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.