Hospital Grand Opening, Education, & Surgery

Hi everyone, sorry it's been so long since my last post! My computer is dying a slow and very painful death- it turns off every time I move it, and recently the keyboard and battery stopped working. I'm on a friend's computer right now.

The past week and a half, we've been doing lots of different things. Last week, on Monday and Tuesday, we went to the local hospital, St. Croix, to help them get the hospital ready for the grand opening of their newly renovated wing. There was a lot to do- we planted a couple plants and swept and mopped tons of rooms. A lot of the newly renovated rooms were barely cleaned after construction was complete so there was a lot of cleaning to do! On Wednesday, we spent some time organizing all the data we had collected from our previous projects, and thought about what we wanted to do for our education project. We decided to focus on birth control education and talking to women about their options and normal/abnormal side effects. On Thursday we created a brochure in Creole, and on Friday, we went to talk to Dr. Meresier (the doctor I shadowed during the live birth) to get his opinion on our idea. He told us that there was already a lot of information available about birth control, but that he liked our idea of walking around and talking to women one-on-one about birth control and asking if they have any questions.

On Saturday morning, we went to the opening of the hospital. The president of Haiti was SUPPOSED to come to the opening, but some of his security caravan got into an accident (I think) which is why he didn't end up coming. It was a nice event- there was a church service and then they had a tour and lunch.

At Mon P'tit Village, the activity center (where Buster lives) near our guesthouse, we've made a lot of friends over the course of the summer. We usually play soccer with them every evening at Mon P'tit Village, and we meet new people there almost every day. We decided to start English lessons for them on Sunday, because a lot of them expressed interest. We split everyone up into basic and more advanced, and I taught a bunch of the younger kids the alphabet, numbers, and some basic greeting/introduction sentences. We continued the lessons on Monday and Tuesday, and we've attracted even more kids- even some adults. They're going well and we're actually teaching in the classrooms in Mon P'tit Village now. We're going to continue teaching every day for the rest of the week, and hopefully some of the better English speakers can continue to teach the others. We only wish that we had started these classes earlier!

Work-wise this week, we started walking around with our translators and talking to women about birth control options and the importance of condom use. We were especially successful in informing younger women about the options, because they knew less and had more questions. Yesterday, we ran into a really young girl who lost both of parents and is living with her aunts. We talked to her separately and found out that she is sexually active, so we helped facilitate a conversation between her and her aunt so that the girl could get the proper medical attention and access to birth control/condoms. She was too shy to tell her aunt, so it was nice that we could kind of help mediate that discussion, even though we aren't formally trained in having these kinds of discussions. We also invited her to our English lessons so that she could get her mind off of her parent's death and meet some of the kids at Mon P'tit Village. It's a really nice community, and we thought she'd benefit from spending more time there.

This morning, I saw Dr. Meresier perform a myomectomy on a young woman. She had a large fibroid in her uterus that needed to be removed. It was the first surgery I've ever seen, so it was a cool experience. There were about 7 doctors, nurses, and assistants in the room and they were all super relaxed during the surgery. They were even discussing politics during the surgery. The anesthesiologist only administered anesthesia to the lower half of her body, so the woman was awake during the whole surgery. I can't imagine what that must have felt like!

That's all for now! We'll be leaving Leogane on Sunday morning, and we'll be in Port-au-Prince for the day and Sunday night. I'll be headed home on Monday morning!

I have a bunch of pictures from the last week, but I have a Creole lesson now and the internet is being slow, so I'll post pictures tonight!

Live Birth + Pictures of Leogane

Hey everyone!

The last couple of days have been pretty exciting. Yesterday, Charmaine, Kohki, and I went to a local doctor's clinic to watch a woman give birth to her fourth child! As soon as Dr. Merisier called us, we got ready and headed over to his tiny little clinic. The room that she was in was smaller than my dorm room at school! We arrive around 3 p.m. and waited for about 45 minutes until the baby was ready to come out. The only real technology the doctor used was a machine that was hooked up to a microphone, and recorded the baby's heartbeat. Around 4, we started to see the baby's head! He had a lot of hair on his head, and it was so amazing to be able to see a live child birth. Once the head started to come out, Dr. Merisier slowly started pulling on the baby's head (which did not look safe, but I guess it works!) to help him come out. Once the baby was out completely, the doctor held him upside for a little while and then he started crying. We watched the nurse clean him up. Besides cleaning the baby, weighing him, and cutting the umbilical cord, they don't really do anything else with the baby! They didn't check his vitals or anything. The doctor just told the mother to take the baby to a pediatrician so that he could get his vaccinations. The baby was a healthy 8 pounds and was shivering until they put clothes on him.

