After the last blog entry, I felt something less emotional might be a good idea. In the beginning I touched slightly on how insane the driving here is, now I'm going to go into a little more detail. The stories in this entry are all things I have witnessed from the back of a Tap-Tap or things that I have seen a Tap-Tap do.
Welcome to a world where stop lights are optional, lanes are non-existant, and pedestrians on the sidewalks are "fair game". The next time someone complains about my driving I'm going to tell them to come here!
For clarification, a "Tap-Tap" is a small truck with wooden benches lining either side of the back and soem kind of tin covering the top and sides in some way. They are usually what I would call "lest leg" cars because they are on their "last leg". Most Tap-Taps are barely held together and by some miracle they still run (most of the time). Tap-Taps are like buses in that you can call and order one to take a group to a specific location or drive a group around for the day at a set price, or you can hail one off the street (like a taxi) and ride its set route. In order to stop the Tap-Tap you use a pen attached to a piece of string to tap on the back window of the truck so that the driver knows to stop, hence the name "Tap-Tap".
When you hail a Tap-Tap off the street it's all about survival skills. Who can you beat out to get thtere first and who can you physically beat out of the way to get on. Almost every time we go by Tap-Tap, the race to get on starts about half a block away and we have to try to get on while it's still moving. Once we are on, we watch as people fist fight, push, and shove to get on and find a seat.
Once you finally get on a Tap-Tap who and who and what are you sharing it with? The answer is as many people as can humanly fit and whatever those people are carrying (that includes livestock!) Most of the Tap-Taps even have a rusty untrustworthy ledge for people to stand on and hang off the back of the Tap-Tap. I refuse to be that person after watching a man holding onto a Tap-Tap fall off and roll onto the street because the metal piece suddenly fell off! Luckily the man was ok but I will never trust those flimsy pieces of metal again!
Another day I was sitting in the back of a Tap-Tap talking to Doucette about how crazy and random driving in Haiti is. She told me it was only random because I didn't understand it but that there was actually a system. Shortly after telling me this we witnessed 2 cars get into a car accident and block off the whole street while the drivers sat there arguing. I looked at Doucette and said "Guess I'm not the only one who doesn't understand the 'system'!"
My lack of understanding Haitian driving extends to sidewalks. I always thought that if you are walking on the sidewalk you are safe from cars for I learned that this is false while Marie, Wibbins, Oksana, Doucette, "G", and I had to dive off ot the sidewalk to avoid a truck who decided that passing in the left lane was not enough, so he drove onto the sidewalk next to the left lane to pass a Tap-Tap that was stuck! Sadly I have seen many cars (including Tap-Taps I was in) do this every day and pedestrians just have to jump out of the way where ever they can to avoid being hit.
Riding in the back of a Tap-Tap yesterday on my way to work, Doucette and I saw a Bies (pronounced bees)catch on fire. A bies is a slightly more expensive (but equally run down) kind of tap-tap that is more van-like and has the doors missing. Somehow the passanger side was on fire and it was in a gas station (not somewhere I would chose to go with a car on fire, but hey, I wasn't driving) while people were trying to throw water at it so that they could put out the flames. No one appeared to be hurt, but our Tap-Tap was not sticking around very long to find out details.
One of the most "interesting" experiences I have had while riding in a Tap-Tap happened on Doucette and my way to the clinic one day. Doucette and I were the only 2 in the Tap-Tap because our group rented it out for the morning so that we could get to work. We were going up a hill that was fairly steep when all of a sudden we started sliding down it backwards. The driver pressed the brake as hard as he could and we stopped sliding temporarily but everytime he tried to press the gas we continued to slide down the hill backwards. Doucette and I tried to get out of the car but the driver told us to stay in, he told us we would be ok. There was an Iraqi UN officer standing outside and he asked us if we were ok. We said yes but he waited and watched to make sure. That was when our driver lost all control and we went careening backwards down the street and off the road onto a pile of rubble from a supermarket that had collapsed during the earthquake.
