Mwen renmen ti moun Ayiti yo!

I love my life

2012-01-28T09:56:00.001-05:00

Me and Grace, my fellow nurse, hanging out in Jubilee with her best bud, Ifocoeur.

Clinic nurse, ravine nurse, orphanage nurse

2012-01-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

Another medical project under my supervision here in Gonaives is an orphanage of 26 children run by missionary friends from the Philippines. The Genada's have lived in Gonaives for 18 years and have recently started their second orphanage. The first was washed out in the 2008 flood and those children were moved permanently to Sherrie's, in Port-au-Prince.

We got physicals on all the children, along with social histories, to create files on each one. Most of them are moderately underweight and we found a couple minor cases of pneumonia, a 10 year old with seizure disorder and developmental delay, and one child with asthma. One of the older boys has a perforated ear drum and chronic ear infections - we're treating him and looking for an ENT surgeon to come repair his ear. We have no ENTs in Haiti.

There was only one child whose nutritional status worried me: JohnLove. He's 6 years old and only weighs 29 pounds. For a little perspective, my friend's 3 1/2 year old son weighs 35 pounds. I've started him on peanut butter supplements and like all the other children, he has received deworming pills and daily vitamins. We aren't supposed to have favorites, but JohnLove and his little brother, Evensky, are mine.

Accepting responsability for a score of children means frequent visits. I've been walking or biking to the orphanage at least 2 or 3 times a week to deliver meds, bandage a dog bite, deal with some break-through seizures, and to just check on kids. I don't mind - it gives me more opportunities to get to know the children and for them to become at ease with me. Which is important because soon we will have to take them all out for HIV tests...

How to help Providence Hospital

2012-01-25T10:33:00.001-05:00

If you would like to partner with us to get Providence Hospital the supplies and medications that they need (see my most recent post), you can donate at muchministries.org via PayPal. Just include a note in the Comments box indicating that you would like your gift to go towards medical supplies for the hospital.

Thank you so much!

Providence Hospital

2012-01-23T16:47:00.004-05:00

One of my roles in Gonaives is to help Much Ministries build working relationships with the existing medical community. We want to be able to improve the quality of care all over the city, not just in Jubilee at our own clinic, and that involves getting to know the strengths, weaknesses and needs of the city's hospitals and clinics.

I spent most of last week doing recon in the ER of Providence Hospital. After my first day winning the staff's favor, I was joined by an ER doctor from Georgia. Our final diagnosis was that although the hospital would benefit from continuing education, the pressing need is for simple supplies. For example, the 2 room, 12 bed ER has only one trash can. They were allotted one box of gloves for an entire day - I mean one box for a staff of 3 nurses, 4 doctors, and 6 nursing students. The ER has no fans and in the whole department, there is only one chair for the average 20 family members who are visiting patients.

The hospital pharmacy was hard for me to stomach. Compare these bare shelves...

...to our fully stocked shelves at the Jubilee clinic!

For the sake of privacy, I only took photos wherever there were no patients, but you can imagine the rest. This is a bed in the post-op ward. The hospital cannot provide sheets or towels, so each patient's family is responsible to bring them. The family also feeds the patient, bathes him, and handles the bedpan or the long walk to the bathroom.

This is the only sink in the ER. I never saw it used for actual handwashing.

In the men's internal medicine ward, this is the sink.

The pediatric ward.

And the hospital's resident goat.

The situation at Providence is a direct result of the floods that devastated Gonaives in 2004 and 2008, washing away or destroying much of their equipment such as oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, IV poles and most of their pharmacy stock. It also forced them to move from the hospital to their current home: a large warehouse. Furthermore, Providence is the government hospital for the whole region and it is sorely underfunded. Dr Honore, the director, is truly doing the best possible with such limited resources. I am also very impressed by the nurses I've befriended in the ER; some of them haven't received a salary in months, but they keep working. They also share their food and drink with patients who don't have family to care for them.

We are doing what little we can to help. Extra supplies from our clinic such as gloves and IV bags were delivered the hospital 2 weeks ago. We gave them a nebulizer and we are currently gathering funds to buy trash cans, fans, chairs, oxygen tanks, and basic medications. It's always fun to have true needs met in a visible manner but even better is sitting with a couple nurses and just hearing them out. Even if we are only able to provide a tenth of what they need, they have been given a voice and that matters.

Gonaives' first stop light!

2012-01-22T21:00:00.002-05:00

I know that might be hard to imagine, but we just got our first stop lights a few weeks ago in anticipation for President Martelly's visit on January 1st. People are fascinated by them. I mean, truly fascinated. There were crowds watching them being set into place and crowds watching them change color on the first few days. Everyone stops - cars, trucks, taptaps, motorcycles, bicycles, even some pedestrians - and they stop about 100 feet back from the red light, as if they're afraid it will smite them for getting too close.

The Jubilee teenagers were particularly funny: "Let me explain this to you, Keziah. When it's red, you have to stop. But when it turns green, you can go." I'm glad they enlightened me; now someone should enlighten them that you can only go when YOUR light becomes green. Even though the angle of the street lets you see when the opposing traffic has a green light, that doesn't mean that the light applies to you too!

Haitian chicken meet Dominican chicken

2012-01-20T21:11:00.000-05:00

Apparently, it isn't just our children who are undersized...

Earthquake - second anniversary

2012-01-16T09:50:00.003-05:00

The best and worst part of the anniversary of the earthquake was my visit to the mass grave. Tens of thousands of victims were taken by dump truck to this barren hillside thirty minutes outside the city. Among them were 3 of my neighbors, 5 of my child patients, a colleague, and at least 4 strangers who died under my care during that first awful night.

In Creole, the word "sonje" means 'to remember', but it also means 'to miss'. As if it is impossible to remember people we love without also missing them.

Ben, Lovenide, Peterson, Memene, Nicky, Chantal, TiPikan, Milo, Dieulifete - we remember you. We miss you.

The desert

2012-01-16T07:39:00.000-05:00

Years of deforestation led to years of erosion, leaving Gonaives like a desert. The ground is a dusty sterile excuse for dirt with high salt and sand levels that make it difficult for anything to grow. One look at the my yard and the mountain overlooking Gonaives is enough to make me want to cry.

I brought from Port-au-Prince the potted plants that lived through an earthquake with me. I call them "My Babies" and I have cared tenderly for them over the past 3 years. Now, with great trepidation, I have planted 4 of them in the best dirt I could find with some horse manure for extra help. I hope, I pray that they survive! May the greening of the desert begin!

Thou shalt not steal

2012-01-08T09:22:00.000-05:00

My camera was stolen on one of the last days of house mudding in Jubilee. I was rather peeved. I lived in Haiti for over 3 years before I had something of relative value stolen from me for the first time (a head lamp and $13). But after less than 2 weeks in Jubilee, I had already been robbed. I was relatively confident that it wasn't one of the teenage boys who works with us daily because they had had plenty of opportunities on other days. But there are always people visiting the work site, so it really could have been anyone.

That afternoon, the boys showed up at my house with the missing camera! This is the story they told me:

"Keziah, we went home and we were very upset. We didn't want you to be sad, and we were scared that you would write to Josh and Ben and tell them that we'd stolen your camera! So we wanted to get it back for you. Djeff's mom offered to help, so she went around to all the neighbors, telling the story and collecting whatever money they could spare. Then we sent Wiesguer's uncle to the voodoo priest's house. We didn't go because we're Christian and we know you wouldn't have wanted us to.

"The voodoo priest told them that 'a guy with a very dark face took the camera' and that he hid it under his shirt when he snuck away. We knew who that was - Dessalines - so we went to his house, all 7 of us, and we told him we'd beat him up if he didn't give it back! [Dessalines is several years older and a lot bigger than all our boys.] He started trembling with fear and he surrendered it. Then he tried to convince us to lie to you and say that we found it somewhere and we don't know who took it. But we knew that if we said that, you'd think we took it, so we're telling you the truth."

I'm glad they told the truth, but even if they'd tried to cover Dessalines' rear, the last photo I found on the camera would have pointed the finger instead:

Note to any future camera thieves: when you get caught, erase your self-portraits before you try to lie about your innocence!

The confusing part to me is how the boys knew that 'the guy with a very dark face' was Dessalines. I have talked with the boys about using voodoo power, even for something good. It's a tough topic and will be an ongoing discussion. And I'm still deciding what to do about Dessalines himself. We don't have much of a relationship with him, so I can't necessarily punish him like I would one of our boys, but I feel that there needs to be consequences so that he will learn and change. Any suggestions?

New Year's festivities

2012-01-04T09:25:00.002-05:00

On December 30th, the teenage boys and I started a sand layer on the adobe house. The teens practically begged me for permission to do it, their main reason that they wanted to house to look "pretty" before the American guys got back. Personally, I think a greater motivation is that they were bored.

In one day, we did all the sanding that we could do using just ladders, the loft crossbeams, and, of course, standing on the ground. So on New Year's Eve, we enlisted the help of LauraLynn, aka Lala, and the tractor. Not only did we use the tractor as a giant mixing trough for the sand and water, we also used it as a crane to transport ourselves to greater heights.

Lala's Christmas present to herself was a 3-wheeler, a hybrid between a motorcycle and a truck. In Creole, motorcycle is just moto and car is machine so we christened her new toy The Motine. We spent New Year's Eve driving around town in the Motine, enjoying the music, the dancing and the street food. We were joined by about 15 of the Jubilee teenagers, which was a real blessing. The Motine wouldn't start with the ignition or the kick starter, so every time we started up, the teenage boys had to push start us! They would run us down the road til the engine jerked into action and then, with all variety of whooping, hollering, and squealing, leap into the moving vehicle. It was a great night!

Mud, glorious mud!

2011-12-28T09:43:00.000-05:00

The first week of December was crunch time for the adobe house! Ben, Josh, Isaac and Chris were all due to leave for Christmas on the 13th and the house had to be done if it was going to survive their month-long absence over the holidays. Luckily, we'd found the factory in Port-au-Prince where rice bags are manufactured and I was able to order 400 meters of un-cut sack for the house. So the final 20 rows were laid using a continual cylinder of sack which we measured, cut and tucked on each row. Much faster and much more aesthetically pleasing.

I was there for 2 of the last 5 days of work. We toiled from 7am to 5pm every day, filtering dirt, hauling water, tossing buckets up the ladder, filling sacks, compressing sacks, laying barbed wire between rows, placing windows, installing cross-beams for a loft...It was great fun and very tiring work.

On December 9th, the boys laid their last bag and the house was complete!

With their precious remaining days, the boys tried different mixtures of mud, clay, sand, horse manure and straw until they found an acceptable product to skim the outside of the house as protection against vandalism, decay, and the elements. They had time to do the highest section of the house before they left, entrusting the rest of the task to me and Sam (the Brooks' youngest son).

On my first morning as an official resident of Gonaives, Sam and I went to work on the house. He had already done much of the upper part and with the help of our loyal teenage boys, we made good progress. The winner of the mud combinations was a mixture of clay, sand and straw so we alternated between squishing clay in our fingers, running the cement mixer, filtering sand, and spreading the mess on the house.

By the end of that first day, my t-shirt looked like this...

...and the house looked like this:

More of the same for our second day of work.

By the end of that second day, my t-shirt looked like this...

...and the house looked like this:

For our last day, December 23rd, we only worked 2 hours to finish off the house.

By the end of the last day, my t-shirt looked like this...

...and the house, that beautiful house, looked like this:

Proud Keziah, proud Sam, proud Jubilee teenagers! I can't wait to see the boys' faces when they get back.

The Christmas spirit

2011-12-27T09:43:00.008-05:00

I celebrated Christmas in Gonaives - pancake breakfast, a visit to the outdoor bike market to buy myself a bicycle, a late afternoon bonfire and swim in the river - but the most Christmas-y thing that happened to me was quite unexpected. A 76 year old man in Jubilee approached me and said that he had a gift for me. He wanted to give it to me as a thank you for the work that my friends and I have been doing in the town.

In Haiti, instead of Christmas trees, the people make little decorative houses with pictures and Bible verses carved in them. The houses are usually shoebox-sized and in the evenings, people light a candle inside them. The old man had made one of those traditional houses for me. There is only one small difference: my house is BIG!

It's so big that Youv, my friend Lala's adoptive son, can play inside it.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Friendship

2011-12-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

Leaving Port-au-Prince meant leaving behind some wonderful friends. I cannot describe how blessed I am to have this crowd of silly and seriously amazing people in my life. They have been there for me through some of my roughest days and they have rejoiced with me in my greatest victories. We share countless memories and I'm glad that my move to Gonaives will allow us to make more on my visits to Port and their visits here.

Kathleen, Dan, Katie and Marc - Merry Christmas! I love you.

Seasons of change

2011-12-19T08:58:00.001-05:00

I am leaving Port-au-Prince today to go work full time for Much Ministries in Gonaives.

There is a myriad of reasons for my decision but the simplest way to explain it is that I am ready for something new. In Gonaives, I will be doing a lot of teaching: inservices for nurses that work at the hospitals, nurses' aide training, community health teaching, and coordination with the local hospitals to improve the city's health system. Sharing knowledge is far more important long term than just caring for patients, though of course, I will still be doing plenty of that, and I'm excited for the new opportunities.