After the baby was delivered, we saw the doctor deliver the placenta and sew up a small tear that the mother had. He did all this very quickly and with a fraction of the medical equipment we have in the U.S. In Haiti, it's not common for the father to come with the mother to the hospital/clinic. The baby's father wasn't even waiting outside! He was at home. The mother only had her sister with her, who took pictures of the baby and sent picture texts once the baby was clothed. When we were looking at the baby, the mother's sister just picked him and gave him to me to hold! I was so surprised, considering the mother hadn't even held him yet. He was so adorable and was trying to open his eyes. Eventually the mother came over to sleep with the baby. They usually keep the baby and the mother for about 4-6 hours before sending them home. Seeing the delivery was an amazing experience and I'm so glad I got to experience that.

On Thursday night we went dancing at a place called MaSaJe groove. It was a nice semi-outdoor patio area with pretty murals on the wall and mosaic artwork on the floor. We spent a couple hours there trying to do the cha-cha and merengue. It was fun!

This morning, Charmaine and I went to the market with Lazeena, our cook. She goes to the market everyday after cooking breakfast to buy ingredients to use for our lunch and dinner. I never realized how much work it is for her to go shopping all by herself. The market was really crowded, especially since it was a Saturday, and she started bartering with the women at the stands to buy fruits and vegetables. She ended up buying passion fruit, carrots, spinach, potatoes, bananas, 60 eggs, breadfruit, rice, vinegar, oil, garlic, cherries, and "lanmbi," which is conch. She bought each of these things at different stands. She has some friends that own a clothing stand and after buying a few items she goes back to her friends' stand to store the items there. We were there to help her carry things today, but it must be pretty difficult when she goes alone. At the end of her shopping trip, Samuel, the groundskeeper at our guesthouse, picks her up and they somehow manage to balance all the food and two people on one motorcycle!


Here are a bunch of pictures from the past few days!

Holding the newborn baby boy!

One of the many cute calves in the field next to the house

The main road (route nef) that passes right in front of our guesthouse

One of the shops in Leogane

The "river"- there usually isn't much water, and when there is, it is muddy and has lots of trash in it

Women selling mangoes

"Tap-taps-" They are the taxis of Haiti- the back seats lots of people. Tons of people cram themselves, their merchandise, and often, live chickens and goats on the tap tap. When you want to get off, you tap the roof, pay the guy in the back, and the driver drops you off!

Street with many people selling things

Clothing "shop"- Most of the things they sell in Leogane- like clothing, backpacks, and toys are usually used. All the stores are like yard sales.

MaSaJe "Groove"- the dance floor

The market

Following Lazeena (on the right) through the market!

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Lazeena balancing a bunch of stuff on her head

Washing clothes!

Learning from Jocelyn

Nutrition Surveys

Hi everyone! So the past few days, we've been working on the nutrition project. Essentially, we go out and find kids who are between 6 and 59 months old. We are looking to see if they are malnourished or not and if Leogane seems to need a nutrition program. We interview the child's mother and ask her questions about the child's vaccines, eating habits, breast feeding habits, education, house type, etc. We also measure the child's height, weight, and arm circumference to determine if the child is malnourished or not. It's been really fun to work with the little kids on this project. Many kids are really nice and smile-y and cooperate with us really well, but we do run into some kids who cry like crazy every time we try to put them on a scale. We try to tell them that there's nothing to be scared of and that it won't hurt (in our broken Creole), but they don't trust us, and who can blame them? Whenever a little kid goes to the doctor for a shot, the doctor always says don't worry, it won't hurt, but then it ends up hurting so I guess little kids can't really trust us when we say it won't hurt. We did 30 surveys over the last three days and did not find any malnourished children, which reconfirms previous findings that Leogane doesn't have a huge need for a nutrition program beyond the smaller, existing ones.

Random story-

Today, we were walking by a house when we saw a woman washing a chicken. We asked if she was washing it in order to kill it, and she said yes! They laughed when we told them that we've never seen a chicken being killed before, and said that we could watch. It was so hard to watch! They plucked off the feathers near the chicken's neck and made a slice in the throat, but didn't cut the whole head off. Then they dropped the chicken on the ground and it flopped around for a while, with the head half off, flopping around. The chicken kept moving for a while because not all the nerves were dead yet and then it finally stopped moving. Watching that poor little chicken die made me really glad that I'm a vegetarian!

