Ellen in Haiti

Changing Neighbourhoods

2010-05-30T19:27:00.004-04:00

Well, after a lot of thought and investigation I've decided to move from Blogger to WordPress. I have migrated all of my old posts from this blog to the new one and will no longer be posting on this site. Please join me at my new address:

Click Here: ElleninHaiti.WordPress.com

Bye Blogger. It was great while it lasted!

Road Trip

2010-05-29T10:13:00.000-04:00

We are definitely entrenched in the rainy season. Every morning since Tuesday we have woken up to grey skies and mud. It rains off and on during the day and night, sometimes a sprinkle, sometimes a torrential downpour. The roads are muddy and slick.

Yesterday afternoon, a Friday after a busy week, we decided to take a drive out in the Rhino to a nearby mission to check on friends who are visiting there. We needed to get out and it was the perfect excuse.

Duverger is about a 30 minute drive into the mountains. It is beautiful and very green right now. Because of the clouds and rain the distant mountains aren't visible and the tops of the nearby ones are shrouded in mist. There weren't many vehicles or motos on the road because of the mud but there were plenty of people on donkeys and horses, or on foot - yesterday was market day in our central village and everyone was returning home.

The Rhino is quite a remarkable little machine. It does much better in the mud than the Landcruisers or motorcycles. There were no hills we weren't able to get up, no mud patches we got stuck in, and it didn't slide around very much. We did have to get out at the river in Duverger and wade across in waist-high rushing water. The Rhino couldn't make it through water that high. The children's home and guest house for Movin' With the Spirit, was thankfully just up on the other side so we didn't have far to walk.

We visited the missionaries there for a while, saw their recent house improvements, and were surprised with a generous and tasty meal before we headed back before dark. Unfortunately, the visitors we had gone to see, the Loyola medical student team, had gone out on clinic and had not returned before we had to leave.

We had a blast driving on the roads and appreciated the adventure of crossing the river. We arrived home muddy and wet, and smiling. Sometimes things here get really busy and we don't leave the residence or our offices very often. It's times like yesterday that remind us where we are.

Playing around

2010-05-23T22:01:00.004-04:00

I'm tired of the look of the blog and want to update, so don't be surprised if it changes frequently until I have what I want. It's not going to stay like this for long....I hope

From SBHF blog: New Wheelchairs

2010-05-23T11:15:00.003-04:00

Copied from a St. Boniface website blog post.

New Wheelchairs

By Ellen on May 22 2010, 11:20am

This past Friday afternoon we were visited by two wonderful organizations, The Walkabout Foundation and Whirlwind Wheelchair International. The visit was organized through collaboration with Partners in Health They came to give our paraplegic patients new chairs that will be sturdier and stronger for them to use on the rough terrain in Haiti. The chair, called the Rough Rider, was designed by Whirlwind. The visiting team included technicians, therapists, organizers and the designer of the chair. The fitted each of our patients with a chair and showed them how to safely use them. The chairs were well recieved and today the patients are putting them through their paces. Thank you Walkabout and Whirlwind!

More photos here

Questions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10....

2010-05-23T10:34:00.000-04:00

Sorry, Kayaker, I just saw your questions. I'll answer some of them below - the ones I'm not too lazy to think about on a Sunday morning.

Take your pick:

What direction do your windows face? Can you see the sunrise? Sunset?

My bedroom/office window faces south. I miss the sunrise and sunset, but I can see all the action in the yard. That's not always a good thing.I also have a window that faces west, but the view is blocked by palm, mango, almond, lime, and banana trees. And chickens. And sometimes frogs.

Based on pre-earthquake and post-earthquake Haiti, what would you say has improved? I'm thinking not about just since the earthquake, but wondering about something that might have improved because of the quake.

The availability of medicines and healthcare has improved. We are well stocked and can refer patients to the foreign run hospitals in Port au Prince for free care right now. We can call for helicopter transport at this time too. No one knows how long this is going to last, but for now people have access to care like they have never had before.

What do you eat? What's something you like to eat? What's something that you don't really like but eat because it's available? Do you go hungry at times? Do you miss dulce? Is there anything like dulce in Haiti?

I usually eat a heavy bread made from unenriched white flour for breakfast. Lunch is very often rice or rice and beans with a fried meat of some kind - either pork, goat, beef or chicken. Supper is usually a cold repeat of lunch modified to make it more interesting, or we make sandwiches or pasta. I am very tired of the food but there's not a lot of options.

Surprisingly, we don't get a lot of fresh fruit, but some seasons are worse than others. Most of the time the fruit that is available is made into juice with too much sugar. Right now we are waiting for mango season to start. I love mangoes and that's a good thing because there are TONNES of them within on our property.

I don't usually go hungry unless we are on the road. I gain a few pounds when I go home, and they come off again after a month or so back in Haiti. I initially lost about 10 pounds when I first came and it hasn't changed any since. Too bad.

I like dulce but I don't miss it much. I haven't seen anything like it here.

How are your long-term patients doing?

They are doing great. They have struggles because their lives have changed so much, but they are happy to be somewhere where they are receiving good care and support. The support we have received from other organizations in response to our new patient population has been nothing short of extraordinary.

They have formed their own little hospital community here. They have a lot of fun together and the community has embraced them.

Is the coffee better than at home?

Undeniably.

Does the roof leak during the rainy season?

I have a concrete roof on the residence where I live. Means it doesn't leak, but it also is a risk in earthquake zones. I try not to think about it. We get more leaking through windows and doors when it is really windy. We don't have glass windows or shutters, but have louvres we can shut.

Read any good books lately? Where do you read?

I recently read Cold Mountain because I loved the movie and it was the only interesting thing on the shelf. I don't do a lot of reading because I can't seem to stay awake long and the only chance I really have to do it is at night.

Are you seeing any tourists? Did you see any before?

Not a lot of tourists here. Most people seem to have a reason to be here and then take side trips to see places like Ile a Vache, Jacmel (before the EQ), and Port Salut.

NYT - Signs of a Cover-Up After Killings in a Haitian Prison

2010-05-23T10:10:00.005-04:00

Deborah Sontag of the New York Times has written some superb articles about Haiti. She and photographer Damien Winter visited us here for a couple of days before she filed the story about rural Haiti. Yesterday's story about the prison riot in Les Cayes a week after the earthquake is compelling and stomach turning.

Quoted in the article is Fr. Marc Boisvert, a friend of ours who has a large orphanage near Les Cayes and has shown great compassion in his years of work at the prison.

See more of Deborah's articles here.

Signs of a Cover-Up After Killings in a Haitian Prison

By DEBORAH SONTAG and WALT BOGDANICH

Published: May 22, 2010, New York Times

LES CAYES, Haiti — When the earth shook violently on Jan. 12, the inmates in this southern city’s squalid prison clamored to be released, screaming: “Help! We’re going to die in here".

Elsewhere in Haiti, inmates were fleeing largely undeterred. But here, where the prison itself sustained little damage, there was no exit. Instead, conditions worsened for the inmates, three-quarters of them pretrial detainees, arrested on charges as petty as loitering and locked up indefinitely alongside convicted felons.

After the earthquake, guards roughed up the noisiest inmates and consolidated them into cells so crowded their limbs tangled, former prisoners said. With aftershocks jangling nerves, the inmates slept in shifts on the ground, used buckets for toilets and plotted their escape.

The escape plan, set in motion on Jan. 19 by an attack on a guard, proved disastrous. With Haitian and United Nations police officers encircling the prison, the detainees could not get out. For hours, they rampaged, hacking up doors and burning records, until tear gas finally overwhelmed them.

In the end, after the Haitian police stormed the compound, dozens of inmates lay dead and wounded, their bodies strewn through the courtyard and crumpled inside cells. The prison smoldered, a blood-splattered mess.

Continue reading here

This Morning's Smile

2010-05-21T11:14:00.003-04:00

My window in my bedroom/office window looks out onto the yard and depots. I was just watching three of our paraplegic patients have an impromptu wheelchair race down the driveway. So great to see those young guys, who have lost so much, having a good time.

Toxic benevolence

2010-05-21T10:46:00.004-04:00

HAITIAN FARMERS COMMIT TO BURNING MONSANTO HYBRID SEEDS

By Beverly Bell

May 17, 2010

www.truthout.org

"A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of
the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be
donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable
seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has
committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest
the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent of May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive
Director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of
the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti
"a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on
Creole seeds..., and on what is left our environment in
Haiti."1

Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports
of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks.
They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs).

For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of
Agriculture rejected Monsanto's offer of Roundup Ready GMO seeds. In an
email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of
Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMO.

Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto's Director of Development Initiatives, called the
news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation "a
fabulous Easter gift" in an April
email.2

Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMO seeds, in
both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive
technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of
what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with
representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find
themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they
find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the
fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with
thiram.3

Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene
bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats
caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then
ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so
dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective
clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a
special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the
chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most
gardeners do not have adequately protective
clothing.*4*

Monsanto's passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in
an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special
clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Haitian social movements' concern is not just about the dangers of the
chemicals and the possibility of future GMO imports. They claim that the
future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local
consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto's arrival in
Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.

"People in the U.S. need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds.
They're ruining our chance to support ourselves," said farmer Jonas Deronzil
of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of
Verrettes.5

Monsanto's history has long drawn ire from environmentalists, health
advocates, and small farmers, going back to its production of Agent Orange
during the Vietnam war. Exposure to Agent Orange has caused cancer in an
untold number of U.S. Veterans, and the Vietnamese government claims that
400,000 Vietnamese people were killed or disabled by Agent Orange, and
500,000 children were born with birth defects as a result of their exposure.
6

Monsanto's former motto, "Without chemicals, life itself would be
impossible," has been replaced by "Imagine." Its web site home page claims
it "help[s] farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We
help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce
healthier foods... while also reducing agriculture's impact on our
environment."7

The corporations' record does not support the claims.

Together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer, Monsanto controls more than half
of the world's seeds.8

The company holds almost 650 seed patents, most of them for cotton, corn and
soy, and almost 30% of the share of all biotech research and development.
Monsanto came to own such a vast supply by buying major seed companies to
stifle competition, patenting genetic modifications to plant varieties, and
suing small farmers. Monsanto is also one of the leading manufacturers of
GMOs.

As of 2007, Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits against U.S. farmers for alleged
technology contract violations or GMO patents, involving 372 farmers and 49
small agricultural businesses in 27 different states. From these, Monsanto
has won more than $21.5 million in judgments. The multinational appears to
investigate 500 farmers a year, in estimates based on Monsanto's own
documents and media reports.9

"Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed
from someone else's genetically engineered crop [or] when genetically
engineered seed from a previous year's crop has sprouted, or 'volunteered,'
in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following
year," said Andrew Kimbrell and Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food
Safety.10

In Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million from the U.S.
government for providing Roundup Ultra in the anti-drug fumigation efforts
of Plan Colombia. Roundup Ultra is a highly concentrated version of
Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide, with additional ingredients to increase its
lethality. Colombian communities and human rights organizations have charged
that the herbicide has destroyed food crops, water sources and protected
areas, and has led to increased incidents of birth defects and cancers.

Vía Campesina, the world's largest confederation of farmers with member
organizations in more than sixty countries, has called Monsanto one of the
"principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty
for all peoples."11

They claim that as Monsanto and other multinationals control an ever larger
share of land and agriculture, they force small farmers out of their land
and jobs. They also claim that the agribusiness giants contribute to climate
change and other environmental disasters, an outgrowth of industrial
agriculture.12

The Vía Campesina coalition launched a global campaign against Monsanto last
October 16, on International World Food Day, with protests, land
occupations, and hunger strikes in more than twenty countries. They carried
out a second global day of action against Monsanto on April 17 of this year,
in honor of Earth Day.

Non-governmental organizations in the U.S. are challenging Monsanto's
practices, too. The Organic Consumers Association has spearheaded the
campaign "Millions Against Monsanto," calling on the company to stop
intimidating small family farmers, stop marketing untested and unlabeled
genetically engineered foods to consumers, and stop using billions of
dollars of U.S. taypayers' money to subsidize GMO
crops.13

The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge to Monsanto
that has just made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. After successful litigation
against Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for illegal
promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food
Safety's case on April 27. A decision on this first-ever Supreme Court case
about GMOs is now pending.14

"Fighting hybrid and GMO seeds is critical to save our diversity and our
agriculture," Jean-Baptiste said in an interview in February. "We have the
potential to make our lands produce enough to feed the whole population and
even to export certain products. The policy we need for this to happen is
food sovereignty, where the county has a right to define it own agricultural
policies, to grow first for the family and then for local market, to grow
healthy food in a way which respects the environment and Mother Earth."