Last week, I had my final clinic day at Delmas 24. I don't mind closing clinic, but I was loathe to let my blood pressure patients go cold turkey from their meds. It was those sweet little old men and women who found a pastor who will let Lucson and Myrlande, my clinic manager and nurse, do BP checks monthly at his church. I was touched by the attitudes of my patients. No one acted angry at my departure; on the contrary, they all hugged me, thanked me, and promised to pray for me.

The kids in my neighborhood heard the news this week. Frantz put it this way, "Oh no, I won't be able to come annoy Kez anymore!" They are annoying, but I will miss them. The good news is that we are keeping my apartment, my Teacup, so that we have a place to stay when we need to overnight in Port-au-Prince. They will still be able to annoy me from time to time.

Call me a coward but I haven't found the courage to tell most of my ravine families yet. A few of them know because they were working for me at the Teacup and at my clinic, but the majority are still unaware. I've been their personal nurse for 3 and a half years! I don't want to leave them and I'm sure that they don't want me to leave.

I thought I was going to vomit when my youth group turned expectant eyes to me for my "big announcement". But when I told them, they prayed for me, they hugged me and the girls cried in my arms, and then the worst was over. I plan to come to the city 2 weekends a month to be at youth group and Bible study, and I will certainly be at our Zanglais retreat in May. They have grown and frankly, they could lead themselves at this point. If only we hadn't bonded like a family since the earthquake...this would be much easier.

Baby Taina

2011-12-16T20:04:00.001-05:00

Taina is an 11 month old from my ravine. I met her shortly after birth, but I only truly remember her from this October. Her mom stopped me because Taina had diarrhea and I almost had a heart attack - the baby looked like death! Her fontanel was a deep depression on the top of her head and her eyes were sunken far into her face.

Taina survived that episode, but not as well as I would have liked. Two months later, she still has a depressed fontanel and her eyes always have that sunken sickly look. She isn't crawling yet and she doesn't laugh. I have theories about malnourished babies and lack of laughter is one of the symptoms I always look for. I don't care how tiny your child is; if she's laughing, I'm not terribly worried about her. But the child that is skinny, lethargic and not smiling...

With her mother and father's approval, I moved Taina to Dorothy's house this week. Sometimes parents seem eager to give their child away, but I was gratified to see Taina's parents truly sad to leave her behind. A few days later when I visited the ravine, they were waiting for me at the beginning of my route to ask how she's doing.

She's doing well. Her starting weight was 15.5 lbs, the average weight of a 6 month old, but I've seen a million times worse here in Haiti. I took her out for bloodwork on Wednesday and everything came back negative: tuberculosis, syphilis, HIV. She is anemic - no surprise there. Every Haitian, child or adult, that I've ever taken for bloodwork comes back anemic! So with all the big threats ruled out, we can assume that she is a case of failure to thrive. And Dorothy's is the perfect place for her. I've seen those nannies work wonders on sad-looking malnourished babies and I'm excited to see them work their magic on Taina!

These are not my pants!

2011-12-12T07:38:00.003-05:00

How much fun can you have with one pair of size XXXXXXXXXL scrub pants, a youth group and a troupe of 7 year old neighbors?

Lots and lots of fun!

Lakay nou lakay Kez

2011-12-09T13:49:00.004-05:00

(at home at Kez's home)

Very few things make me happier than to see my little neighbors and my adult friends make themselves at home in my home. I love when they know where to put things away, when they get a cup of water without asking, when they greet visitors at the door for me, when they share a meal with me and when they do the dishes afterwards without being asked.

A Good Samaritan in Goodwill

2011-12-08T13:20:00.003-05:00

Two months ago Wisnal, my community health worker in the ravine, told me that he was getting married in December and couldn't afford a wedding dress for his bride. In Haiti, weddings are a big deal, a very big deal, and therefore, they are painfully expensive. Many couples stay engaged for years or live as common-law husband and wife because they can't pay for a proper wedding. When I heard Wisnal's news, I offered to look for a wedding dress when I visited the States in November.

I stopped at a Goodwill store and I found a dress I thought a Haitian bride might like: poofy, frilly, sequin-covered, complete with a small train. It was $100, about twice as much as I could spend. I stood at the cash register, waiting to negotiate with the manager when a woman overheard me explain that I needed a dress for a young woman in Haiti who couldn't afford one. Out of the blue, this stranger smiled at me and said, "Can I give you my wedding dress?"

I may have stared at her for a full 10 seconds before I could stutter an answer. Poofy, frilly dress forgotten, we followed this kind woman to her house where she brought out a beautiful, perfectly white, stylish wedding dress. And then she was gone, leaving me flabbergasted and very grateful.

The story gets a bit complicated after this - with only a few weeks before the wedding, the bride was nervous about making the necessary adjustments for the dress to fit her right, and perhaps she thought it wasn't frilly enough for a Haitian wedding, so days before the wedding, Wisnal told me that they'd found a different dress. I was very disappointed but reminded myself that my American tastes do not quite match those of my Haitian friends when it comes to wedding attire. On Saturday, the wedding day, bride and groom were radiantly happy and that's what counts.

But don't worry, my Good Samaritan dress played an important role too. After the bride, the next most elaborately dressed individual is the maid of honor, Emmanuella, one of the rescued orphan girls from the Gonaives flood. She appeared at the beginning of the processional looking simply spectacular in my storied dress. It fit her perfectly and she literally danced down the aisle. I'm sure she has never felt so beautiful!

Good Samaritan from Goodwill, if you're reading this, thank you very much!

Wear your underpants!

2011-12-02T07:06:00.003-05:00

The kids at Dorothy's are growing up! We can ride bikes and sing songs and go to the bathroom by ourselves and speak in full sentences and differentiate between Kez and Katie. We can open the gate and close the door to the basement and walk all the way to school without falling into a mud puddle. We can even play Duck-Duck-Goose.

But we can't wear clothes. Oh no. Life is way more fun in your underpants!

Gonaives adobe house progresses

2011-11-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

Ben, Josh, Isaac, Chris and their horde of loyal children and teens have kept working on the adobe house in Gonaives. There have been some setbacks, like the day when they arrived in the morning to find a handful of sacks slashed open, or the day several sacks were emptied of their dirt and stolen. A few weeks ago, their storage space in Jubilee was broken into and all their tools, barbed wire, and some sacks were stolen. But the work has continued with very encouraging results.

Over Thanksgiving week, the house reached my height. When I left to come back to Port-au-Prince, the guys were getting ready to install the front door and go even higher on the walls. Much of the work we do in Haiti has little visible results; with the adobe house, we can see every minute of labor and it is very satisfying.

Life has me in stitches

2011-11-28T15:13:00.003-05:00

I work primary care here in Haiti, not emergency room. I like it but the monotonity of my patients' complaints gets to me sometimes. Heartburn, headache, hypertension. Heartburn, headache, hypertension. Heartburn, headache, hypertension.

You get the picture.

Every now and then, I get to change hats and do one of my favorite things in the medical realm: suture people. It's odd, but I have noticed that these things happen in waves. I may go weeks without any blood, and then suddenly have 4 or 5 patients in a week. Monday was a bit like that. First, I had a scheduled patient, a 14 year old with a large skin tag on one of her breasts that I removed and sewed up. I'd barely finished cleaning up when a neighbor, Brunel, came to the door. He'd sliced his ear open moving rebar at the St Joseph's construction site and he needed a couple stitches also. Unlike my last few patients, all children under the age of 15, big tough Brunel tried to run out of the room when I said the word "stitch".

A few days later in Gonaives, Martha, the nurse instructor who oversees the hospital inservices and the various health classes we teach, asked me to teach suturing to the nurses she is training in Jubilee. It was a blast! I loved showing them what I've learned, sharing some of my successes and mistakes with them, encouraging and correcting and guiding them. The only thing that was a little disturbing: our practice arm which looked frighteningly real!

Little one

2011-11-22T15:30:00.003-05:00

My friend Edjour and his wife Sofie had a baby boy!

I finally got to meet the little man this week. It's ridiculous how much he looks like his daddy! They still haven't named him, because Edjour insists on a name that starts with "E", like his, but there just aren't many boy names in Creole that begin with "E". It's OK - we already have a nickname for the baby.

My crazy landlady hates Edjour and has threatened to kill him on several occasions. The threats are funny for 2 reasons. First, she is an old woman who couldn't kill him in her wildest dreams, and secondly, she can never remember his name. So each time she rails on him, she makes up a name that sounds vaguely like Edjour. Our favorite is Pidjouk, pronounced Peed-CHOOOK. I've been joking with Edjour for months that if he doesn't choose a name for the baby, I will christen him Pidjouk. It appears that it may stick...

Welcome to the world, little Pidjouk!

Powerless

2011-11-14T08:05:00.003-05:00

Someone asked me recently what I miss most about the States, other than the obvious friends and family. I answered, "Consistent power."

I don't mean 24/7 electricity. That's a luxury for my other life and frankly, I am completely comfortable living without it for periods of time. No, when I say consistent power, I mean that I want it to happen in a reliable fashion so that I know more or less when I will have power and when I won't. So that I can put food in my fridge without wondering if it will rot the next day. So that I can see if my feet are still dirty after my nightly bucket shower. So that I can write a blog post now and then.

In Haiti, most of us are at the mercy of EDH: Electricite Nationale d'Haiti. It's the government-controlled power grid and it is fantastically unreliable. I joke that it is directed by a cynical little man (in my mind he's about 5 feet tall with a pointy beard and beady little black eyes) who sits at a switch board, messing with our minds and our lives.

"Heeheeheehee, let's give Delmas a little bit of power. And oops! Let's turn it off again! Hahahahaha! How did you like that, people?"

Backing up my theory of the evil little man is the vocabulary used in Creole to describe electricity. In English we say that "we lost power" and "we got power back", but in Creole we say, "they took power and "they gave us power"." It certainly adds to the persecution mindset.

In truth, this fall has been one of the best seasons for power. In my neighborhood, they've been giving us electricity nearly 16 hours a day quite consistently since September. Sure, we had a little 9 day hiatus in mid-September with no power at all, but I'd gotten accustomed to a functional fridge and charged telephone and internet possibilities. And then our transformer blew. That was 2 1/2 weeks ago and today is the first day that I've finally had power. It's weak, only strong enough to run a laptop or charge a phone. The fridge can't run, the fans can't run, and for reasons unknown the non-electricity-savvy me, it has blown 4 lights and 2 sets of Christmas lights in my house since coming on last night.

I guess we'll stick with the candles for a little longer.

Kevs

2011-11-14T08:02:00.002-05:00

Thanks for praying with me! Kevs is home at the orphanage in Gonaives, and the last reports have him doing well. He has some residual effects from his still undiagnosed illness - one-sided weakness and occasional "episodes" like mini-seizures - but he has been receiving physical therapy and is regaining strength. I will hopefully see him when I go to Gonaives this week. I can't wait to hug that lovable punk!

Fall outing

2011-11-04T09:47:00.002-04:00

I took a week-long trip to visit my parents who are doing a semester sabbatical in Washington, DC this fall. My brother Barnabas is at college in Maryland, less than 2 hours from DC, so I got to see him on two occasions. And my sister, Polly, back from her year of teaching in Indonesia, is living in DC doing a teaching fellowship in DC public schools. I spent a night at her apartment and an exciting morning at the Department of Motor Vehicles with her. OK, just kidding, but when you see family as rarely as I do, any time together is precious, even if it's in a long line and an awkward waiting room.

I took extensive walks around Capitol Hill with my parents and with my friend Maggie who came to spend a day with me. The Capitol Building, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Tidal Basin, the Washington Memorial, the botanic gardens, and much more. I was impressed with the beautiful architecture of the homes and historic buildings in DC and I was, as always, amazed by the cleanliness of the streets and yards. But more than any of the monuments and fountains, I wanted to see fall foliage. Nowhere can beat New England in autumn, but Rock Creek Park did its best.

And the best part, better than walking through an impressive city or hiking through a forest, was just being with my family. Sharing stories and news, excitements and disappointments, laughing and encouraging, reminiscing and planning. I am blessed.

Pray for Kevs

2011-11-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Please join me in praying for Kervens. When I lived at Dorothy's in 2008-2009, Kevs was the oldest of her kids and he and I became quite close. We would organize silly games with the kids, play soccer in the rain, quote movie lines at each other, mop flood water after storms, do yardwork and other chores side by side, and each evening, when I tucked him in, we would exchange wild imagined stories about the Leprechaun King (Kevs) and the Scissortail Queen (me). Needless to say, he is special to me.

He's been living at an orphanage in Gonaives, spending weekends with the Brooks at Much Ministries. Last week, he got very sick with seizures, breathing difficulty, and a very stiff neck, symptoms which pointed to meningitis. My friends have been working tirelessly to treat him, but he has not gotten better. On Monday, they brought him to Bernard Mevs hospital in Port-au-Prince where an American neurologist saw him and ruled out meningitis, but found typhoid bacteria. So now he is being treated for typhoid and they are working to control the seizures. He is still in a very fragile state as he is treated and we work to get the seizures under control both for the immediate and long term.

Please pray with me!

Sorry, Holland

2011-10-29T21:07:00.001-04:00

I lived in Holland for a year when I was 12. My family loved Holland and one of our favorite things about it was the scrumptious peanut butter. In fact, 7 years later when we lived in Belgium for a year, we would drive regularly across the border to buy cases of Dutch peanut butter.

Haitian-made mamba is fantastic, but I've always rated it second to Dutch peanut butter. Until Wednesday.

