 women on vocals, a man on keyboard, a man on drums, a woman on saxophone.

I felt at home. The sound of English swelling out the open windows to mingle with the Creole voices at the Haitian churches in service next door made me feel united. I was reminded that Christians bridge the gap between Haiti and home, in this culture different in so many ways from my own.

We ate Haitian fast food after church and met up with Shirley and Alex, a young couple and friends of Sister Gladys who opened a young boys’ orphanage in Port-au-Prince last year. The sandwich, French fries and vanilla cupcake was delicious, but loaded with Mayonnaise and other condiments. Epi d’Or is an extremely popular fast food joint in Port, and offers everything from bacon cheeseburgers and ice cream to traditional Haitian food and cakes. Like the grocery store we visited in Port, the building was huge, packed with people of all nationalities and walks of life, and guarded heavily by security officials carrying impressive guns.

But I’m back to reality now, listening to someone’s donkey braying and the soft whack of a machete in the garden.

I’ll be up late tonight typing a clinic report for the organization overhaul I hope to finish soon. It’s looking fantastic, and we have a huge donation of surplus supplies, including Lactated Ringer’s for cholera, for the hospital in Petit Gôave. Montrouis is not well equipped by any means, but it’s great to see medical supplies pooled where they’re most needed.

Tonight, I have had education on my mind. For a Haitian family to put their child in kindergarten, the cost is around 1500 Haitian dollars a month – a sum out of reach for most families. Education is not free here like it is in the U.S. Many of the schools are pumping money directly into the pockets of corrupt government leaders. Without education, these kids will not be equipped to move Haiti forward. Please pray with me for available primary education and an end to government corruption.

Petit Gôave, kerosene lamps and culture shock

The blanc, white girl with glasses and eyes that squint in the unforgiving Haitian sun. A source of comedy. I watch, numb and awkward, as an old woman seizes my hand and pumps it up and down, shouting a mocking “Bonswa, blanc!” and calling out to her neighbors, forming a tight circle around me and the Canaan kids I have been walking with through the tent city of Petit Gôave, a coastal city south of Port hit hard by the earthquake.  

Singled out, shouted at, grabbed and jostled. It was culture shock Friday. Temporary paralysis and humiliation followed.

It’s an area wrought with cholera and parasites. I pulled my face into an awkward smile and fought the urge to pull out my hand sanitizer. The kids I escorted stared at the dirt as the people hurled insults at me and the three other American women I walked with. It started out as a harmless greeting – white people are a rarity in this area and blanc is more to identify someone as non-Haitian than a charged racial comment.

Two boys who lived at an orphanage in Petit Gôave were leading us to see the new houses their Christian alliance has provided for the broken community. I imagine we looked like a mismatched parade. I held some of the younger girls’ hands as we walked through shacks bearing USAID tarps and the. Men and women clad in clothing castaways from the U.S. (graphic Ts from every forgotten Middle School team to College fandom, cheerleader uniforms, even torn Barbie ballgowns) would occasionally shout blanc and point a finger our way, mouths gaping and then erupting in laughter.

One of the older girls instructed me in succinct English to keep my eyes low and ignore their Bonswas. We were now attracting a large crowd. Anxiety bloomed with the lush banana trees and mimosas. I saw a man walking our way heft his machete in our direction—the tool of a worker, used to slash through the thick stems of banana trees and not an uncommon sight—to point us out to his children. I felt a lurch or fear as we finally stopped and turned around. No one wanted to see the rest of the houses anymore. We were already to get away.

I was exhausted, and what had started out as a day promising the beach and relaxation had somehow brought us here: in the midst of rural Chaos and unsettling poverty, walking through the slums of Port Gôave and trying not to stare at the tattered clothing and stink og feces. Six hours in the back of a bouncing truck, south past the traffic of Port-au-Prince, simultaneous dehydrated and needing to pee, and finally arriving at Sister Gladys’ city of birth alongside 20 Canaan kids, all coated in smoke and dust.

Then, the climax. The old woman who had put my handshake and glasses on display had followed us. Now, she straddled the dirt path, blocking us from passing. As she balanced a large aluminum tub on top her head, she gave me a toothless grin and started shouted to another woman nearby. She shouted back, and they started gesturing one another aggressively.