*Many thanks to Moira Birss for her assistance with research and writing.*

*Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years.
She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of
Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds,
www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic
alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy
Studies.*

1 Group email from Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, May 14, 2010*.*

2 Email from Elizabeth Vancil to Emmanuel Prophete, Director of Seeds at
the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, and others; released by the Haitian
Ministry of Agriculture, date unavailable.

3 Ibid.

4 Extension Toxicology Network, Pesticide Information Project of the
Cooperative Extension Offices of Cornell University, Michigan State
University, Oregon State University, and University of California at Davis,
http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/pyrethrins-ziram/thiram-ext.html

5 Jonas Deronzil's comments are from an interview in April. He was not
specifically discussing Monsanto.

6 MSNBC, January 23, 2004. "Study Finds Link Between Agent Orange, Cancer."
The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2008. "Last Ghost of the Vietnam War"

7 www.monsanto.com

8* *La Vía Campesina, *"*La Vía Campesina carries out Global Day of Action
against Monsanto", Oct. 16, 2009,
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=797:peasants-worldwide-rise-up-against-monsanto-gmos&catid=49:stop-transnational-corporations&Itemid=76

9 Center for Food Safety, "Monsanto vs. US Farmers," Nov. 2007.

10 Andrew Kimbrell and Joseph Mendelson, Center for Food Safety, "Monsanto
vs. US Farmers," 2005.

11* *La Vía Campesina, October 16, 2009, Op. Cit.

12 La Vía Campesina, "La Vía Campesina Call to Action 17 April 2010 - Join
the International Day of Peasant Struggle," Feb. 23, 2010,
http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=node/639

13 Organic Consumers Association, "Taxpayers Forced to Fund Monsanto's
Poisoning of Third World," Finland, Minnesota, *
http://www.organicconsumers.org/*

14 Center for Food Security, "Update: CFS Fighting Monsanto in the Supreme
Court," May 11, 2010, http://truefoodnow.org/?CFID=23809091&CFTOKEN=67921769

Taken

2010-05-16T09:11:00.005-04:00

I made a trip to Fonkoze yesterday to change some money for the programs I am overseeing. I took several $100 US notes and gave them to the clerk to change. She marked each of them with the special pen they use to test the paper to see if they are real or not. I was surprised when the last one came up as counterfeit. The marks did not stay colourless, but instead turned blackish. After examining it against the others you could tell that it felt a little different, and when it was crumpled it started to tear right away.

I'm not sure where I got the bill. I have four envelopes that I frequently change money between. I'm not sure if the counterfeit came from the US or from somewhere here in Haiti. I suspect Haiti, but who knows. As a result, the manager gave me some advice and also I was warned to check large gourde notes as well, as they can frequently be counterfeit too. I am going to be a little more observant from now on.

Haitian artist Larose describes the earthquake in vivid images

2010-05-13T15:23:00.003-04:00

**Great slideshow here**

Haiti earthquake through eyes of artist

By Steven Sternberg, USA Today

For days, Hugues Larose lay quietly in his bunk aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort, asking little of his doctors and nurses, a peaceful soul aboard a vessel echoing with the cries of shattered, tormented people.

Larose was one of the first patients brought aboard the Comfort when it reached Port-au-Prince eight days after the Jan. 12 earthquake. After a few days on board, he asked for a pencil and paper "to give birth to my thoughts." Using the aluminum clipboard hanging beside his bed, he began to sketch a woman crushed by a telephone pole, a survivor sitting dazed in the street, limbs jutting from pancaked buildings, frantic people pouring into the streets, and ships, including the Comfort, anchored offshore.

"My fingers are influenced by the earthquake, all collapsed houses and dead," Larose says. "Survivors look so different."

In an instant, the simple black-and-white sketch carried the Comfort's doctors and nurses ashore to witness the immediate aftermath of letremblement de terre— "the trembling of the earth" — that in a few minutes flattened Haiti's densely populated capital, killing 250,000 people and injuring more. It allowed them to experience the tragedy, not through a camera lens, but through the eyes of a survivor who happened to be an artist.

See article and slide show here

.

Big new thing

2010-05-13T15:19:00.001-04:00

I mentioned in a prior post not too long ago that I was waiting “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 :)”.

Well, we got the news last week but I hadn’t written about it until today on the St. Boniface blog and connected to Twitter and Facebook. It’s a big deal for our community, and for me personally and professionally as it’s something I haven’t done before.

We received good news in response to a proposal submitted to the World Food Progamme and have had a large community feeding program approved.

What does this mean? It means we will be distributing rations to all children aged 6 months to 5 years, and to pregnant and lactating women in Fond des Blancs and Villa. We hope to reach 12,000 children and 7,000 women with the distribution, which will provide additional food to most of the households in our region. The program will last for 6 months and have a huge impact on the health of the community. In April we saw a dramatic increase in the admissions of severely malnourished children to the hospital. Programs such as this are meant to decrease the rates of acute malnutrition in these high-risk groups.

The rations we will provide will be Supplementary Plumpy (not the same as Plumpy'nut) to the children under 3 years, and a fortified flour made from corn soy blend (CSB) with oil and sugar for the 3-5 year olds and the women. The Plumpy is a peanut butter based ready-to-eat food, and the CSB will be used to make a nutritious hot cereal.

A program of this scale is a huge undertaking. We have hired some additional staff to assist and the community health workers will be involved in helping us identify the recipients and aiding us at each post. WFP will be sending us food for distribution on a regular basis. One large challenge for us has been finding the storage space. The 40-foot container received from Gethsemane Scholarship Institute is a blessing because approval of our program hinged on having adequate space to receive and hold the food.

We have never done a program this large in Fond des Blancs before, and are happy to be new partners with WFP.

My role in this program will be as a consultant to help with the technical aspects as we have hired Haitian staff to do the coordination and hands-on work. I am really excited to be involved in a program like this. There is a lot to learn, but I’m happy that our community will be getting fed and finally see some of the aid that they have heard has poured into the country.

Question #4

2010-05-11T21:22:00.000-04:00

Deb asks "how long do you intend to stay?"

Probably until this time next year at the least, maybe longer. I volunteered for most of the first two years. Now I receive a stipend from a generous private donor. At some point, I will need to have a salary but I believe things will work out.

Question #3

2010-05-11T17:36:00.001-04:00

Gwen (my sister) asks:

What, in your opinion, is the biggest misconception about Haiti by the rest of the world?

Ok, 2nd question....what, from home, do you miss most? Besides the obvious - family and friends. We miss you.

When I was living with the rest of the world, there was remarkably little knowledge of Haiti to have misconceptions about, except that it was a violent place with demonstrations and dictators and coup after coup. After the EQ, most people now know where it is and and that it shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. And that Haiti and Tahiti are two different places (honestly). The news liked to emphasize the looting and the shooting, but while that is a true thing, it did not show the infrequency of it and how small a problem it was.

One thing I have learned is that people are people. Haitians are no different than anyone else in what they desire - food, health and security for their families and education and opportunity to advance with the expectation to work hard and make sacrifices to do it.

For the second question, I can honestly say there's very little that I miss as far as things. I am very fortunate for the living situation I have here. It's not fancy, but by local standards I have it pretty good. The food is good, but I must confess we get a little bit of food fatigue as many of the dishes we get are similar. What I do miss a lot though is the freedom to go anywhere I want. Travel is difficult here and it is hard for foreign women to take public transport. There are parts of the country that I would like to see but can't go until I have a way to get there and someone to go with. When you are used to just jumping in your car and heading wherever you want, it's very limiting.

Goofing around

2010-05-09T12:50:00.000-04:00

When I was home last month I had to go through most of my things and eliminate and reorganize. My mother is selling the family home, which is also my storage depot. Going through photos was interesting. I threw a lot away and brought a bunch of old ones to Haiti to scan and save in digital format. My twin sister Elaine, wanted to steal the first one here for her Facebook but I wouldn't let her.

Here we are in a photo booth at 14 years old. The attractive one with the lovely grimace is me, Elaine has the Princess Di haircut.

Bucket Bath

2010-05-09T11:16:00.001-04:00

One of the first things you notice when come to Haiti is how hard people work for water. You see it being carried everywhere. In the city you see people waiting in line at cisterns or water trucks to fill galon jugs or five-gallon buckets. Most of the time they have to pay for it, sometimes not. In the country you see women and children, sometimes men, carrying water from community pumps, and rivers and streams. It makes my head hurt to see them carrying five gallons of water on their head, though they do it with ease not spilling a drop.

Our water system at the hospital and compound is fairly complicated. We have running water that comes from a main well. Most of our cisterns are small tanks, or chato dlo, on the roof that get filled when the generator comes on. The chato dlo is black plastic, so during the day the water will get warm and at night it cools to the same temp as outdoors. This means that in the morning the shower is refreshingly cool from April to October, and a little chilly in the winter. But on summer afternoons when you would like the water cold it has had time to warm in the sun and isn't quite so refreshing.

We have several buildings on the system and there are times that a tank will run dry before the generator has time to fill it. I've been having problems with the plumbing for my bathroom and have been without water frequently. Sometimes I have enough to trickle through the faucet of the sink and fill the toilet tank, but not enough pressure for the shower.

Thus, I've mastered the bucket bath. My shower stall is a nice large tiled area so I can splash the water around a lot. Believe it or not, there's a technique to it, and keeping the water out of your ears is the hardest part :) I've got it down pat and can bathe and wash my hair using only about 3 litres of water.

Believe me, I'm not complaining. I still have it much better than most. I don't have to work hard for the water, I don't have to carry it for miles but only from one residence to another. The water is clean. Although there is something simply beautiful about seeing people bathing in streams and rivers, something very basic and human, I am very grateful that I have the luxury of doing it in private.

Today's special treat

2010-05-08T19:58:00.000-04:00

I don't get away from the hospital compound much anymore, so I jumped on the opportunity when Nancy and Betsy said something about going to the beach. We live only about 8 miles and a couple of mountains from the beach but we rarely go for various reasons. Late this afternnoon when we had finished what we were working on, we hopped in the rhino and headed to Mouillage Fouquet. Didn't stay long, but it was loveleeeee.

Question #2

2010-05-08T09:36:00.000-04:00

Marc asks pretty serious questions:

"Do you feel your work is making a difference? What is the most rewarding aspect of your life in Haiti? What is the hardest? If you could wave a wand and make change in Haiti, what would your priorities be? CHOOSE ANY OF THE ABOVE"

I go through phases where I question whether what I do makes a difference or not. I love it here in Haiti, I've sacrificed a lot to be here, so I always come to the conclusion that I am making a difference - even if it's just to make myself feel good. That's an honest answer.

The times of real doubt come when you look at the ENORMITY of the problems, and at how unsustainable some of the activities we do are. By unsustainable, I mean what I do helps in this moment but what does it do for the future? It would be a long, long essay to get into it fully, which I don't have the energy to do, but food distribution would be an example. Part of my job is to give away food to hungry people. What I give them helps them for a couple of weeks, but they have to come back to receive it again. Distributing rations helps in an emergency, or when your children are malnourished, but what does it do to help the families sustain themselves later?

So I help with the hunger pains for a few days, but what do I really do to improve their lives?

That's where other activities of the foundation come in. I think I make a difference in the lives of the people at our elderly home. When I help educate mothers about better nutrition choices they can make within their means, and I see the light come on in their eyes, I know I've made a difference in the health of their child.

There's no shortage of hard things. It's hard to say "no" to people in need. It's hard to see how women are treated here. It's hard to see the things that people just accept and live with. But, in my personal experience, the hardest thing mentally and emotionally is the lack of trust that seems to be an inherent part of the culture, and comes from a history of brutality. In turn, I don`t trust anyone that I deal with. It impacts everything I do here and almost all of the relationships I have. That mistrust runs from being suspicious that someone is being nice to me just because they want something, to hiring someone to do something and having to make sure I`m not being ripped off. That kind of constant mistrust is very wearing, and depressing.

So, to answer your last question, if I could wave a magic wand to change anything in Haiti, it would be to change the way people treat each other. I think it holds everything back because it is such a fundamental thing. I would make it so that leaders know it`s not okay to be corrupt and only look out for themselves, that men understand the value of fidelity to their wife or girlfriend and vice versa, that teachers know it`s not okay to let your students cheat. I would change the dog-eat-dog mentality that is prevalent. So many people profess to be Christians, and I believe they are (who am I to question someone`s heart) but I pray that behaviours would become more Christ-like, more loving, less self-serving.

But I would also aim that magic wand at the rest of the world. Those issues are everywhere, they just happen to manifest differently in Haiti.

Question #1

2010-05-07T19:50:00.000-04:00

This was from Mary Ann. Her comments made me smile, too.

