May 13th, 2010
Yesterday we received an email from Judy Foster in Les Cayes. She’s been working with a visiting surgical team in PAP. She wrote to ask if we could locate the young baby boy who needed cleft palate surgery; if we could find him then the surgeons could fit him into their schedule before they return to the US. Jean Henri was seen by us last October in Nan Dot; he must be between 8 and 10 mos. old now. He was scheduled for surgery in February, but then the earthquake happened.
Judy’s email asked if we could have him at her house tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. and she’d drive him and his mother to Port for the surgery. This came out of the blue! A couple quick emails to Amoce, and a phone call late last night to make sure he knew about it. Then tonight…a few minutes ago…Judy emailed to say that Jean Henri and his mom are meeting her in the surgical tent in PAP.
We still don’t know all the details of how this managed to come together, but we do know that God is good!
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May 12th, 2010
This is a good time to share an episode from our trip last month. It was a “first ever”, but it wasn’t funny for the horse!
At the end of our long day at Nan Doti, Pastor Wilfrid came to us and said that a farmer had brought a horse and asked if Dokte Mark would look at it. Animals are very valuable property in Haiti and the farmer really wanted to take care of his horse. The horse had very nasty abscess the size of a football right in front of his hind legs. Being the good sport that he is, Mark agreed to look, said “Sure! We’ll fix it!” … then he asked about the horse’s temperament and returned back to his table to finish seeing patients.
In the meantime, the farmer hobbled the horse and tied it to a tree, so that it wouldn’t be any ‘trouble’. We were soon done seeing patients. As Mark walked back toward the horse, Bob Myers volunteered to take a look at the poor animal. Bob and his wife raise llamas, so a large animal was no worry for him! Yes, indeed, Bob got right to it, lanced the abscess, debrided it, peroxided it, and gave the farmer instructions on caring for the open wound.
The horse was also given megadoses of antibiotics to fight off infection. The farmer sure was grateful for all of the medical attention for his horse and it made a comical ending to our day. At the end of the day, we hope he had a healthier horse and both Bob and Mark have something else they can add to their resume!
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May 10th, 2010
Amoce and Carli have been working to plan another food and tent/tarp distribution. It looks like they’ll be able to do one this Friday in the area around Ti Goave. Here is a picture of that area from when we were there in January.
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May 4th, 2010
Check out the new video just posted. Click on the “Photos/Videos” tab above.
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May 1st, 2010
One of our most exciting days this trip was the day we were in Platon to do medical clinics. In addition to the medical clinics we had another project to investigate. Way back 3 months ago, Paul, Amoce and I went up to Platon to have a meeting with the community there. We like to take the opportunity to listen to what a community has to say. We asked them what their biggest problems were. One that rose to the top was having sufficient water. The discussion about water went on for a long time. They told us there were two springs (sous) that ran all year long. One was far away (4 hour walk), the other closer (15 minute walk). So after that meeting Paul got to thinking, and decided that he needed to go see the sous when we were back in Haiti.
He and Enrique left early in the morning with Vilbon Dominique, a member of the committee and Yanie’s father, to walk to the closest sous. They were gone for several hours. Paul returned with incredible pictures of beautiful mountains, women walking up the mountain carrying water, and women doing their laundry together in the pool formed by the spring. 
He also came back saying he couldn’t believe how steep the climb was and how difficult it was to get to the place. They had already poured a concrete cistern a long while ago, but never used it and it wouldn’t hold water now anyway. They also had poured a pad for a generator far down the other side of the mountain near where the spring is. The idea was to pump water up the mountain to the cistern and then let it be gravity fed to two communities down the mountain. It was impressive to think they’d been able to manage to build those structures.
On the way back down to Platon he also learned that there are 70 houses in the mountains in the area that have rain-water collection cisterns, but most of them are no longer functioning because the metal roofing is too badly corroded. Paul was told that the water that used to collect in those cisterns was meant for community use and was shared by everyone.
After we came back to Massachusetts, Paul kept thinking about the feasibility of delivering that water to a community. He’s continuing to investigate options and has had one meeting with an engineer he works with. There are lots of challenges, but it will be an interesting project if we can figure out how to make it work.
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April 29th, 2010
Little two and a half year old Judeline came to see us in Nan Doti with her mother. She has a congenital deformity of the left hand, right foot and leg. She’s a real cutie who managed to run around very well despite the fact that her right foot faces backwards. Bob Myers and Mark Bigda evaluated her and determined that it appears she actually has all of the finger and toe bones, and that her leg is relatively normal from just below the knee. We came back from Haiti with the intention of trying to find a surgeon who would do corrective surgery.
Yesterday I emailed a pediatric orthopedic surgeon from CURE International. This morning we got an email back saying that she could get surgery in two weeks in Carrefour!! Dr. Nelson saw her photos and said she probably has “constriction band syndrome” and it’s likely they can ‘improve the situation significantly!” Wow! God is good!
There’s a lot of logistics to work out before then, but we’ll all work hard to try to make it happen. Amoce is going to be a busy guy!
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