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.”