"What has made you smile lately?"

I'm not a big "children" person, meaning I like kids and love to talk and play with them - for a while - but I'm not the woman who's always saying "he/she's soooooo cute". To me kids are kids, and they're all beautiful. A lot of the work I do is for children, but I don't have any of my own and probably never will. I wasn't dealt that hand of cards.

So, there was a little guy who absolutely melted me yesterday. He is in our pediatric ward, came in with something like diarrhea and fever. Anyway, when I met him he was pretty well recovered, standing on the bed with his sturdy, chubby two year old legs, looking like a four year old Budha. Big boy. Big personality. Not shy. He saw me and started laughing and giggling, and it was an infectious laugh that got everyone in the ward going. I went to the other beds to see the other children, and as I was leaving he had a crowd around his bed and was still laughing, eyes sparkling. I left the room smiling and with a light heart.

Thanks for asking. This made me smile all over again.

Questions, period

2010-05-07T15:15:00.002-04:00

It's Friday again. Time passes so quickly here. My last post was a week and a half ago. Does that mean that I have nothing to write about?

Not really. It means that I'm having difficulty writing something that I think anyone would be interested in. I have attempted to write, only to stop after a paragraph or two and think "who would continue reading this?". Deleted.

So, just for fun, for some variety and my own amusement, I'm going to open the blog up to questions, assuming anyone has any. I'll answer the first 10 questions. I reserve the right not to respond if I find the question offensive or too personal to post on the internet.

Bonus points if you make me laugh :)

Monday morning optimism...skepticism

2010-04-26T07:57:00.000-04:00

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 :)

Haiti Wants Food Aid to Stop?

2010-04-22T07:27:00.000-04:00

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.

What we do with the help of great partners

2010-04-19T08:22:00.000-04:00

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

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.

Continue reading here

Sleeping with Peace

2010-04-14T09:28:00.001-04:00

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.

Port au Prince

2010-04-06T07:18:00.002-04:00

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.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

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.

Beautiful story

2010-04-01T09:53:00.000-04:00

There are some amazing people blogging from Haiti.

Here's a beautiful story from Haiti is Such a Strong Word.

This makes me smile

2010-04-01T07:29:00.001-04:00

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.

Haiti's Declaration of Independence, discovered in the British National Archives.

Haitian Declaration of Independence (pdf)

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

Home again

2010-03-31T09:15:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post.

I arrived back on Fond des Blancs last night and am really liking the warm weather. It was 35 degrees C in PaP when I arrived, which was a little too warm, but FdB is always cooler.

The trip back was uneventful, but have to say that the arrival procedure at the airport definitely takes more time than before - waited for my luggage for an hour and a half. There's no carousel, so the luggage retrieval is very chaotic.

Am back to work this morning. Happy to be home!

PBS: The Quake

2010-03-28T09:04:00.001-04:00

Since I'm not in Haiti at the moment, the only things I really have to post about are news articles and things I'm finding on the internet. I'm taking advantage of having increased internet access. It's been great to be able to watch video online, but I must say I am happy that we couldn't watch any news footage during the quake aftermath. We were limited to photos and written articles. I'm glad I was spared the horror of the news barrage and moving images.

Frontline on PBS will be airing a documentary on Tuesday 30 March about the situation in Haiti called "The Quake". I think it will be very interesting but unfortunately, I won't be able to see it. I'll have to ask my friends to record it and send it down to us.

On the Frontline website is an interesting, short video clip about the economics that have arisen in the tent cities. I've seen and marveled at this when traveling through Port au Prince. People are doing what they can and life is going on.

NYT Audio Slideshow: Close Quarters in Haiti

2010-03-28T07:20:00.000-04:00

Gotta love the New York Times. This audio slideshow Close Quarters in Haiti accompanies the story:

Quake accentuated chasm that has defined Haiti

March 27, 2010
By Simon Romero

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The lights of the casino above this wrecked city beckoned as gamblers in freshly pressed clothes streamed to the roulette table and slot machines. In a restaurant nearby, diners quaffed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and ate New Zealand lamb chops at prices rivaling those in Manhattan.

Near the camp, well-to-do Haitians and foreigners dined recently at Magdoos.

A few yards away, hundreds of families displaced by the earthquake languished under tents and tarps, bathing themselves from buckets and relieving themselves in the street as barefoot children frolicked on pavement strewn with garbage.

This is the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince, a hillside bastion of Haiti’s well-heeled where a mangled sense of normalcy has taken hold after the earthquake in January. Business is bustling at the lavish boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs that have reopened in the breezy hills above the capital, while thousands of homeless and hungry people camp in the streets around them, sometimes literally on their doorstep.

Continue reading here

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Ayiti Leve Kanpe - Haiti Get Back Up

2010-03-27T13:21:00.004-04:00

A moving video showing Haiti before the earthquake and after. Music is beautiful and is performed by the Dominican Republic Symphonic Orchestra and the Dominican Republic National Choir.

**Warning: some graphic footage of EQ damage and casualties**

Washington Post - Steady supply of medical services begins to pressure Haiti's doctors

2010-03-25T07:38:00.001-04:00

Steady supply of medical services begins to pressure Haiti's doctors

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2010

Jerry and Marlon Bitar are prominent Haitian surgeons, identical twins who have done everything together for all of their 48 years. They both studied medicine in France, returned to Haiti in 2000 to take over a clinic serving low-income patients, and built a separate private practice that has given them national prominence and paid the bills.

In the weeks following the deadly Jan. 12 earthquake, they worked 18-hour days side by side, performing 900 surgeries and amputations free of charge between both of them. And now, their lives are defined by the same split reality: "before the earthquake" and "after the earthquake."
Sitting in their cramped office, the brothers tell the story of most Haitian medical providers and hospitals. Since the earthquake, Haiti has been awash with doctors from all over the world providing the kind of top-notch care rarely experienced in this chronically poor country. It has been a gift of epic proportions, the Bitars say, in a place burdened with disorganized health care, and high rates of HIV and tuberculosis.

But as the immediate crisis starts to wane, more and more patients with maladies unrelated to the earthquake are turning to international health-care teams led by the World Health Organization, raising concerns about Haiti's ability to care for its own once the relief teams pull out and need for rehabilitation and long-term care grows.

The Bitars ask what appears to be a simple question: How can the country's medical structure be rebuilt when hundreds of humanitarian teams are still providing health care for free? The surgeons say they have no income -- not from the poor and not from their private practice. For one, 700,000 people are now homeless with no access to funds. For another, the hospitals, the Bitars and others say, are finding it hard to compete with the visitors. With no end in sight, some of the nation's doctors have already left, and others are considering leaving.

Continue reading here

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English-Haitian Creole Medical Dictionary

2010-03-24T15:07:00.000-04:00

Educa Vision has released a free app - their English-Haitian Creole Medical Dictionary - for the iPhone and iPod.

Check it out here

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Memory Lane

2010-03-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

My mom is doing some work on our house so there's lots of sorting of old stuff going on.

Tonight I found an envelope of all my twin sister's and my report cards. We were in the same class until the 4th or 5th grade when they separated us. I had to laugh at the reports from 1st grade - in November my report card says that I am not as confident as Elaine and look to her for approval, and her report card for March says the same thing about her. I think our teacher couldn't tell us apart.

It was fun to read the reports. I certainly thought that I did better in high school than I actually did. I don't remember getting in trouble for being such a lousy student.

The sad thing is I think I hit my peak in the third grade.

NYT Article about Fond des Blancs

2010-03-17T19:24:00.001-04:00

A week and a half ago we were visited at St. Boniface by Debbie Sontag and Damon Winter from the New York Times. They spent two days with us, interviewed many people and visited our community. Today we were happy to see the fruit of that visit published on page A4.

More Photos »

Rural Haiti Struggles to Absorb Displaced

New York Times, 17 March 2010

Deborah Sontag

FOND-DES-BLANCS, Haiti — Before the earthquake that changed everything, Chlotilde Pelteau and her husband lived a supremely urban existence. A cosmetics vendor and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince.

Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Ms. Pelteau, 29, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet of Nan Roc (In the Rocks), which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up.

“With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?” said Ms. Pelteau, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them.

Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved at a steady clip to Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the government, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have received little emergency assistance.

Continue reading here

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R&R

2010-03-16T06:45:00.000-04:00

Heading home for some R&R today - have worked 62 days straight (okay, I lie, I had a 1/2 day off :) )

Part of me hates to leave because so many interesting things are going on, the other part just wants to relax.

I'll try to continue to post, but if you don't see anything it's because I'm having too much fun.

Roadtrip

2010-03-15T08:48:00.000-04:00

Friday and Saturday were road trip days. We had meetings in Jacmel and Port au Prince, which meant two days of driving. It was tiring but productive.

I had been to Jacmel in my first year in Haiti. You can't drive there from Fond des Blancs, as the road does not go all the way along the coast. You need to drive back out to the Route National and drive back toward Port au Prince, and then turn off to head back toward the southern coast. It is a mountainous region and the road twists and winds a lot. There were many places where there had been landslides onto the road, but they had all been cleared. There also were a few places where the road was damaged along the edge, but miraculously there were no places where the road had collapsed completely. The view is always spectacular, this time even moreso as you can see many places where large sections of the hills have just fallen away, exposing the bright white limestone underneath.

We passed areas where small tent encampments have been established, but it became evident when you looked closely that the tents were unoccupied. There have been "ghost" tent cities established in some places, supposedly in an attempt to attract aid to an area.

There is some pretty heavy damage in the city of Jacmel. It is so sad to see so many of the old colonial buildings destroyed.

We had a meeting with ACDI/VOCA and then attended the health cluster meeting at the UN. We had no where to stay and it was too late to drive to PauP, so ACDI/VOCA allowed us to sleep on cushions in their office. It was much better than the option of sleeping on the ground or in the Patrol. I didn't really sleep, and then we were up at 3:30 to head to early meetings in the city.

I haven't been to PauP in a few weeks - much had changed, and much was still the same. People have started to clear the rubble, but with no way to truck it out of the city, it is being piled up on the sidewalks and in the streets. Some parts of the two-lane Route National have been reduced to one lane because the rubble is advancing into the roadway. This is illegal, I'm sure, but there's no enforcement, and people need to get on with their lives. It will be a huge problem. If the state removes it, it will encourage people to keep doing it. If no one removes it, it will become increasingly difficult to get around the city.

The tent cities have grown. I noticed many new areas of tents, and some of the smaller sites are now quite large. It's not surprising, as those in underserved areas are moving to where they know they can get aid. Also, as we've noticed in Fond des Blancs, many people who had left the city for the countryside have returned to Port au Prince because there's no aid at all andeyo.

We went to the UN compound to meet with Unicef and the World Food Program, and had some promising discussions with them. We then drove through the city for a couple of other meetings, the last of which I was having an embarassingly difficult time not falling asleep.

It was a very fruitful two days, but I am glad that we don't have to do that kind of trip too often.

*sorry for the poor quality photos - taken from moving vehicle.

Ti Goave

Near Ti Goave

Tarp distributed by Canadian troops

Large limestone boulders in the road, route to Jacmel

Tent city on mountain side in Jacmel. Ghost city?

The view on road to Jacmel. Deforestation at it's finest.

Destruction in city of Jacmel

Tents pitched in the town square in Jacmel

NYT article: Elderly in Haiti

2010-03-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Earthquake's burdens weigh heavily on Haiti's elderly

New York Times, 12/3/2010
Ian Urbina

LÉOGÂNE, Haiti — Junie Sufrad, 110 years old, stopped suddenly as she described what life was like in the Haitian countryside before electricity, paved roads and cars.

“I don’t know if it makes me lucky or unlucky to still be here,” she said after a long pause, adding that although she was missing no limbs, the January earthquake had made her an amputee. “It’s like part of me is gone.”

Ms. Sufrad is a monument to the past in a nation that has been severed from it.

Like other aged survivors of the earthquake, she is a rare repository of this country’s history and culture, but she said she considered her memories as much a painful burden as a proud legacy.
No strangers to hardship, elderly Haitians find themselves distinctly vulnerable and emotionally burdened these days. They have grown old in a place where so many people die young. With longevity comes survivor’s guilt.

“You’re not supposed to outlive your children and grandchildren,” she said.

Continue reading here

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If...

2010-03-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

If you think it sounds like I need a vacation, you're right.

Hard

2010-03-10T19:23:00.001-05:00

It has been difficult here for the past few days. There have been a lot of people asking for food. They are coming to the hospital compound because we are giving out food, just not to everyone. They are coming in the hopes that they can squeeze in. The food donation we received for community distribution is organized to be given out to ticket holders (this helps avoid mayhem) but not everyone knows they need to have a ticket. All of them are in genuine need.