My patients and the parents of children I sponsor in school frequently bring me food as "Thank You" gifts for my help. Generally it's avocados or mangoes or rice and beans but Kimberly's mama brought me her own hand-milled mamba on Wednesday. I stuck a fingertip in and licked a sample...heavenly choruses resound, trumpets blast, confetti falls all around!

Sorry, Holland. This mamba beats your very best!

Dora's village

2011-10-27T20:51:00.004-04:00

My friend Dora works at Village Espoir, an orphanage and school for about 60 healthy children and 20 handicapped children. This week I visited her and the handicapped kids. I have to be honest - I have never really enjoyed handicapped children, probably because the majority of my interactions with them have been rather purposeless. While working for AMH, I would periodically take medical teams to Wings of Hope, St. Joseph's sister home for handicapped children. The doctors would examine some of the kids, but I, for some reason, never felt the urge or authority to jump in and get useful.

At the Village though, I'd only been inside 5 minutes before Dora was asking me for advice: "Kez, this little Jacob is always breathing badly. He needs to cough but he can't himself. What can we do to help him?" I started doing chest PT on him and then showed the nannies how to do it. Why stop with just chest PT, I thought, so I moved to his joints and started doing range of motion on his knees, elbows, ankles. I don't know much about physical therapy, but I know enough basics to help prevent contractures. I spent the morning going from one adorable child to another, doing range of motion. Jacob, Kiki, Moise, Christian...

A stiff joint does not enjoy being put through range of motion, and the children would cringe and occasionally whimper as we worked. But every time we made eye contact, their faces would break into beautiful smiles. I think I've fallen in love...

Adobe houses - Gonaives

2011-10-24T11:15:00.004-04:00

What is an adobe house and why build one?

I don't really know the exact definition of an adobe house, but the plan for the house in Gonaives is to use rice bags filled with dirt to makes the circular walls of a home. As the levels of bags get higher, the circles gradually get smaller until the bags meet at the top forming a dome. Inside and outside are skimmed with a thin coat of concrete to protect the bags. A gutter will collect rain water off the house, small windows act as vents and light sources, and a drainage ditch surrounding the house keeps it from eroding. The benefits are simple:

1. An adobe house is flood-proof and earthquake-proof.
2. The thick dirt bag walls keep the house cool.
3. All the supplies can be found or purchased locally - for example, we've bought our bags at the outdoor market, our dirt sifters were handmade from hardware supplies bought in Gonaives and our dirt is genuine dirt from the Jubilee dump.
4. If we do this right (fingers crossed), the adobe house will turn out to be a cheaper alternative to the concrete houses that are so common here, and far more durable than the tin houses or mud huts that fill Jubilee.
5. Building your own house is plain old fun!

I was in Gonaives 2 weeks ago for the ground-breaking.

And for the trench digging that will form the foundation of the house.

With used rice bags from the local market, we started laying our first sacks. My friends are paying 2 teenage boys to work with them, a system to help the boys go the afternoon school without simply giving them a handout. But beyond Jeff and Robenson, there is always a crowd around the work site. Children of all ages, their mothers, young men from the ghetto...and most people end up helping in some way or another, though it is interesting to note that the women and children are much more likely to pitch in than the adult men. Just an observation.

My biggest role that first week was rock gathering. In our original plan, we intended to use bags and rocks and cement as a sort of foundation, so I spent hours crouching in the dump collecting stones. The little kids seemed to think this great fun! At any given time, I had 5-10 kids holding out skirts, hats, cardboard boxes, stryrofoam plates, or little hands for me to fill them with rocks to dump in the trench. It was a repeat of the old classic Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence and getting his friends to help.

Unfortunately, upon my return to Gonaives a few days later, I was told that the original plan had been thrown out and the new plan was the start laying sand bags in the normal fashion from the trench upwards. So all our rocks and all our first bags had to be removed. We bought unused bags for the sake of uniformity and laid a new first level, only to decide that our dirt quality was not good enough and our current trench was too large. So those bags got emptied too, we redug the trench a few feet smaller and we started sifting the dirt. My job, ironically, was to sit on dirt piles, pulling out by hand the very same rocks that we had collected a week earlier! The boys shoveled my hand-filtered dirt into a sifter and filled sacks with this superior dirt. And finally, the bags were laid just the way we wanted.

As of today, I am back in Port-au-Prince, living my normal life. Work will continue on the adobe house and I'm very excited to see how it goes!

Adobe houses - Leogane

2011-10-24T08:45:00.003-04:00

My help was enlisted 3 weeks ago to drive to Leogane in search of the only adobe houses in Haiti. My Much Ministries friends want to build one (and hopefully many more after that) in Gonaives and we wanted to see what has already been successful. It was an adventure! We eventually found ourselves driving several miles along a river and in a river on the outskirts of Leogone until we arrived at the village of Bigone. The scenery around us was so beautiful - we stared openmouthed and wondered why anyone would leave this sort of paradise.

We found the first house close to the river, a pumpkin-like dome, built for a couple and their children. It was a small, one room structure with a little loft whose staircase took up most of the inside space. The owner showed us a little shed area off the back that serves as the bedroom because the windows have been incorrectly installed so that water runs straight into the house whenever it rains.

The second house was truly magical. It reminded me of a hobbit house from Lord of the Rings! Three adjacent domes formed the structure and it had lovely wooden carved doors and windows as well as intricate metal working for vents and lighting. Inside was cool and spacious and bright - just what you want for a house in Haiti.

We were awed.

Not quite Sandlot

2011-10-22T19:23:00.001-04:00

I taught the neighborhood kids how to play baseball last week. They're pretty horrible at it, but I take great pleasure watching them rejoice in their little improvements.

Kenep

2011-10-07T08:21:00.000-04:00

Are you ready to grossed out? Get ready.

Have you ever eaten a snotball?

OK, they're not really snotballs; they're called kenep and they are a little fruit that grows in tall trees in Haiti, ripening in the late summer and early fall. They taste quite good, but upon first inspection, I can understand why my friend Sam called them snotballs. They really do look slimy and nasty.

The kids love them, especially because they don't have to buy them like most fruit which grows in the countryside. We can pick them right here in Port-au-Prince. So a few weeks ago, my neighborhood kids enlisted my help to go gather kenep. We went to the school across the street and asked the guard at the gate for permission to climb the tree and pick fruit. He looked at me and started laughing, "You won't be able to!" He didn't say "white girl" but I know that's what he was thinking. White people, especially white women, do not climb trees.

That decided it. I was climbing that tree, as high as I could climb, and I was getting as many kenep as I could reach. I'll show you, guard, that white girls can indeed climb trees!

A boy named Jonny went up with me and we stripped that tree of kenep, dropping them down to the eager girls waiting below. When we finally climbed down, you can bet that I gave that guard a very sweet smile on my way out.

(I have to confess, I really am not the greatest tree climber, but this particular tree is right beside the house, so all you have to do is walk up the stairs to the roof and then up into the tree. Quite painless.)

We ate kenep on my porch and on my roof and threw kenep across the street to some little boys playing soccer. The kids showed me how to make pwanch, a drink of kenep, moonshine, sugar and cinnamon. Unfortunately, I don't moonshine at the Teacup, so we had it with the sugar and cinnamon only.

And the guard? He looks at me with a slightly crooked smile every time he sees me. I think he's still laughing at me.

Mountains and sunsets

2011-10-03T12:59:00.000-04:00

Last week took me to Gonaives for a 4 day visit. I did the usual translating, playing with half-naked children, and medical work, but I had time for some unusual, unusually fun outings.

Every time I have gone to Gonaives, I have looked at the mountain that towers over the city and wished that I could climb it. Time and temperature have always been against me but this time, my friend Ben and I decided to make it happen regardless. We scrambled and sweated our way up the mountain, through the low prickle bushes and the little rock terrace walls that are supposed to prevent mudslides. At the top, we circumnavigated the peak, going out on little crests and adjacent hills looking for the best views. We were not disappointed!

I got to be there for an artisan festival where the women of Jubilee, the dump ghetto where my friends work, sold their wares to American visitors. It was the first time that the women did their own sales, which required them to speak some basic English. They were very nervous, but when it was all over, many of them told me that they were proud of themselves and they had felt alez (confident) with the foreigners.

On each visit, I get to know a few more of the Jubilee kids and adults. It can be embarassing because I forget names swiftly while they tend to remember me very easily - how many white women come through Jubilee speaking perfect Creole? But I still try to focus on a few each time in hopes that eventually, I will really know them. This trip gave me Claudine, a little firecracker who I often want to hug and spank in the same breath.

In the evenings, my friends and I would walk across the dump and sand flats, through the salt harvesting pools out to the ocean with a group of kids. They would swim while we watched the sunset. All around us is poverty and trash and dusty barrenness. And yet below us are cheerful children and above us are the most magnificent skies I've ever seen. I sometimes wonder if God purposely puts the greatest beauty in the places of greatest ugliness.

Restavek

2011-10-03T11:53:00.004-04:00

When I lived in the Shoebox, my next door neighbors always had a restavek, or child slave, living with them. Perhaps you remember the story of Dieula, the girl they kicked out onto the street in September 2010 who I was able to place in a rescue home. Shortly after Dieula, I met their new slave, a girl named Pierreline. I didn’t see her as often as Dieula but I slowly got to know her. Once or twice she came for food, saying that they had left her home alone all day with nothing to eat. And in February, she approached me for bus money so that she could go home to the countryside to visit her ailing mother. I gave it to her, as well as meds for her mom, and that was it. She never came back. I’d unintentionally freed her as well.

My neighbors got a new girl a month later. One afternoon when all the kids and I were goofing around on the front porch, the girl came over to ask me a question. My neighbor’s wife heard her and immediately came out screaming, “Don’t you go near that white woman!!” Apparently, she was afraid to lose yet another slave.

Two weeks ago, a girl walked past me on the street with a basket of bread on her head. Our eyes met and she stopped short. It was Pierreline, back in Port-au-Prince, living with her aunt and selling bread to survive.

I invited her to come see me a few days later with her 8 year old brother, Emmanuel. They told me that in the storm earlier that week, their little house had flooded. The rain had washed away all their clothes, food, and few belongings, and had threatened to take them too. An older cousin was able to rescue them using a plank of wood as a ladder, and now they were living in an unfinished room in Delmas 64.

I went to my youth group girls and asked them if they had any clothes they could spare for Pierreline. My mother brought some clothes for Emmanuel and they gratefully accepted them, along with a tent to help their current living situation. When Pierreline visited me again to say thank you, I asked her some more questions about her time as a restavek with my neighbor. “You started working for them in the fall of 2010, right?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Pierreline replied. “I was there for 2 years before you gave me that bus money. They never let me leave the house. I just stayed in that downstairs room, doing laundry and cleaning. I used to hear you and see the children run past on their way to playing at your house, but I could never go out.”

I lived beside her for nearly 1 ½ years without realizing she was there!! I am still completely stunned. And Pierreline is merely one of thousands of girls and boys who live in such situations in Haiti. When will we get justice for them?

Parental visitation

2011-10-02T10:23:00.001-04:00

My mom and dad came to visit in mid-September! They stayed for 5 days, visiting with me and my friends, but mostly working on beautifying my little Teacup. We washed walls, polished couches and chairs, rearranged furniture, sewed and hung curtains, shopped for porch chairs and coffee tables, and added little "Mother" touches such as throw blankets and cushions, table lamps, baskets, and wall hangings.

The place looked absolutely spectacular by the time they were done!

And of course, in typical Haitian fashion, we didn't work alone. Edjour helped out, the neighborhood kids were around, and Christine and Obed were with us for almost every minute of it. It was a week that truly confirmed them as friends, not a patient or a beggar anymore, as they'd been when I first met them 1 1/2 years ago. It takes a long time here to get beyond color and social status barriers, but with the two of them, it has happened.

On my parents' last day, we all stayed home for a birthday party for Sendhie, my friend who worked for me at Angel Missions last year. Christine, Manezda and Christada helped me make cards, bake a cake and make Creole spaghetti for lunch. We completely surprised Sendhie with a little party, the highlights of which were braiding my hair Haitian style (painful!) and teaching all of them how to play BINGO.

All in all, it was a great visit. I really enjoyed having them around and sharing my life with them, not to mention having a positively adorable Teacup now. I would have cried saying good-bye at the airport, but fortunately, the annoying vendor who kept shoving ugly necklaces at me while I hugged them kept me from getting too sentimental. I'll be going to the States to visit in November, so I will see them again soon.

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Hello again, Ravine!

2011-10-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

My poor ravine in Delmas 31 always seems to be getting hit by some catastrophe or another! This month it was a rainstorm that washed away 3 homes at the beginning of my route. Tin and wooden houses, completely gone when the rain swept through the ravine. No one died, but it means another family that I care for has been displaced.

Otherwise, all is well in the ravine. Every week, I am amazed at how accepted I am and how well everyone knows me. No one calls me "Blan" anymore; it's always, "Miss Kez!" Parents are talkative and joke with me a lot; one even gave me fried chicken last week, just to be friendly.

My nurse Myrlande continues to work with me dutifully at clinic and in the ravine. She is becoming better and better at recognizing illnesses and how to treat them. Most days, I don't even need to tell her what med to write down in the notebook - she's already writing it when I turn to her. And when we get back to the school to prep the day's medications, she's often halfway done before I've finished saying all my hello's to the teachers and staff.

