Haunted

Haunted. I am haunted by a face. Every day.

We are up after a very good night's sleep (earplugs). Marcia, Lauren, and I head to the school to see if we can help out. As we approach, the older kids are outside singing before classes. The kids sing to us a song of praise. A very good way to start the day!

We help with various students. The classes are divided into four. Pre-school, elementary/middle, middle/high school, and five students who are in a class needing some extra attention. The children arrive at the orphanage usually with no education. Since they arrive at all ages, pre-school can have children 5 to 9 years of age. Classes are divided up by levels of education. Below, Lauren helps one of the students with reading.

Mid-morning, Caroline Gast, who runs the Medika Mamba program, asks us to accompany her to the orphanage mentioned earlier in the week. Eight boys had been brought over Tuesday for the program, with six qualifying. We were told there were many more children at this orphanage and today we will go see. We travel a short distance from Canaan, about 15 minutes. The orphanage is right on the roadside and the desperate poverty of this orphanage is immediately evident. The Pastor who runs this orphanage greets us and begins to take us on a tour. There is so very little. A few small dark buildings and very little grounds.......all swept dirt. Two outhouses are at the back of the property. A cow is wandering through the common area. The "dorms" are being cleaned and are shells with wooden bunks---the foam mattresses have been washed and laid out in the sun to dry. We visit the "school", a very small, dark, windowless room with long benches. This is where we sit and visit with the Pastor to hear his needs. They have nothing but love and compassion. Marcia, Lauren, and I are silent in our

stunned disbelief of what we see. Compared to this, Canaan is the Ritz.
28 girls under the age of twelve are lifted into the back of the truck to ride to the Canaan clinic where they will be measured and weighed for the Medika Mamba program. Lauren and I ride in the back with them. They are all so obedient and quiet and well-behaved.
Once we get to the clinic, all sit down to wait on the benches outside. I have never seen children sit so quiet for so long.
Caroline begins to see the kids one-by-one. Lauren, Marcia, and I use this time to care for the girls and hold them and tend to any that need us. Before long, as you can see, Lauren is enveloped by little girls who just want to be held for a while.
Dr. Ric Bonnell and Dr. Wendy Bonnell take this opportunity to give each girl a quick physical. They are all relatively clean without lice or fungi or worms. But when asked what they had eaten that day, every last one answers "nothing". And it is 2 pm.
This is Naphtali. She was alert but could not raise her body. Once in a sitting position, she could sit up, but she could not raise herself. She was so complacent that I believe she must be left on her back most of the time. Marcia gave her a bottle as well as some water, and she became very alert. Whatever physical issues she has, her brain seems to be fine.

All of the girls were given a packet of Medika Mamba, which supposedly tastes a little like Reese's peanut butter cup. No wonder they licked the packages clean, tearing them apart, and even attempting to try to take any remains from the trash can.

You can google Medika Mamba and read about this amazing ready-to-eat therapeutic food.

This was our last day of work in Haiti. Caroline added 33 kids from the orphanage "down the road" to the Medika Mamba program. Within a week, the boys had returned and they had gained weight! My prayers are that this situation for these children is about to change.

Still, I am haunted by a face. Every day.

Wednesday in Haiti

We are up early on Wednesday and after grabbing a quick bite for breakfast, we walk down to the Medika Mamba clinic. Today, Caroline Gast, who runs the Medika Mamba malnutrition program at Canaan, will take her program mobile and we will go to the mountain village of Rousseau. We load the back of the truck with boxes of Medika Mamba, baby scales, a wooden measuring device made by a Missouri man just for this program, bags to carry the Mamba in, packets of baby clothes and essentials, and Kids Against Hunger food packets. First, we stop at a bakery and Caroline purchases bags of baked bread rolls. The people walk for miles and wait for hours for the Medika Mamba program, so Caroline provides everyone with a large roll of fresh bread.

Looking at the main highway from the back of the truck we ride in.

Mothers walk miles to enroll their babies into the program. They all wait so very patiently. I see this over and over at all the clinics. No one wears a watch or checks time on a cell phone. Haitian Time. So very different than the impatient people you and I deal with every day when waiting is an issue. Everyone here is grateful for the opportunity to be seen. I am always so inspired by the true humility and gratitude and patience that I see. This country may be impoverished by material and nutritional goods, but it is rich in decency, dignity, and compassion.