Still clinging onto the hand of a little girl, I felt myself pushed around the shouting woman and running down the path alongside 20 others. Through closed teeth, the older Canaan girl told me the woman was saying she wanted to fight us – to fight the blancs who had arrived in their part of town. She said if we crossed her path and touched her or any of her neighbors, she would fight us.

We half walked, half ran from the tent city, past a dried up river where some cattle and goats were tied, through sludgy green sewer run off, and down crusty streets to the safety of Sister Gladys and the orphanage.

Later, when we told Sister Gladys what had happened, she tutted her tongue in disbelief. "The people of Petit Gôave are warm and welcoming people. They must be getting restless." She said it was doubtful any harm would come to us, but we all felt uneasy at the display, the drama.

Could it be boredom? Or is there something brewing in Petit Gôave. It's been two years since the earthquake, and still half the city is leveled and confined to tent city. Nothing has been done for these people. They are another sad story, buried in rubble as deep as Port-au-Prince.

We ate Haitian food at a long table accommodating pastors and their wives. I found it interesting that while they all spoke Creole as their langue maternalle, their meeting was conducted only in French -- the language of elite education. It was ironic that a group dedicated to building homes, providing medical care and food for earthquake survivors, many illiterate and Creole speaking, chose to express themselves with the golden tongue of the Haitian bourgeoisie.

Sister Gladys herded us to the steaming bowls of rice, stewed greens in a flavorful sauce, and a small dish of tender meat. It was the most delicious meal I have had here. We washed it down with Coke in glass bottles, made from real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. It reminded me of my trips to Mexico in high school, and lugging our glass bottles back to the small shops for a few pesos refund. I finally felt the life creep back into my legs, and it was already time to make the drive back to Montrouis and Canaan.

The drive back was even more jarring, but just as long—hours of retracing the grime and alternating scenes of towering mountains, glaring ocean and bustling commerce. The church bench we had put in the back of the truck collapsed from all the jolts, so Katie and I sat on the floor where the dust from the road slapped our tired faces.

Port-au-Prince is sensational at night. The women, crouched next to their market stalls since early in the morning, light kerosene lanterns to display their wares into the evening. Stereos boom like thunder. The flames burn high and seem to lap at their faces, mysterious and reminding me of the gypsies and fortune tellers in New Orleans’ Jackson Square. I wondered how easy it would be for one overturned lantern to burn down the entire tent city—people and booths and their dwellings and the trash are so packed together they’re sometimes indistinguishable.

As we rumbled over the last stretch of highway to Montrouis, I looked out behind me. The city lights bobbed and hovered like stars – an arm of cosmos molded in the arm of mountainside stretching to the coast.

The crowds did not seem to thin, but less children walked the streets at night. Men strolled loudly on the sidewalks and swerved through the streets on loud mopeds. Police men with rifles strapped to their chests and pistols in their fist stood stoically on intersections. Waiting.

I hastily rinsed off and collapsed in my bed. I felt like I’d never wake up, but rose with the sun (and the barking dogs) at 5:30 this morning.

It’s nice and breezy this afternoon, although I’m dripping sweat. I just hung up my laundry to dry, and I’m so glad I packed few items of clothing. It took me hardly 20 min to scrub finish. I read while the other missionaries labored at least an hour over their clothing. We might be heading with Sister Gladys to Port again this afternoon. I’m praying for some more rain and a safe and less painful ride.

Haitian hospitals, Medicine food and Creole lessons

Child with Kwashiorkor symptoms.

It has been a week and a day since I arrived in Haiti, but it feels like longer. There was a funeral at Canaan for a man of Montrouis, and I have part of the tune stuck in my head. It reminded me of a New Orleans jazz funeral –- several trumpets and a trombone player played a lively waltz rather than a somber melody. It was a colorful affair, which I peeked at through the steel-barred clinic windows.

I had my first Creole lesson today! Pastor Joelle’s wife taught us the Creole Alfabét, which is almost exactly the same as French, and some basic classroom vocabulary for the women working as English teachers.