And the kids just keep growing! I always do a little double take when I see Samania, Patrick, Benley, Cendy and some of the other toddlers who I have known since birth. That they are alive and thriving is a never-ending source of joy to me.

Waterfalls beyond waterfalls

2011-09-11T20:15:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I made the trek up the mountains to Furcy, a small village beyond Kenscoff. I thought I was going to help my Much Ministries friends plan hospital inservices, community health classes, and the medical aspects of a trade school in Gonaives. I did all of that, but the weekend was much more. There were over 25 of us including the Brooks family who run Much Ministries, Emory Wilson who has been the man on the ground in Gonaives for 3 years, Laura Lynn who oversees the school but is actually a nurse and kind of my soul mate, 2 horticulturalists, 3 medical people, a number of teachers, and 5 new interns. We spent 3 days getting to know one another and preparing for the year. My contribution will be minimal, mostly planning, resource support, and monthly visits as a guest speaker/translator, but I love being part of this family.

I'd been told that there was a beautiful waterfall near the lodge where we were staying, so I set out with 2 of the interns to find it. It'd been raining so the steep descent to the stream was treacherous and when we arrived, we found the water as reddish brown as the local clay. But we did not care. All we saw was waterfall. Not one, not two, or three, or even four. That first day, we discovered 5 gorgeous waterfalls. And the next day when we skipped dinner to go again, we found over a dozen. The photos cannot come close to doing justice to the sheer beauty of that place and to the wild joyous freedom of exploring a stream for hours with new friends.

When can I go back??

Once was already too often. Twice is unbearable.

2011-09-09T09:35:00.003-04:00

In late November last year, my friend's baby, Christopher, died of meningitis partly due to my mistakes in his care. It was an awful day; I will never forget weeping with his mother, Christine, and with my friend and clinic manager, Lucson.

A beautiful new beginning came in early summer when Christine gave birth to Chrystel. Baby Chrystel didn't only fill the void in Christine's heart; she also became the second chance for her older sister, Christina, to be "Other Mother". I met Chrystel upon my return to Haiti this August and I was deeply touched by the joy I saw in their faces.

On Wednesday, Christine came to pick up some formula for Chrystel who has been off the breast since she was hospitalized shortly after birth. Christine told me that the baby had cholera and was in a treatment center but when I responded with shock and concern, my friend assured me that the danger was past and the doctors said Chrystel was doing great. When I hugged Christine good-bye, I told her to please call me when Chrystel was discharged so that I would be at ease.

The call came the following morning at 7am. I was in a taptap going to clinic and I knew as soon as I heard Christine's voice on the line: Chrystel had died.

In some ways, it was worse than Christopher's death because I wasn't there to hold Christine and to cry with her. I walked to clinic, hid in one of the unfinished rooms, and cried for 20 minutes. And then I got up and started working. Because this is Haiti. We live with death in our faces every day. It's awful, but it keeps our compassion alive and our eyes on the only true constant that exists: Jesus.

Meeting the President

2011-09-07T09:36:00.002-04:00

My Haiti life is absurd. For example, yesterday I spent the morning teaching health classes in the ghetto and then spent the evening at a Brazilian Independence Day ball where I met Haiti's president!

How did I end up at the Brazilian Independence Day ball? Well, a couple friends and I crashed the party. We had good reason - two of our other friends were performing at the ball and we wanted to support them. So we just waltzed into the most posh hotel in Haiti, down the receiving line where I got kissed by the Brazilian ambassador and his wife, and then through throngs of Brazilian UN soldiers. Minutes later, the ambassador started the official program by saying, "We are pleased to welcome His Excellency, President Joseph Michel Martelly," and suddenly, there was our president, standing on stage!

After the speeches were over, Martelly joined the rest of us on the floor to watch the dancing. He was surrounded by Secret Service, but we were able to walk right up, get a photo and then poke a hand through for a handshake. I'm still not sure what I think of him as a politician, but I can say that he has a firm, trustworthy handshake and a very happy looking smile.

Viv Tet Kale!!

(In case you forget what Tet Kale means, Martelly's the bald man in the center leaning forward to smile at me when he saw me taking the photo.)

Flane

2011-08-26T20:29:00.008-04:00

In an effort to save my house from certain destruction from too many eager neighborhood kids, I occasionally propose "flane" as an alternative to playing in the Teacup. Flane is a Creole word that translates to...actually, I don't really know how to say it in English. A combination of stroll, explore, wander, meander, and hang out in the streets.

We walk down dirt roads with streams of dirty water draining down the middle and we walk down neatly cobblestoned lanes with flowers hanging over the walls on either side. We pass piles of earthquake rubble and collapsed houses that stand next to the pristine mansions of the bourgeoisie (Haitian upper class). We buy bags of water at little stands and when we're done, we toss the empty bags into the giant dumpsters on Delmas. From the 4 lane main road, we weave our way through the labyrinth of passageways and stairs back towards my house.

The best afternoons of flane end with a fresko. Fresko is like a snow cone but with Caribbean flavors such as coconut, passion fruit, and corrosol, not to mention all the other flavors that don't have names and are simply identified by their color: red, green, yellow, pink, etc. It's the perfect way to cool down after a stroll around town.

Graffiti vindicated!

2011-08-25T20:17:00.002-04:00

This afternoon, I walked past my favorite graffiti and started laughing out loud. Apparently, the artist did not mean "herd of pigs" figuratively!!

St. Joseph's reconstruction

2011-08-24T19:28:00.000-04:00

The work at St Joe's has continued strong and steady over the summer. I was speechless when I saw it. Speechless and a little nervous. Though I have seen all the earthquake precautions that they've taken in the construction, I have to admit that I will be scared to go inside the building when it reaches its full height of 6 stories.

Graffiti

2011-08-23T19:14:00.002-04:00

I love Haitian graffiti. This one says, "Don't throw trash here, you herd of pigs!"

Kez's Haiti life

2011-08-22T20:00:00.001-04:00

I realize that my blog can be a bit confusing with all the people and places I refer to, so here is a quick summary of my life.

My real name is Keziah but everyone calls me Kez. I grew up in Boston and attended nursing school at Northeastern University from 2003-2008. In 2007, I lived in Haiti for the first time, a 5 month internship at an orphanage called Hope for the Children of Haiti (HFC). I mentored the 60 teens there, learned Creole and fell in love with working in Haiti. Back in the US for my last year of college, I traveled to Haiti 4 times, visiting different sites and looking for a more medical place to work. During the summers, I started working at Chop Point camp in Maine, first as a counselor and then as the nurse, a job which I’ve done for 5 years now and which I truly cherish.

The HFC girls

My Chop Point mini-family

When I graduated in 2008, I moved to Dorothy’s, a home for malnourished infant and toddlers, specifically my little AIDS baby, Johnny J. I worked several days a week with an American PA who taught me much of what I know today, I started to lead youth group at church, and I began doing the Ravine. The Ravine is a project started by Sherrie Fausey, an American who runs an English school for impoverished children in a ghetto of Delmas 31. She wanted the children coming into school to have the best possible brain development which means good medical care as babies. So she has a medical check-up program which I have been running for her since 2008 with a community health worked named Wisnal. That year, I started traveling periodically to Gonaives to do clinics and met the Brooks, the family who founded Much Ministries, my current affiliation. I made my first connection with the US military when the USNS Comfort came to Haiti in the spring of 2009 and I got involved at QCS, an upper class school where I occasionally substitute taught.

Me, Johnny J and other kids at Dorothy's

Working in the Ravine

My first trip to Gonaives

In 2009, I moved into the Shoebox (my apartment) on Delmas 91 and started working for Angel Missions Haiti. I continued the Ravine but also started doing medical visas for AMH, hosting medical teams, coordinating medical training exercises for the US military, and running a small clinic on Delmas 24. I grew more involved with the youth group, partnering with an American named Marc. I bonded with the little kids in Delmas 91, especially a little boy named Frantz. And I got to know my neighbors at St Joseph’s, a guest house and boys’ home directed by Bill Nathan, a young Haitian who is also on the AMH board and who became a good friend.

The roof at St. Joseph's before the earthquake

The Shoebox

Marc and youth

On January 12th, 2010, an earthquake devastated Haiti, killing an estimated 300,000 people, including over a dozen of my patients and Haitian acquaintances. St. Joseph’s was destroyed, nearly killing Bill, and damaging my Shoebox on the way down. My life became a movie-esque nightmare as I took care of victims and tried to obtain provisions for my community, Dorothy’s, and other friends. Things progressively returned to normal and I spent the rest of 2010 and the spring of 2011 working for AMH with a young woman named Sendhie and a man named Edjour. In June 2011, I resigned from my position at AMH and came under Much Ministries.

Earthquake victim

Earthquake destruction

So here I am, back in Haiti in the fall of 2011, living in the Teacup (my new apartment), still doing the Ravine, the clinic at Delmas 24, and the youth group. I am also going to be teaching an ESL class, traveling to Gonaives whenever I can, and caring for the needs of the tent city where my Delmas 91 neighbors have been living since the quake.

And that is Kez’s Haiti life in a nutshell.

Good-bye, Shoebox. Hello, Teacup.

2011-08-21T17:59:00.006-04:00

Leaving Angel Missions meant leaving the Shoebox because it is rented by AMH and serves as their office. As soon as I decided to resign, I started looking for other housing options in the same neighborhood. I am deeply connected to the community of Delmas 91 thanks to the earthquake and to the 2 years that I lived in the Shoebox, connected in a way that most foreigners can’t be, connected in a dual-dependency where my neighbors rely on me for medical care and school sponsorships and I rely on them for security and a helping hand around the house. I wouldn’t leave this neighborhood unless absolutely necessary.

One of my neighbors, an older woman named Tita, has lived in the tent city since the quake. Her house is intact, but she was initially afraid to move back in and later realized that by staying in the tent, she could make some money off of her home. I treat Tita’s high blood pressure every month and on one of those days, she showed me her second floor apartment. It was a mess but I fell in love with it and told her I wanted it.

Before I left for Chop Point, I gave Tita a deposit on the apartment and instructions to let Edjour work on the plumbing and get the house generally ready for my return. But when I talked to Edjour throughout the summer, he told me that Tita was refusing to let him go near the place. A week before I was due to fly back to Haiti, he informed me that Tita had decided she didn’t want to rent the apartment to me after all. What a delightful surprise!

So I flew to Haiti homeless. My friend Dorothy had generously offered to let me stay with her while I figured out a living situation, knowing that I might be with her for several weeks, so I went to her house for my first night. The next day, I marched up the hill to Delmas 91. Flanked by my knights in shining armor, Bill and Edjour, I confronted Tita. After an hour of arguing during which Tita kept insisting that I pay her $600 more than our predetermined price and I kept insisting that I couldn’t and wouldn’t, Bill simply said, “Listen, you promised Kez this place and she is moving in. What time should we be here tomorrow morning?”

At 7:30 the next morning, we found Tita outside the apartment with a strange man. She claimed that he had stopped by that morning completely coincidentally and offered her a higher price for the apartment. I cannot describe the arguing and the reasoning and the raised voices and the frustration that ensued. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this after almost 4 years of experience in Haiti, but it blew my mind that a woman who is my neighbor and who I’ve treated for free for 18 months would work so hard to cheat me. I kept repeating to her and to the man, “You promised me this apartment 4 months ago and you accepted my deposit. What are you doing?!” She seemed completely unmoved but after an hour, the man gave up and left.

Hoping to not give Tita another chance to back out, Bill, Edjour, my friend Katie, and I simply walked into the apartment to start moving me in. It was dustier than you can imagine and full of Tita’s belongings. “Give me 4 days,” Tita tried to convince us to leave. “In 4 days, I’ll have everything out and the place will be yours.”

“Tita, you’ve known for 4 months that I was going to move in and you didn’t move anything. Why should I think that in 4 days you’ll do it? We’re here now and we are moving me in.” For the next 4 hours, we carried boxes and furniture to the basement. Christada, Manezda, and little Jessica helped us while Tita sat in the kitchen and yelled abuse at us. One minute she would be all sweet, telling me how much she loves me, and the next minute she would be screaming at me to not rush her and to treat her belongings more lovingly! At one point, she stormed out of the house yelling to the world that Kez was going to put all her stuff out on the street, something which of course I had never said and would never do.

When everything was moved, I tried to give her the rent money that I owed her. Bill and Edjour had left for other work and I realized that I didn’t have a witness so I asked her to wait while I called Bill to return. At this, she snatched the money and ran out of the apartment, deeply insulted that I would want a witness present for the exchange of a large sum of money. I grabbed the money and pulled her back in just as Bill arrived. We counted the money together but Tita refused to take it. She acted as if she was so hurt by my need for another person that she wouldn’t rent me the place after all. I gently told her that the witness was for me, so that when I give an account to my friends in the States, I can have someone attest to how my money has been spent, but she was so worked up that she wouldn’t listen. I gave up, walked out and sat in the street. Bill stayed with her and after 20 minutes, he worked his magic and got her to take the money. He even convinced her to let me put my own lock on the apartment door and to give me a copy of the key to the outer gate.

The next morning, my 4th day in Haiti, I moved all my personal belongings in and I spent that first night in the apartment. Ironically enough, since those 2 nightmarish days, Tita has been perfectly civil to me. She hasn’t given me any trouble at all and has even come to check in, make sure I have water and electricity and that the fridge is working. Oh, Haiti.