We pass out bread to everyone.

I call this little girl on the right "happy face". Her face looks full, but her hair is scant and light-colored, telltale signs of malnutrition. Orange hair is the obvious give-away. Full bellies but bone-thin arms and legs also spell malnutrition.

Moms everywhere love their children. Some parents walk five to ten miles to be part of this program. Babies with bare bottoms are given diapers. The bags on the right with crosses were made by women at First and Calvary Presbyterian Church for mothers to carry the Mamba home in.

This amazing wood device is used to measure the kids for the Medika Mamba program. It lies down for babies, or sets up for the kids who can stand.

Medika Mamba (mamba is the Creole word for peanut) is a ready-to-use therapeutic food that was developed by Dr. Patricia Wolff, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis. It takes 6-8 weeks for the program and has a high success rate at reversing malnutrition. To learn more about this product, please visit the website at mfkhaiti.org.

Babies are measured for height, they are weighed, and the muex (upper arm is measured). Weight gain is dramatic when the program is followed.

Oftentimes, families have other children at home who may not be malnourished. Caroline will

send Kids Against Hunger food packets with them so that they too will have something special.

We load up the truck and leave Rousseau mid-afternoon, after every family has been seen. Our ride down the hill coincides with Haitian kids coming home from school--that is, those who are fortunate enough to go to school. Many kids cannot. Those who do are often transported home on motorbikes----carpooling on a motorbike: one adult driving and up to nine kids packed on, four in front and four behind. As we head down the mountain, this boy begins to run after us to gain a ride on our "tap-tap".

Tuesday in Haiti

Morning wake-ups in Haiti are the best ever. Our windows are always open, though they are screened. The early morning sounds of roosters crowing and children playing, laughing, and singing before school begins is one of the best sounds I've ever heard and I love to awaken to this.

Marcia, Lauren, and I oversleep this first morning because we are so exhausted. Breakfast is at 7 and we awaken at 7:15! All three of us jump out of bed and quickly dress and head down to the dining hall for eggs and papaya, and my favorite coffee — Haitian. We eat very quickly and begin a tour of Canaan since this is Lauren's first trip.

Our first stop is the school and there is so much positive progress since I was last here two years ago. Classical music plays in the three classrooms: pre-school, elementary/middle-aged, and the older high school kids. Some of the teachers are volunteers from America and others are paid Haitians. I so admire the teaching staff that comes to volunteer with only room and board and meals. They stay for the year to give the kids continuity. Canaan kids learn English, as well as their native Creole.

Marcia, a retired Kindergarten teacher, stays to help in the school. I take Lauren on down for a tour of the Canaan clinic.

Jordan is the American clinic administrator, which is a needed addition, as he is here volunteering for a long while and keeps track of the medical supplies and medications. He collaborates with the Haitian clinic doctor, Dr. Jean Robert, as well as any American doctors who arrive on medical missions.

Lauren unpacks the medicines from CoxHealth and I unpack and sort the supplies. The new clinic has a room for each.

Dr. Tony Hlavacek, the pediatric cardiologist who leads this trip, checks a 12-year-old girl who has been brought in. She has severe heart disease: a mitral-valve beats furiously and without surgery in the states, her prognosis is not good. A host family, host hospital and transportation are needed. Now, she cannot lie down or her lungs fill with fluid.

One of the children Dr. Ric Bonnell looks at is covered with a raging fungus, tinea, commonly called ringworm. A previous doctor misdiagnosed this and the child was put on an antibiotic, which sent the yeast spreading viciously from head to toe. Ric pulls the antiobiotic and administers steroids and fluconozale, both provided by CoxHealth, in hopes to begin clearing this up and giving this child some relief.

Tuesday is also Medika Mamba day at Canaan. This is the malnutrition program that saves lives. We head to that building and work with Caroline Gast, who has volunteered for two years in this position. She now speaks fluent Creole and is truly a miracle worker, saving lives every day. Mostly mothers, but some fathers, walk miles and miles to enroll their malnourished children in this program, which follows strict guidelines. Lauren catches this little girl for a picture because she, like Lauren, is wearing Tom's shoes! We are elated to see in the clinic boxes of Tom's sent from the company and that Caroline gives them out to the children who arrive barefoot (we are all traveling in our Tom's).