Yesterday was also child malnutrition program day, so I couldn't go anywhere in the yard without someone asking me for food. I can't give the food for the program to people who aren't in the program. We are responsible to CRS for every grain. And yesterday, we had so many program participants show up that we ran out of food.

We had a small amount left of the canned goods/crackers/cookies donation we had received that I've been giving to people who aren't in the programs at my own discretion - elderly women, those the doctors suggest need some food etc. I had one woman come and I asked her to come around to the back galery so that it wouldn't be seen that I was giving her food, and where I could explain to her how to reconstitute Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix (they don't eat this in Haiti, but I don't want it to go to waste). I thought she came with her baby and some young family members. She said thank you for the food and walked away with the baby. The other young woman stood there and asked where her food was. She had followed the other woman up without being asked, not concerned at all that she was uninvited - she wanted some food. I should know better by now than to assume that people belong together. I was quite annoyed with her, and it had been a long day, so I let her know it. I regret it, but only a little. She knew it was bad form and thought it was funny.

I feel terrible even writing this, but I'm going to post it anyway. It's a no-win situation. No matter how I treat the issue, I feel like I'm in a position that can't be anything but arrogant.

oh my poor, neglected blog

2010-03-10T19:01:00.000-05:00

I've been a very bad blogger lately. Sorry.

Sometimes there's so much to write about but no time. By the time you get some time, the ideas are gone. I'm also supposed to be blogging for the St. Boniface website. Same issue. We've started to use Twitter. I almost tweeted today, but what I wanted to put on sounded too much like a donation/funding request, so I didn't. Our SBHF twitter is supposed to be professional, so you won't see any bug tweets or the like. Maybe I need to use my own twitter account more often. I have one but have never used it.

The sandals

2010-03-06T12:33:00.002-05:00

I met J.C. in the hallway of the hospital this week. He had suffered a facial injury during the earthquake and has a palsy of one side of his face. The nerves are starting to recover some and he is speaking better, and can open his mouth wider. He also had surgery on his foot after having a concrete block fall on it. We stopped to chat and he said he was happy that he can brush his teeth better now, and he told me he is eating well. He looks like he has gained a small amount of weight too, which is really good.

He pointed to his feet - one had a battered croc-type shoe on it, the other the foot brace from his surgery. He told me that he had lost his sneakers when he had gone to the Comfort for treatment, and asked if I had any sandals. I told him that, by chance, I did and asked him what size he needed. "Size 9 is best" he said.

I went upstairs to the residence and checked the bag of clothes that our January visitors had to leave behind when they were evacuated. I found a beautiful pair of size 9 Columbia sport sandals (Jay, I think they were yours).

I took them back down for him to try on. They were perfect, and he gave me a priceless, crooked smile. I joked with him that back in January, God knew that J.C. would be needing some sandals in March and asked Jay to leave them for him.

Neglijan

2010-03-04T21:03:00.000-05:00

I've been negligent in my writing lately. At times it's difficult to sit down and try to put into words how our days are passing. I can honestly say I have never worked so much for so long in all my life. It's been good work, interesting and worthwhile, but also exhausting.

We have a team from Florida here this week who are doing all kinds of great work. We have a physical therapist, occupational therapist, and three nurses helping our patients in the hospital and doing wound care training. We went to Kay Granmoun, the elderly home, today and delivered a walker to Lerison, and a bedside commode for Abraham. Kay Granmoun's sponsoring parish, Queen of Peace in Gainesville, sent down some gifts for all the people. They had fun trying on their new clothes, and showed the blans how dominoes are really played.

With the team also came two technicians who have installed an xray machine at our hospital. This is a very big deal. Now we don't have to refer patients to other places and the suffering of traveling with an injury or illness that was involved. We have a diagostic tool for TB. The machine will help us save lives. It's also a digital machine, so there's no purchasing, transport, or disposal of chemicals involved. The image quality is excellent. Getting radiology here has been more than ten years in the planning.

Also new and exciting is our latest team member, Betsy. She has come to help us and will be the new hospitality person along with several other important jobs. I think we're going to like her :)

N'ap degaje - we're making do

2010-02-28T09:30:00.000-05:00

We have received a few patients from the Comfort who have head injuries. As a result of this they aren’t able to eat on their own, so they had PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy) tubes placed. These tubes are placed through the abdominal wall directly into the stomach for patients who will need long-term tube feedings.

This is where my clinical experience as a dietitian has been coming in handy. We have limited access to the formulas that we need to put through the tubes to feed the patient. In the US and Canada, they are very expensive, and in Haiti they are difficult to find. A few cases were sent with the patients, but we will run out soon.

I’ve been working on a recipe that we can use to feed them. It will involve a pureed bouyon (soup) that we already make in our kitchen, fortified with soy protein, sugar and oil to give it more calories and protein. The nurses will give the patient this mixture through their tube 5-6 times a day when we run out of the commercial formula.

There are a few reasons why pureed food is no longer put through feeding tubes in the developed world, but here we need to make do with what we have. We will be careful with the food preparation and the liquid consistency, and the nurses will make sure that the tubes get flushed well with water to prevent them from clogging.

This situation makes me nervous, but we will do our best. We have no other choice.

New Kreyol translators

2010-02-27T13:41:00.001-05:00

A friend just forwarded me the link to Bing translator which has Haitian Kreyol in it's list of languages. This led me to check my favourite translation program, Google Translate, and it now has a version of Haitian Kreyol too. Cool. I have tools to cheat with :)

Back to Clinical

2010-02-25T21:07:00.000-05:00

I've been doing more clinical work this week than my whole time in Haiti so far. Most of the nutrition work I've done has been with our community programs.

I worked as a clinical dietitian for eight years before I came to Haiti. There are things about my old job that I miss, some that I don't, but it's been kind of nice to do it again. I'm not sure how many hats I can wear at one time, but I'm giving it a try.

We have two traumatic brain injured patients that came in this week from the Comfort. They are going to be a challenge for us in more ways than one. Both of them have gastric tubes placed as they have no way to take anything by mouth. We don't have normal tube feeding formulas here and only a limited supply of liquid supplements. Usually tube feedings are simply pureed kitchen food with extra liquid added. We don't do that in Canada or the US for a few reasons, but here there's no other option. I've coming up with feeding plans for the two so that we can prevent a large weight loss and to help them keep their skin healthy.

We had a patient die last night. She was the most malnourished person I had ever seen. We had been trying to get her to eat and had finally placed a feeding tube which she had agreed to. She pulled the tube only a few hours later. She was an AIDS patient and was severely anemic too.

I've been working with a young man who was injured on the face during the earthquake. He has a palsy that prevents him from moving one side of his mouth, tongue and lips. He is expected to recover and we have already seen improvements. He has a gastric tube placed too, but I think he is now able to eat enough on his own that we can take it out. He was so happy to discover that he could finally brush his teeth, which Melissa, the physical therapist from Healing Hands for Haiti encouraged him to try.

I think that I may be spending more time in the hospital from now on. There's more need with our patient population. I will definitely need to develop some protocols.

I love working here. Never a boring day.

LA Times: Haiti quake is beginning to be felt miles away - Post-earthquake crisis looms for Haiti's farmers

2010-02-24T11:42:00.002-05:00

This article could have been written about Fond des Blancs

Haiti quake is beginning to be felt miles away

Ken Ellingwood, LA Times

Reporting from Saint-Marc, Haiti - Even in normal times, Edwin Andre has all he can do to eke out a living from the corn, tomatoes and sweet potatoes he coaxes from an acre plot in northern Haiti. His wife, Roselaine Cius, peddles the produce roadside and cooks rice-and-bean plates from a stick-frame lunch shack to help support their family of eight.

Suddenly, though, eight hungry mouths soared to 18 after siblings and in-laws from earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince fled by rattletrap bus to this sweep of farmland, a two-hour drive from the capital.

The couple's spare, concrete house -- no bigger than an average one-bedroom apartment in the United States -- is packed to bursting. Food once converted to cash goes to feed the homeless loved ones. Money is now so short that the pair doubt they will be able to buy seeds for the crucial spring planting season that is only weeks away.

"I don't see how we will have enough money," said Cius, 40, sweating under a porkpie hat as she ladled rice from a charcoal-heated pot. "There's no way. There's no money."

The effects of the Jan. 12 earthquake that flattened much of Port-au-Prince are rippling powerfully across rural Haiti, the poorest swath of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Villagers are near the breaking point as they try to accommodate tens of thousands of displaced city dwellers just when they would be putting their precious resources into preparing for planting. In desperation, some have resorted to eating their meager seed stocks or killing their chickens and goats to feed the influx, rather than keeping them to sell.

Continue reading here

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What a day

2010-02-22T22:14:00.000-05:00

The day began at 7:30 and is just ending now at 9:30. I can't even remember what I've been doing for the last 14 hours. My timesheet says I've worked 222 hours in the last 22 days, which means an average of 10.1 hours every day. Yikes!

Today's run down:

- met with Genel about the food depots and plan for the week
- morning community health team meeting
- organize calendar
- start tomorrow's to do list
- collect data re: our nutrition programs for weekly submission to Unicef
- met with Guito about minor repairs in residences and depots, and estimate to make a fence
- check on food for nutrition program tomorrow
- arrange a ride home for someone at Kay Granmoun
- paid my credit card :)
- check residences before arrival of Healing Hands for Haiti team
- received the team at lunch
- met with Dr. Miliane about two patients who are not eating
- met with cooks about meals and making purees for one of the patients
- sat with patient who suffered a facial injury when a block fell on him during the earthquake and can't chew, to observe his first attempt eating with a spoon
- made a plan of care for the other patient, a very severely malnourished woman
- made supper for visitors
- spent the last hour and a half sitting on the depot step watching some guys unload a truck full of donations because I can't leave the depot unlocked with no one to supervise.
- clean up the kitchen and put the extra food out for the guards

There's still five or six things left on my to do list for today :( and tomorrow's is already long

I need a vacation

Doing nutrition work in Haiti

2010-02-21T19:15:00.001-05:00

I recently did an email interview for Today's Dietitian that they have printed on their website. If you are interested in some of the things we are doing, besides playing with frogs, you can find the article here.

Back to bugs and critters

2010-02-20T12:30:00.000-05:00

I found a minor distraction with this krapo yesterday. I like frogs. It was hiding behind a bag up against the wall of the galeri and I found it when I moved it. I haven't been able to take any photos of frogs before because I either don't have my camera or someone kills them before I get the chance.

Haitians, for the most part, do not like frogs. If they see them, they kill them. They say that if they pee in your eye you can go blind.

What I'd like to know is how could one possibly pee in my eye?

I made sure this one escaped into the potted plants before anyone else saw it.

From Salon.com - Haiti: A survivor's story

2010-02-20T08:33:00.000-05:00

The story below is very moving.

I can't describe how it makes me feel, other than sadness and loss from knowing that Haiti has changed. There is now a before (the earthquake) and an after.

Yes, life will go on and there are many things that will stay the same, but the country will not be the same. I've been here long enough to feel the loss of the Haiti that was, and even though there is great hope for a better future, a chance to start over, I will still grieve the thing I can't describe.

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Haiti: a survivor's story

By Laura Wagner

I was sitting barefoot on my bed, catching up on ethnographic field notes, when the earthquake hit. As a child of the San Francisco area, I was underwhelmed at first. “An earthquake. This is unexpected," I thought. But then the shaking grew stronger. I had never felt such a loss of control, not only of my body but also of my surroundings, as though the world that contained me were being crumpled.

I braced myself in a doorway between the hallway and the kitchen, trying to hold on to the frame, and then a cloud of darkness and cement dust swallowed everything as the house collapsed. I was surprised to die in this way, but not afraid. And then I was surprised not to be dead after all. I was trapped, neither lying down nor sitting, with my left arm crushed between the planks of the shattered doorway and my legs pinned under the collapsed roof. Somewhere, outside, I heard people screaming, praying and singing. It was reassuring. It meant the world hadn’t ended.

I want you to know that, before the earthquake, things in Haiti were normal. Outside Haiti, people only hear the worst -- tales that are cherry-picked, tales that are exaggerated, tales that are lies. I want you to understand that there was poverty and oppression and injustice in Port-au-Prince, but there was also banality.

Continue reading here

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Cracks of Gender Inequality: Haitian Women After the Earthquake

2010-02-15T14:00:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Rebecca for sending me the link to this article from the Social Science Research Council. There are quite a few other great articles there as well.

