I'm usually up quite early. Monday mornings are amusing because I spend quite a bit of the early quiet time mentally planning the week before I remember that it is a waste of time. I almost always start the week with enthusiasm, thinking of all the things I want to get done. While it's good to have an idea, some structure to my plans, I can usually throw 3/4 of it out the window.
What I love about living and working here is that no one day is like another. Events come up that lead you in all kinds of different directions. It also means that almost a year can pass before you actually start something that you want to do. I always have a list of projects in my head. Things like doing in-services for the staff on various clinical nutrition topics, which I never seem to have the time to sit down and develop let alone schedule, and then deliver. I'm excited about this week because it is a time-to-breathe week, a waiting period that can be put to good use.
Anyway, all of this is to say that my project(s) this week is to look at what we are doing for our patients with diabetes (for food) at the hospital. This will entail looking at the hospital menu, which will lead to another project of planning a new menu, with diabetes options, and then some staff education. We have a new hospital population, our paraplegic patients, which means the length of stay is longer, so menu variety and fibre content needs to improve too. Many times when I start one project, it branches into other areas.
So, heaven only knows what will get accomplished this week, but I am sincerely hoping that I can check a couple of things off the mental list in my head. And am hoping that this week ends with some very good news - the end of a waiting period and the beginning of something big, new, exciting and terrifying :)
4.22.2010
Haiti Wants Food Aid to Stop?
This article on the CBS website takes a complex situation and just makes it look bad. So many people have donated money and now they are going to wonder why.
The problem with the article is that it just talks about food aid....in Port au Prince. There is so much else in Haiti that needs to be done with the relief money, things that will have long-term benefits. Things that will create employment - so people can buy food, clothes, and pay for school. Food aid is not a sustainable thing, it doesn't help people grow their own food. Clearing rubble, building schools, funding agricultural projects, integrating the relief medical system into the Haitian medical system to employ Haitian nurses and doctors, are all relief activities that will have long-term impact on the quality of life in Haiti.
The problem with the article is that it just talks about food aid....in Port au Prince. There is so much else in Haiti that needs to be done with the relief money, things that will have long-term benefits. Things that will create employment - so people can buy food, clothes, and pay for school. Food aid is not a sustainable thing, it doesn't help people grow their own food. Clearing rubble, building schools, funding agricultural projects, integrating the relief medical system into the Haitian medical system to employ Haitian nurses and doctors, are all relief activities that will have long-term impact on the quality of life in Haiti.
4.19.2010
What we do with the help of great partners
Healing Hands for Haiti has sent several teams and individuals to our hospital to help us with our spinal cord injured patients. They have been really remarkable, and we've appreciated their support so much. A recent HH physical therapist had this article about her experience published here.
Concord Monitor - Physical Therapist Finds Need in Haiti
Concord Monitor - Physical Therapist Finds Need in Haiti
Donna Lannan had wanted to go abroad on a medical mission for years, but none of the places she considered felt right until the ground began to shake in Haiti.
After the Jan. 12 earthquake that left more than 200,000 dead and once the survivors were pulled from the rubble and their wounds patched, Lannan, a physical therapist, knew she could help. There would be Haitians who suffered spinal injuries and would need months of therapy to return to their homes - if their homes hadn't been destroyed in the quake, which left an estimated 1 million homeless.
"They had such a huge number of rehab injuries. . . . That's a role that a PT could really step into and be needed," Lannan said yesterday, a week after returning to her home in Concord.
4.14.2010
Sleeping with Peace
I've recently stopped feeling phantom aftershocks. Even when I was home in Canada and there would be vibrations from people walking heavily across wooden floors, or from furnaces starting, I would be startled for a split second until I realized what it was. I could feel my pulse start to race, and then remember that I was far away from Haiti.
I was about 50 miles from the epicenter of the EQ and did not see the initial suffering and shock first hand, and so was spared the nightmares and PTSD-like symptoms that so many people are dealing with. I'm realizing now though, that I wasn't left untouched. Every time I go into the basement depot I was in when the tremors started, I remember the thoughts that were going through my mind and my hurried exit to the middle of the yard while trying to stay on my feet and being afraid that the swaying dump truck was going to let loose and crush me. I remember my almost immediate fear for the people of Port au Prince.
We had an aftershock last night, just before midnight. It was a 4.3 and located in TiGoave, which is closer to us than the big one. It wasn't long, but it was enough to bring me wide awake with my bed moving and bookshelf rattling. I know that if a big one ever strikes closer to us here, and I am in my room, that I probably will not be able to get out before the building collapses. That's a thought that I've been living with since 12 January.
Like everyone else in Haiti, I fear when another one will come, but also like most everyone else, I know that life must go on, will go on and that I cannot let fear become my constant companion. I also know that I have no control over when my time on Earth is up, that it's in God's hands along with everything else, and there is a tremendous peace that comes with that. More than enough peace for me to go back to sleep.
I was about 50 miles from the epicenter of the EQ and did not see the initial suffering and shock first hand, and so was spared the nightmares and PTSD-like symptoms that so many people are dealing with. I'm realizing now though, that I wasn't left untouched. Every time I go into the basement depot I was in when the tremors started, I remember the thoughts that were going through my mind and my hurried exit to the middle of the yard while trying to stay on my feet and being afraid that the swaying dump truck was going to let loose and crush me. I remember my almost immediate fear for the people of Port au Prince.