That's when the driver told us he had "transmission problems" (meanwhile his break light and oil light were both on and he clearly had no control over his car) so that's when Doucette and I got out and ignored him while he was insisting we would be fine and we should stay in the car. We watched from our position perched atop a nearby pile of rubble as the driver again attempted wedge his way off the pile of rubble and onto the street. Then, as he tried again to make it up the hill, he went all of the way backward down the road almost taking out a pedestrian and a bunch of angry cars as he did. While he continued to struggle, Doucette and I decided it was quickly time to rethink our own location due to falling rubble from what was left of the supermarket. We made our way toward the Iraqi officer who gave us a nod and left after seeing that we were ok. We were just rounding the corner when the Tap-Tap driver finally made it up the hill and made his way over to us telling us to get back in his Tap-Tap. I don't know what he was smoking but neither Doucette nor I were willing to go with him after that. There were plenty more hills busier and steeper than that one on our way to the clinic and neither of us wanted to risk staying with him for those so we called and had somebody from the house pick us up. The best part was the driver, who didn't even come close to getting us halfway to the clinic, driving back to the house and asking to be paid for his "services" YEA RIGHT! (Le Fou = he's crazy!)
Needless to say, life is never dull in the back of a Tap-Tap in Haiti!
Kreyol Word: Manifestacion (pronounced "manifestasy own" pretty much just as its spelled) and means riot
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Tip of the Iceberg
As I stated before, although Doucette and I are living with Dwight now, we are still continuing to work with Dr. Joey and Dr. Jackie at their various free clinics. We are helping them to expand their work into areas that normally don't see medicine.
For instance, we have set up a tent clinic in one of the tent cities near the main clinic. In a previous entry I talked about tent cities and some signs posted outside of them saying "We need help! Send doctors, food, water, tents, and money". We are the doctor portion of the answer for at least one of the tent cities where they had no prior access to medicine. Going into my first tent city was a very powerful experience. There were people lined up all around us waiting to get their blood pressure checked by Doucette and I and then get in to see the doctors and receive medicine. Dr. Joey and Dr. Jackie have started a new blood pressure program to treat people with high and low blood pressure so we registered over 200 people!
During a break I was able to walk around and take pictures. As far as I could see there were tents everywhere! Ironically, the landscape looked so beautiful covered with different colored and shaped tents with beautiful mountains for a back drop. But what you won't see in the photos (once I'm able to post them) is the extreme heat from the sun beating down on the tents and tarps, or the lack of clean drinking and bathing water, the lack of a waste management system so that in addition to malnourishment the people living in tent cities are at risk for an assortment of other health problems (i.e. parasites, birth defects, high infant mortality, etc.)
In addition to the problems I briefly mentioned above, another problem plaguing many residents of the tent cities and other impoverished areas in Haiti is a lack of school. I can't speak for all tent cities or all children in Cite Soliel (another area that is extremely below the poverty line) but in the tent city we were in there was no evidence of a school system in place. In Cite Soliel there are some schools but it is my understanding that in many cases a lack of funding to buy uniforms prevents a large group of children from access to education as well.
While many kids elsewhere in the world who have education available to them have a tendency to take it for granted (myself included), the children in these areas are extremely limited in what they can do during the day to keep occupied. I found a few kids with toys that seemed to bring them joy but lacking an education is a real problem that seems to only further enforce the glass ceiling that is ever present over these kids' heads.
Additionally, adults and children alike in these areas are finding other ways to entertain themselves. As Dr. Joey put it "Their choices are either having sex, listening to the radio, or having sex while listening to the radio". While sex is a healthy part of human nature, whithout taking certain precautions, sex can cause a lot of problems. Hence, the quest to promote safe sex!