Cracks of Gender Inequality: Haitian Women After the Earthquake

By Régine Michelle Jean-Charles

Humanitarian crises usually have calamitous gender-specific results that disproportionately affect women and girls. Natural disasters are certainly no exception. In the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, hundreds of thousands of people were left dead, injured, homeless and jobless. The circumstances under which many Haitians in Port-au-Prince, Leogane, Jacmel, Petit Goave and surrounding areas have been living since the earthquake present unique challenges to women and girls that must be addressed in relief efforts, recovery programs, and the re-construction of the state.

Over 200,000 people lost their lives in the earthquake, including four significant fanm poto mitan, pillars of the Haitian women’s movement. These feminist activists were Myriam Merlet, Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Women’s Condition and Rights and founder of the umbrella National Coordination for Advocacy on Women's Rights (CONAP); Magalie Marcelin, founder of KayFamn, the only shelter for victims of gender-based violence; Anne-Marie Coriolan, founder of Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA), one of the country’s largest women's advocacy groups; and Myrna Narcisse, Director General of the Ministry of Women’s Condition and Rights. The loss of these women, each one a champion of human rights and fiercely committed to the equality and protection of Haiti’s female population will be felt strongly by the feminist activist community. The loss should prompt us to consider how gender inequalities are playing out in the wake of the earthquake, as they certainly would have.

Studies have demonstrated that disaster significantly exacerbates existing inequalities, which is why women and girls are particularly vulnerable right now. Take for example, how gender introduces distinct health related needs. According to the United Nations about 63,000 women are currently pregnant in Haiti, which, prior to the earthquake had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. These women and the children they bear will require prenatal, labor and delivery, and postnatal care in the imminent future. How will such care be distributed? Will these women’s concerns be taken into consideration in all of the pressing medical needs of the country? Likewise nursing mothers are particularly susceptible to malnutrition and dehydration that could lead to further mortalities. What other public health issues with gender ramifications are still emerging as a result of the earthquake?

Continue reading here

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Makes me smile

2010-02-14T11:02:00.001-05:00

I'm working at my computer and looked out the window and am watching with a smile one of our patients from the USNS Comfort. A little boy who has a fractured leg is out walking with a walker. He came to us not knowing where his parents were, if they had survived the earthquake. One of our employees went into Port au Prince a couple of days ago and found the boy's father. You have never seen happier people than when they were reunited.

Edit: Levason did know that his parents had survived but had somehow gotten separated from them when he went for medical care and the doctors had no contact info for them.

Haiti didn't screw herself up on her own, she had outside help

2010-02-14T07:48:00.001-05:00

There are many complicated reasons the country of Haiti was in such poor shape before the earthquake. Here's a taste of how the international community and politics played a role.

Can you imagine being forced to pay interest on a loan that you haven't received yet?

Haiti and the Loan that Wasn't

NYT: Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti

2010-02-14T07:33:00.001-05:00

When I read this article, I thought of the students that St. Boniface supports to go to post-secondary school in Port au Prince. Those young men escaped the home, Xavier House in Canape Vert, as it collapsed around them. They walked for miles through the city, some with no shoes, before being picked up on the highway to Fond des Blancs. They are all wondering what the future will bring for them.

Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Christina Julme was scribbling notes in the back of a linguistics class at the State University of Haiti when, in an instant, everything went black.

“You’re in class, your professor is talking, you’re writing notes and then you’re buried alive,” said Ms. Julme, 23, recounting how her semester came to a halt on the afternoon of Jan. 12 when the earthquake turned her seven-story university into a towering pile of wreckage, with her deep inside.
Ms. Julme, ailing and slipping in and out of consciousness, was pried from her collapsed classroom after two days of having her dead professor’s leg touching her, an injured friend’s face a few inches from her own and many of her classmates’ bodies growing fetid.

Haiti’s best universities are in wreckage, their campuses now jumbles of collapsed concrete, mangled desks and chairs, and buried coursework. Hundreds of professors and students were entombed, although the exact number of dead is complicated by the fact that class lists and computer registries were also wiped out by the quake.

continue reading here

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Carrefour

2010-02-13T11:41:00.002-05:00

When I was in Port au Prince before Christmas, I spent a day with Emerson walking around Carrefour. It was one of the times that I will always remember about Haiti because it gave me a closer view of people here - I was just Emerson's friend going to visit his friends and family, not a blan on tour.

Carrefour is a suburb of Port au Prince. The homes are built side by side, most surrounded by high concrete security walls. It is a crowded, dirty, dusty place with few trees and very bad roads.

We walked through the streets and back alleys, through the markets, and into homes to say hello and get caught up. I was amazed at how many people he knows, but there are a lot of people from Fond des Blancs living in Carrefour.

I have wondered how all of those people are. Most lived in buildings that were more than one story. We had gone by Catherine Flon, his old high school, and I know that it did collapse killing many students inside.

The other day when I was down in the hospital a young woman stopped me and called me by name. I didn't recognize her right away, but it was a cousin of Emerson's that we had visited. I had held her new baby while the others got caught up on news speaking Kreyol rapidly around me. I have thought of them often. They lived on the second floor of a corner house.

Beatrice told me that everyone was alright. Then she took me to see her baby where a friend was holding her waiting to see the pediatrician. The family had moved to Miragoane even though their home in Carrefour was okay.

I have been to Carrefour since the earthquake and it is a very different place. Many of the narrow streets are blocked, not by rubble but by tents. Most of the homes there are two stories, and very many of them are down or severely damaged. There was a five story apartment building close to the home of Conor's in-laws, that I used to look at from the galeri of their house. I remember thinking "that thing wouldn't stand in an earthquake" and sadly I was right.

One month

2010-02-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

It’s been one month since the catastrophe that changed so much of life here. It seems like an eternity ago because so much has happened in between.

Life, in many ways, is going on as usual, and sometimes the only reminder is a haunted look on a friend’s face, but most of the time the “evènman” is a stark reality.It is in the Haitians’ way of using understatement that the catastrophic earthquake that has caused so much suffering is now referred to as “the event”.

We have been working a lot. We wouldn't know what to do if we weren't working. We haven't had a day off, maybe a couple of hours to do something different and distracting, but the urgency of our work is not forgotten in that time.

I am probably one of the least affected people living here.I have not lost any loved ones, have not had to send children and family members overseas not knowing when I will see them again. I have not lost the security that so many did when their homes and businesses were destroyed, essentially plunging them into an unrelenting poverty. I could go away if I wanted to. While it hurts me to see the destruction and loss, I could never feel it as deeply as a Haitian does. And for that I feel guilty, and I feel blessed.

Haiti will go on. She has been battered and bruised yet again, but she is not broken.The spirit and determination of the people, their belief that things can be better, will pull them through. I don't know why this country and these wonderful people have had to suffer so much, but there is faith here, and I do know that God holds them all close to him and he knows their suffering.

Scammers

2010-02-12T09:01:00.003-05:00

Ok, I'd like to know who recently sold my email address to the scammers. I've been getting five or six emails a day promising me riches. This morning alone:

- Wilson Okana promises "there is a fund amounted to 30.6 million USD which I want us to jointly invest.

- Barrister Jerald Clinton promises $950,000 US from the British High Commission

in Nigeria, Benin Republic, Ghana and Bokinafaso received a report of scam against you and other British/US citizens and Malaysia,Etc.whom the country of Nigeria/Benin,Bokinafaso And Ghana have compensated you due to meeting held with Four countries Government and the world high commissions against fraud activities by the Four country Citizens. (HUH????)

- a Mrs claire page sending me this mail from her "sick bed in the hospital.please contact my lawyer Email(barr.landon.watson@gala.net)"

- and Mr. Adamo Sacko, of Atlantique Bank says "Hello dear, I came across your profile in my search for a capable and trustworthy person in your country, now that i have notice that you are not a bad person, i will like you to help me carry out this transfer. The deal involves $18.6 million US dollars and I have been packaging it for a long time."

I also got another one offering refinancing on an apartment I rented in Virginia 10 years ago. The disturbing thing, and what prompted me to open it, was the email address it came from: oreetz@alexi.moneytohelphaiti.info

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Early Tuesday

2010-02-09T08:10:00.000-05:00

5:30 am and I'm listening to James Taylor, drinking coffee, watching the gecko on my window screen, and preparing for the day. Tons to do.

Today is nutrition program day and we are trying to get back to the normal routine with that. We've been able to continue the program uninterrupted but today have some extra food to give the mothers outside of the normal rations. They'll be happy with that. For the last four weeks I haven't been able to participate too much because I have been so busy with other things. I'm hoping that I can participate more today.

We're expecting a team from Healing Hands for Haiti later to provide our staff, and quadraplegic/paraplegic patients and their families with training. We are excited they are coming. The service they are providing us is so valuable. We also may receive more patients today from the USNS Comfort.

No boredom here, that's for sure.

Caution needs to be taken when collecting and distributing infant formula during disasters

2010-02-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

Almost every collection effort I've seen has been asking for powdered infant formula. There are serious concerns and consquences with the uncontrolled distribution of infant formula in emergency situations - it can cause illness and death. The emergency protocol in Haiti right now states that only ready to use formula (liquid formula) is to be distributed. I've copied some text from a Unicef statement to the media explaining why the distribution of formula is a concern:

"Although Sri Lanka is a country with a high exclusive breastfeeding rate, there was a myth among mothers about the inability to produce enough breastmilk when under stress. A major problem was thedistribution of infant formula and feeding bottles by donors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), without the appropriate controls, to breastfeeding mothers. Donors acted emotionally without any scientific basis, disregarding the dangers of artificial feeding in disasters. Additionally the mass media was very keen on feeding babies so made a public appeal to supply artificial milk and feeding bottles. The Ministry of Health faced many challenges to ensure that breastfeeding mothers continued to do so and did not swap to unsustainable and potentially dangerous infant formula."
Statement from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Why are infants vulnerable?

Babies have specific nutritional needs and are born with an undeveloped immune system. For
infants who are breastfed, breastmilk provides both food and immune support, which protects
them from the worst of emergency conditions. However, the situation is very different for
babies who are not breastfed. In an emergency, food supplies are disrupted, there may be no
clean water with which to make up infant formula or to clean feeding implements and the
health care system is stretched past breaking point. This means that babies who are not
breastfed are vulnerable to infection and to developing diarrhoea. Babies with diarrhoea
easily become malnourished and dehydrated and so are at real risk of death.

Whenever there is an emergency, it is extremely important that babies who are already
being breastfed continue to be and that babies who are not breastfed re-start breastfeeding
or, if this is not possible, are given infant formula in the safest possible way.

What is the problem?

Past experience has shown that when there is an emergency, massive amounts of infant
formula and powdered milk are commonly donated. Some donations are a direct result of
media appeals for infant formula. These may originate with aid agencies, governments or
from individual efforts to help. Media coverage may generate public pressure on governments
to bring in formula. In the confusion that surrounds emergencies, these products are often
distributed in an uncontrolled way and used by mothers who would otherwise breastfeed their
babies. This results in unnecessary illness and death for many infants. For instance, a UNICEF
audit after the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake in Indonesia found that although breastfeeding
rates were initially very high, 70% of children under six months had been given donated
infant formula. In another example, a Centre for Disease Classification (CDC) investigation of
the post-flood deaths of more than 500 children in Botswana in 2005-06, found that nearly all
of the babies who died were formula fed. Here the risk of hospitalisation for babies who were
not breastfed was 50 times greater than that of breastfed infants. It is also extremely
common for powdered milk to be distributed as a part of general rations. However, this is
also problematic since experience has shown that about half of such milk will be given to
babies.

How can babies and young children be protected in emergencies?

There are accepted guidelines for the management of infant feeding in emergencies.

1. Mothers who are breastfeeding their babies are to be given support and practical assistance to continue, they should never be indiscriminately given infant formula or powdered milk. Experience has found that peer support programmes can help mothers to care for their babies and keep breastfeeding.

2. Mothers who have stopped breastfeeding completely, i.e. weaned their babies, should be encouraged to restart breastfeeding (relactate) and the option of wet nursing (where another woman breastfeeds the baby) should be explored for babies without mothers.

3. If there are infants who cannot be breastfed they should be provided with infant formula and the associated necessary resources to prepare it, under close supervision. Carers should be provided with education and support and the health of the baby monitored. Baby bottles should never be used because of the risk of contamination due to the difficulty of effectively cleaning them – even young babies can be fed via cup or spoon.

4. If powdered milk is to be provided it should be mixed with the local staple cereal prior to distribution so that it cannot be used as a breastmilk substitute.

5. Efforts to protect and support breastfeeding and ensure safe artificial feeding should extend to all young children.

6. Emergencies may be used by infant formula manufacturers as a way to enter new markets and increase sales. Unethical marketing of infant formula is a problem worldwide and an international code has been developed to protect mothers and babies from such unethical marketing.