But now that the drama is over, I’m thrilled to be here. I left the Shoebox and now I’m living in what I call the Teacup because of its rounded pink walls and china-like tiles in the bathroom and on the porch. The Teacup has an open balcony where my plants can live and an enclosed roofed porch area where I can do laundry and store things. Inside, I have a large living room with a hideous red couch and matching chairs. The dining room/kitchen is also quite large with ample storage space. My bedroom feels huge and has 2 wonderful windows that create a pleasant cross breeze. And the second bedroom gives me space for a pharmacy and first aid station.

Everyone has come to help in one way or another. The girls have swept and mopped. Mardochee scrubbed the hall and kitchen walls till they look freshly painted. Christine helped me set up the pharmacy. Jeff swept and mopped again. Tweedledee and Tweedledum carried boxes for me and helped me buy a new mattress and box spring. Beberto is building me a stand for my stove. Alix’s wife washed all my dusty rags and clothes. Two of my youth boys brought me fruit today and Christine brought me a dozen avocados. Through it all, Edjour has been my hero, helping me in one way or another nearly every day since I got here.

You will notice that I’m still missing a few essential items such as chairs. I recently acquired a little stove but I don’t have the gas tank for it yet, so I’ve been living on cold food only. Tita is doing work on the third floor apartment so we can’t set up my rooftop water tanks yet; honestly, I want running water eventually, but for now, I don’t mind spending an hour every week hauling water upstairs from the cistern and filling my water barrels. I’m just very glad to be in the neighborhood and to not be homeless anymore!

I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

2011-08-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

At my church in Woolwich, there is an elderly man named Ron who comes to camp now and then to do odd jobs. Last year, he came to chop down some dead tree limbs, but before he started, he visited the camp office. I had spoken at the church one week earlier, talking about my quake experience and some of the trauma that I was experiencing in its wake. So Ron wanted to be sure that someone warned "that Haiti nurse that branches are going to be fallin' and there might be some loud noise and some ground shakin'. I don't want her to be scared."

This year, Ron asked for a private audience with me and he played me a song on the trumpet. It's called "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go" and my favorite line reads, "But if by some still small voice, He calls to paths I do not know, I'll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in Thine, 'I'll go where you want me to go'."

It was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me.

The Chop Point disease

2011-08-08T18:52:00.003-04:00

Some people inflict bodily pain upon themselves as penance for wrong-doing. Athletes endure physically crushing ordeals just to earn a gold medal. Protestors hunger strike to the point of starvation to bring down corrupt political regimes.

But we, Chop Pointers of the world, we undergo pain and suffering for no good reason. There is no gold medal at the end of our road, no scoured conscience or liberation of oppressed masses. For us, it’s just the end of camp, the long drawn out farewells, and the lonely aching hearts for months thereafter.

It truly does beg the question, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

We could live even-keeled, unemotional lives where we have a couple friends who we see every day and only ever say "See ya later" to. But no, we insist on ripping our hearts out every summer and loving people who live hours, sometimes days away more passionately than we love anymore nearby. We choose to weep and blubber and snot all over each other when we could be normal individuals who casually high-five each other. Instead of peaceful summer days and nights, we live for the pain and torture of "Good-bye, I may never see you again."

I think we have a serious disease.

So like any good medical professional, I’ve spent hours, not thinking of a cure because this malady is clearly incurable, but thinking of prevention techniques. Ways to keep the campers from liking each other and therefore missing each other. Ways to keep the staff from liking the campers and therefore missing them. Simply put, how to stop the Chop Point disease before it strikes.

Method #1: Duct tape everyone’s mouths shut so that they cannot have good conversation and get to know each other well.

Method #2: Award extra desserts to any camper or counselor who cannot remember the names of their cabin mates.

Method #3: Place in solitary confinement in the pig pen any campers who exhibit signs of being friendly such as smiling and making eye contact.

Method #4: Eliminate all activities considered “fun” and replace them with “unfun” activities such as cleaning toilets and stacking wood and scrubbing buoys.

Method #5: Stop accepting campers.

Unfortunately, as is the case of prevention techniques for many illnesses, these methods are not exactly foolproof. So we resign ourselves to suffer on, missing one another and living for the days when we will be reunited.

Fellow victims, be strong and courageous! This too shall pass.

Infirmary quotables

2011-08-08T14:39:00.001-04:00

"Kez, your chapel talk made the most impact on me out of anything this summer...I also enjoyed gossiping with you."
- Tristan

"If only I could breathe through my nose, then I could chew with my mouth closed!"
- Unknown

In response to my command to vacate the infirmary so the kids who are actually sick could come in: "Yeah, but are they life-threatening?"
- Gabby G

"Kez, will you autograph my bandaid?"
- Hazel

On the last day of first session as we all sat in the lodge eating candy: "All our campers are gone. We have got to stop eating away our emotions!"
- Jill

"I want a good manly bandaid. Ooooh, you have Hello Kitty bandaids!"
- Most of the boys in camp

"Chop Point has been the most awful experience of my life. I mean, AWESOME! The most awesome experience of my life!"
- Baptiste (French camper)

"I used some Icy-Hot on my back yesterday. It felt like God was giving me a back massage."
- Sam

In response to my explanation of what neosporin is: "So you mean it's like over-the-counter white blood cells?!"
- Cullen

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

2011-07-31T20:46:00.002-04:00

Camp may be a whirlwind of frisbee and soccer and surfing and sailing and chapel and outings, but some of the best times are just sitting quietly with a few kids, talking and talking and talking.

Boston trip

2011-07-31T20:01:00.004-04:00

I spent 3 days back in Boston last week with 2 groups of campers. We hit all the hot spots: Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, the Bunker Hill Monument, Old Ironsides, the Public Garden, and the Boston Common. And we did the hottest activities: watched an evening Shakespeare performance on the Common, played in fountains, danced in gardens, rode the swan boats, ate canolis, climbed all over the jungle gym at the Children's Museum, re-enacted the midnight ride of Paul Revere and even had our own Boston Tea Party. It was a great time!

Children of the 'firmary

2011-07-18T11:19:00.001-04:00

The infirmary is quite a hot spot especially between 9 and 10pm. Kids are coming in for evening meds, bandaids for scrapes, tweezers for splinters, warm soaks , anti-itch cream for mosquito bites, aloe for sunburns, cough drops for colds, ice packs for sports injuries, and hugs for a bad day. Sometimes I walk in and find a literal crowd outside my door.

We fill the place up. First the chairs. But what do you do when the chairs are full?

You collapse on the beds.

What do you do when the beds are full?

You collapse on the floor.

What do you do when the floor is full??

You collapse on the desk?

Awwww....

Popularity

2011-07-16T07:44:00.006-04:00

I was never really popular as a teenager in the United States. Sure, I had a few friends and my teachers certainly liked me, but I always wished that I was one of those girls who was always surrounded in the cafeteria and who got invited to all the parties. My senior year of high school was probably the worst year of my life - I lost almost all my friends due to a shift in our interests - and I was happy to go off to college and never have anything to do with teens again.

Then I became a summer camp nurse. I was 22 years old, working with 60+ teenagers, and I suddenly discovered that I was popular. Kids genuinely seemed to enjoy spending time with me and talking to me. They wanted me to sit at their dinner tables and to sail in their boats. They cheered when I was added to their team or when they realized I was their van driver.

I was shocked. And quite happy.

Four summers later, I'm still the nurse at a summer camp for 60+ teenagers and every summer, I am still a little shocked to find that I'm popular. It's a mystery to me - why so many kids want to spend their free time on the infirmary beds or on the dock while I'm lifeguarding - but I take full advantage of it.

I recently heard a quote that said, "Popularity is a line of credit to be used in the act of telling the Truth." That's my summer philosophy in a nutshell. I win kids' trust, build strong loving relationships with them, and therefore I am able to speak to them about the truth of Jesus Christ.

It sounds a bit cruel and if any of my campers read this, they would probably cringe, feeling like my friendships with them are just a ploy to create preaching opportunities. But that's not true. I adore my campers; I fall madly in love with them every summer and it's their fault that I come back to Chop Point year after year. There are plenty of opportunities for Truth-telling in Haiti, plently of teens who are hurting and need God's love. But for me, missing the chance to have 3 weeks with even one of my beloved campers is intolerable. So I return.

And when I return, I tell the Truth: the Truth that my relationship with Jesus is the most exciting, most fulfilling, most comforting thing in my life. The Truth that He wants to have that same kind of relationship with every person alive.

My campers listen to me. Wide-eyed and intently, they listen to my stories. Why? Because they love me and they know that I love them. I wouldn't be telling them these things if I didn't believe with all my heart that they needed to hear them. Love wants the absolute best for us; I want the absolute best for my campers.

"Popularity is a line of credit to be used in the act of telling the Truth." I don't believe that it's an accident that my campers and I have gotten so close. I believe that it's God setting up opportunities to speak to His beloved children through me. And for that, I am deeply grateful. To have been entrusted with some of the most amazing teenagers in the world, even if it's just for a few weeks, is an honor and a privilege I do not deserve.

So I will keep telling the Truth. And pray that God will keep using me to love His children. Because in the process, I get to love them too. And that makes coming back to Chop Point more than worth it year after year after year.

Surfin' in the USA

2011-07-14T08:53:00.000-04:00

I don't like saltwater. I grew up swimming in a half-mile wide spring-fed pond. Its water is so clean that I drink it while swimming (everyone thinks I'm insane to do that but I promise you, I've been doing it for years and I've never gotten sick!). Compared to my pond, ocean water just feels yucky. I get out all sticky and sandy and my lips feel like they've been pickled by the salt and my hair feels like it's been turned into straw. I love beach soccer and beach volleyball, building sandcastles, and walking on the beach, but I do not really enjoy anything in the water.

Until I went surfing for the first time.

Chop Point is a 40 minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean so every few days, we send a small group of campers surfing. Our instructor? Sixteen year old Sierra, a girl who has been a camper of mine for the past 5 summers and who is a camper-worker this year. She participates in all activities like a camper, but she also has the job of maintaining the boats, doing odd jobs on the dock, and leading surfing trips. And since she's too young to lead alone, I get to be the surfing chauffeur and lifeguard.

The water is frigid and I spend most of the 2 hour trips treading water alongside 4 inexperienced surfers, helping them time their rides correctly and stay safe when the waves are really high. But every now and then, a few kids will get too cold or too tired, and then Sierra and I get the chance to ride the waves too. She's fantastic; I'm very bad. But we both love it! If the water wasn't so cold and the sun so burn-able, I could do it all day.

We love summer camp!

2011-07-11T07:30:00.010-04:00

Strawberry picking, Christmas in July, obstacle course, sailing, war paint, silly skits, ice cream flower pots (if you've never done this, it's delicious and definitely worth doing), luau, water night, mud fights...

We love summer camp!

Sendhie

2011-06-26T07:45:00.003-04:00

The toughest part about leaving AMH was telling my Haitian staff, Sendhie and Edjour. They have been working for us since shortly after the earthquake and have been very loyal and trustworthy helpers.

Sendhie was my secretary and personal assistant. She handled all my patient phone calls - I got a lot of patient phone calls - and acted as the liaison between host families in the US and our patients' Haitian families. She would accompany patients to doctor's appointments, run errands, do paperwork, and hold office hours to meet with patients on days when I was out working elsewhere. When teams visited, she contacted the translators for us and worked as a translator herself. She did everything I asked: cleaning, buying water, picking up people at the airport, finding out street prices for sandals, and a lot of things I didn't ask like filling my water barrel, doing my dishes, having me over for Sunday lunch, even washing my clothes with me.

On Thursdays, when I ran the clinic at Delmas 24, Sendhie used to work beside me as my assistant. She's a bright young woman who hopes to be a doctor someday and I loved watching her learn alongside me. I always explained odd medical conditions that we might see and I would talk with her after patients left about other treatment options that were available or explain why I'd given a certain medication. She very quickly learned our standard formulas such as treatment for vaginal infections or fungal rashes and she would have the meds ready for me before I even finished examining the patient.

The funniest part was listening in while Sendhie translated for teams. Because they are a little intimidated by foreign doctors and because cultural rules dictate thus, Haitians will answer "Yes" to every question you ask them in examination. For example, if you ask "Do you have pain when you urinate?", the person will most likely say "Yes" without even thinking about the question. So I intentionally phrase my questions in a way that makes "No" the easier response. "It doesn't hurt when you pee, does it?" "You don't usually have the headaches in the morning, right?" I laugh to myself whenever I hear an American doctor ask a question and I hear Sendhie rephrase it perfectly with my technique.

Sendhie has a special place in my heart because it's hard to become friends with Haitian women my age. Most of the women I know who are in their twenties like me are single moms that I treat at clinic and in the ravine. I like them and they like me but we have more of a professional relationship. Sendhie, however, is my friend. We can talk about the things that young women talk about and we can laugh together and we can share our frustrations together. She is my best Haitian friend.

When I broke the news that I was leaving AMH, Sendhie nearly cried. And she nearly cried (or threw things at me) every time I saw her until the day I flew out. But I kept reminding her that I'm only leaving the organization. I'm not leaving Haiti. And now, I won't have to boss her around anymore. We can just be friends.

