WARNING - x-rated photos!

I'm not kidding. These photos are utterly gruesome and you may want to ignore them and stick to the ones about cute kids.

The reality is that my life isn't composed only of cute kids. Haiti is a dark place and though I am a person who easily focuses on the beautiful, I encounter true ugliness every day. This week has been no exception.

The elderly woman who lost her daughter-in-law a month ago and her son this week. Their newborn baby is lucky to have a grandmother who cares, but he will never know his mother or his father.

The beautiful teenage girl, pregnant at 15.

The angry mob outside my house, protesting the government's decision to bulldoze a series of properties down the block. They throw rocks at the UN compound, burn tires, smash bottles and build roadblocks out of rock and rubble.

The 6 year old girl with a wound on her forehead that looks suspiciously like abuse.

The woman who comes to clinic with a rash all over her neck, a rash we almost never see unless the patient has AIDS. She sits, weak and discouraged, as our staff reads the test results to her and explains why her life is slowly ebbing away.

And finally, the old lady whom neighbors find walking to the ocean to drown herself because the pain in her infected foot is more than she can bear. They pick her up and bring her to us instead where we remove an old bandage, decrepit stitches and almost vomit when the smell of rotting flesh enters our nostrils. The three of us, Grace, Lala, and I, take turns cutting away blackened skin and draining dark red and yellowish-green pus from tunnels of infection that have overtaken her limb. We give her a shot, antibiotics and pain medications and then we wait. Wait and pray that we can save that foot.

Zanglais

I love my Gonaives life, but when I'm with my youth group...what can I say? These are some of my all-time favorite kids and some of my best friends in the whole world.

(Photos courtesy of Janelle Fosnaugh and Katie Benner and me)

The climb

We took our youth group on their annual retreat to Zanglais last week. It was the usual mix of beach time and singing time, eating time and prayer time. But for many of us, the favorite time was the mountain time. On our second day at Zanglais, I went exploring and found a path that led to the peak of the mountain that towers over the retreat center. The next morning, 41 teens and 4 leaders stretched into a long line and followed me up. 

We stopped 1/4 of the way at a large clearing where we could appreciate the view and where Dan and Kathleen could exhort the children about climbing the mountains of life through faith and perseverance.

I knew that many of the kids do not enjoy physical exertion so I gave them the option of going back to camp after the message. I expected the majority to turn back, but instead, inspired by their leaders' words and the majestic scenery, all but 7 of the kids chose to continue to trek!

The hike was hot and exhausting, especially for me. The path isn't easy to follow and since I was the only one who had already hiked it, I had to take the group of 7 back to camp and then reclimb our original route to catch up with the larger group. Many of the girls were wearing jeans and flipflops, but they all made it to the top and were brimming with pride.

This year has not been an easy one for my youth group. They have lost 3 leaders over the past 5 months and by September, all their leaders will be gone except for me, and I live 3 hours away. They came into the weekend discouraged and ready to give up, but as they helped each other over that mountain, I could see the hope come back into their eyes. God is not done with them and they are not going to stop fighting. It doesn't matter how high the mountain is or how impossible the climb seems, they are holding one another's hands and stepping forward.

Cap Haitien

For the entire 4 years that I have lived in Haiti, people have constantly asked me whether I'd been to Cap Haitien, the old city on the north side of the island that was the hub of culture and government during colonial days. The answer has been a regretful "No". So when we closed our clinic for Nurse Spring Break, Grace and I decided that Cap Haitien would be our destination.

A sickening 4 hour taptap ride over the mountains and a terrifying moto-taxi run through the city dropped us at our adorable hotel. We spent the first afternoon exploring the city and marveling at the traditional style buildings and the cleanliness!

I woke up at 3:30am the following morning with a lovely case of vomiting and diarrhea. It's been going around our community, though everyone has gotten varying degrees of illness. Some, like Grace, have been chronically pooping for 4 or 5 days while others, like me, were more violently sick for about 36 hours. I spent 6 hours on the floor of the bathroom wishing that I was dead. Needless to say, we didn't leave the hotel that day, although we did gain the strength to manage some pool time in
the afternoon.

We had only one full day left, so we got up determined to make the trek to the famous Citadelle. It didn't matter that both us had some toilet time that morning and couldn't hold our breakfast down; we were going. A taptap to Milot, a town outside Cap, and then the climb. Most people take a moto 3/4 of the way up and then hike or donkey that last stretch. We were stubborn (I have no idea why) and hiked the whole thing...that is, until we both realized that we were so weak from our sickness and from not eating, that we might pass out on the way.

Halfway up, we accepted a moto ride, only to have the moto break down before he reached the stopping point! So we were back to climbing, slowly and painfully, stopping frequently to rest and encouraging one another with thoughts of how amazing the Citadelle would be.

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Everyone has told me that the main reason to go to the Citadelle is the incredible view. This is what we saw when we got to the top.

We were completely fogged in. We could barely see 10 feet in front of us so we had to satisfy ourselves with just exploring the inside of the fortress.

We left the Citadelle when it started to rain. Because of the rain, it wouldn't have been safe to take a moto, so we hiked the entire way down, still food-less and feeling like death. We taptapped to the hotel in the rain and arrived soaking wet to the great amusement of the hotel staff. A classic ending to a ridiculously catastophic day.