Sunday Morning Worship

2010-02-07T09:10:00.001-05:00

You are the sun shining down on everyone
Light of the world giving light to everything I see
Beauty so brilliant I can hardly take it in
And everywhere you are is warmth and light

And I am the moon with no light of my own
Still you have made me to shine
And as I glow in this cold dark night
I know I can't be a light unless I turn my face to you

You are the sun shining down on everyone
Light of the world giving light to everything I see
Beauty so brilliant I can hardly take it in
And everywhere you are is warmth and light

And I am the moon with no light of my own
Still you have made me to shine
And as I glow in this cold dark night
I know I can't be a light unless I turn my face to you

Shine on me with your light
Without you I'm a cold dark stone
Shine on me I have no light of my own
You are the sun, you are the sun, you are the sun
And I am the moon

~ Sara Groves, You are the Sun

Tiny mental health break

2010-02-06T20:15:00.000-05:00

We've all decided to something distracting tonight. Nancy has gone down to the carrefour in the market, our local "Champs Mars", to watch a public movie. Conor has gone home to watch Disney with his family. I'm putting on Glee and eating a bowl of canned peas, the closest thing to a vegetable I can find.

Tomorrow is another day.

PaP yesterday

2010-02-06T18:01:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was the third time in two weeks that I've gone to Port au Prince. Each time it is more emotionally difficult.

I know that's hard to understand. You'd think when the disaster was new it would be harder, but each time the reality sinks in a little further. Each time we go we are seeing different parts of the city because we're avoiding traffic jams and taking people where they need to go. I couldn't bring myself to take any photos, and at times had to just put my head down and not look any longer. I'm not a person who cries easily, and haven't cried much, but I was close a lot of times yesterday.

Port au Prince before the earthquake was a dirty, crowded, hard place. I didn't always enjoy going there, but had come to appreciate its rough beauty and vitality as I became more familiar. All of the places I liked to go no longer exist. As you drive by the huge buildings that are now rubble in Centre Ville you know many, many people never made it out. The university nursing school is hard to see. Almost the entire 2nd year class of students was lost, with many still inside even now.

The tent camps continue to grow in size and number. The difference between Monday and yesterday was astounding. Almost every large space of public land has a camp on it. Some appear well organized with real tents, but most are not. Most are plastic sheets, tarps, bed linens, and table cloths held up with sticks. Some are upgrading to cardboard and tin. In parts of Carrefour, you can't get through the narrow streets because so many people are camping in front of their uninhabitable houses.

There are a lot of things to be worried about for the near future. The rainy season is coming and it will bring disease to the whole city. When it rains it is a deluge, and can come for several days before stopping. Port au Prince is built on a hill. The water will run through the downed buildings and decomposing bodies. It will get wet in the tents that so many people are living in. How wet and miserable do you get before you decide it's worth the risk to move back into an unsafe house?

NYT - Haiti Hospital's Fight Against TB Falls to One Man

2010-02-06T10:24:00.000-05:00

Haiti Hospital's Fight Against TB Falls to One Man

By IAN URBINA

Published: February 5, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At a fly-infested clinic hastily erected alongside the rubble of the only tuberculosis sanatorium in this country, Pierre-Louis Monfort is a lonely man in a crowded room.

Haiti has the highest tuberculosis rate in the Americas, and health experts say it is about to drastically increase

But amid the ramshackle remains of the hospital where the country’s most infected patients used to live, Mr. Monfort runs the clinic alone, facing a vastness of unmet need that is as clear as the desperation on the faces around the room.

“I’m drowning,” said Mr. Monfort, 52, flanked by a line of people waiting for pills as he emptied a bedpan full of blood. All of the hospital’s 50 other nurses and 20 doctors died in the earthquake or have refused to return to work out of fear for the building’s safety or preoccupation with their own problems, he said. Mr. Monfort joked that the earthquake had earned him a promotion from a staff nurse at the sanatorium to its new executive director.

continue reading here

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Thanks Katie & Frontier Cafe

2010-02-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

Some suggestions for anyone thinking of doing a food or other goods collection for Haiti...

2010-02-04T12:31:00.002-05:00

People are very motivated to help right now. After being on the ground here for a couple of years I'd like to offer some guidance to those who would like to help and make the best impact.

1. The most efficient and helpful thing people can send is money. A lot of things can be bought in Haiti, even now, and it helps the economy get back on it's feet and creates jobs if things are purchased in-country. And you don't have to worry about shipping costs.When a shipment of shoes and used clothing arrives here it takes work away from those who make those things for a living. Also, when an NGO uses your monetary donations to purchase food in large quantities, you get much more bang for the buck. You could send a half box of food to a food drive, but if you sent the value of that same food as cash, the NGO can buy 5-7 times as much food with it.

2. Make sure what you want to collect is acually needed. As an exception to what is said above, some organizations will ask for clothing and shoes if they have a genuine need for their recipients. DON'T SEND JUNK, EXPIRED OR BROKEN THINGS - it's a waste of money and shipping space. Chances are if you can't fix it, no one here can either. In general, if something isn't good enough to give your brother or sister, it's not good enough to send to Haiti either.

3. Before you start collecting food (or anything else for that matter) make sure you have a way to get it to Haiti. It is an extremely difficult country to ship things to in the best of times. It is even more difficult now. It breaks my nutritionist's heart to hear of people collecting food and it never making it here - either it ends up just sitting in the US or it ends up sitting in port here in Haiti. What a waste of food and very good intentions.

4. If you collect food, I would suggest that you ask people to donate things that the people of Haiti are used to eating - the good, nutritious staple foods like rice, corn meal, spaghetti, dried beans, and canned fish, meat, milk and peanut butter. While they are very grateful to receive food in an emergency they aren't used to eating a lot of things that North Americans are. They enjoy cookies and snack items, but those aren't sustaining foods and won't do much to prevent malnutrition. If you want your food collection to have the most impact, make it nutritious.

My two cents.

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Quick Post

2010-02-04T09:39:00.002-05:00

The helicopter just landed again to bring three more patients to us (photos here). All the patients we've received have spinal cord injuries. There are very few places to send these new paraplegics and quadraplegics, so we are privleged to be able to say yes to receiving them. There will be many challenges with their care but our staff is committed, and we will be relying on partnerships with organizations that can provide training and support.

Before the earthquake, Haiti was an incredibly difficult place for people with handicaps to live - it may be even moreso now. I cannot even begin to imagine what these new patients are feeling, what kind of fear they have about the future.

I stopped for a brief visit with M. the man who was brought in on Tuesday. I was very happy to see that he had family visiting. He's from near Petit-Trou-de-Nippes, which is a couple of hours from here. The patients are given a choice of where they will be discharged and are choosing places closer to their families.

Love your neighbour

2010-02-04T07:33:00.001-05:00

This essay is incredibly moving. Please link to the PIH website to continue reading.

Love Your Neighbour

Dr. Evan Lyon, Partners in Health

It is possible to imagine, even now in these darkest weeks, that something good may come. Many of our patients said out loud to me, sometimes for me to hear but more often just thinking out loud with another human being: “Bondye kite nou kanmpe.” God left us standing. Most still wondered if it would remain true. Would they still die of an injury, or would another aftershock take us all? I had the feeling many people couldn't believe they were still alive. But some went so far as to say: “God left us standing for some reason.”

I think this is the biggest job for all of us that care about Haiti right now: to remain open and committed. In solidarity. With compassion. With tremendous love.

It seems reasonable to me at this point to consider more than 200,000 dead and 1.5 - 2 million homeless and displaced. There is pressure on the infrastructure of the entire nation with so many fleeing the city to live with family in the countryside. Much of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel need to be rebuilt. I understand that Leogane is nearly completely gone. We need to stand with Haiti for a long time to come.

continue reading here

Getting dizzy with it all

2010-02-03T17:08:00.000-05:00

To say we're busy is an understatement. I haven't written as much here as I would like because I've also been writing for the St. Boniface blog. Communication is so important right now. We have donors who need to know what is going on. People are raising funds for us and we need to keep them in the loop. If you want to see some of the things we're doing, please check out the blog at www.haitihealth.org. There's some overlap in the writing and coverage between here and there, but I have so much going on I can't remember where I wrote what :)

I just returned to my room/office from spending a couple of hours in the depot we have in the old convent chapel. Jean Thomas, a local pastor and head of Haiti Christian Development Fund has received some shipments of food brought in by air. He is graciously sharing some of the food with us to distribute to the community. We made room in the depot for the boxes and organized everything. I think it came from a food drive because there's a variety of items. This food will be very much appreciated by those we distribute it to.

This morning after the memorial service, I went to Fonkoze for the first time since the earthquake. In a prior post I linked to story about the tremendous effort they made to get cash into the country quickly after the disaster. We are so lucky to have a Fonkoze branch here. The next closest bank for us is an hour away.

It was busy there this morning. We have had an increase in population and there are a lot of remittances being sent to people here from overseas. I think I was the only one there for a regular withdrawal - everyone else had a wire transfer form in their hands. The service there isn't always very fast, but they were well organized today and there was no limit on the amount I could withdraw. The exchange rate (gourdes to $US) has gone back up, but is still not where it was before the quake.

So, right now I'm going to indulge myself with a little nap if no one needs me, and prepare for a night of reporting regional data regarding our programs to submit to the Nutrition Cluster. And also write a few long-overdue emails. And help a friend clean a virus of his computer. And God knows what else.

We're in business

2010-02-02T21:05:00.000-05:00

Things are picking up. Our networking and planning are paying off. We received our first two patients from the Comfort today.

A man and a woman were brought this morning by helicopter and we are expecting more tomorrow. It caused a lot of excitement at the field to see them come in, and the community is very excited to be helping with relief efforts. Our two patients were given their beds at the hospital. After everyone had left I stopped to talk briefly to the man who had been brought in. He seemed to be a little overwhelmed and scared. I told him we would take good care of him. He had tears running down his face as he told me how thankful he was to be here, how Jesus has been with him, and how he has been blessed. His name is Maxo. Please pray for him.

Dedication

2010-02-02T20:51:00.000-05:00

I had to write about this because it has hit me so hard.

The mother of the little malnourished girl has taught me something. As we were driving back to FdB last night and everyone was so tired I wondered how difficult it must be for her.

- she took her sick child to an orphanage quite a distance from her home in an unstable place in the hope that they could help her; they couldn't but they cared enough to find help for her
- she agreed to accompany her child to a remote place that she has never been, has no friends or family, and does not know anything about the hospital
- she packed up her three year old to come with her too, not wanting to leave her as a burden on her neighbours, and maybe unsure of how well they would care for her
- she is vacating her place in a tent camp for a week, with only the verbal assurance of neighbours that her space will be there when she gets back
- she has no telephone to call home to let anyone know how she is
- she didn't know until later that there would be no charge for the care of her child (you would not believe the look of relief on her face when I told her that we care for malnourished children for free)

Her dedication to her child is humbling. The circumstances are so hard. When we arrived at the hospital last night, she remained outside with her children while she changed the baby's diaper, changed her clothes, and tidied up Angelica, the 3 yr old - before she would see the doctor. I can never know what it's like to walk in her shoes but I have the utmost respect for her.

Yesterday in Port au Prince

2010-02-02T11:40:00.000-05:00

I wish I had the time to write this well. There's so much that happened yesterday.

I was up at 3am to leave FdB by 4. I attended a meeting at the Unicef tent in the UN compound at the airport. Meetings are meetings, but I got some good information and talked with a few people. It's interesting to hear what others are doing. Everyone is scaling up. We won't ever meet the needs, but we are all trying. There were big and small NGOs present. St. Boniface is one of a few Haitian NGOs. Most of the people with the big guys have just come in for this event. It's a little different for us; Haiti is our friends, family and (adopted) home.
Saw many areas of the city. Went to Petionville, the airport, Delmas, Carrefour, the port area and Fort Dimanch/Cite Soleil area. We went with some of the 82nd Airborne to pick up a malnourished little girl, Nerline, from Mother Teresa's home to bring back to Fond des Blancs for recuperation. Her mother had no one else to take care of her three year old daughter, so we picked her up near Cite Soleil. I had never been to that part of Port au Prince. Now there are tent camps in the slums. Even though people are desperately poor, they are still kind and polite. When they knew we came to help Pharand with her children, they were very nice to us. Conor played Krik Krak, a kind of riddle game, with a group of little boys who came to his window of the ambulance. Angelica, the three year old, sat on my lap a good part of the trip. She really is an angel.
There's lots of stuff going on in the city. People are trying as best they can to regain some normalcy. There is some excavation of buildings going on. We drove past the Caribbean Market, where so many were killed. The bulldozers are removing rubble and the stench of the as-of-yet unrecovered bodies fills the air for blocks around.