I wish I could convey how many cases of STDs and infections we see on a regular basis and tell some of the stories but due to a shortage of time I suppose those will have to wait for another day. I will say that on Friday, Doucette and I were able to go into the 2 clinics Dr. Jackie and Dr. Joey run in Cite Soliel and conduct HIV testing! It was probably one of the most exciting things we have gotten to do because before Friday there was no documented information about how prevalant HIV/AIDS are in that area. After we told people their results, Doucette or Flo (one of the nurses we work with) talked to each patient about how to protect against HIV and STDs and encouraged the individual to ask any questions he or she might have. (My Kreyol is nowhere near advanced enough to have that conversation).
We were pleasantly surprised to find almost every patient we tested was negative! We only had 2 patients with results of "unkown" and 1 patient who tested positive for HIV. (I don't know the exact number off hand of how many people we tested but if I had to guess it would be around 60 or more).
I was testing one woman, and I pricked her finger and squeezed out the droplets of blood onto the test strip just like I did with everyone else. Once the test was finished I sent her away and told her that I'd call her back when I had her results. I looked at the strip a few minutes later and it had 2 lines...positive for HIV. A sheer panic shot through my body and immediately I checked my gloves for holes and made sure there was no blood on my body or clothes. Of course there were no holes and ther was no blood because I had been careful while testing her just like I was careful testing everyone else and in general working with cuts. But the reaction was so instictive, so automatic I couldn't help it. Then there was more fear...how was I going to tell this woman that she was HIV positive? How was I going to tell her that she came in for something small and her whole life was about to change?
I called Flo over to show her the results and I asked her what we should do? She said it was better if one of the doctors talked to the woman. I hate myself for feeling this way but when I heard her say that I was so relieved. I was relieved that I didn't have to be the one to tell her that her life was about to change, I was relieved I wouldn't have to see the look on her face when she found out, and most of all I was relieved it wasn't me who was HIV positive.
I heard from Flo that when the doctor told her she was completely surprised and said she had only had sex with her husband. Instead of stating what we usually find in a lot of cases with STDs (the spouse is cheating), Flo explained that there are other ways to get HIV and she told the woman about those as well and got her information so that she could continue to receive treatment she needs.
In spite of my gut reaction, I still want to continue testing people and helping with preventative medicine because my hope is that each day that we help explain how to protect from HIV will be one less person who tests positive hopefully in the future.
Dr. Joey has proposed a plan to gain access to a giant movie projector and show movies for free once a week or so in some of the tent cities to help reduce boredom and give people in those areas soemthing to look forward to. Although it's not a perfect solution to the whole problem, it will help. Being in Haiti has taught me that while it's important not to ignore the whole picture, it's also important to break it down sometimes and take wins where you can because little wins here and there add up eventually.
Kreyol Word: Kijen Ou Ye (pronounced key jay ooo yeay) means How are you?
For instance, we have set up a tent clinic in one of the tent cities near the main clinic. In a previous entry I talked about tent cities and some signs posted outside of them saying "We need help! Send doctors, food, water, tents, and money". We are the doctor portion of the answer for at least one of the tent cities where they had no prior access to medicine. Going into my first tent city was a very powerful experience. There were people lined up all around us waiting to get their blood pressure checked by Doucette and I and then get in to see the doctors and receive medicine. Dr. Joey and Dr. Jackie have started a new blood pressure program to treat people with high and low blood pressure so we registered over 200 people!
During a break I was able to walk around and take pictures. As far as I could see there were tents everywhere! Ironically, the landscape looked so beautiful covered with different colored and shaped tents with beautiful mountains for a back drop. But what you won't see in the photos (once I'm able to post them) is the extreme heat from the sun beating down on the tents and tarps, or the lack of clean drinking and bathing water, the lack of a waste management system so that in addition to malnourishment the people living in tent cities are at risk for an assortment of other health problems (i.e. parasites, birth defects, high infant mortality, etc.)
