Introduction and Krapos

My name is Sarah Preston Hesler and I am a Naturopathic Physician (ND) who recently located to work in northern Haiti along with my husband Sean Hesler, who is also a naturopath.  Why Haiti you ask?  Why not?  Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and that was before the terrible earthquake in 2010.  Add on top of that the cholera epidemic and political unrest that have been plaguing Haiti as it tries to recover.  Then consider the rising food prices and the fact that 1 in 10,000 Haitians has access to a doctor and you can see why we are here.  Haiti needs help so badly and as time goes by I will be sharing much much more on that later, I'm sure.  More on what we are doing here: Sean and I are employed by the organization, MamaBaby Haiti (www.mamababyhaiti.org) a 501c3 who's mission is to reduce the maternal, fetal and neonatal death rates in Haiti and we are the medical directors for the birth center/clinic.  Our center is located in Morne Rouge just west of Cap-Haitien.  On staff we also have a lovely Haitian nurse midwife, Charles Marie who is extremely competent and very sweet with the women who come to our facility to have their babies.  We also have frequent volunteers from doctors, to midwives, to students to community volunteers who just want to help Haiti.  It's a pretty great life but it's just amazing how different things are here.  Yes we're all just people trying to survive in this world and some of us are having an easier time of it than others but honestly sometimes it's so shocking how different things are here.  

Take the Krapo ("frog") Incident for example:  Before I can tell you this story I have to give you some background: On our property we have a swimming pool.  This pool is not filled and is ridiculously big and deep.  We as an organization don’t know what should be done with it.  We could fill it but when you consider that most of our patients don’t have access to clean water, how can we justify swimming around in it for fun?  We've considered the idea of filling it with dirt for extra garden space, filling it with fish to provide more sources of protein for our patients or just leaving it as is.  The matter has yet to be resolved so for now, it collects rain water and as of today has a fence around it to prevent any small children from falling in.  Many creatures have taken advantage of the collecting rain water including mosquitoes, dragon flies and krapos.  We have tadpoles and krapos who like to make a LOT of noise at night.  As the tadpoles were growing, we realized that most Haitians are TERRIFIED of krapos and claim they will “pee in your eye and you will go blind!!”  This of course makes all the Americans laugh hysterically.  The Haitians however, don't seem to have a fear of the same things we Americans fear like spiders, snakes, or mice.  When we are shreaking and running away from a mouse or a spider they are laughing at us so I guess it all works out.  

Anyway, back to the story: One day someone brought a full-grown frog into the pool as a joke and Sean, our friend Zeenia and I decided it would be a good idea to catch it.  Santo, our translator who lives and works with us started throwing pebbles at the poor thing and was yelling emphatically for us to leave it alone and that we would surely lose our vision if we picked it up.  Sean eventually caught the poor thing and started chasing Santo around the yard with it.  Santo ran out of the gate and down the road and one of us decided it would be hilarious if the frog was in his bedroom when he came back.  Yes this is what we do for entertainment with slow, spotty internet and no TV.  We went about our business as usual until Santo came upstairs saying “You put the frog in my room!”   We took the frog out of his room and then started getting threats from Santo that he would put a snake or a spider or a mouse in our rooms.  He would walk by us and say “I have three mice for the three of you…”  We hope this will be the first of many practical jokes that are played in Haiti.  Alright the power's off and the battery backup may die very soon so I better sign off for today.  Thanks for reading!

-Dr. Sarah