Here are a few works of the day that will be useful for the clinic, especially when directing patients to their place while taking vitals:

Chita (la) = sit (here)

(Pa) kanpé la  = (don’t) stand here

Sòti  = go out

Rantré/ antré = come in

My morning was rather monotonous. Katie and I resumed cleaning the clinic storage room and sorting supplies that we think need to be donated to the local hospitals. I’ll be typing the list for Sister Gladys this weekend.

We had to put a lot of supplies in a trash pile for being either trampled in the chaos, covered in dust or bug bits, and some once-sterile containers chewed through by rats. It was also frustrating to see so many surgical supplies YEARS past the expiration date, thrown messily in rotting boxes. It’s fantastic that American medical supply companies are donating to Haiti, but medicines and wound prep kits “good until 2001” aren’t ideal.

View of the mountains through the Mamba truck window, on our way to Rousseau Hospital.

We sang along to Adele from my iPod Touch until our feet were gray from shuffling around in dust.

Here’s my reflection of the day: Why in the world would a rural primary care clinic need Foley catheters, sterile bone saws with leg amputation bags and around 1,000 surgical gowns? It may be a dream down the road to offer care in emergency situations, but for now Canaan doesn’t have the resources (or the space!) to store these supplies. They need to go where there’s a pressing need or them, like the hospitals in Pierre Payan, St. Marc and Rousseau, with specialty doctors on staff to address these needs. Otherwise they’ll end up like the pile we trashed—dirty, rat-eaten and unusable.

Yesterday I woke up with nausea and abdominal pain. I had to sit with my head between my knees so I wouldn’t start dry heaving at breakfast. The change in diet has disrupted my digestion, but who knows exactly what set it off. However, it was a busy day and I had no time to take it easy.

Doctor Jean Robert prescribed me some medication that the pharmacist, Henry, only gave me after teasing me in drawling French. Katie and I, along with Mis Elise and a translator from Canaan, hurriedly loaded the Mamba truck and drove 45 min to Rousseau, a hospital and health center deeper into the mountains than Montrouis.

It was the bumpiest drive I’ve ever been on. We passed a thick river, with naked children washing laundry and stretching linens to dry over skull-white stones. With their thumbs out like hitchhikers, people from Montrouis hailed us to stop so they could jump in the bed and catch a ride along the steep road.

The hospital was nice, but crammed with people waiting for consultations. We set up the Mamba supplies as mothers and grandmothers lined up on a crooked bench. Some of the children were so malnourished that their ages were indiscernible. A mother brought her 5-year-old son, smaller than the 2-year-old I babysit back home. He weighed a shocking 11 kg. An 8-year-old girl weighed only 14 kg, but could not be admitted into the Mamba program because of her age. The nurse gave her bags of rice. We also gave every family we saw to large bags of dehydrated soup – aid for parents as shriveled as their sick babies.

Here, food is medicine.

Rousseau Hospital. My camera was fogging up all day.

We admitted a new baby into the program that had severe edema (swelling) of his legs and belly. The edema is a symptom of Kwashiorkor, a form of malnutrition when the diet doesn't provide enough protein. He looked like a cartoon, his skin suctioned to his rib cage, while his legs and belly swelled like balloons. He was burning up with fever, but we were out of antibiotics. It was horrible feeling to let him leave without proper medication. 

We finished the Rousseau Mamba consultations at noon. After a quick lunch at Canaan, Katie and I drove one of the young mothers and her sick 6 mo. old baby to the hospital in St. Marc for a chest X-ray. A doctor living in the states who serves Canaan in his spare time agreed to take on the baby as a patient. She has strange dimples in her chest, as if her rib cage has been pushed too far back. There’s strangeness in the way it juts, and the baby sounds like she has pneumonia or some kind of lung infection.We didn't have to wait too long for the X-ray, and there were no lead coats for protection. I stepped outside to put a cement wall between my body and the radiation.

I saw my first Emergency Room in Haiti at the St. Marc hospital. It was a large room, smaller than a waiting room from one of the hospitals I work at in Baton Rouge. Mismatched beds were squeezed together like an infirmary. The room was hot and still, except for a single ceiling fan. I can't imagine laying in that stagnant heat for treatment.

I was exhausted and still felt sick after the long day. After dinner, I fell immediately asleep and did not wake up until 6 am this morning: 11 hours, through the generator being turned on and off, without moving. I’m feeling better, but the pain comes and goes.