If you like Pina Coladas, Getting Caught in the Rain...

You know how in some music videos or movies you see rain coming down and there are people standing in the street enjoying the rain and singing, that's exactly how it is here...NOT!

The first time I had my first experience of getting caught in the rain in Haiti, I was at the clinic and we had already finished work for the day so we were waiting to get picked up by a tap-tap to take us back to the volunteer house (before we moved in with Dwight). It started raining and everyone ran inside. I was so confused, wasn't rain a good thing? It meant water for showering, cleaning, etc. and equally important in my book, it would cool everything down! I walked out into the rain to feel it cool me off while I went to go help an elderly woman walking on the street who was pushing water toward a stream that had begun to grow in size (there is always a flow of water down the road but when it rains that obviously gets bigger). She yelled at me in Kreyol and gestured for me to go inside saying "You're crazy you're going to get wet!" I just looked at her confused thinking "Yea, it feels good nd I won't melt" but I walked back inside because it wasn't worth arguing and she didn't seem to want any help.

About 5 minutes later I saw why she wanted me out of the street and why everyone was going inside. The rain came down in sheets (just like it is right now as I'm sitting and writing this, which means I'm going to be spending the night at the clinic tonight cause that's where I am now and it's already late) and almost instantaneously the road turned into a river (literally there were rapids you could have rafted it! Can't wait to post pictures!) As this happened, people all around began running toward the street throwing trash into the "river"! Before I knew it, the "river" was carrying down bags and bags of trash quickly and other kinds of waste without bags. I watched in abject horror as 3 kids ran into the streat naked to bathe in the trash-filled-flash flood. No wonder we see so many cases of people with water parasites! But not everyone was using the street to shower, many people ran onto their roofs and bathed there some filling buckets of water to use later others just finding an area on the roof where there was a pipe they could stand under to get a nice steady flow of water.

Meanwhile the water just kept getting higher and higher and on a flooded rock/dirt road that's already uneven, there was no way to get any kind of car or truck through. This could only mean one thing, it was time to start making the trek up the raging river of trash to get to the main road where the tap-tap was waiting fo us. 2 guys from the house came to get Doucette and me so the 4 of us (Santil, Adams, Doucette and I) made our way carefully trying to stay to the sides up against the houses and avoid the water, but there was almost no way to avoid it in many areas where the water came up past my knees. All I could do was tell myself, "Just don't think about what you're stepping in", but that failed miserably. All I could picture in my head was the severed finger I had found on the road earlier that day which must have been washed onto the road from the storm the previous night (probably from underneath a pile of rubble somewhere).

Just when I thought I couldn't take the thought of walking in God-only-knows what, I looked over the ledge of the house I was clinging to and realized the inside was flooding with garbage and water. I couldn't stand the thought of walking in this for 15-20 minutes imagine how whoever lived here felt. Not just in that house, but houses all down the road had water flooding them whenever it rained (because it usually pours when it rains and when it doesn't pour, the rain just brings up heat from the ground and makes it even hotter so either way you lose).

When we finally made it to the tap-tap we were all soaked to the bone but the adventure didn't end there. Driving back to the house the tap-tap had to go through so much water I was worried we wouldn't make it (though a much more recent tap-tap experience like this one involved water coming up through the floor and into the tap-tap and the driver telling Doucette that we better pray because he had little to no control and was worried we would be spending the night in Karfu because the engine was flooding and we were basically floating down the road until we were able to get close to the back of a truck so that we could follow it and ride in it's wake!)

This tap-tap experience was also made a little scarier when a man jumped into the back of the tap-tap with us and when we tried to tell him it was a private tap-tap he flipped out and decided to single me out even though I spoke the least and the only thing I had said was "No". He started screaming obscenities at me which included comments regarding the color of my skin, but before he was able to lunge at me, Adams and Santil pulled him away from me and pushed him out of the tap-tap and wouldn't let him back on. Then they explained to me that the man was mentally unstable and was muttering to himself and I shouldn't worry about him. At that point I just wanted to get home it was more than enough excitement for me for one day!

We made it home just fine but I couldn't stop thinking about the rain. Not only does it compromise travel which causes a lot of problems on its own, but the sanitation problems that arise and bring a myriad of other problems (some as serious as birth defects like the one a little girl named Bushna, who we treat at the clinic, has. Hers prohibits her from growing or gaining weight so even though she is about 2 years old she only weighs 7.5 Kg which is roughly 16.5 lbs and it is related to a lack of clean water).

I also want to reiterate at this time that not everyone lives this way. There are people in Haiti with showers in their homes who don't shower in the streets (though some of these people may have a shower in their home and still chose to shower in the streets). Also I would like to remind you that not everyone in Haiti throws their trash into the street when it rains, there are wealthy and poor areas of Haiti just like everywhere else. But at the main clinic where I was working on this particular day that was the case. My wish is that everyone could have access to clean water and a sanitation system that would discourage people from throwing their trash into the street when it rains (or any other time for that matter), and lastly of course for better roads and a sewage system that helps prevent flooding but at the moment those feel like distant dreams so I hope to continue talks with those in the process of helping plan to come up with a solution for the problems I've mentioned in this entry. If anyone else has any solutions I'm all ears!