I Survived

Arrived home yesterday at 4pm, bit of a culture shock being back in the developed world, toilets that flush, power at will, water that always comes out of the tap, hot showers!!!! and real food, I am sure it will take me a few days to adjust but despite the harshness of the work and the living conditions but if someone said to me please could you get on the next flight out we need you in the camps I would be there with bells on!!
I thought in my arrogant westernized mentality that I was going to go there and change the world and yet I was the one who was changed. Nothing could have prepared me for the level of poverty and disease that I saw, little brown babies that were so covered in ulcerated scabies they looked white, children who were so malnourished their hair turned blond due to lack of nutrition, asthma, TB on a grand scale (yes I am going to get tested in a couple of weeks dont worry!), lots and lots of dysentry. Yet kids are kids the same over, even with nothing and these kids had no toys they still had that joy in their faces. They taught me their counting and circle games and I taught them the chicken dance and the macarena - now that was funny, who needs a common spoken language when you speak in love, I knew no spanish they knew no english but we communicated perfectly with a touch and a smile and often a belly aching thigh slapping laugh.

I have many stories, too many to write today, I will try and get them all down. The one that I just cannot get out my mind though is the third day in the camp when this young girl (who looked about 14 yrs) wandered into clinic with a near-death newborn laying limp in her arms. Now the Haitians spoke either spanish or creole and it became apparent that this girl only spoke creole and we had no creol interpreter. So by the grace of God ( and that really is the way this worked) this non-spanish speaking girl wandered deep into the camp by herself (not advisable) and somehow came across a woman who spoke both spanish and creole managed to get her to follow me. The translator spoke to my new found friend in Spanish who interpretedt to the new mom with near dead baby in creole and in this way we communicated. This girl did not know how old she was or how old the baby was (not uncommon) but that the baby had diarrhea since birth, she was breast feeding but not producing much milk. Slowly and lovingly I rehydrated the baby and poured a liter of clean(very precious) water down the moms throat, gave the baby antibiotics and vitamins and gave some to mom too, many hours later when they left and the baby was more alert and finally breast feeding on his own, I noticed how carefully this young girl was walking and wished I had a private and clean place to examine her as she probably had a traumatic delivery and her perineum was ripped to shreds. I could not help wondering as I watched them walk back into the filth and disease if that baby would live to see 1 month old let alone his first birthday, the mother had such a dead look in her eyes as if she had given up already and no amount of loving touch on my part elicted any reaction from her.

But even though I do have many more stories like that I do have ones of joy and laughter too and knowing that every time I gave a kid a vitamin A dose and dewormed them ( and I cannot count how many mouths my fingers were in the past couple of weeks) I knew I was making a huge difference to their life expectation and quality of life right there and now. We saw close to 850 children in 2 weeks a record we as a team did not really care to break but we did it willingly.

To all you angliphiles I sang God Save The Queen every day and every Broadway hit I could remember - 'The Sun'll come out tomorrow" was a big favorite along with"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". I learned the intimate bathroom habits of all my housemates and they knew mind - s0 much fun having a daily BFR (bowel function report) we laughed a great deal because if not we would have truly have gone crazy. The Dysentry was a huge issue but once I got on the right antibiotic it has cleared quickly but I still lost 15 pounds in 2 weeks, on my current size 6 frame that is a little extreme so I intend to fatten up for Thanksgiving.

When I got home all I wanted was a cup of tea without evaporated milk (yuck) a hot bath, a glass of wine and a pizza in that order.

Thanks to Colin for maintaining my blog - I thought he did a brilliant job!! Who knew he was so funny and so verbose. The house and the kids and the animals are all in great condition........so maybe its not too early to start planning that next trip!!!!!!!