Family and Friends,
The 2nd November Mission Team arrived safely and on schedule. This week will include more medical clinics in different locations and more work projects. Please pray that God will do great things in and through each person visiting. Also, Richard is on this team, along with his lovely wife Joyce. Richard is the man how comes and stays for several weeks and makes furniture for Mission Haiti.
"Clinic Adventures"
I thought you might find it interesting, if you have never been on a medical mission trip here to Haiti, to read a brief description of exactly what we do and what happens during our mobile clinics. To give you one example of what we do and see, I will describe the clinic we did this past Monday...
Typically we ask a church or school (or both, because they usually share buildings) to host the clinic on a day we agree on beforehand. Normally we give them a few weeks to get the word out to the community that we will be coming. A lot of times the church will sell tickets or charge people a little bit at the door to come, and then the patients receive the medicine for free. I don't remember if I wrote about this previously, but at first I was against this approach, preferring to allow people to come for free. However, I can now say that charging a little something is probably a better approach. The reason is that when people pay something, they appreciate it more, and we tend to see more people who really need it, as opposed to every person in the community who isn't necessarily sick at the moment but hopes to go home with some vitamins and/or pain medication. Make sense? We are always striving to get the medical attention to the people who really need it as opposed to those who can push to the front of the line. This is just a basic principle to follow for any kind of aid distribution.
The clinic on Monday was scheduled for the Church of God in Gaspar, the village between Ti-Rivier and our county seat, St. Jean. It is a nice church building, for Haiti, and a good setting for the clinic because of ample seating for the waiting hordes. Unfortunately, the hordes never showed up there. The team went first thing in the morning and got set up. I had to teach at the high school from 8-9AM and planned to catch up with them later. Sue was working with Pam at other schools. So they were on their own at first. Well, they had Antoine to help them, and after all the clinics he has translated for already, he is practically a nurse himself.
I ended up having to take a tap-tap and got there a little before 10 o'clock. At that time the nurses were seeing a few patients, and only a handful were waiting to be seen after that. I took Chelo, another translator, and we began canvassing the neighborhood to make sure everyone knew there was a clinic. We were asking people if they had heard about it and if there were any home-bound individuals we could visit as well. The answer to both questions was “no.” People weren't really told about the clinic in advance, or at least not the people in the vicinity of the church. Others said they would like to go but didn't have the money to buy a ticket. One other issue they mentioned was that most people were either shopping or working in the market, because it was the day for the medium-sized market nearby to be open.
After awhile Chelo and I went back and talked to the team and asked if they would like to try to relocate to the market in order to see more people. One thing we have learned with clinics is that sometimes you have to be ready to go where the people are. I left them to think about that, and Benson (a guy in the youth group) and I took a motorcycle down to the market to look for a good location. It wouldn't be a good idea to try to set up in an open market booth or out in the open, because the people would probably press in and get unruly. I had in mind a house where we normally park our motorcycle if we are hiking up the mountain from there (this is the place where we go up towards the Jabouim and Toussaint schools). However, when we got into the market I spied an even better place.
There is a nice house whose gate is right in the middle of the market, and I've always wondered who lives there. I decided it was a good day to find out. Benson and I went inside and knocked on the door. It turns out a Cuban doctor lives there with his wife. He commutes to the General Hospital in Les Cayes to work a certain number of days each week. When we started trying to communicate, a little bit of Spanish from high school came back to me. We were able to communicate enough, between my broken Spanish and his broken Creole, to get his permission to run the clinic out of his yard for the day. He was very hospitable and very welcoming. Later on he even participated in the clinic, which was really fun to see...Americans, Haitians, and a Cuban all working together to offer health care. Who would have seen that one coming?
So we packed up at the church and hiked for 15 minutes down to the market area. The team set everything up again and we got started. Over the next 2-3 hours we saw a nice, steady stream of people. We were able to control them at the gate and manage the crowd pretty well despite the fact that it was now free to enter. The team did a great job of giving people quality attention but also quickly moving them through and giving them the proper medications. I actually made the decision to turn some individuals away if they couldn't clearly state why they were there (what sickness they had) and they looked healthy...especially teenagers, young adults, etc... It can be hard to do that, but when you have 80-year-olds and moms holding babies, all standing there in the sun at the gate, that makes it a little easier to make those decisions. The team later told me that there actually were some fairly serious cases, and they were able to help those individuals with the medications they had on hand. Soon we basically ran out of medicine, and the crowd dwindled at just the right time. We packed up and got ready to head for home.
We gave the Cubans a big “Gracias mis amigos!” and they were clearly a very nice couple. Their skin was basically as white as ours, so I'm sure they get treated as outsiders or “blancs” just like us. Most Haitians might not necessarily know how different Cuba and the USA are, exactly, so I imagine it was nice for them to spend some time with fellow foreigners despite the language barrier. It would be interesting to talk to that doctor a little bit more and find out why he is working in Haiti, what his life has been like in Cuba, whether or not he is a Christian, etc... Interesting stuff.
Each clinic we do is a little different, and each person helping in the clinic has his/her own perspective and personal stories to share afterward. You never know what kind of sickness will show up at the door. You have to be ready for anything, as we found out the other day when baby Mishel (closer spelling, I think) was brought in barely breathing. High blood pressure is very common here, as well as all kinds of skin conditions, chronic stomach pain and high levels of acid, joint pain and arthritis, eye and vision problems, cuts and burns that won't heal, lung congestion (sometimes tuberculosis), and too many conditions to name that persist without proper medication and treatment.
One little funny story from this clinic...I was managing the gate and sometimes that means joking with the crowd to keep them relaxed. Learning more and more creole helps a lot. A blind guy came up and asked for a card with a number on it so he could get in. I asked him, “How are you going to read the number on the card?” He said, “You are going to tell me the number, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life!” (everyone laughed) He continued, “Most of these people can't read, either, so just tell me their numbers and I'll remember for them, too.” (more laughter) Sure enough, whenever I would call a number he would say the name of whoever had that number, helping THEM remember that it was THEIR turn. Amazing. I asked him, “What have the doctors told you about your eyes? Are you totally blind? Is there a chance that treatment could help you see?” He retorted, “The doctors? I haven't been to the doctor...why do you think I am here?” (people laughed) I answered, “You have never been to a doctor about your blindness?” He assured me he never had. The guy was probably 40 or so. How sad is that? After that he and I led the crowd standing there in a couple of Haitian hymns. He knew all the words of course.
So if you are a medical person, how about coming down sometime and helping out? As we always say, a paramedic is a nurse in Haiti, and a nurse is a doctor.
Have a Healthy Adventure Today!
-The Grimms