Today, eight boys from a very poor neighboring orphanage are brought over to test for malnutrion. Six apply and we learn that there are more children at this orphanage, just down the road. When the last Mamba child is seen, we get into the truck and drive 15 minutes to visit this orphanage. It is sobering and eye-opening for all of us. We promise to return to take all the girls under age 12 for complete physicals and to test for malnutrition.

Caroline, Marcia, and I spend the remainder of the afternoon hiking up a dirt road into the mountainous Haitian countryside. Caroline is used to this steep, rugged walk in the hot 90 degree sun, but Marcia and I chug along, huffing and puffing. We pass people hauling water, farmers, goats, donkeys, cattle, and children who would like us to relinquish our water bottles and cameras. ... we greet everyone with a "bonsoir."

We arrive back at 5:30, barely time to clean up before dinner. My evening will be spent journaling about this amazing day. Pase bon nwi.

In Haitian Time

To visit Haiti is to be forever changed. This month, I made my third trip with the core medical mission team that I have traveled with the past three years. One trip prior to the earthquake, one immediately after the earthquake, and this trip two years post-earthquake. Traveling to Haiti from mid-America requires a wake-up time usually reserved for the deep sleep stages of my night. It would probably make as much sense to not go to sleep at all. 3:30 am comes much too quickly, but brings an eagerness and excitement that is enhanced by the dark and quiet of the wee hours of night.
Prior to this early morning mission, I had worked with various people at CoxHealth to gather medicines and medical supplies requested for the Canaan Christian Community clinic in Montrouis, my destination. The clinic is in need of virtually everything and Cox fulfilled every request on the list of needs, plus additional life-saving supplies. My own packing needs for 7 days would be weighed out thoughtfully in a backpack. Taking one cap or two becomes an issue of weight and room and necessity. Two large duffels from Army Surplus carry all the medical supplies, which are first loaded into my vehicle at Cox, unloaded onto my dining room table, sorted, unpackaged as much as possible (American over-packaging can be frustrating when you are traveling to a country with no trash service as well as trying to be an efficient packer), and repacked in various sizes of Sterlite (which are useful to the clinic and the orphanage kitchen in discouraging rodents and insects). Being a person who likes structure and organization, this is a task I enjoy and I asked my niece, Lauren Anderson, who would also be traveling to Haiti with me, to assist in the unpackaging, weighing, repacking. Handling everything as we chatted gave us even more personal investment into this trip.The meds requested from Cox included vitamins (infant, children's, pre-natal), ibuprofen, acetaminophen, amoxicillin, fluconazole, antifungal creams, antibiotic ear and eye drops, etc. Supplies included needles, blood pressure monitors, first responder vital sign monitors, IV starter kits, stethoscopes. Our Cox suppliers (Barbara Nunn and Lyndell Dorrell) were good---one bag weighed in at 48 lbs. and the other, 49! Almost too exact to believe!

Canaan Christian Community is about an hour and a half from Port au Prince, where the airport is located. The drive is never the same, with detours always a possibility. My traveling companions and I gathered our bags from the airport, which is a large warehouse with one bag carousel (pre-earthquake there was no carousel — bags were just thrown into an area from the plane). The large American Airlines jet had been full of Haitians and missionaries, as it always is. Tourists do not travel to Haiti. Maybe one day...

The Haitian people are kind and gentle. They exude hope, faith, and love. I suppose when you have next to nothing, you cling to hope. There is a resilience and dignity mixed into this gentleness. As we travel by truck (most of us standing in the back with our bags and hanging on for dear life as the road is washed out and bumpy), you notice that the Haitian population is always outside in the light hours — homes are small and dark and mostly used for shelter and sleeping. I also notice that everyone works — sweeping dirt dooryards, washing clothes in buckets or in murky puddles of water, tending cooking fires, hanging clothes from lines, tilling the ground, breaking apart rocks to make into building material much like cement---yes, this is done by hand in Haiti. It is common to see a large pile of stones and a man sitting next to it on the side of the road pounding the rocks apart with a bigger rock and restacking the smaller pieces.