Transition x 2

2011-06-14T17:35:00.007-04:00

The transition this summer is not just from Haiti to Maine. My work life is also in transition: I have resigned from my position at Angel Missions Haiti. Upon my return to Haiti, I will be coming under the umbrella of Much Ministries, the organization run by my good friends Kathy and Beaver Brooks, who work in Gonaives. You can check out their website at muchministries.org

It has been an honor to work with AMH for the past 2 years, but I am ready to shift towards other things that meet my passions and my calling more closely. My plan currently is to return to Haiti in mid-August and continue my work in the ravine, at the clinic at Delmas 24, and with the youth group. I am looking forward to having more availability to meet with youth one-on-one and to take them out on community service projects and other activities. It will be great to have more time to visit and support Dorothy Pearce at the home for malnourished and sick babies, and to be available for other friends who need medical help.

If you have been supporting me through Angel Missions, I would appreciate if you made the switch too. You can donate by contacting me directly at nursekezzie@gmail.com or via PayPal on the Much Ministries website and sending a message that your gift is for Keziah Furth.

As always, I covet your prayers. Transition is never easy and this one is a triple whammy: travel to and from the States combined with the challenges of a new job and a new home. Pray for wisdom in decision making and for favor in all my endeavors during this new year.

Finally, to Vanessa and Tom Carpenter, and to everyone at Angel Missions Haiti, thank you for a wonderful two years.

Transition

2011-06-14T16:59:00.002-04:00

It's that time of year. Time to leave Haiti and go to Maine for my summer nursing job at Chop Point camp. As always, it was difficult to leave, especially with all the excitment that has surrounded my youth group for the past month - retreats, road blocks, banquets for poor people, church service led entirely by the youth, prayer and worship in a voodoo cemetary, taking care of a crippled lady in the streets, doing service projects at the church, visiting a destitute family in the pouring rain - but it is nice to be back among my camp friends. Of course, it would be a lot nicer if it wasn't so horribly cold here!

This is me. Today. Freezing. To death. In Maine.

I got to spend 3 days with my family in Boston before coming to camp. It was short but sweet. The good news is that my younger brother, Barnabas, is a counselor at Chop Point this summer, and my sister (front left) will be the dining hall steward. My mother is renting a cottage nearby so that we can see her conveniently, and my older brother and his wife (top right) are staying at my parents' condo in Boston for a few months before starting new jobs. My dad is headed to Holland for his annual teaching seminar so I won't see him again until the end of the summer.

Happy summer, everybody. Well, they keep telling me it's summer but I'm not sure I believe them. It feels a lot more like early winter...

"When you give a banquet..."

2011-06-06T13:58:00.002-04:00

We held our end-of-the-year party with the youth group on Saturday. It was the usual affair: games, singing, dancing, funny skits with Biblical lessons, and the boys lining up to get cake for the girls. What was unusual about it was that the youth group kids were not the guests; they were the hosts.

There's a passage in the gospel of Luke that says "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Another passage in Matthew talks about loving your enemies, so we combined the two for a unique celebration of an amazing year. Each youth was given one invitation and told to bring someone who was their enemy or who matched the scripture from Luke. Among the 80+ guests who came I got to meet a drunk who lives in a tent on Delmas 83, a girl with congenital malformation of her hands, 3 little street boys, 2 little old ladies, a boy with mumps, and a brother and sister who live with their parents and 6 siblings in a one room shack with nothing but a decrepit bed for furniture. One of the youth even invited a voodoo priest, but unfortunately, the man got lost and never made it. Still, the connection has now been made and we will be able to include him in our next gathering.

What a day it was! It had been raining for the past 4 days and all morning on the party day. Since Haitians do not go out in the rain, Marc and I were expecting (a bit dejectedly) only a dozen youth to come and even fewer guests. We prayed. At 1:55pm, just as we started walking to the church, the rain stopped and people began to venture out. By 3:30, we had a full house. The party lasted until 6pm and as Marc locked the last door in the church so we could go home, it started to rain again. I do not call that coincidence.

God was apparently taking care of the food for us too. I'd spent 4 hours that morning cooking Creole spaghetti for about 100 people - I didn't have time or money to do more than that. And because Haitians like ketchup on their spaghetti, we'd been given 1 bottle of Heinz. Part way through the serving of dinner, they called me over: "Kez, we've used up all of the plates!" I hunted and found some dessert plates that we could use and they kept serving. When the food ran out, everyone had eaten, even me, and a few kids had got seconds. The ketchup had run dry on the final plate of spaghetti, not a drop before. We had fed nearly 160 people.

Best party we've ever thrown!

Maine medical team

2011-06-04T09:29:00.004-04:00

My camera has died a very tragic death so I have been photo-less for about a month now. It's a rough existence. It seems like photo opportunities are twice as abundant as usual now that I cannot take advantage of them. All that to say that I wish I had more photos of this medical team's trip to Haiti last week, but I don't. Fortunately, the lack of photos does mean that the trip was lacking in any way.

I love when this team comes for several reasons. First, a group comes from their program every 6 months, so though I don't know each individual doctor, I know Dr Chi and Dr Jim, the leaders. And though most of the doctors don't know me, they have usually heard enough crazy stories about me to feel as if we are friends already. Secondly, they are from a residency program, so there is always excellent teaching during their clinics. I learn so much from working with them, as do my young Haitian translators. Thirdly, they are from Maine, one of my many homes. Visitors to Haiti are rarely from New England, so it's always a treat to be able to talk about familiar places. And it seems that one of them is always wearing a Red Sox hat!

Cock fighting

2011-06-02T11:19:00.005-04:00

I've had some fun "Welcome home, Kez" greetings when I'm walking into my neighborhood, but this one was definitely the most unexpected: a circle of excited onlookers and in the middle, 2 roosters trying to kill each other. Usually the men on the corner drink kleren (Haitian moonshine) and play dominoes, but apparently they were looking for some better entertainment that particular day. It made for interesting photos, but I can't say I'm a real fan of cock fighting. There's something very sad about watching two animals be poked and prodded back into a battle that they clearly do not want to participate in.

Let's stick with playing dominoes, guys.

Ravine news - good and bad

2011-05-25T13:45:00.005-04:00

Mumps are making the rounds through Port-au-Prince. Several of Sherrie's school kids and orphanage kids have it and a number of my ravine kids have had it. I may not be very familiar with mumps, but the Haitians sure are and they promptly wrap the poor little child's face in cloths and some kind of thick leaves that supposedly bring the swelling down. Dear little Maranatha, who mirrors her mother's cheerful "Hello's" and smiles, had it last week and never lost her big smile throughout. Sendhie, my assistant here at Angel Missions, had it 2 weeks ago. And this week Wisnal, my community health worker at Sherrie's, has it.

Immediately after my busiest stop on my ravine rounds, I walk past a tent where the woman on the right lives. She doesn't have any children in my medical program anymore (they have grown up and are in school) but she always calls out to me regardless. It's a mini-miracle each time; most adults I encounter only engage me in conversation if they want something from me but this woman wants nothing more than to say "Hi" and ask me about my day. Last week, I was in the ravine when I got the call that my grandmother had passed away. She was the first person I told and she was as kind and sympathetic as an old friend. I don't even know her name!

Vesly is 12 years old and has an eternal case of tinea capitis (head fungus). This sounds horrible but I'm glad she's been sick because I wouldn't have gotten to know her otherwise. She's got that undefeatable spirit that I've seen over and over in young Haitian women.

And then there's Betty's family. Her youngest is Samania, the little girl who has been terrified of me ever since she turned 1. Edmirson is the middle child, who was also afraid of me from about age 1 until age 2. And her oldest is Sandina, who I rarely see because she goes to school in the mornings. Since the quake, Betty, her boyfriend, and the kids have been living in a tarp-house. I've never met the boyfriend but I know he has a temper - one day in the ravine, I saw that the door to their tent was ripped off and Betty told me that he did it when he was angry with her. Scary!

The good news is that he is working and he does provide for them. A month ago, Betty called to me from the door of a real house! They'd pulled together enough money to rent a cute little 2 room apartment and when I walk through now, Betty proudly invites me in. The house must have some magical qualities because Samania overcame her fear of me as soon as they moved in. She will actually stay in the same room as me now and high five me and wave good-bye without any screaming or hiding.

Finally we come to Bergine. I first treated Bergine in the fall for his mysterious skin condition and overall deterioration. In the following months, I had him seen by several American doctors and a Haitian doctor. No one knew what to do for him. His family moved him out to the countryside after Christmas and I would hear news about him secondhand. Last week,when I stopped at his house, his sister told me he'd died over the weekend. We still do not know why.

"Jerry"

2011-05-23T09:06:00.001-04:00

A graffiti artist named Jerry has been covering the walls of Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. This is my favorite of all his drawings. The words translate to "Haiti will not perish!" I love the swollen bellies on the children, the way the words drip paint like blood or tears, and the fact that the mother is sitting on a pile of broken concrete blocks as she sews a ripped flag. Beautiful.

To me, this one simply says "HOPE."

And my other favorite is this one from a wall in Petionville. It shows Haiti suffering from the cholera epidemic, again, a very realistic and deeply moving picture.

Rain, rain, go away!

2011-05-19T18:31:00.002-04:00

Reminiscent of the freak storm that hit us in September last year, ripping down tents, trees and St Joseph's temporary tin fence, 2 weeks ago, we had another such storm whip through Port-au-Prince. This time, I had just gotten home, accompanied by one of the teenage boys from youth group who wanted to escort me and show me a shortcut through a ravine I didn't know. He left as the rain started and I quickly began putting my plants outside for their usual bath. But the wind was so strong that my plants blew over, so I brought them back in and stood in my covered porch to watch.

The rain blew sideways and the winds threatened to take down my neighbor's trees. And suddenly, with a great creaking and groaning, St Joseph's 12 foot high tin fence came crashing down, straight onto my house. First in the earthquake, then in a freak storm...I have got to convince my neighbors to stop dropping pieces of their house on mine!

The wind subsided after a few hours and the kids joined me on the sand pile for some rainy fun. I love when it rains here but sometimes I get tired of getting up at 6am the following morning to shovel away the pile of sand and mud that washes up in front of my door every time. I shouldn't complain; at least I don't have anyone's sewage draining towards my house like the people below me do!

Tet Kale!

2011-05-15T07:22:00.002-04:00

New President "Sweet Micky" Martelly was inaugurated yesterday. The streets were empty as thousands went downtown to watch the proceedings live on Champs de Mars, while everyone else stayed home to follow via radio or television. Of course, the dear current government cut power to the city for much of the day, making it impossible for your average Haitian to watch TV, and I am told by friends who did watch that former President Preval refused to actually place the ceremonial sash of authority over Martelly's head, as is tradition. He gave it to someone else who then adorned Tet Kale. I appreciate the good example of our former President - thank you for showing children and adults in this nation that we should cling to our differences and use every opportunity to show our opponents that we dislike them.

Regardless, it was a day of celebration in Port-au-Prince. Many people stayed up partying all night Friday night in anticipation (I know because the music from the parties was blasting when I went to bed at 10pm and was still going strong when I woke at 6). Walls, telephone poles, trees, and even the street have been painted with his colors, pink and white, and last night, a real fireworks show, the first I've ever seen in Haiti, went off from the mountain high above the city, so that everyone could see it.

The people love him, but now the real test starts. He has made promises. Will he be able to keep them? And how long will the people wait if the promises are slow in coming to fruition?

I never walk alone

2011-05-11T11:34:00.000-04:00

Blockade Runner Part Two

2011-05-10T13:47:00.003-04:00

Going home from Zanglais is always a sad affair. The kids are tired, we are tired, and everyone is bummed to be going back to normal life. The bus is silent.

We were halfway home when traffic completely stopped. For 45 minutes, we waited in the rain, not moving. When the rain let up a little, Scotti and I walked down the road and saw a familiar site: a large truck parked sideways across both lanes of traffic, obstructing the road. In that part of the country, a minority party won the local elections, but current President Preval's party members were named the victors. So the people have been protesting, primarily by blocking main roads. In this case, the driver was there, but the key to the truck had been taken. Scotti and I prayed over the truck and the key.

The UN arrived and began a futile attempt to tow the truck out of the road. Scotti and I decided it was time for God to move things. We went to the bus and started the youth singing worship songs, songs with lyrics like, "My Savior, He can move the mountains," and "How great is our God!" People walked by and stared at the bus full of 40 Haitian teenagers singing English Christian songs. We kept singing.

Within 5 minutes, the key had been located. Within 10 minutes, the truck was moved and we were steaming towards Port-au-Prince.

Needless to say, the atmosphere on the bus changed a little. We'd seen God move swiftly and dramatically in response to our praise; what better assurance that He was coming home to Port-au-Prince with us and that "Greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done here!"

You should become a youth leader too!

2011-05-07T09:25:00.007-04:00

How lucky am I? I get to live on a Caribbean island and work with teenagers in every moment of my free time. Invite me on a cruise, a trip to Paris, an African safari...I will turn you down each time. None of those could possibly beat my four day vacation at Zanglais with the youth group, playing wild games and doing crazy team cheers, and becoming a family.

We spent hours on the beach, getting slammed by waves and playing in the sand.

And we had our daily sessions of prayer, worship, Bible study, time to write words of encouragement to one another, and plenty of music.

Last year, the kids served themselves so much at meals that by the time we got our plates at the end of the line, there was frequently minimal food left. So this year, we served them. I dished up rice, spaghetti, chicken casserole, more rice, while Marc handed out silverware. Other days, Marc and I got to sit while Jenny and Eric served. And on those days, inevitably, a 17 year old girl named Dieula, would give one of us her plate and then get back in line for herself. We always serve the girls first and on the last evening, they, of their own accord, gave their plates away to the boys until all were served.

