Dear Friends,

It was really nice to see many of you and some family on my short visit home at the end of October. I really appreciate all the prayers and support that have been coming my way. I've been encouraged a lot by the amount of support and it has helped me to try and be a better person down here in Haiti. The past month has been a busy and intense one, especially the past three weeks. I've been hosting two different medical teams, an OB/GYN physician and nurse for a week followed by an anesthesiologist for a week. We were working in northern Haiti at a Haitian-run hospital not too far from where Sara volunteered. I got to spend a lot of time seeing the physicians in action which I really enjoyed. The OB/GYN did consultations each day at the hospital and also performed 5 or 6 surgeries, including a couple emergency C-sections. The anesthesiologist did an assessment and some training of their anesthesia staff, so that entailed a lot of time in the operating room with him. On top of hosting the teams, I also taught English classes for the hospital staff while I was there. Lets just say I have a new appreciation for teachers!

We had a couple really sad and traumatizing cases during our time there. The very first day the anesthesiologist was here we were literally giving him a tour of the hospital when we walked by the pediatric ward and a couple nurses were performing chest compressions on a 3 yo girl. The anesthesiologist basically went straight into code mentality and took over CPR. I was the only translator there which was definitely not ideal, and the OB/GYN had to run around the stock room looking for supplies while the anesthesiologist bagged the girl (tried to pump oxygen into her lungs) and I did chest compressions. We found out later she was admitted for a lost appetite/stomach pain and also had a couple convulsions, after which she stopped breathing. We performed CPR for about 10 minutes before giving up. It was exceptionally sad because neither of her parents were there at the time. Typically in Haiti when someone dies close relatives start to wail quite loudly, but it was only quiet after she died.

A patient that was operated on during our time there was a young teenage boy who broke his arm and somehow got an infection at his hand/wrist. It was honestly the worst injury or illness I have ever seen. The extent of the infection was such that the boy's arm had to be amputated at the forearm and there was hardly any living flesh below that point. A lot of the interior anatomy of the boy's arm was visible and it was quite disturbing. People can get infections in the US that are similar, but I have a hard time believing such an infection wouldn't have been preventable with better access to healthcare and treatment.

The realities of what Haitians face day to day have been a good reminder of what I should be thankful for and what I should learn to live without. Despite the despair of the cases outlined above, I remember in some way being happy that the 3 yo girl that passed away got a level of care that very few people receive in Haiti. Although I really wanted her to live and to see a positive outcome, I've been trying to teach myself that service is not necessarily all about that: it's about solidarity and the human relation you have with people you serve. I hope however or whenever you serve others over the holidays and after, you find joy in doing so regardless of the results. Blessings to you and yours.

I know it has been forever since I posted! I apologize. A lot has happened since my last post, but I think during my short trip back to the States I was able to update some of you. During the month of September I worked a lot in the office in Port au Prince on various odd jobs and made a very quick trip home since flights were cheap and work was light.

Today I finished hosting a physical therapy and prosthetics team in Les Cayes, a major city in the southern peninsula. It was the first time I've been to southern Haiti and I was really impressed. It's much more developed than northern Haiti and the city is really enjoyable to live in. It has a lot of amenities like Port au Prince, but without the traffic and international influence. We stayed in a guest house run by an agronomy ministry which teaches Haitians advanced farming and livestock techniques and sends them out into smaller communities to work and train others. It's pretty awesome.

MTI has a physical therapy clinic in Les Cayes called the Advantage Program that is run by a full time physical therapist from the states. She is really amazing and dedicated and has been working in Haiti for a long time. The PT team was great and did a lot to help the director. The volunteers had good attitudes the whole time and were very enjoyable to be with. They treated some interesting patients, including a surprising amount of stroke victims.

I do have to mention our most notable patient who was a 25yo man with a deformity from birth that kept his left knee locked at a 90 degree angle. He use to walk using a long pole until this summer when he had surgery to amputate at the knee. He walked on two legs for the first time in his life this past week thanks to a prosthetic made by one of the volunteers. The look on his face was something to see.

That's all I can post at the moment but more updates are coming soon. Check out "Medical teams international - Haiti" on facebook for a bunch of pictures. Thanks again for all the support and encouragement--it means a lot to me. Peace and love.

The beach in Les Cayes

Hey Friends,

I have not been as successful at keeping this blog up to date as I had hoped, but there's not too much to report lately--besides that near-hurricane that blasted us a couple weekends ago! Our staff and property here at MTI took the storm quite well with hardly any negative effects. The wind never reached a level where it was extremely scary, but it was definitely a bit breezy. There were many folks who did feel ill-effects though, particularly people living in tent cities or temporary shelters. About 9,000 people had to be evacuated in total in Port au Prince and 8,000 families are without homes throughout the country. The MTI Country Director and myself made a trip out to Canaan to assess how folks were doing there, and we were very thankful to see that there was minimal damage. Although a lot of folks live in tents/tarp shelters there, there are also a fair amount of semi-permanent materials used. I think the real difference maker was that Canaan was just far enough outside the eye of the storm that it was less severe there. The government actually did a reasonable job of informing people ahead of time to evacuate tent shelters, and most who chose to stay did so to prevent theft. The government also coordinated ahead of time with the UN and NGOs (non-governmental organizations, aka non-profits) to provide mobile clinics at tent cities and food/necessities through the World Food Program, so kudos to them and the UN mission here. I encourage you to check out the "Medical Teams International - Haiti" Facebook page as there are a lot of photos that I posted there. If you're not on Facebook and would like to see photos just email me and I will happily send them along!