Another random story-
We saw a little baby on the ground in the dirt with a bunch of women sitting around it. The poor baby had its legs out but instead of sitting up, it was completely folded over with its head/face in the dirt. He was crying and screaming and the position did not look comfortable at all. The translators told us that the baby was only 4 months old. He probably wasn't able to hold his own upper body and head up yet and sit up, so he was flopped over on the ground. The women around him were just laughing and saying that they left him there so that he'd start crawling, but he seemed to young and uncomfortable to learn how to crawl in that position! They didn't even have a blanket out and didn't have him laying on his tummy or anything. In order to get them to pick him up, we had our translators tell them that we were doctors and that it's not healthy for the  baby to be in the dirt like that, and they finally picked him up. I hope they don't do that to him again!

In case you were wondering about Buster-
Buster is doing really well! He definitely recognizes our smell now and always comes to us looking for food. He's looking a little healthier, although he could put on a few more pounds. His friend, Arthur (another little puppy that lives there) is also doing well. Today, we brought Buster and Arthur some milk and cheese, and they ate it all really quickly. It was so cute! I hope we can bring him to a nice size by the time we leave!

I don't have any new pictures and that's all for now! I can't believe that I only have 2.5 weeks left in Leogane! The trip has gone by so quickly!!

SPRINT-Es & Jacmel Trip

This past week has been pretty busy! On Monday, we started doing SPRINT-E interviews. From our focus groups about the SPRINT-E post traumatic stress disorder questionnaire, we learned that there weren't many changes that needed to be made to the SPRINT-E for Haitians to understand the terms we were using. Thus, on Monday, we headed out to fill our quota of 50 SPRINT-E interviews. We split into two groups and had our translators with us. We ended up going to a nearby UN tent-city. Apparently, the tent city was a lot bigger just months ago, but now there are still about 100 tents. Our group targeted interviewing the people in the tent city from Monday to Wednesday, and each interview took about 20 minutes. We started out by describing the interview and then read the consent form to them in Creole. Then we started by asking them to tell us their "earthquake story." We asked where they were, what they were doing, how they felt, etc. Then we asked the survey questions, which asked about changes in sleeping habits, appetite, hope for the future, stress, etc. We found that the Haitians had kind of a hard time quantifying their answers (using a scale from 1-5), which was required for the interview, but in the end we managed to get the data. It was really hard to hear some of the stories, because they lost so much and we aren't able to do much to help. The last couple of questions asked if they ever had thoughts of hurting themselves or committing suicide, and it was really hard when they answered yes. If they did seem to be having these thoughts, we recommended them to some places where they could talk to a mentor or psychiatrist in Leogane. Even though we were able to talk to them and give them recommendations, it felt weird just walking away afterwards. I also don't like that we can't follow up with these people and make sure they are getting some kind of help. If these people are depressed or have PTSD, it's not likely that suggestions from some students and their translator will motivate them to go and seek help. This aspect of our work has been kind of frustrating, but I guess there isn't much else we can do given Family Health Ministry's current resources in Leogane and the fact that we don't have the education to help these people ourselves. Next week, we'll be starting our research for the nutrition project.

The UN camp we worked in

Last weekend, the graduate student, Fan, got her hair braided by some of the Haitian women that live around our house. My friend, Priscille, braided all my hair, and it took about one hour. I looked really funny!

On Thursday morning, we all headed up to Fondwa, which is a town in the mountains about 45 minutes away from Leogane. We had Ben and Cindy with us, two psychologists who were planning to do a relaxation/stress workshop with some women in Fondwa. The rest of us looked at the school there (which are just temporary shelters right now, because the earthquake destroyed their school). We also went over to the orphanage in Fondwa and spent a lot of time with the kids there. We had a really good time with the kids! The orphanage is right on the edge of a mountain. After lunch, we drove to Jacmel, a town by the ocean. We checked into the Cyvadier Hotel and spent the night there. The next morning, we did some souvenir shopping and then headed back to Leogane!

On the hike down to the orphanage/school

The view

Temporary school

The orphanage

My buddy, Naymi- We spent the morning together. We danced, I was her personal swing, and she spent at least 30 minutes repeatedly taking my watch off my wrist, putting it on her wrist, and putting it back on mine. We had a good time :)

Since the walk back to our van was really steep, we got a moto ride back up. It was fun and kind of scary to be on a motorcycle while going up steep and curvy mountain roads!