We had an aftershock last night, just before midnight. It was a 4.3 and located in TiGoave, which is closer to us than the big one. It wasn't long, but it was enough to bring me wide awake with my bed moving and bookshelf rattling. I know that if a big one ever strikes closer to us here, and I am in my room, that I probably will not be able to get out before the building collapses. That's a thought that I've been living with since 12 January.
Like everyone else in Haiti, I fear when another one will come, but also like most everyone else, I know that life must go on, will go on and that I cannot let fear become my constant companion. I also know that I have no control over when my time on Earth is up, that it's in God's hands along with everything else, and there is a tremendous peace that comes with that. More than enough peace for me to go back to sleep.
4.06.2010
Port au Prince
I have a love-hate relationship with Port au Prince. Going there now, usually for morning meetings, means getting up in the middle of the night and leaving here at 4 am. In the past, if we had morning meetings we would go in the night before and stay over. We no longer have anywhere to stay.
Port au Prince is a wacky place. One of the things I like about going there is the entertainment driving around the city provides. It's a survival-driven city, full of people who work incredibly hard to get by. The EQ has intensified it, but it has always been that way.
There's not much going on for law enforcement of minor things, like securing loads on vehicles, or limits on loads for that matter. You see buses so top-heavy with goods it makes you shudder and then there are passengers sitting on top of that.
We watched a young guy the other day riding in the back of an open panel truck that had an upright refrigerator in it. He was lying on top of a couple of tires beside it, unconcerned as we went through the unpaved section of the city where the oil tanks are. The refrigerator was bouncing and dancing around, ready to fall on him. He saw us laughing and shaking our heads in the vehicle behind, so he continued to lie there, but did the splits and put one foot and leg up the side of the fridge to stabilize it. Not sure how that story ended.
The city changes every time we go in now. There are no long lines of women along the road receiving food in the mud and dust of the oil tanks and trucks. People are moving rubble around (not sure if it's actually making it out of the city) and traffic is bad because more streets have become blocked. We drove by the collapsed Palace of Justice the other day to see that everything had been completely removed, hardly a speck of dust left. We saw another place close to the port that was completely cleared too and I was told that it was going to be a new base for the American military.
Despite those few signs of progress, not a lot has changed as far as improvments for the people, particularly those who have been displaced. It is going to be very difficult to move people, as I think many of them have lost the thought of "temporary" housing, especially those who have set up thriving little businesses in their new location. They will not want to give that up.
Port au Prince is a wacky place. One of the things I like about going there is the entertainment driving around the city provides. It's a survival-driven city, full of people who work incredibly hard to get by. The EQ has intensified it, but it has always been that way.
There's not much going on for law enforcement of minor things, like securing loads on vehicles, or limits on loads for that matter. You see buses so top-heavy with goods it makes you shudder and then there are passengers sitting on top of that.
We watched a young guy the other day riding in the back of an open panel truck that had an upright refrigerator in it. He was lying on top of a couple of tires beside it, unconcerned as we went through the unpaved section of the city where the oil tanks are. The refrigerator was bouncing and dancing around, ready to fall on him. He saw us laughing and shaking our heads in the vehicle behind, so he continued to lie there, but did the splits and put one foot and leg up the side of the fridge to stabilize it. Not sure how that story ended.
The city changes every time we go in now. There are no long lines of women along the road receiving food in the mud and dust of the oil tanks and trucks. People are moving rubble around (not sure if it's actually making it out of the city) and traffic is bad because more streets have become blocked. We drove by the collapsed Palace of Justice the other day to see that everything had been completely removed, hardly a speck of dust left. We saw another place close to the port that was completely cleared too and I was told that it was going to be a new base for the American military.
Despite those few signs of progress, not a lot has changed as far as improvments for the people, particularly those who have been displaced. It is going to be very difficult to move people, as I think many of them have lost the thought of "temporary" housing, especially those who have set up thriving little businesses in their new location. They will not want to give that up.
4.04.2010
Happy Easter
Happy Easter everyone! The Peeps and Eggies made it Haiti in my suitcase and look very nice on the table this morning. Only a few casualties during the trip - some cracked eggs and one Peep lost his face.
4.01.2010
Beautiful story
There are some amazing people blogging from Haiti.
Here's a beautiful story from Haiti is Such a Strong Word.
Here's a beautiful story from Haiti is Such a Strong Word.
This makes me smile
This article was in the New York Times yesterday.
Haiti's founding document found in London
By Damien Cave
There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.
A Canadian graduate student at Duke University, Julia Gaffield, has unearthed from the British National Archives the first known, government-issued version of Haiti’s founding document. The eight-page pamphlet, now visible online, gives scholars new insights into a period with few primary sources. But for Haitian intellectuals, the discovery has taken on even broader significance.
Continue reading here
Haiti's founding document found in London
By Damien Cave
There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.
They proclaimed their freedom boldly — “we must live independent or die,” they wrote — but for decades, Haiti lacked its own official copy of those words. Its Declaration of Independence existed only in handwritten duplicate or in newspapers. Until now.
A Canadian graduate student at Duke University, Julia Gaffield, has unearthed from the British National Archives the first known, government-issued version of Haiti’s founding document. The eight-page pamphlet, now visible online, gives scholars new insights into a period with few primary sources. But for Haitian intellectuals, the discovery has taken on even broader significance.
Continue reading here
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