If you are wondering what I do on a daily basis lately, it's not too exciting by most people's standards. There's a lot of office and logistical work that goes into running an NGO and I've taken up a few different projects to help out since we don't have any teams right now. I considered inventory to be my initiation project into the office, as it was the first thing assigned to me and it was quite annoying. Since then I've developed a security manual for our operations here and have even become a used cars salesman! (If anyone's interested in a Toyato Prado SUV we have a sweet deal for you! Seriously this would be an instant buy in the US!) I also continually work on our Reflection Guide for medical teams that come down, although it doesn't look like I will be with a team again until October 1st. One of my favorite projects I've worked on so far is a community health survey of Canaan, which is really fascinating and insightful to health issues there. I'll have more to report on that once we finish the survey.

Anyway enough of the rambling--I hope everyone is enjoying the end of summer since summer will never end here! I've included a picture of the moon because the night sky is exceptionally beautiful here in Haiti and I always try to look at the stars for at least a couple minutes each night. It is nice to know all my friends and family are looking at the same stars. Peace to you all.

"Woch nan dlo pa konnen doule woch nan soley." The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun.

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for the delayed post! It's been a busy week and it has taken me a little while to recover from hosting the team in northern Haiti. As my first team, it was a pretty demanding trip with a steep learning curve. I forgot what it was like to be a first-timer in Haiti, and let me tell you in can be a pretty rough experience. The team I was hosting consisted of a retired peds surgeon, a nurse prof, and an ER nurse. Their purpose was to do an assessment of the hospital, Beraca Medical Center, which is an extremely difficult task coming from the US healthcare system. All you tend to see is problems, and usually fail to fully grasp the context of the medical care provided here. When resources are as low as they are here, you work with what you got.

The physicians and staff at Beraca are a pretty inspiring crew: their operating budget consists almost entirely of patient fees. Think about this for a second. Try to imagine running a hospital based on fees paid by individuals who make less than $2 dollars a day in income. And we think we have insurance problems! MTI's goals in Haiti are sustainable development, but such a low resource reality makes you wonder how much a "sustainable" and non-dependent hospital will be able to do for patients without drastic economic development in the country. I've always been attracted to medicine because I thought it was a straight-forward way to serve and prevent suffering in developing countries, but the more time I spend in Haiti the more value I see in non-medical development as well.

In regards to patient care, our time at Beraca was a good reminder not so much of the unique diseases that Haitians face, but the difficulty they also have in treating the illnesses we struggle with in the US. We lost a 4 day old newborn to cancer (renal/adrenal neuroblastoma), a little baby girl who had one of the largest masses our surgeon had ever seen in a neonate. In the hospital was also a 13 yo boy with epilepsy who had seized, fallen into a cooking fire, and received a 3rd degree burn on 20% of his body. (The photo below is quite gruesome so only look if you have the stomach for it.) The team really wanted to transfer the boy to a hospital where he could receive a series of skin graphs, but the family opted not to travel because of a lack of support in Port au Prince and other family reasons. MTI worked to arrange logistics and treatment in Port au Prince so hopefully they will be able to travel soon so the boy can be operated on.

Anyway, enough blabbering for now. The next post will be much more timely and straight forward.
Before I go I would like to ask for prayers for my friend and co-worker Wilson who had a college friend pass away in child-birth this last week. The suffering in Haiti comes at you from all angles.


Blessings to you

Valmy, our 13 yo burn victim with his mom.

"Sa ou fe, se li ou we." What you do is what you see.

Dear friends and family,

I hope you are all doing well. I have finally conceded defeat and started a blog to post updates on Haiti for whoever might be interested in how I’m doing. I actually didn’t start the blog, my wonderful girlfriend Kayla took the initiative and got it running and deserves most all the credit for anything that you will view here. Sadly she opted not to incorporate my suggestion for the title of the blog, “Slothing About Haiti.”

Life in Haiti has been really quite nice so far. Port-au-Prince has lots of amenities and luxuries that you find in any developed country, so you don’t have to worry about me suffering. My apartment is also really nice and even has an AC unit that works every now and again! As for tarantulas and scorpions, I have yet to see any, thanks to the sweet baby Jesus.

On Friday afternoon I made a trip with our Country Director, Eleonore, out to Canaan, a temporary resettlement community for people who lost their homes in the 2010 earthquake. Estimates vary on the population of Canaan, ranging from 90,000 to potentially 120,000, and the community sprawls out over multiple hillsides. A lot of people live in old USAID or UN tents from their former homes in tent cities, or have built temporary houses out of an assortment of materials. MTI has been running a clinic staffed with Haitian nurses in Canaan in partnership with a local church, who will hopefully take over sole management of the clinic at some point in the near future. One of MTI’s major projects over the next year will be doing a thorough assessment of Canaan’s community health needs and implementing community health initiatives there.

This upcoming Saturday I will host my first volunteer medical team, one of the primary responsibilities of my position with MTI. We’ll be headed to Beraca Hospital in northern Haiti, a hospital that we frequently sent patients to from the clinic in Passe Catabois. MTI works with Beraca to train staff there and help them acquire additional skills. I plan on reporting all about it when I get back to Port au Prince in a couple of weeks.

That’s all I have for you at this point, hopefully its an adequate introduction to my work here. More updates will be coming soon I promise. I miss all of my friends and family and am very grateful for the support I continually receive even while in Haiti. Peace and love to you.