Hello from Haiti ! Well, it has been a long day, but a good one. We arrived around 11:30am, and the airport experience was CRAZY, but we eventually found our driver, and drove to the hospital. The traffic here is absolutely chaotic; there are no lanes, people are honking their horns and yelling, there are UN trucks going by with guys with machine guns on top, and at the same time, goats, pigs, and dogs wandering the street. There are ladies walking with buckets of water on their heads and lots and lots of rubble and tent cities.
We were oriented at the hospital from 12:30 to around 6:30 pm, and it is quite overwhelming. I am getting all the names of people mixed up, between the patients, the employees, the administrators, and the volunteers. Toward the end of the day I started to feel a little more comfortable, but Monday is going to be interesting in the least, without Donna here. She told me that she already told the administrator that I would go with her to the meeting on Tuesday (with all those important people - the Haitian Minister of Health, the World Health Organization, etc, etc). She thought that I was the obvious choice since I am here for two weeks and so I can go to two meetings.
We have three interpreters who are going to stay with us the whole time. (that' the good news). The bad news is, we have to pay them privately at the end of each week. The hospital had been paying them, but that ended today. Their agreed rate is $4 per day, and they are working Mon-Sat. So, I am expected to pay each of them $24, and then give them a $20 tip, each week. Ky and I will split the costs for all three interpreters. They are pretty important though, and make the work easier. My personal interpreter's name is Alex; the other two are Gibson and Emmanuel.
Donna has already changed the name of our group to "Global Therapy Group" - does that surprise you? :)
I saw two inpatients this afternoon, one of which was the pregnant woman who is an amputee. She has not had her baby yet, but it will be any day. Her stump is much better (not as swollen), and she walked about 100' with a walker today. The other patient will be my special project. Her name is Judilene and she is 15. She has a below the knee amputation on the right, and an ankle injury on the left and a severe wrist injury with a tendon transplant on the left. She was just curled up in the corner not moving and not talking to anyone 4 days ago, and now she is walking about 15' with the walker and moderate assist. She has a long way to go, and she is kind of moody and suspicious of us, but begrudgingly does her therapy if she gets two stickers afterwards to decorate her wheelchair. I'll do my best to win her over. :)
The construction guys put up the center wall of the new outpatient clinic today, and they are putting the tarp (the roof) on tomorrow. They had two largepieces of tarp that needed to be sewn together. There were no needles, so they pounded out a nail and made an eye in the top, and made homemade needles. So we spent the last two hours or so sitting on the top of the hospital roof (that's where they are camping out), sewing by hand this large tarp. We finished and then sealed it with duct tape. The ribbon cutting ceremony is tomorrow, and we open the outpatient clinic on Monday!
Our driver came at 6:30, and it took us about an hour to get up the mountain to the guest house. It is very pretty up here, and cool. The city was very hot today and the hospital didn't have power all day, so we had no fans and no lights. Dinner was very nice; fish, green beans, rice, and a kind of warm potato salad. Then we had about an hour downpour of rain.
I'm pretty tired now; it's 10:10 here, but it's been a very long, but fun day. We have church tomorrow (3 hours long) and then we are going to visit the orphanage, so that should be fun.
Blessings to all!
Janean
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