February in Haiti

Whew it's been a busy few weeks and I have not been able to write a new blog in a while. Here are some highlights of what I've been up to:

• The main event for Haitian Kanaval was in Cap-Haitien this year and we decided to brave the crowds. Imagine big busses driving down the street with the most popular artists standing on top performing everyone's favorite songs. All around the busses are LOADS of people dancing, singing, yelling, pushing, shoving, etc. There is so much energy and you can barely speak to those around you because it is so loud. Not something I would do every day but so glad I got to have the experience!
• My birthday was during the week so we opted to celebrate the following weekend. We had the opportunity to take a boat to a private island and spend the day swimming, laying in the hammock, playing with the resident dog and eating some of the best fish I've ever had. Such a great day!
• We have been working as much as we can to fix up the rooms where our volunteers stay. We are resurfacing the roof to prevent it from leaking, building a kitchen and laundry space, painting, fixing windows, building benches and tables as well as an shelter out on our patio where we can eat in the shade. It's shaping up well though we need a plumber to install some missing pieces in our sinks and showers.
• We had 9, fantastic medical students come down to volunteer and had a fantastic time together. They were so eager to jump right in and work hard. We saw nearly 170 patients in 4 clinic days and we were so impressed with their level of skill. 
• We are now ready to start our refeeding program for malnourished kids using Plumpy Nut/Medika Mamba, a fortified peanut butter supplement made at a factory about an hour from our clinic. The factory is run by an American NGO called Meds and Food for Kids. We were able to tour their new factory on Wednesday and are so excited about the work they are doing.. It costs about $70 to treat a malnourished child using the product. If you would like to save a life in this way, you can make a donation on our website here. 
• After touring the MFK factory, we visited SOIL, an NGO working in Haiti to turn waste into something useful. They mainly make compost toilets and then use the compost that is created at their organic farm. Visiting their site inspired us to create our own compost pile for our kitchen and garden waste. Wish us luck that it goes well!
• We almost have our first garden plot cleared to start our community gardens and have started to clean out the pool in preparation for building the Garden Pool in April. I can't wait for fresh, organic, crunchy vegetables!
• We finally took a day yesterday and went to the beach with some friends. It was so nice to recharge our batteries a bit.

That's all for now. I will write again later.

Thanks for reading!

Dokte Sarah

First Week in Haiti - 2013

I had intended to write blog posts more frequently to keep you all up to date but the internet has not been cooperating. So I will give you some highlights of our first week back in Haiti! Our friends at MamaBaby Haiti graciously allowed us to stay the first few days at their facility so we could get on our feet. After purchasing a few essentials and hanging our bug net, we have spent two nights in our new clinic. The first was in the fanciest and biggest room but it had no ventilation so we roasted. Last night we moved to the smallest room and I actually got cold which rarely happens here. So it looks like the small room it will be. It has its good points though: cross-ventilation, a balcony with a door we can open at night and it is located in the very back so we don't hear the traffic noises as much.

So far we have hired a health worker/translator, a cook, our night guard comes today for an interview and we are doing a trial run for a gardener. The gardener is Innocent, the father of baby Dafka I wrote abut in an earlier blog post. We hope that he can receive training from Dennis with The Garden Pool when he comes in April to help us build one in Haiti. This training will give him a unique skill to go to other NGOs and build Garden Pools for them. It is difficult because so many of our friends and acquaintances are without work and have asked us to hire them but we are not in a place to hire very many people. 

A couple of our employees have young children and were not sure what to do with them during the day while they came to work so we decided to create a Childcare Center as part of their "benefits package". I invision it being almost like a preschool where they can learn, play, sing songs, make crafts, etc. We have asked Madam
Clauden, an older woman with three daughters who was living in a bad situation to be our childcare provider. The back story of her family is heartbreaking: One of the daughters was being attacked by a family member and a baby was the result so MamaBaby helped them to find a safe place to live. Madam Clauden and her daughters
manage the little library out of their home, that MamaBaby helped to start but are at risk of losing their house because none of them have been able to work in quite a while. When I told her about the job opportunity, I thought she was going to rip my neck off she was hugging me so hard. We also hope to make this family one of the first ones to participate in our community garden project so they can grow their own food and medicines and have a bit to sell. I am excited that these children will always be in close proximity to their parents to allow for things like breastfeeding to continue smoothly and to have a loving and caring woman to look after them while their parents work to provide for them. Seems like a win-win for everyone!