We arrive at Canaan at dusk and dinner has been saved for us. We are welcomed in the sweet fashion of the Haitians with a slight brush of the lips to one cheek and the Creole "bonsoir". Dinner tonight is boiled chicken, fried plantains, a potato salad, and rice, and it is delicious. After greeting old friends and eating dinner, we are shown to our rooms, a dorm on the site for missionaries and guests. Marcia, Lauren and I are in one room with a small but cheerful bathroom. The sink barely has a trickle of water, oh, but the shower! We have the pressure and amount of water that I would compare to my garden hose. The water is stored above our roof in a cistern and comes out whatever the temperature of the day may be. Since a shower in the evening follows a hot and dusty day of work, it is always refreshing.We collapse in our mosquito-netted bunks and fall asleep to the nightly ritual cacophony of the "dogs" that guard Canaan. There is a border war near our dorm which is near the edge of Canaan property and dogs from both sides of this border carry on all night, along with the crowing of a few confused roosters who sing all night as well. Tomorrow we will arise to the roosters and the sounds of children and will begin our work.

Nighty-night. Sweet Haitian dreams.

'Once you go, you want to go back'

Tracy Lipscomb, wife of CoxHealth Board of Directors member Larry Lipscomb, is on her third trip to Haiti to deliver much-needed medical supplies on CoxHealth's behalf. Tracy is volunteering in the Canaan Christian community, which consists of a medical clinic, orphanage, school and church. "There are no words to describe the conditions there," Tracy says. "It's unbelievable, but what is just as unbelievable are the people and their resolve, resilience and dignity."

Watch for updates during this year's trip. In the meantime, here's a look back at Lipscomb's 2010 trip to Haiti, as featured in the June 2010 issue of CoxHealth Connection:

Medicine and supplies donated by CoxHealth were used this spring to treat hundreds of Haitians, many of whom were still suffering from injuries they sustained in the earthquake that devastated the island the first of the year.

Springfield resident Tracy Lipscomb delivered the items on Cox’s behalf in March while traveling to Haiti to volunteer at an orphanage. Lipscomb is the wife of Larry Lipscomb who is a Cox board member and grandson of CoxHealth’s namesake Lester E. Cox. This was her second trip to Haiti.

“I did not want to go empty-handed especially after the earthquake,” says Lipscomb. “I really wanted to be able to take something from Cox on this trip.”

The supplies were used by a group of American physicians and nurses who travel to Haiti several times each year to provide medical care in a community called Canaan, near the coastal town of Montrouis. The Canaan Christian community consists of a medical clinic, orphanage, school and church.

Lipscomb was invited to join the group by her friend Marcia Hlavacek, whose son, Dr. Tony Hlavacek (right, above) leads the medical mission. Dr. Hlavacek, a pediatric cardiologist from South Carolina had provided Lipscomb a “wish list” of items needed to hold medical clinics in the area.

“Cox provided everything that was on that list,” says Dr. Hlavacek. “It was very generous. I didn’t expect to get all of the stuff we asked for, but we did. I was so excited.”

Lipscomb collected the donation from Cox and carefully packed the supplies, filling two large bags with medication to treat infections, pain relievers, anti-fungal creams, vitamins, and surgical supplies.

As Lipscomb arrived in Canaan she saw people already standing in line to get help. Many of them had come from long distances away. Word spreads quickly when the doctors return.

“The medicine was unwrapped so fast,” says Lipscomb. “It was put on the shelves and used immediately because there were people already waiting outside the clinic to see the doctors.”

People of all ages come from the surrounding area to the clinic. Dr. Hlavacek says doctors saw a boy with a serious viral infection. Doctors were able to stabilize him using the medications from Cox before he was transported to another facility. Dr. Hlavacek says the boy recovered.

 

“We held clinic for three days thanks to the medication and supplies from Cox,” says Dr. Hlavacek. “The first day we saw 75 patients at the clinic. The second day we sent out two teams, one to a small mountain village that has no access to medical care and the other group was at the orphanage. We saw 115 people that day. The third day we had clinic back at the orphanage and saw another 70 patients. We were able to treat more than 250 patients with those medications.”

Dr. Hlavacek says donations like the one from Cox are vital to continuing the medical missions since the group relies almost entirely on donations. The group plans to return to Haiti in August and in October.

Lipscomb would like to return to Haiti more often but plans to go once a year to support the medical team and the orphanage.

“Once you go, you want to go back,” says Lipscomb. “I really love the Haitian culture. I love the people. There are no words to describe the conditions there. It’s unbelievable, but what is just as unbelievable are the people and their resolve, resilience and dignity. There’s no sense of entitlement. They are very grateful for everything that comes their way. It’s pretty amazing.”