Doing some clean up, cash for work program

Clothes for sale

This is a kindergarten. In the middle you can see the undisturbed front entrance.

This slab of concrete is the building's roof. No one has bothered to try to excavate. No one could have survived this collapse.

National Nutrition Cluster meeting in a tent at the UN compound at the airport. Everytime a large aircraft would go over we would have to stop talking and wait.

Sorting through the rubble for what can be saved.

Haiti Women's Micro-lending Bank Brings Big Cash to Rescue

2010-02-01T20:53:00.000-05:00

Haiti Women's Micro-lending Bank Brings Big Cash to Rescue

truthout.org
by Peggy Simpson

Able to quickly reach a well-developed network of women throughout the country, an alternative banking system performs while the Haitian economy is in shambles.

A micro-credit program and banking system for more than 200,000 women in Haiti has come to the rescue of the overall economy in the wake of the devastating earthquake.

At a time when Haitian commercial banks remain closed, Fonkoze, the Haitian branch of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, mobilized over one weekend to get funds to its members in rural towns as well as Port-au-Prince.

Between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m., last Saturday, January 23, Fonkoze brought in two million dollars in cash from their U.S. bank and distributed it by helicopters to regional offices in the most remote parts of the country.

continue reading here

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Meds & Supplies

2010-01-31T21:52:00.000-05:00

These are some medicines and supplies we received from CRS today. They were given to us in anticipation of the patients who are going to be sent this week. We are now on the official list of referral centers for post-operative care.

We have been anxiously awaiting word on when we would be receiving people. We had expected to have them coming quite a while ago, knowing what the need is. No one has ever dealt with this scope of disaster and injury before. No one is prepared for it. Much to our frustration, things are just barely starting to get organized in Port au Prince. There are incredible bottlenecks. We hope to start receiving some orthopedic post-op patients and possibly some stabilized spinal cord injuries and burn patients. Because of our very bad roads, it's not just as simple as driving in and picking them up in our ambulances.

We have been treating these past few days of waiting as the calm before the storm.

Cool T-shirts

2010-01-31T20:24:00.001-05:00

Kate Butler was one of our visitors who arrived the day the earthquake hit. She was deeply touched by her experience here and decided to do what she could when she got home. She has started a website to sell t-shirts to support St. Boniface Haiti Foundation.

Check it out, click here. I particularly like the "nourishment" shirt.

Favour

2010-01-31T15:27:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know how I would go about finding scholarship information for a young Haitian man who wants to study agriculture in Canada? My online searching isn't providing much information.

And now for something completely different...

2010-01-31T08:05:00.000-05:00

Catch What's on Your Plate?, the documentary about kids and food politics, on national TV this February 7th, 2010!

Join families across the country for a Family Cook-In! on Sunday, February 7th and spend an afternoon learning with your kids about food - what it's made of, where it come from and how to enjoy every bite.

First, download our Screening Toolkit. It has all the stuff you need to have a fun and delicious Family Cook-In!
Second, watch What's on Your Plate? at 2:00 p.m. on Discovery's Planet Green. (Go to http:planetgreen.channelfinder.net to find your local channel).
Third, check out the games and activities in our Screening Toolkit.
Fourth, cook and eat together! Get everyone in the kitchen chopping, stirring, pouring and baking. Then sit down together for some fresh and yummy home-cooked food.

Think food justice is too tricky for kids? Think again.

What's On Your Plate? proves that not only can kids understand the issues, they can actually teach other kids about how they are what they eat.

The film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates.

According to Michael Pollan: ""What's On Your Plate?" is exactly the film we need now."

And Alice Waters says: "It was an amazing experience to hear kids talking about these issues. This movie can have a real impact on the way we think about what we’re eating."

Don't miss this chance to see this witty and provocative film on national television!
Join in the conversation on how we can change what we eat, and in the process, change our world.

Visit our website for more information on the film and how you can get involved.
www.whatsonyourplateproject.com
Can't make the Family Cook-In! broadcast? No problem.
The film will be showing throughout the week, with additional broadcasts on:
Saturday February 6th, 2010 at 10 pm
Thursday February 11th at 11 pm
Friday February 12th at 7 am
Friday February 12th at 3 pm

St. Boniface Update

2010-01-30T14:04:00.000-05:00

Conor Shapiro
Director
St. Boniface Haiti Foundation
Fond des Blancs, Haiti
Jan. 29th, 2010

St. Boniface Earthquake Relief Update

The overall situation on the ground here in Haiti remains very confusing. It’s not clear who is able to accept patients for surgery, which hospitals can no longer accept patients, and who does/doesn’t have transportation for patients. We continue to do everything we can here at the hospital to take care of those who need care. There are a couple of new avenues where we are throwing ourselves into the relief effort

1) We continue to correspond regularly with the USNS Comfort Navy hospital ship that is receiving more cases than they are equipped to handle. They already have a waiting list that is beyond their capabilities and are running out of time to treat those in need. We are one of the hospitals responsible for post-op care from the ship and although we are ready and waiting, the Comfort doesn’t have enough helicopters to get patients off the ship. These delays in moving patients to post-op are creating bottlenecks that are severely limiting the Comfort’s ability to provide surgery for patients in dire need of care. We should start receiving post-op patients by helicopter to Fond des Blancs tomorrow, but if the Comfort doesn’t receive more helicopters it could be a long wait. A captain from the ship is working with the US military to get us cots, as we are quickly going to run out of beds here at the hospital once the flights start to finally come in.

We are working with Catholic Relief Services, USAID, and donations from the US to help us receive all of these new patients discharged from the Comfort. Once patients start to arrive, we will analyze their needs and perhaps request volunteers from abroad to help us with certain cases.

2) We are also working with Captain Coulter of the 82nd Airborne, whose team has been trying to evacuate 6 severely malnourished children from Mother Teresa’s home in Port-Au-Prince. The home was set up to take care of the kids, but collapsed during the earthquake. Capt. Coulter is trying to find a helicopter (apparently an impossible task these days) to take the children out to us for treatment. If we can’t find a helicopter we will send an ambulance and go pick them up. It sounds like we are the only place that Capt. Coulter has found that is willing to take these kids in for treatment and I am sure we are going to receive a lot more patients from his unit in the coming days.

We have been battling for goods and services in the last couple days and have been somewhat successful in a couple of areas:

A) WHO

Jean Bertrand (one of our ambulance drivers) and I went to Port-Au-Prince yesterday morning to find meds and supplies for the hospital. All of our previous pharmacies have collapsed or been closed since the quake and we have not been able to purchase our general stocks for the hospital. Thanks to a tip from some friends at Partners in Health, we were able to get to the World Health Organization and find some essential meds to keep our operations going. We also made additional contacts to purchase or receive meds and supplies from other organizations in the coming weeks.

B) UNICEF

We are currently working on a partnership with UNICEF that would help provide nutritional and primary health interventions in Fond des Blancs, Villa, and a few of the numerous makeshift (sheets and sticks for houses) refugee camps that have sprung up in Port-Au-Prince and Petit-Goave. Dr. Miliane Clermont has been meeting with some of the committees set up by the refugee camps and we hope to start a partnership with UNICEF to start to take care of their residents’ basic needs (especially for mothers and children). In the meantime, we have given Dr. Miliane some pediatric medications to take care of some immediate needs in the camps.

C) Funding

The banks are starting to work again and we are able to use your donations. It has been tricky to get cash since the earthquake, but thankfully banks are finding ways to stay open. Our staff received payroll without delay this month.

Our team on the ground continues to do remarkable work and I am constantly impressed by their resilience and solidarity. Our staff has been through a lot since the earthquake, but they continue to do everything possible to participate in the relief effort. This is going to be a long haul and I couldn’t be prouder of the attitude and dedication of those who work for St. Boniface.

Please feel free to write me at conorshap at yahoo dot com if you have any questions or comments, or visit our website at www.haitihealth.org to see how you can help.

The small things

2010-01-30T11:45:00.000-05:00

There's still a sense here among us that this can't be real. We were just talking about waking up in the morning and then remembering how things have changed. It is surreal and sometimes it just hits you in the face. I haven't had a lot of tears but they do come, and unexpectedly.

When I open or save files on my computer now I am looking mostly at a folder called "Earthquake Emergency Relief". I can't believe that I have a folder named that. Earthquake?

I know this post is trivial in face of what is going on in the country. But maybe by sharing the small things I can also share the scope, the impact of what is happening. Or maybe not.

I've been keeping track of some of the food prices in our market with the help of our cooks. I want to know how things are changing for the average person. They seem to be stable this week, but most things have increased by at least 25%. Haiti relies heavily on imported foods, and the vast majority of people here had a difficult time purchasing food at the normal prices, now many things are already out of reach.

One small thing I've noticed - we were laughing about it in the kitchen today - is that even though the price of bread has not gone up, the rolls have shrunk by about 25%. These diamond shaped rolls are the form of bread we have in this region and are made with unenriched white wheat flour. They are heavy, usually about 4 ounces, or the equivalent of 4 slices of regular white bread at home. They are now about 3 ounces. The cooks were giggling, wondering how small they are going to get before the price goes up. They've been through this before.

History may be Haiti's greatest resource

2010-01-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

This article is incredibly moving. Haiti is alive, she will live.

History may be Haiti's greatest resource

Dr. Joia Mukherjee, Partners in Health
The Huffington Post

Haiti was founded by a righteous revolution in 1804, the first black republic, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, the first to break the chains of slavery, the only to aid Bolivar in his struggle to liberate Latin America. It is the response of the powerful to that history that has impoverished Haiti. Feared by Jefferson for their successful uprising; extorted by France in 1825 for 150 million French francs to compensate France for losing these once chatteled people (a debt the Haitian people finally finished repaying more than a century later); occupied by the U.S. military to stifle European influences in Latin America; disrespected in their quest for democracy by dictators and coup d'états backed by Western powers, the free people of Haiti have been continually crushed with the enormous debt that attempted to re-shackle them.

Why does this history matter in the face of the current tragedy? Because this history and the constant fight and struggle of the Haitian people for justice and dignity are their greatest resource. It is this history that makes Haiti mighty -- mighty without wealth, without natural resources, without arable land and without arms.

continue reading here

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Schools & WSJ article

2010-01-30T06:37:00.000-05:00

I apologize for all the news articles, but I am only really posting things that deal with issues that I'm encountering. For example, I've been reading about Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYFC) and how the unorganized and unrestricted distribution of infant formula can be damaging to a community's health - mothers need to be supported in breastfeeding their children and use infant formula only as a last resort.

This article about schools from the Wall Street Journal is timely. We've been talking about it, wondering about when the schools will reopen. So many people want it to happen. There are so many things complicating it, like how on earth will the state be able to administer exams?

School is a huge deal in Haiti. Everyone wants their children to go. Most schools in the cities are full from morning until night as different age groups and courses switch through. That's why there were so many fatalities at that time of day - many of them were full.

The journalist makes a small mistake. The reason so many people send their children to private schools is because there are not enough public schools. The state cannot support free education to all children - it is a constitutional right in Haiti but it has never been able to do so. The private schools are businesses. The vast majority of schools do not offer a quality education - public or private. Only 50% of the children in Fond des Blancs go to school because their parents cannot afford to pay for it.

Call for breast milk donations in Haiti goes bust

2010-01-29T15:10:00.003-05:00

Call for breast milk donations in Haiti goes bust

Intentions may be good, but supply isn't safe or necessary, aid groups say

By JoNel Aleccia

Health writer, msnbc.com

When lactation consultant Faith Ploude heard that babies in Haiti might need donated breast milk, she made sure to get the word out to her classes at Mercy Hospital in Miami — and her database of more than 1,000 nursing moms.

“Everybody is moved because Haiti is so devastated,” she said.

But it turns out that Ploude and a bevy of United States breast-feeding advocates may have unleashed a well-meaning but misguided flood of mothers’ milk to the earthquake-shattered nation, one that aid workers in Haiti say was not requested — and is not needed.

Tell them not to send it,” said Eric Porterfield, a spokesman for the American Red Cross. “I’m 100 percent sure we didn’t ask for that.”

The international Emergency Nutrition Network has asked one group, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, to retract a press release this week that issued an “urgent call” for breast milk for orphaned and premature infants in Haiti, saying the donations contradict best practices for babies in emergencies.

continue reading here

Some numbers

2010-01-27T11:52:00.000-05:00

It is difficult to get my mind around the enormity of the situation. I found some figures this morning that help to quantify how big it is.