We occasionally second-guess ourselves: "Is everything that we do with these kids actually changing their lives? Will any of it stick with them as they move on in life?" At a bonfire on the last day, all doubts were removed.

Blanc and Bernadin, two young men who are graduating high school, shared their testimonies. Blanc used to be the biggest troublemaker in his school, stealing money from younger students, terrorizing teachers, and wreaking havoc in the neighborhood. Now, he spends most of his free time at the church, making music and helping with whatever is happening. He is dirt poor but he loves to "Stop and pray for people who are really poor." Bernadin was your typical TV teenage boy, going to parties, drinking, and rebelling against his parents. But he turned his life around when he realized that his younger brother was leading a better life than he and was losing respect for him. He told us, in tears, how hard it was to leave his old friends, but that God has blessed him through the youth group with new friends who are like brothers. One of our most reliable kids, he is now a serious student, a peer leader, and a model son and older brother.

I'm not kidding. If you haven't considered it already, you should think about becoming a youth leader too!

Climb every mountain

2011-05-04T09:47:00.006-04:00

On our first morning at Zanglais, we got up with the sun to climb the mountain that overlooks the bay. A dozen kids stormed the top and explored and reveled in the views from high above. How a morning like that makes me wish that I lived in the country!

Zanglais!

2011-05-04T09:21:00.004-04:00

The best weekend of the year is always our 4-day weekend retreat at Zanglais with the youth group. We were scrambling until the last minute this year to come up with the funds to go and a bus to get us there, but God seems to get a real kick out of giving us exactly what we need moments before we need it. Three days before we were supposed to leave, knowing that we were about $800 short, Marc and I prayed a simple prayer: "Thank You God for providing everything for this retreat. We believe Your promises and we thank You in advance for giving us every penny of the money we need."

The next day I got the call - the bus we wanted was available and we had an additional $1000 in our youth fund that neither of us had known about! So off to Zanglais we went with joyfully grateful hearts.

The best job in all Haiti: the gravel crusher

2011-04-24T09:29:00.003-04:00

The man literally sits on this pile of gravel all day long, hitting rocks with a hammer to break them into smaller pieces. Don't you wish you had a job that exciting?

Good Friday

2011-04-23T10:00:00.005-04:00

I give away a lot of food here in Haiti. Neighborhood kids, street kids, beggar ladies on the corner, youth group kids...My most frequent visitors are Obed and Jean Marc, the brothers who followed me around for several months after the earthquake. Their dad died a few years ago and their mother lost her janitorial job after the quake, leaving her destitute with 8 children in her care. Obed and Jean Marc come to my house every night for dinner. Every night. Sometimes it gets annoying, especially when they show up at 9pm and I'm already in my pjs, but what can I do? Some days, the food I give them is the only food they eat all day long.

So it was quite a surprise when they showed up last night and didn't want any food. Instead, they handed me a bag of mangos and a stack of little bowls with a complete traditional Good Friday feast: rice and beans, boiled plaintain, dried fish sauce, lettuce, tomato, and beet-potato salad! To be totally honest, I only really like the mangos and the salads, but I was really touched by the gesture.

An hour later, another knock on the door and my neighbor Alix, the man who is responsible for the tent city, was there with a foot-long egg sandwich that he had made for me! Apparently, Good Friday is the day to make your American friends fat.

Gifts of food are just part of why Good Friday was special. Kites are the main event. I got home from work in the late afternoon and joined all the young people on the roof of my next door neighbor's house to fly kites! We had a variety of kites donated from the US by the Roanoke medical team, little plastic bag kites made by the younger kids, and big wooden framed kites crafted by the teenagers and young men.

All over town, roof tops were full of children kite fighting, sending their kites across ravines to catch and cut down other kites. Kites whose strings break or that get caught in trees are finders-keepers, and though there is a lot of yelling and mock anger, the whole event is a study in good sportmanship.

I love days like yesterday - days when everyone is united in the pursuit of something beautiful. Days when no one asks me for money or food or medical care because we are all perfectly content. Days when we can fully appreciate Haitian culture without voodoo influence or the corruption that is so common here. Days when it doesn't matter that I'm white and everyone else is not. A good day.

St. Joseph's construction

2011-04-20T09:37:00.000-04:00

Almost exactly one year ago, this is what St. Joseph's looked like. They had just started to demolish the top layers of the building. These photos are from April 19th and April 25th, 2010.

By the end of May 2010, it looked like this.

In August when I got back to Haiti, it looked like this.

In January it was looking like this.

Today things look a little different. It's mind-boggling, actually, to imagine that it was only one year ago that a sad ruin of a building stood here and now...Incredible. It's the most rebar I've ever seen in my life, almost like a rebar forest. You'd think they're trying to make this new home earthquake-proof or something!

Help! I can't get down!

2011-04-19T14:36:00.000-04:00

Forget calling the fire department to rescue kittens out of trees...

Without a question, the most panicked goat I have ever seen!

Pediatricians galore!

2011-04-18T13:17:00.005-04:00

A team from Roanoke, Virginia spent last week running clinics with Angel Missions at my clinic at Delmas 24 and at a community center in Carrefour. Part of the team had been to Haiti last year during the immediate post-quake weeks and it was great to have them back! They truly impressed me with their ability to remember everyone's names, from my clinic staff to patients and families and even little kids in the neighborhood. I have a hard time remembering names and I can speak the language!

Two of the doctors are pediatricians, one is a family doctor, and the other is a retired ER doctor. The ER doctor, Dr Bob, from Missions of Love, worked with us the first three days only and after that, it was a combination of pediatricians and family practice docs each day. Everyone wanted to see children and no one really wanted to see adults! It's hard when you're used to treating childhood illnesses to suddenly be thrown an 80 year old woman with high blood pressure, edema, hemorrhoids, and no teeth! So they fought over the babies and were wonderfully good sports and treated all the little old ladies too.

I don't know why I ended up with zero photos of the nurses. They were there too though, each one working alongside a doctor to prep meds, give shots, hand out Tootsie rolls, do bandages, and tell jokes. I love working that way - each doctor having his or her own little station with meds and an assistant. It's time efficient, space efficient and patient efficient (that's a phrase I created to mean that it works best for the patient because the doctor who prescribed the med is also the one explaining to the patient how to take it instead of a pharmacist who may not know exactly why that med is being prescribed in a given situation).

They did a great job and were a pleasure to have around (best taptap karaoke I've ever heard!). See you guys next year!

Un-convent-ional vacation

2011-04-17T15:00:00.006-04:00

I took a week-long trip to the US in the beginning of April with my friend and youth group co-leader, Marc. It was an odd vacation, to be sure. We didn't go to either of our respective "homes" (Boston or Minnesota) nor did we see any immediate family members. Instead we attended a conference in Michigan where a number of missionaries, pastors, and ministers who are truly living the Christian life told their stories and encouraged the church to get up and start living out their faith. If the Bible says feed the hungry, perhaps we should actually feed them. If it says set the oppressed free, perhaps we should actually set them free. If it says to rejoice when we are persecuted, perhaps we should stop looking for comfort and embrace the tough times. If it says to heal the sick, perhaps we should heal instead of just sending Get Well cards.

I could say a lot about the actual conference, but it's difficult to put into words the ways that God spoke to my heart while I was there. It would be easy to say that by being in Haiti, I'm already doing much of what the speakers were entreating us to do, but the Bible makes it clear that it should all come from love, God's love. Too often, I find myself doing the things I do out of a sense of duty and obligation, not because I feel a burden for the hurting and lost people around me. Or I act with love only towards those who are easy to love, treating the others such as the men who hit on me or the strangers who demand money from me with impatience and even contempt at times. This business of loving Christ and living for Him is a journey and I am still learning how to step out in faith and how to rely on Him to do everything that is dropped in my lap. Fortunately, it's a rewarding and exciting journey and I'm loving every moment of it!

I can't show you photos of the conference, but I can show you our incredible accomodations! Our first night, we stayed with a former missionary friend at her grandfather's ranch near Fort Lauderdale. I got to walk barefoot in the grass - a wish come true!

From Florida, we trekked cross country in car, plane, city bus, Greyhound bus, and pick-up truck to Sylvania, Ohio. The nuns who stay at my Shoebox during their visits to Port-au-Prince come from a community in Sylvania and they invited us to stay there for the duration of the conference. Our friends Kathy, Loe and Abbey, all of whom used to work in Haiti with us, joined us at the convent and attended the conference with us. The place was huge and simply beautiful, full of lovely artwork made by the nuns themselves.

Kathy and I were given a tour of the workshop where the nuns make all the tiles for their mosiacs and for their little giftshop. I was amazed by the quality of their pieces, the precision and detail of their craftsmanship, and by the strength these sweet little ladies must have to do their work.

We were a little early for full spring, but that didn't stop me from taking long walks around the convent grounds whenever I had the chance. There was a river on one end, a little cemetary on another, a stream weaving through a garden area, and lots of trees.

My favorite spot was the little prayer chapel a short walk from our dormitory. It was made of red sandstone and is about 75 years old. It reminded me of places I've visited in Europe.

Marc and I returned to Haiti refreshed and invigorated...actually, that's not entirely true. I was exhausted and invigorated; that's what limited sleep but a very inspirational week will do to you. It was a perfect little break though because it left us wanting to get back to Haiti and back to work!

Human travel and internet travel

2011-04-16T14:29:00.000-04:00

If you're wondering why the blog has been silent for 2 weeks, it is a simple case of double travel. First I was traveling - a week in Ohio and Michigan at a conference with some of my Haiti missionary friends - and then my internet started traveling - a week at Delmas 5 with my boss. I have been able to get brief intervals of computer time at my friend's house, but it's usually limited to a few emails and updates. Vanessa, my boss, is going to Port-au-Paix next week, so I should get the internet box back soon. When I do, I will post photos of the beautiful place where I stayed in the US as well as photos from the medical team from Virginia that have been here with Angel Missions all week.

An eerie EAR-ie tale

2011-04-02T09:03:00.005-04:00

Q-tips are something of a commodity in Haiti, so I frequently see Haitians using matches to scratch and clean inside their ear canals. That's a great idea, especially when the match breaks, leaving a chunk of flammable wood in there! We were very lucky to get this one out quickly and easily.

A toddler was brought to the school in Gonaives with an ear infection last week. One of the teachers cleaned out the pus and sent the child to me for meds. But the next day, the child's mother found me and started to tell me that her son had a bug in his ear. It sounds odd and a bit revolting, but I've actually heard of this before, where small roaches crawl into ears on cold nights to stay warm and then can't get out. So I cleaned all the pus out of the boy's ear again and took a good long look with my otoscope. There was nothing there.

I told mom that the bug must have already come out and I gave her some alcohol drops to put in the ear to dry out the water I'd used to flush the ear.

Ten minutes later, the woman was back. "I put the alcohol in his ear," she said. "And this came out." She was holding a maggot.

No longer odd and a bit revolting. This was completely and entirely revolting! And incredibly sad. I've dealt with maggots in open wounds before where you can see them and pick them out or cut away dead tissue to increase the chances of healing, but inside an ear? There's no way for me to work in there and unfortunately, the fact that I couldn't see the maggot when I examined the ear probably means that it has tunneled into the infected flesh. All we could do was put him on a stronger antibiotic, tell mom to continue the alcohol drops, and pray that there was only one maggot.

It was a rather squirmy sqeamish day in the clinic!

Red Sox!

2011-04-02T08:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the beginning of the baseball season for my Boston Red Sox. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles - I actually got to watch 2 innings of the game. I bet my ravine families were rather perplexed when I went a little giddy over this boy's t-shirt...Go Sox!

Another Gonaives adventure

2011-03-29T15:33:00.005-04:00

I took Eric to Gonaives last week to kill 2 birds with one stone: he needs to get observation hours under a licensed physical therapist and the physical therapists needed someone to translate for them. So we took the public bus there (that's another whole story in and of itself!) and spent a couple days in the ghetto. Eric was a huge hit and everyone thought he was my brother. Supposedly we look just alike...despite the fact that he is tall, thin and dark. Must have something to do with both of us being white.

We did home visits in Jubilee, checking on a variety of people with physical disabilities. Most were stroke victims and it was sad to see how young some of them were, as young as 35 years old and suffering from partial one-sided paralysis already!

Kathy is teaching the ladies and young women of Gonaives how to make jewelry and wind chimes using supplies they can find locally. The ghetto of Jubilee is one of 3 major trash dumping sites for the city, so the sand flats are covered with aluminum cans, matress springs, broken glass, pieces of ceramic plates and bowls, bottle caps, and other non-flammable items that survive the daily trash-burning. It sounds silly now, but Eric and I got really excited about hunting for treasures for the ladies, so we headed off to the beach and to the dump. Local children flocked to help us as we selected the most colorful pieces we could find, loaded them into rusty paint cans and carried them back to the school. Pounds and pounds of trash that will be transformed into artwork and hopefully, a reliable income.

The Secret (of the) Garden

2011-03-19T09:30:00.006-04:00

As I may have mentioned recently, Port-au-Prince is a dusty gray wasteland and one of the ways that I combat depression from lack of greenery is with my little garden on the porch of my Shoebox. After the earthquake, the plants suffered pretty severely from water rationing (drinking and occasional bathing had priority over laundry, dishwashing, and definitely plant care in those days) and I was down to a rather sad-looking 5 plants who drooped more than they bloomed.