The building where we are living is in better shape than we thought which is a huge relief. One of our friends is coming today to look at the roof because it needs to be re-sloped to stop it from leaking when it rains. Hopefully it will be an easy and affordable fix. We also need to buy several new beds because the ones here are in terrible shape. We are going to price some beds in Haiti today and may end up making a trip to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to buy some beds at the IKEA there.

Sean set up our little solar system so we have a place to charge our electronics yesterday. It is amazing all that he can do. When he didn't have the right cords to connect everything, he cut them and put two together and got it to work! We estimate we will have 10-12 hours of sunlight each day so we will get a lot out of them. The man who manages the clinic where we are staying has two more solar panels he said we might be able to use so that would give us even more power! We are going to try to fix the cistern on the roof so we can have running water but for now we are hauling water from the well (at least it has a hand pump!) and carrying it up to our room for bucket showers and to flush the toilet. I expect to have Michelle Obama arms when all is said and done. :)

Today is my birthday but we have a lot that needs to be done today so I think my birthday will be on hold until we can go to the beach on Sunday. A couple of the women who live/work around here want to throw me a birthday party which is really sweet!  We are also going to start an English/Creole exchange so I can learn Creole and they can learn English.

OK I better get to work. Just wanted to update all of you on the latest. Will write more when I can!

Thanks for reading!

Dokte Sarah

En Route to Haiti

Sean and I are finding it hard to believe that we are finally en route to Haiti! We have been dreaming about this day for what seems like forever and it's difficult sometimes to be fully present to the fact that we are nearly there. So many of you have seen us through the huge range of emotions we've gone through during this process and we can't thank you enough for continuing to be here, standing by our side telling us you believe in what we are trying to do!

The night before we left, my Grandma made us a final dinner: gluten-free beef stroganoff and also a final breakfast: gluten free waffles, fresh fruit and coffee. She and Grandpa have been so supportive of me being gluten-free and frequently report when they find cookies/cakes/pasta in gluten-free form.  They drove us to the airport, we had a teary goodbye and then we were off! The flights were rather uneventful so I'll fast forward a bit. ALL of our bags made it in one piece and so did we. No concussions this time! :)  We took a taxi to our guest house, a steal for $20/night with our own bathroom a fan, wifi and electricity. I tried to connect to the internet on my phone, ipod, kindle and laptop and couldn't get it to work on any of my devices.  Sean got it to work on his laptop but as soon as I tried it, I couldn't get it to work there either! It made me realize how out of practice I am living on this island. In reality it's not the end of the world if I can't get online for a few days, but since I do the majority of my work online, it was extremely frustrating when I couldn't connect. So I went to bed frustrated and when I woke up today I could connect! After working for about an hour, I decided to plug in my computer and then found that it wouldn't charge! I tried several outlets and once again even though Sean could get his stuff to charge, mine wouldn't work. So fortunately our good friend Jared saved the day by calling Apple for me and getting a reset code from them. It worked!

After a while we set out in search of food and solar panels. We wandered around in the rain for a few minutes and finally came across the Caribe Tours bus station where we purchased our tickets to go to Haiti in a mix of English, Creole and Spanish. Since it was raining so much we hired a taxi to head to the solar panel store. Sean had found them online and they had small, inexpensive panels he thought we could use. Long story short, they didn't have small panels, only gigantic ones and after two more taxi rides, 4 more stores and a membership purchased to a store similar to Costco, called Price Smart, we have a small solar panel system! This will allow us to have some lights and internet most of the time without using city power or a wasteful generator, and we couldn't be more excited! Unfortunately while we were in Price Smart trying to purchase our membership, our taxi driver came running in and said his wife had been taken to the ER and that he had to run. We of course told him to go and be with her but it meant we didn't have a ride back to our hotel. We quickly resolved the situation when one of the store's employees made a call to have a taxi sent for us.

Once we got back to our hotel, we got an email from our renter saying that our furnace quit. Again. So we are trying to get that resolved while we are a few thousand miles away. Fortunately we have insurance and those supportive family members to look after our place. I will write more when I can.

Thanks for reading!

Dokte Sarah