Yanie saw the doctor this morning. Her surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning!! We are praying that everything goes very smoothly. We’ll try to phone Amoce again tomorrow evening and post any news we hear.
(It’s been raining very heavily for the past two days. Not good news for the people in the tent cities in Port AuPrince.)
This morning we went over to the Les Cayes soccer field where refugees are being housed in tents. Many of the tents are Boy Scout tents and the Haitian Boy Scouts are there in uniform helping out.
There are over 20 tents on the field with a family in each one. More tents are needed. Jay has a company in Ft Lauderdale that wants to donate tents. Rob Rice from Great Commission Air is here with us; he came in with Jay and 900 pounds of food yesterday. Because of the huge response to the needs of the country planes are now in short supply. Rob is trying to help Jay get those tents here.
Each tent we looked in had someone who had been injured. Most of the injured looked like they would have been in a hospital if they lived in the US. It was quiet except for a small group of women who were singing outside a tent.
There are teams of volunteers, Haitians who live in Cayes, who are organizing and managing things. They showed us their locked storage area where we saw a corner full of water packets, and another corner with rice. In one other room there was a couple small piles of donated shoes and clothes. The volunteers had begun putting together ‘relief packs’ with necessities such as toothpaste, soap, etc. They had about 100 bags organized.
Jay is loaning them a generator, wire and lights so they have better security. He also gave them funds to run 6 buses to PAP and bring more refugees out. Some of the refugees will have relatives in town but the rest will go to the soccer field.
We went to the medical tent where there were doctors and nurses from Hospital Immaculate Conception. Their meager supply of meds fit on just one table. We asked them to follow us back to the house and we supplied them with antibiotics, pain killers, etc. Tonight they will return and we’ll give them surgical dressings and more meds.
Webmasters note: Thanks to Chris at the artmuffin, for helping clear up one of the images for viewing.
-JB
The last time I posted about Yanie Dominique’s broken hip we had heard back from Dr. Nelson. He recognized that she needed a total hip replacement. He has referred us to another orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mehne. We are in contact with him now and will be working toward getting Yanie to the Dominican Republic for surgery in late October. There are many, many things to arrange if that is going to happen including a passport for her and her translator. Dr. Mehne is donating his time and the prosthesis, but there will be other costs including operating room, anesthesia, nurses, meds, housing and meals for the translator as well as transportation to and from the DR. If we can’t get all of this together in time, then we’ll make every effort to arrange it for January.
Now that we’re back, unpacked, and have settled back into a more-or-less regular schedule, it’s time to get down to all of the necessary follow-up tasks. Our first task was to write a letter to the medical director at Cite Lumiere to set up an account so that we can make referrals for the TB and HIV clinic there. We understand that we are able to write simple hand-written referrals from the field, give the person money to travel by public transport to Cite Lumiere, and they can show up and get free testing for TB and HIV. If they test positive they will receive the meds they need. (Greyson and I will be finding out more ‘exactly’ about this when we stay at Cite Lumiere in January.)
The first person we are referring is the cute little 11 year old girl in the red dress that was on the front of our fund-raising flyer earlier this summer. She’s an orphan we saw in February. When Greyson and Matt saw her at Platon in October, she no longer had any hair and she doesn’t look any healthier despite vitamins. Culturally, there may be lots of things going on, but at least we can refer her for testing so that we have a little bit better idea of what we may be able to do for her. She has a beautiful name: Wislene Noel. (She is in the photo slideshow on the right. The little girl, with no hair, in the blue dress.)
The other two are women are also from Platon. Montilia is 38 years old and pregnant. Jacqueline is 19 years old and presented with weight loss, fever, and cough. Please pray for all of them.
(I’m still not able to upload photos directly to the blog. I really need to find time to upload the WordPress software.)
We have returned from Haiti safely, and for the most part, healthy. Paul and Jan arrived about midnight last Saturday night; the rest of the team (Dr. Don, Dr. Mark, Dr. Matt, Greyson, John Burnett, and John & Lynda DuBois) arrived home about 2 a.m. last Friday morning. Dr. Don returned with a bit of pneumonia but is recovered pretty well from it; an injection of antibiotics in Haiti helped a lot.
The rice/beans/oats distribution went very smoothly. We carried 400 lbs. of food down to Haiti. We took the first full day to repack meds, sort them into separate duffle bags for the different clinic days, and to repackage the rice, beans, and oats into quart baggies. At Amoce’s suggestion we then put each food item in a small black plastic shopping bag that is common in Haiti. This proved to be the ideal solution for distribution. Each woman, mother, and/or elderly person received a bag of food when they picked up their medications at the pharmacy. It went so smoothly that there were no complaints, no competition and no arguments; we were amazed.
While it wasn’t immediately obvious that there had been a lot of damage from the hurricanes, a closer look revealed many large puddles, standing water, soggy fields, washed away hillsides and very damaged roads. We were there 6 weeks following the hurricanes so the most immediate damage was not readily apparent; many of the buildings that had been flooded have been cleaned up and the rice fields that had been ruined were being prepared again for cultivation. We did notice there wasn’t much fruit left on any of the trees. Food and gasoline were also much more expensive; we paid $10 a gallon for gas when we could find it. Only one station out of the 5 in LesCayes had any gas on our first Saturday. Amoce spent much of Sunday trying to gather up and save a gallon at a time so that we could travel to the clinics the rest of the week.