Once the roads opened up and water trucks were able to get into my neighborhood regularly, I began a valiant effort to save my little garden. I was so successful that in the fall, I had to separate one plant into 2 new pots because it was growing so large. Sherrie gave me 2 purple flowering plants and when my mother was in country, we bought a beautiful climbing vine. One of the neighborhood girls, 13 year old Manezda, caught the excitement and when a lady moved out of Delmas 91, leaving behind all her potted plants, Manezda rescued five of them for me! We planted them together and felt very proud.

On Mardi Gras, Marc, Eric, and I took 6 youth group kids and a few of our friends far up the mountain to Furcy. I was driving a friend's pick-up truck when we saw a lady lying on the side of the road. She had been in a motorcycle accident and although she wasn't too badly hurt, she was basically in shock. After we dropped Eric and the kids off at our hiking spot, Marc and I drove and then carried the woman home down a few miles of very steep mountain roads. We rejoined our party and began a hike in the gorgeous mountains.

Partway through the hike, a man came running down the trail to meet us. It was the injured lady's husband. "I brought you some flowers to thank you!" he explained. "I left them in your car."

I was amazed: a lot of Haitians tend to take for granted kind things that foreigners do, as if it's your job as a blan to be the Good Samaritan. Not this man. And when I saw the "flowers" that he'd left in the car, I was even more amazed. They were tall, beautiful potted plants that weighed close to 30 pounds. He had carried them up miles of steep terrain that had us puffing and panting simply to tell us thank you. To me, his act of love far outweighed our own.

Daily life

2011-03-19T09:07:00.006-04:00

Having Lauren here meant that I now have photos of virtually every aspect of my daily life in Haiti, from the mundane to the exciting.

We have the simple projects around the Shoebox, such as hanging new curtains that my mother sewed for my room, creating makeshift couch cushions from discarded foam, and hauling water from my cistern for bathing and doing dishes.

I walk on average 4 miles every day to get to my various jobs and friends' houses. Port-au-Prince is a dusty, dry, barren wasteland but here and there along my route, these flowers bloom radiantly and offer a little escape from the gray. Sometimes Marc walks with me, on our way to youth group or feeding program, and we frequently have small children following us. Sort of like the Pied Piper...

In my neighborhood, I've been too busy lately to spend much time with the kids, but at least once a week, we watch a movie or bake cupcakes or do homework together. Frantz is still the darling of my heart, even when he skips school and I have to publicly reprimand him.

Quisqueya Christian School, the English school where I have subbed in the past, still offers one of my few outside entertainments in the form of a basketball or soccer game. It's fun to cheer the kids on and to just laugh with my friends.

We recently hired a Haitian nurse named Myrlande. I am training her in preparation for my 2 month furlough at summer camp from early June to August. She has been a great addition to our team and I have high hopes for her.

Things are moving extremely slowly with medical visas, both on the Haitian end and the US Embassy end, so I'm seeing less new patients than I normally do. Despite that, my mornings can still look like this: me, in my Au Bon Pain pajamas, creating a file on a plastic surgery case while my assistant Sendhie chats with the family.

The young woman who used to lead the feeding program at the orphanage in Delmas 75 recently left for school in the Dominican, so they are in a bit of a pinch, especially to find people who can translate when teams are there. I've been trying to go every Monday afternoon and some Wednesdays too, functioning as a translator and facilitator as needed.

Perhaps my favorite part of the week is Bible study. Twelve to thirty teenagers meet with us for an hour and a half, read scripture and ask questions. How should we pray? Is is wrong for us to cheat on exams when everyone else is doing it? God says that we shouldn't sin in our anger - isn't that basically impossible? I love it!

I try to make it down to Dorothy's house to visit with the babies and the animals.

Clinic at Delmas 24 has been hopping! We frequently see more than the 50 patients I allot slots for and we generally have to turn a few away when closing time arrives. Sendhie, Myrlande, and Lucson continue to do a marvelous job running the show. I've been particularly impressed with our blood pressure program - more than half of our patients actually come regularly to receive their meds and their check-ups. For Haiti, that's pretty good.

Construction continues next door at St Joe's and in the house directly behind mine. Sometimes I come home at the end of the day to find the way to my house completely blocked by sand piles. Fortunately, Frantz and the other kids will eagerly help me clear the way whenever we can get our hands on a shovel and a broom.

The ravine is still the ravine. A few of my families recently got kicked out of their tent homes and property owners are threatening to move over a hundred tents next month. It's frustrating because there is no real solution. These people need jobs; from jobs they could earn enough to not be homeless. But where are the jobs going to come from? At least I can assure that their children are healthy. And healthy they are!

A new obsession!

2011-03-19T08:52:00.007-04:00

Youth group in Haiti has always consisted of a lot of praying, Bible studying, singing and guitar playing, teasing friends, and lots of soccer.

And now, bursting on the scene, a new youth obsession: BASEBALL!!

When Marc's brother, Eric, came to Haiti for a 5 month stint starting in December, he brought his baseball gloves with him, so I brought mine too. For the first day, it was just me and him, but to my surprise, the kids began clamoring to play too. And to my even greater surprise, they were really good! A little erratic and a little prone to overthrow, but for 16, 17 and 20 year olds, they have picked it up very quickly. Of course, I haven't trusted them with a bat; all we do is play catch all over the field, but with a few more months of practice and a few more gloves, we might be able to build a proper team.

Baseball. You don't really how much you miss it until it suddenly returns to your life!

Mackenzie

2011-03-19T08:47:00.002-04:00

Meet Mackenzie.

Mackenzie is one of the street children who comes to the feeding program in Delmas 75 where I help on Monday afternoons. He's probably 11 years old and is hands-down the most impossible child I have ever worked with. He's stubborn, he's defiant, he's moody, he's sharp-tempered, he's a bully, he's simply out of control. Short of beating him (and frankly, I'm not much bigger or stronger than he, so I don't forsee that going well) there isn't much we can do to discipline him. Our only hope for the past year has been to overwhelm him with love and surround him with people who can show him better examples of who he can be.

Last Monday, Mackenzie ran up to me and tried to yank the bracelet off my wrist. Instinctively, I pulled my hand up and away and when he made a second lunge for the bracelet, he missed and punched me in the eye. He ran off and I was left with an aching, watering eye.

A little while later, I saw him steal a ball from a smaller child. Chasing him down is counterproductive so I yelled to him that I would be sitting on the stairs, waiting for him to come give me the ball. I sat down, eye still watering, and waited. Amazingly, within 2 minutes, he brought me the ball and sat quietly beside me. "How are you doing, Kez?" he asked me.

"I'm doing great, Mackenzie," I responded. "My only problem is that my eye hurts a lot because a boy punched me today."

His smile faded. "That was me, wasn't it?" he asked.

I nodded.

To my surprise, Mackenzie reached up and started to gently rub my eye lid. I sat there, both eyes shut, slightly on edge, expecting the real Mackenzie to come back at any moment. His hand was still on my eye, so I peeked with the other and saw an incredible thing: Mackenzie, trouble-maker extraordinaire, had his head bowed and was praying for my eye!!

When he was done, he rubbed the eye a little more, then looked up at me with bright eyes and asked, "How does it feel now?"

"Better, Mackenzie. A million times better!"

Lauren's visit

2011-03-18T16:10:00.006-04:00

Lauren and I had a great time during her week-long stay at the Shoebox. Some highlights were a pancake party with a lot of music and neighborhood boys...

Gifts for all the kids including a sticky bubble-blowing kit that...ahem...we may have stolen from the goody bag and used with my Haitian staff and American friends. In our defense, I don't think the little kids could have mastered the technique...

Playing with little kids at feeding program...

I think her favorite was our time at Dorothy's. Lauren is a baby FANATIC and if there had been any way to smuggle these twins into her suitcases, she would have done it.

If I was super excited to have my friend here, Frantz was just a step behind me. He remembered Lauren from her visit in March 2010 and he spent long hours at the Shoebox with us.

Friendly visit

2011-03-06T19:14:00.002-05:00

My dear friend from nursing school, Lauren, visited me this week. She lived my normal life with me and made it not normal. It's funny how the mundane things of life become so much more fun when a good friend comes along for the ride!

Johnny J

2011-03-06T18:01:00.005-05:00

My Johnny J is doing great! He's on his ARVs to keep his HIV under control and he is going to school every day. His lisp is still very noticeable but he is starting to speak in full sentences! He likes to sing a little song that he learned at school and he can count and recite the days of the week. He's also become a little flirt that all the visitors to Dorothy's immediately fall in love with and sometimes he steals food, with encouragement from Cha-Cha. But he's so stinkingly cute that it's hard to get angry with him. His favorite nanny, Rose, is his Maman RoRo, and I am still his Maman Keziah. Isn't he adorable?

My mother

2011-03-01T08:30:00.002-05:00

My mother came to Haiti at the end of January and spent 5 days with me. We're horrible at remembering to take photos, so I have very few to show from her stay, but it was a good one. She got to come along to youth group, a work day on the church property, feeding program, medical visa appointments, lunch at Epi D'Or with Marc's kids (their first hamburger ever!), and a day of peace and quiet at Baptist Haiti Mission. It's was her second trip to Haiti but her first visit since the earthquake and her first time seeing the Shoebox and meeting most of the people who are my community. Coincidentally, my mom was there for the 26th anniversary of St. Joseph's and take part in the celebration and service with Bill, Walnes, Michael, the boys, and many guests. She got to see Bill drum and Patrick dance and taste a little of St Joe's hospitality.

(My mom and I are sitting together on the left in the below photo of the celebration at St Joe's)

One of the great things about my mom's visit was having her do some interior design touches to my Shoebox: reorganizing my shelves and my kitchen, a new bedside table, and a full length mirror so that I don't have to stand on a box anymore to see if my pants match my tops in the little mirror on my walk. Best of all, she was able to transform my exam table into a proper couch with cushions and everything. How pleasant it is to be able to sit somewhere other than my bed to read and relax!

Of course, the best part was just having her here. I love talking to my mother on the phone and during my visits to the US, but to have her in Haiti in person to meet the people from my stories and see the places where I've walked and worked...it was fantastic! Thanks for coming, Mom :)

Rice patties in the desert!

2011-02-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

Jubile, the ghetto in Gonaives where my friends work, is located on the outskirts of town, very close to the sea. It's like a desert, a barren brown plain, all dust and concrete homes and tin shacks. The little greenery that can grow is stunted and rarely survives long enough to produce crops or fruit.

Some of the children took me and Kathy out to see the rice patties on a part of the plain 10 minutes from the school. I expected to see three or four shabby plots and a few gray, dying plants. Instead, we found acres full of rich, wet fields and rice growing strong and healthy thanks to a small stream that the local women say has water all year long, even during dry season. It was beautiful and very encouraging - now we know that if we can get a reliable water source to the little gardens near the school, we will be able to grow some greenery!

"Mwen gen gwo bibit!"

2011-02-24T20:47:00.002-05:00

Translation: "I have big biceps!"

And yes, I did need to talk about that to illustrate a point for my hypertension talk. Thanks to my buddy Rebecca Brooks for the awesome photo!

Health seminars in Gonaives

2011-02-23T09:04:00.004-05:00

This week, I am working in Jubile, a ghetto in Gonaives, with my friends from Much Ministries, teaching the first of six weeks of health seminars. My classes focus on health problems that are common to most Haitians, how to prevent them and how to treat them at home in the ghetto. In the following weeks, other Americans will come to teach first aid, mother-infant nutrition and health, basic care for a hospitalized relative, and to midwifery.

My first day went well. Over 35 people attended, mostly women, but a few men as well. About 7 were midwives, 4 were nurses, one was a nurses' aide, and the others were simply members of the community there in Jubile. The topic was heartburn and vaginal infections, two conditions that my adult patients constantly present with when they come to clinic or to my house.

Apparently I provided great entertainment when I demonstrated to the crowd why it’s better to pee on rocks than on dusty ground! Don’t fear – I wasn’t actually urinating, but still, the sight of a white woman, squatting in the dirt pouring water from a cup so that it fell between her legs was quite amusing.

Needless to say, there were a lot more men in the class the following day! They were probably disappointed, though, because the lesson was about hypertension, headaches, anemia, and back pain. The dramatic interpretations were more mundane; I demonstrated proper body mechanics when lifting a heavy object and then made everyone get up and practice by picking up one of the many children who were sitting on the pavilion walls to watch. The visual aid for blood pressure was a little more fun. I put 12 year old Rebecca behind the door to the school and told her to push against me with gradually augmenting force when I tried to open the door. None of us realized just how strong Rebecca is, especially me! Everyone was laughing when I had to push my whole body against the door to get it open. But they got the point and I was able to refer back to the door example many times during my talk.

I had spoken with the Haitian nurses after the first day’s session about how we could incorporate them into the seminars. We want to teach them but also empower them to be able to really use their skills to help Jubile, so when it came time to actually check blood pressures and talk about what the healthy levels are, we called the nurses up. Each one got a stethy and a cuff and did the check-ups themselves. Something that would have taken 45 minutes had I been alone took about 10 minutes and showed those nurses that we value them and want them to take ownership of this community’s health. They were simply beaming later when I thanked them and asked them to come every day to help, especially in the weeks to come when the teacher will be someone who does not speak Creole and is less familiar with Haitian culture and way of life.

All in all, a very good start!