3 million people affected, with 2 million of those in PaP, Carrefour and Petionville (suburbs of PaP)

400,000 people in camps

1.6 million with unknown whereabouts but internally displaced (have gone to countryside or other cities)

480,000 of those affected are children under the age of 5; 204,000 are under the age of 2

240,000 are pregnant and lactating women

It says 3 million have been affected, but that is only directly by the devastation. 100% of the population has been affected. 100% of the population will be struggling for years to come.

USNS Comfort

2010-01-27T06:11:00.002-05:00

We are still awaiting the arrival of patients being sent from the USNS Comfort for post-op care. We are anticipating that they will start arriving this morning.

Here's an article from USA Today detailing the great work that they are doing in Haiti.

Haiti's 'floating hospital': Tough questions on USNS Comfort

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Aftershocks

2010-01-26T21:12:00.000-05:00

The aftershocks continue and are getting to be annoying. We had a very brief stronger one about an hour ago. We feel mild ones quiet frequently but the stronger ones are quite disconcerting. Some are short and sharp, like just one blow, but others last a little longer and feel like several vibrations.

After seeing the escalation of the severity of damage as you get closer to Leogane, I can only imagine what these feel like closer to the epicenter.

We're about to get very busy

2010-01-26T08:29:00.001-05:00

Conor Shapiro, MPH
Director
St. Boniface Haiti Foundation
Fond des Blancs, Haiti
www.haitihealth.org
1/26/10

St. Boniface Haiti Foundation Earthquake Report

The St. Boniface Haiti Foundation and St. Boniface Hospital continue to be part of relief efforts and health interventions in the wake of the earthquake. We have started a number of initiatives and will continue to do everything possible to ease suffering in the wake of this unprecedented disaster.

We have been asked by the USS Comfort to start receiving patients who underwent surgery on their ship and now need post-op care. Helicopters should start landing in a field next to the hospital by noon today. We have agreed to take as many patients as we can hold and our staff will be working closely with the medical staff of the comfort in order to ensure a smooth transition of care. We are also partnering with Catholic Relief Services to ensure adequate supplies, housing, and food. Donations to support the hospital and to support the care of all our patients are extremely welcome.
Our recently completed Villa Clinic was destroyed by the earthquake, but this has not prevented our staff from organizing a new clinic in a neighboring church. Without these crucial primary health services, the desperately poor population who relies on the clinic would be without any access to care. We will continue to do everything possible to ensure a continuity of care despite no longer having an adequate building to provide these services.
Dr. Miliane Clermont, a long-time St. Boniface employee is spending this week as an ambassador from our St. Boniface to a few makeshift refugee camps in Port-Au-Prince. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to these makeshift camps (usually nothing more than sheets and sticks) throughout the capital. Dr. Clermont will be working with a couple of these settlements to help their leadership identify needs and eventually provide basic services.

St. Boniface continues to do everything possible to ease the suffering in the wake of the earthquake. We thank you for your continuous support and generosity. Please visit www.haitihealth.org to see more about our foundation.

Haitian proverb

2010-01-26T06:33:00.001-05:00

Depi tet pa koupe nou espere met chapo

If they haven't cut our head off yet, we can still wear a hat

We're alive, we will live

Quick Post?

2010-01-25T21:50:00.000-05:00

It takes me a long time to write a blog post. I don't write easily. I only have about half an hour to do this so it may be a little disjointed. Ok, so maybe it will be easier to write it in point form. Here goes:

I went to Port au Prince today for a national nutrition meeting. I didn't really want to go in to the city, but I didn't want to miss the meeting. National planning and networking is underway to assess the nutriton situation in the country and to plan programming. It was at a tent at the airport as Unicef lost their building in the quake. We got some good information and will be moving full steam ahead this week. I'll write more about it as it comes to pass.
Driving into the city was difficult emotionally. There's not much obvious damage out here but as you get closer, it becomes more apparent. The first thing I saw were some rock falls onto the road, and then as we drove into Petit Goave and Grand Goave we started to see the fallen buildings. Leogane is a disaster. There is hardly a house standing, large or small. It seems like everything has been flattend.
Port au Prince is getting better but is horrifying. There weren't any bodies around, and the population that is left seems to be getting on with their lives. The marchands are selling on the streets and people are out and about. There are many,many buildings down and tents and makeshift tents everywhere. The median between the two lanes of traffic of Route Nationale through Martissant has tents covering the whole thing. People are living between the lanes!
There are a lot of organizations on the ground, from every country imagineable. We saw American soldiers, and some Canadians too. UN forces are a continued presence. They are doing all different kinds of good work. I saw water being distributed in a few places.

I saw only two men looting, and no violence whatsoever. There are HUGE lines at all of the wire transfer places that have opened up. There are HUGE lines of people waiting for food at Champs Mars. In all places, I saw people in orderly lines, patiently waiting for hours on end. That is one thing that is never gets shown, seems to never get stated: Haitians are very patient people.
I saw Dr. Cadet and gave him a big, hard hug. It was so good to see him! We miss him a lot.
I didn't take any pictures. I was in a vehicle with dirty windows and I couldn't roll the windows down. I couldn't have taken anything that hasn't already been shown very well in the news already anyway.
I helped a friend loot his own house before the anonymous looters could do it.
Tomorrow is another day. Maybe the next time I write I will tell you how it felt to be in PaP today, but I just can't do that now.
The aftershocks continue

Trying to keep up

2010-01-25T20:55:00.001-05:00

I've been away all day, and if I have time and energy tonight I will write about it. My email box is exploding, so I'd like to say to all of you who have written and commented, I'm sorry if I can't respond right away. We are about to get a whole lot busier here too, so it may be a while.

That said, I want you all to know how much I appreciate the kind words, gestures, and encouragement. They show us that you aren't forgetting Haiti. We need to know that you won't. We are in this for the long haul and need your help.

Please also note, that if you send me a comment with any personal information like an email address or phone number I will not post the comment. Or if you are asking something personal that's not related to the blog, I will try to answer you privately, but it may take a while.

Hurry up and wait

2010-01-24T08:42:00.001-05:00

It's a quiet Sunday and time to sit and reflect a little before I go to church.

I haven't written very much about what's going on here in Fond des Blancs because there hasn't been a lot going on - everyone is in waiting and planning mode.

Our hospital is pretty remote which means that we haven't had a huge influx of patients - yet. We know as things get more organized in PaP that our facilities will be used. We know that we will be receiving patients coming for surgery (when we get a surgeon) and we may be used as a facility for post surgical care. There is a great need for aftercare. There will be a great need for treatment of the second wave of illness after disaster - infection.

We have been busy working with connections to make this happen. We are sourcing medicines and supplies, and planning for receiving a large number of people.

The community has been pulling together. Everyone is helping each other. A committee has been put together to make an assessment of how many evacuees have arrived in the region and what their needs are. Requests for assistance will be based on the assessment. For now, we have already started to receive some emergency aid. As it should be, the community is taking care of this. St. Boniface is a large presence here, but ultimately the community needs to do this for itself, with us supporting them in whatever way we can.

The tsunami coming: riding the waves of rescue, rebuilding, and resurrection

2010-01-24T08:18:00.000-05:00

Great article about the different stages of medical need here in Haiti.

The tsunami coming: riding the waves of rescue, rebuilding, and resurrection

So cool...

2010-01-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

I am completely blown away by what this fourth-grader has done. Please go to A Heart for Haiti to read the story and buy some Valentine cards. Funds raised with this brilliant initiative will help St. Boniface Hait Foundation respond to the emergency in Haiti.

If you truly want to help...

2010-01-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

If you truly want to help, please read this:

Disaster do-gooders can actually hinder help

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NYT: Some frank talk about Haiti

2010-01-22T09:36:00.001-05:00

Some frank talk about Haiti

NYT Op-ed

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Published: January 20, 2010

On my blog, a woman named Mona pointed to Haitian corruption and declared: “I won’t send money because I know what will happen to it.” Another reader attributed Haiti’s poverty to “the low I.Q. of the 9 million people there,” and added: “It is all very sad and cannot be fixed.”

“Giving money to Haiti and other third-world countries is like throwing money in the toilet,” another commenter said. A fourth asserted: “Haiti is a money pit. Dumping billions of dollars into it has proven futile. ... America is deeply in debt, and we can’t afford it.”

Not everyone is so frank, but the subtext of much of the discussion of Haiti is despair about both Haiti and foreign aid. Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, went furthest by suggesting that Haiti’s earthquake flowed from a pact with the devil more than two centuries ago. While it’s not for a journalist to nitpick a minister’s theological credentials, that implication of belated seismic revenge on Haitian children seems defamatory of God.

Americans have also responded with a huge outpouring of assistance, including more than $22 million raised by the Red Cross from text messages alone. But for those with doubts, let’s have a frank discussion of Haiti’s problems:

Continue reading here

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Where I'm at

2010-01-22T07:08:00.002-05:00

At this precise moment my exact location is 18 degrees 16'39.38"N and 73 degrees 07'50.00"W. Here's how SBHF looks on Google Earth. Welcome to Fond des Blancs.

WIRED article - Haiti aftershocks will continue...

2010-01-22T06:44:00.000-05:00

This article in WIRED is rather disturbing in it's predictions for the future.

In the first map it shows the locations of the quake and aftershocks. Fond des Blancs is directly south of the group of circles at the left.

Wow

2010-01-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

Wow. Four posts today. Imagine that. Oops, just made it five :)

Swamped

2010-01-21T16:52:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to clean out my email inbox. I'm the kind of person who keeps it to one page and puts everything in folders. I'm going nuts with the disorder :)

I'm finding many emails and Facebook posts that I haven't had the time to respond to. I would like everyone to know that even if you haven't heard from me, I appreciate deeply the care and concern you have expressed. Your encouraging words and prayers are a huge help.

Mesi anpil, anpil, anpil. Bondye beni nou (Thank you so much, and may God bless you).

Ellen

Out and about

2010-01-21T13:49:00.001-05:00

I decided to leave the hospital compound this morning - I am feeling very out of touch with the community. I've been feeling out of touch with everyone here as I still don't understand kreyol very well. I am missing out on the conversations, the escape with humour that those around me are enjoying.

I went to visit M. to see how she and her family are doing. St. Boniface has recently built her a house of which she received the keys on 1 January. The new house has suffered no damage but she is waiting until the latrine is ready before moving in. They continue to live in the little leaf and bark house, but are sleeping outdoors. I sat on an overturned bucket on which they had placed a cushion - the seat of honour they prepared when I called to say I was coming. We talked for a while about events and I promised M. if she came to the hospital I would show her pictures of the damage in PaP. She has only heard about what has happened by word-of-mouth. I am afraid to show her because she used to live there, has a lot of friends there, and I know she will be very shocked.

As she walked me back down the hill and through her neighbours yard we stopped there to look at the neighbours' house. One of the walls had fallen down. The roof and everything else was okay. This house is made of rocks filled in with mud/clay and covered with something like cement or plaster, the way they were made before concrete blocks took hold in Haiti. The rocks in one wall all tumbled out, leaving the house uninhabitable. The family is living in their cooking lean-to, which has never had the luxury of four walls. Their possessions are all bundled up under the thatch roof, where they will be susceptible to rain and bad weather. They plan to rebuild but don't have the means right now.

I continued on to visit EM, E's brother. They have returned to Fond des Blancs from PaP with family members. EM told me how he was on his way home from work and going through Carrefour when the earthquake hit. He described how his car was shaken around, and how there was a huge cloud of dust that arose after the buildings collapsed. He was very worried for his family as he rushed to his house near Carrefour to find that everyone was okay and the house was still standing. They came back to Fond des Blancs for security.

They have been building a nice house here on the family property but it is far from finished. Right now they are living in the old house on the property, one that is similar to the one I mentioned above. Neither the new or old house suffered any damage and they are happy to be in a safe place. I sat and talked with them, met the children, and EM showed some family photos. One was of E as a little boy leading the procession of schoolchildren for flag day. He was a very cute little boy.

As I walked back through the village I was noticing already how things have changed. There's a lot more noise in general and seems to be more people around. When I would walk past familiar yards, I would see children that I hadn't seen before.

I'm glad for the small, normal activities in the midst of all the strangeness and I am happy that people were happy to see me. I was also happy to tell them that, no, I wasn't going to be leaving, at least not yet.

Evacuation

2010-01-21T06:23:00.000-05:00

Our visitors were finally able to leave on Tuesday. We had 9 in total, but not all were able to leave on Saturday. Five had to stay behind for three difficult days of waiting.

Sue, Anne, Lee, Martha, and Linda: I hope you all had a smooth trip home and are enjoying being back in the arms of your loved ones. Thank you for the support that you gave us while you were here. You guys were wonderful, and held your cool amazingly well.