Our first clinic, on Saturday, was at Baie du Melse, a place of incredible beauty with turquoise blue water. The road to Baie du Melse was partially washed out, meaning we had to stop the trucks, load the meds into a boat and travel to the school by boat. The rest of the team had to walk because the boat broke down. We worked until almost dark, at which time we expected to take the now-repaired boat back to the trucks. Unfortunately, the boat motor broke half way across the bay and the Haitian men in the boat had to paddle back. So, part of the team were paddled back, and the rest of the team walked 40 minutes in the dark.
On Sunday we attended the contemporary worship service at Community of Grace Church on the campus of AUC. In the afternoon we took a short tour of the local general hospital to see first hand what conditions might be like. I spoke with the wife of one patient who had been staying there for 8 days caring for her husband. Her children cooked food and brought it. Although I didn’t ask her, it’s probable that she slept on the floor under his bed each night. There was no glass in the window openings, no screens, no fans. Each patient had whatever sheets/blankets they were able to bring. The wards were not crowded, although all the beds were full, but there was no evidence of “nurses” and the only doctor we saw approached us to ask why we were there. He was Haitian and had done some training in Cuba; he had 3 weeks of his ‘duty’ left at this hospital and then he intended to try to get a job with the government.
On Monday we went to a small village, not far from Cayes…about 40 minutes away up in the mountains. The road was not bad; we only had to get out and walk twice because the surface was limestone and slippery. We worked in the school building…a three room hut with a tin roof and thatched sides, but with a million dollar view! (Of course, the view is made possible because of all the deforestation.) The pastor’s wife and women made a buffet dinner for us and we left after dark had fallen. We hope to return to this village to work on environmental projects, perhaps starting with a cistern to catch rainwater on the roof since the villagers have to walk to the next mountain for water. The drive back to AUC was punctuated with amazing views of the Milky Way and the constellations.
Tuesday was our most adventurous day when we returned to a church we’ve visited twice before named LaPrete. The road is tortuous up the side of a beautiful lush mountain. However, we got stuck twice in the river crossing (once after dark) because the river was just too high for us to see the rocks, and the other side was over 1.5 deep in fine gravel. But, as is always the case, Haitians appeared out of nowhere and with strong backs pushed the truck out of the river and up the side of the mountain. John DuBois used his excellent driving skills to drive the second truck straight through without any problem at all…much to the appreciation of those of us riding in the truck who cheered our “Bon Chauffeur!!” Once arriving at LaPrete, part of the team….the hardy souls among us….had another hour’s hike on foot up to Platon. Dr. Matt, Greyson, and Paul walked up with 2 donkeys following them with med bags.
Wednesday was a more tame day, with just an hour’s drive on mostly flat roads (just a few deep puddles, deep ruts, and mud) to a school building in Govin. We appreciated the easier physical pace of this day. We had killed one of the trucks the day before (the white one in the river photo), so we were graciously offered the use of another missionary’s truck.
All in all we saw almost 800 patients with three doctors over 4 days. Amoce, from Mustard Seed Haiti, did an awesome job in pulling together all of the logistics for the trip, which meant he was not done working by the time we were in bed each night.
Paul and Jan were able to stay two days longer to do some networking and make future arrangements. One of the highlights was spending almost two hours with the American missionary surgeon at Cite Lumiere who will be doing the surgery on three patients we are referring (facial cancer, testicular cancer on a 21 year old, and a gangrenous foot.) We also saw cases of what appeared to be TB; we’ll be making referrals for those patients to go for testing and setting up an account to charge Mustard Seed for the medications.
We met another American missionary who has been living in Haiti for two years. Jenn volunteered to translate for us and we were able to have her do intake for all of the patients we saw. She is a friend to Witchner and Amoce and we expect that she will be visiting us here in Mass. in December.
We took hundreds of photos, but I won’t attach more of them here. Someone once wrote, Haiti is the only country with a ‘last name’….“Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere”. Unfortunately, that’s true…almost every article you read will say that. However, Haiti is a beautiful country with beautiful people. Any one of us would be happy to share more photos with you. We will have a powerpoint presentation running at the missions conference at College Church this weekend.
We thank each and every one of you for your gracious and generous support; it made this trip, the medications, and the subsequent medical treatment possible. We appreciate all of the prayers that were lifted to God for our safety. Please continue to pray for the people in Haiti.
Thank you!
October 23, 2008
We left Northampton at 3:30 a.m. for a smooth ride to JFK arriving there by 7 a.m. without getting caught in rush hour traffic. There are new check-in procedures…electronic kiosks that allow you to swipe your passport and get a boarding pass. Then you walk your luggage over to small individualized counters to be checked in. The process is incredibly smooth without long lines to stand in. We proceeded to our gate with ease. Once at the gate we had about 3 hours to wait for our plane.
The flight to PortAuPrince was smooth and we landed on time. More miraculous was the fact that we passed through customs without them inspecting any of our 20 duffle bags! This is the first time we have not been stopped and searched…truly amazing! Following that we walked out to Nader’s new large tour bus for the short trip to the small airport for our Tortug charter flight. Again, that whole process proceeded very smoothly. We took off at 3:00, right on schedule and landed in LesCayes at 3:45 where Amoce and Judy Foster were waiting to greet us!
This was definitely the smoothest, easiest trip that we have ever had!