In addition to the problems I briefly mentioned above, another problem plaguing many residents of the tent cities and other impoverished areas in Haiti is a lack of school. I can't speak for all tent cities or all children in Cite Soliel (another area that is extremely below the poverty line) but in the tent city we were in there was no evidence of a school system in place. In Cite Soliel there are some schools but it is my understanding that in many cases a lack of funding to buy uniforms prevents a large group of children from access to education as well.
While many kids elsewhere in the world who have education available to them have a tendency to take it for granted (myself included), the children in these areas are extremely limited in what they can do during the day to keep occupied. I found a few kids with toys that seemed to bring them joy but lacking an education is a real problem that seems to only further enforce the glass ceiling that is ever present over these kids' heads.
Additionally, adults and children alike in these areas are finding other ways to entertain themselves. As Dr. Joey put it "Their choices are either having sex, listening to the radio, or having sex while listening to the radio". While sex is a healthy part of human nature, whithout taking certain precautions, sex can cause a lot of problems. Hence, the quest to promote safe sex!
I wish I could convey how many cases of STDs and infections we see on a regular basis and tell some of the stories but due to a shortage of time I suppose those will have to wait for another day. I will say that on Friday, Doucette and I were able to go into the 2 clinics Dr. Jackie and Dr. Joey run in Cite Soliel and conduct HIV testing! It was probably one of the most exciting things we have gotten to do because before Friday there was no documented information about how prevalant HIV/AIDS are in that area. After we told people their results, Doucette or Flo (one of the nurses we work with) talked to each patient about how to protect against HIV and STDs and encouraged the individual to ask any questions he or she might have. (My Kreyol is nowhere near advanced enough to have that conversation).
We were pleasantly surprised to find almost every patient we tested was negative! We only had 2 patients with results of "unkown" and 1 patient who tested positive for HIV. (I don't know the exact number off hand of how many people we tested but if I had to guess it would be around 60 or more).
I was testing one woman, and I pricked her finger and squeezed out the droplets of blood onto the test strip just like I did with everyone else. Once the test was finished I sent her away and told her that I'd call her back when I had her results. I looked at the strip a few minutes later and it had 2 lines...positive for HIV. A sheer panic shot through my body and immediately I checked my gloves for holes and made sure there was no blood on my body or clothes. Of course there were no holes and ther was no blood because I had been careful while testing her just like I was careful testing everyone else and in general working with cuts. But the reaction was so instictive, so automatic I couldn't help it. Then there was more fear...how was I going to tell this woman that she was HIV positive? How was I going to tell her that she came in for something small and her whole life was about to change?
I called Flo over to show her the results and I asked her what we should do? She said it was better if one of the doctors talked to the woman. I hate myself for feeling this way but when I heard her say that I was so relieved. I was relieved that I didn't have to be the one to tell her that her life was about to change, I was relieved I wouldn't have to see the look on her face when she found out, and most of all I was relieved it wasn't me who was HIV positive.
I heard from Flo that when the doctor told her she was completely surprised and said she had only had sex with her husband. Instead of stating what we usually find in a lot of cases with STDs (the spouse is cheating), Flo explained that there are other ways to get HIV and she told the woman about those as well and got her information so that she could continue to receive treatment she needs.
In spite of my gut reaction, I still want to continue testing people and helping with preventative medicine because my hope is that each day that we help explain how to protect from HIV will be one less person who tests positive hopefully in the future.
Dr. Joey has proposed a plan to gain access to a giant movie projector and show movies for free once a week or so in some of the tent cities to help reduce boredom and give people in those areas soemthing to look forward to. Although it's not a perfect solution to the whole problem, it will help. Being in Haiti has taught me that while it's important not to ignore the whole picture, it's also important to break it down sometimes and take wins where you can because little wins here and there add up eventually.
Kreyol Word: Kijen Ou Ye (pronounced key jay ooo yeay) means How are you?
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"
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"
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