It's been a while...

The purpose of this blog entry is to give you a brief update about what has transpired since it's been a while since my last entry and there's been a lot going on. I wish I could cover everything, but I can't so I'll just go over some of the major things in this entry and the next few entries to catch you up to speed. I want to warn you that because it has been so long since my last post, the next few entries didn't occur in chronological order but have occurred some time in the past few weeks.

First and foremost, Doucette and I moved out of the house! We are now staying with Doucette's brother, Dwight, (my Haitian brother) at his house. We will most likely be spending the remainder of our stay in Haiti at Dwight's house where we are spoiled with cold water and our own rooms! We even have pets living with us at the house including 4 dogs and a cat. We were warned at first that the dogs were mean and would tear us up because they are very protective but within about a week of us living in the house they seem to have adjusted and will now let me go outside without barking at me and pet them or roll over for a belly rub (not so tough now I guess!)

Having animals around has been good for me because I love animals and being around them makes me feel at home, but there is one animal I'm not happy to have around me. Her name is Mimi and she is the most spoiled, stuck up cat on the planet. While other cats in Haiti are starving because they can't find food, Mimi is starving because she refuses to eat anything that isn't "people food" she is literally wasting away. Not only that, but she waits by our feet while we eat meowing loudly and biting and scratching when you don't give her food. When she does get food, she shuts up long enough to eat it and then continues being the spoiled brat that she is. One day she was really getting terrible and she clawed my leg which is already full of cuts so it started bleeding. Needless to say I was not happy so I locked her in the bathroom in my room thinking she would stop after that. Somehow that psycho cat scaled the bathroom wall to a ledge where she made her way down and then scaled my bedroom door (way above the ground) to a perch where she watched us through glass and pawed at the glass wining for food still, unbelievable! I kid you not when I say that I have never been one to believe in animal abuse and this cat is testing that theory to the max! She also makes her way into my room late at night while I'm sleeping and starts meowing or clawing me so I have threatened to fry her up with some nice picklees (Haitian spices) and serve her to people who are hungry (though to be honest she wouldn't even feed one person she is that snobby about her food!) I have learned to get her away for short periods of time by spraying her with water (it annoys her but doesn't hurt her so I feel O.K. about doing it). Ironically the same solution I used when boys at the house were peeping through our window while we were changing (I took a spray bottle and sprayed them so they would stop peaking through! haha).

Luckily my time with Mimi is fairly limited because Doucette and I are busy most of the days going to work. Although we moved out of the house, Doucette and I are continuing our work with Dr. Joey and his staff at the various clinics (mostly in Cite Soliel). We plan to expand our work so that we can also work with the Red Cross during the week when we are not at the clinic and then help with HIV/AIDS and STD prevention on the weekends by working with the CDC (Center for Disease Control) or a few other groups in teaching sex ed classes to people, handing out condoms, providing testing and medication for HIV and medication for STDs to those who need it. At the clinic we are still working in with Dr. Joey I have been learning so much. In addition to the medical work Doucette and I were doing before, Dr. Joey and Dr. Jackie have me sitting in on incisions they are doing so that I can learn to souture (I still need some practice on a Chicken before I can do those on a human), inserting IVs, sitting in on diagnoses so I can see and hear symptoms for diseases that are common here (lots of scavies, malaria, and TB), and a variety of other medical procedures. I am very excited about the work we are doing and although there have been days that are hard, my enthusiasm for the work has not died out in the least!

Especially after having some unfortunate experience with sickness myself, I understand a little bit what some of the patients we see are going through and I am so thankful to be a part of the effort to bring them medication. Unfortunately, even though I have tried to take every precaution possible (unlike Doucette who at a Pattie from a street vendor in Cite Soliel and got sick that way), I somehow managed to get a terrible case of food poisoning and lucky me, I had parasites at the same time (Joy of all joys!) Without going into too much detail, I will say it was an extremely unpleasant experience but I was fortunate enough to have Dr. Joey there to give me medicine for both so I am feeling much better now! I hope to stay healthy the rest of the trip and continue to enjoy the rich food and culture Haiti has to offer!

I want to finish this entry by promising that I will try to continue updating the blog but now that we live with Dwight internet is even more limited and we have to go to an internet cafe to pay for internet where we may or may not have it available. At the moment one of Doucette's friends is lending me the internet at his house so I can post a few entries today but I apologize in advance if there are long periods of time between posts in the future or for the mass posts like the one today. If you have any comments or questions please let me know any suggestions on something you would like to hear more about or less about I will try to take into consideration! Other than that, hope you are enjoying the blog!

Kreyol Word: Ou Fou (pronounced oo fooo) means "You're crazy"