Cap Haitien + Cormier Plage

This past week, we took a little vacation within Haiti! We headed up 9.5 hours on extremely rocky, pothole-y, mountainous roads to Cap Haitien, where we say the Citadel and Christophe's Palace. The Citadel used to be a fort (it's the largest fort in the Americas) in the early 1800s. It was built after Haiti got its independence from the French in order to protect the country from any future attacks. The fort was built on top of a mountain so that it could overlook the entire valley below. We drove up most of the mountain, then had a little hike up to the actual fort. The views from the fort were amazing, and we were able to explore the fort. Henri Christophe named himself the King of the northern part of Haiti also around the early 1800s, and his palace was at the foot of the mountain that the Citadel is on. We got a chance to see that too, although the palace is mostly ruins. It was heavily damaged in a huge earthquake in the mid-1800s.

After we did a day of sight-seeing at the Citadel, we headed to Cormier Plage for a day at the beach! The trip to and from the hotel was kind of rough- we sat in the back of a pick up truck (it had benches) and headed up on some mountainous rocky roads. On the way up, I got whacked in the face by some tree branches, and on the ride back down, we hit a pothole so hard that we all flew up from our seats and came back down onto the seat really hard- I'm still recovering. However, the hotel was beautiful, and the private beach was amazing as well. It was definitely worth the rough drive up. We all just spent time in the warm water and enjoyed good food at the hotel restaurant!

In summary- we traveled up to Cap Haitien all day Monday, stayed in a guesthouse near the Citadel on Monday, visited the Citadel and the palace on Tuesday, went to the beach on Wednesday and stayed there overnight. Today, we made the long journey back until Port-au-Prince and are staying here overnight. Tomorrow, we'll be doing a little bit of sight seeing around Port-au-Prince and then we'll head back to Leogane in the afternoon!

Enjoy the pictures!

View during the ride up to the city of Cap Haitien

On the walk up to the Citadel

View from the Citadel

More mountains!

View of part of the fort from the roof

Tons of cannonballs- they were never used because the fort was never under attack

Christophe's Palace- also known as the Sans Souci (carefree) Palace

The hotel

Me and Priscille at dinner after getting dark all day in the ocean

View of the beach

Mountainside Photo shoot + My week in pictures

Hi everyone!

Today we all decided to go on a hike. You can see the mountains in a haze from our guesthouse, so we figured we could make it to one of the mountains. We walked for about an hour and a half and finally made it to the base of a mountain. We started following the mountain road and eventually found a dirt path that went straight up one of the little mountains, so we followed that path up. The view from the top was amazing. We could see most of Leogane and the ocean! We had a little photo shoot at the top of the mountain- here are the pictures!

Lasya-style picture

We ended up taking about 4 hours for our whole trip and we were exhausted  by the end!

Here are more pictures from this past week in Leogane!

Salil, Amber, and I went to work at the Hopital St. Croix Pharmacy. We got a chance to count pills to put into the bags for the patients. We spent the whole time talking to the pharmacist, Jojo. He was a really nice guy and was very smart. He told us he wasn't married and didn't have a girlfriend, so we decided to set him up with our cook, Yvette (we told her we'd find her a potential husband). We described Yvette to him and told him she was pretty and was a great cook and everything. When we got home and told the cooks about Jojo, they said that they knew him and that he was married! Jojo had facebook friended us, and we checked his Facebook and indeed, there was a comment on his wall suggesting he had recently gotten married. We were shocked that such a nice guy lied to us about his marital status, and even let us try to set him up with our cook. Turns out that lots of Haitian men aren't really truthful about this kind of stuff- don't really know why!

The hospital pharmacy- they sell medication at a subsidized price (flat rate- about a dollar per medication you get), because most of the medication is donated by missionaries. 

Buster eating some bread we brought him!

Buster with his adopted mother, and his friend, Arthur-ina (we think she's a girl). So today, when we went to our dance lessons at Mon Petit Village, we went looking for Buster. I saw him looking down at the ground about 20 feet away from me. I called his name and HE ACTUALLY LOOKED UP!! I called his name a few more times, and he actually came over to me. Amber and I gave him some Rice Krispy Treats to reward him. We were so happy that we actually managed to make the name stick! It was a great moment :)

Visiting the school at Mon Petit Village! The kids were so cute! They were running around and playing, and they sang songs for us!

Posing with the kids in the school

A view of the classroom