It was real in Petit Goave, but now we are back in Port au Prince. After my last post, John, Randy, and Chris set up a medical clinic in Petit Goave outside our friend Renel's store. The clinic went very well, we saw a lot of people and gave out lots of medicine. Most of what we saw was just worms, so we gave out mebendazole left and right and in a few days these kids will be worm-free. Other than that we saw a lot of dehydration and colds.
Michelle, Lindsay, Sandy, and Kelsi all arrived that night with Bruce and Shelly. The ride back from the airport in Port au Prince was cool, although Bruce, being the man that he is said "I almost died like 17 times."
The next day we went back to the clinic and handed out clothes and provided more medical care to the people of Petit Goave. Michelle, Kelsi, Sandy, and Lindsay really enjoyed playing reindeer games with the kids outside the clinic. Kelsi and Michelle enjoyed learning the local Haitian dance. Lindsay liked being bombarded by all the kids when she was handing out stickers. A lot of the children have actually never seen themselves before (due to lack of mirrors and cameras), so whenever we took a picture of them they would always ask to see it. "El foto" was something we heard yelled very often around the children.
After a long day at the clinic, we went to the local "hotel" for dinner. The food was good, but getting used to Haitian time is something everyone is still struggling with.
We went to the orphanage the following day. We got the attention of everyone in the street because we had bags of clothes and toys for the orphans (not to mention we were the blancs in town). Everytime we saw the orphans, they would stop whatever they were doing and start singing. Our translator Nesly told us that they thank us for being there and sing about more help coming soon. We had a blast handing out toys to all the orphans, they really liked the dolls we had given them. We also gave out punching balloons which made for an interesting exit.
After finishing up at the orphanage we went back to the site of the clinic (which was going to be closed for a while for renovations) and said our goodbyes to the local kids and families that we had grown to love so much. A few of them followed us back and we had to say goodbye again (which was even more sad). And then they came back again. To say goodbye. Again.
Later that night, we were eating dinner and we heard Johnny and Gueto (the kids) come up again. This time, they brought their moms and dad. Johnny’s mom is 8 months pregnant, Gueto’s mom had a 6 month old baby, and Johnny’s dad came to make sure his mom made it to where we were staying (over 3 miles away). The group came just to make sure they could thank us again, and they wanted our phone numbers to make sure they could call us. They walked over 3 miles…just to say thank you. At that point, I think I could have stood in front of traffic and been fine. That was the best feeling in the world to know that we had made such a large difference in these people’s lives in such a short amount of time.
The next morning we packed everything up, with the assistance of Johnny (who cut school to come help us) and left for Port au Prince. On the way we stopped by Renel’s house and gave him our tents and beds (and one pool float) for him to keep for us for when we come down again. The drive back to Port au Prince was long, bumpy, and hot. A few of us got sunburn, we didn’t count on being in the sun that long.
We are now in Port au Prince. We spent tonight sorting through drugs and punching them out and organizing them and researching them…it was a long process worthy of a run on sentence. Everything here is great on our end, we have our work cut out for us here. Tomorrow we will be setting up a clinic for a conference run by the local pastor. Over 1000 people will come to be seen, so we should be pretty busy. Au revoir from Port au Prince, we will write more soon.
All the best, Chris, Michelle, and a really tired Lindsay
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