A Time to Play...

Tuesday Night, 10pm

Right now I’m listening to the beautiful sound of our much-needed rain. The sound reminds me of my first trip to Haiti, 8 years ago. I was 16, had never been outside of the States and had just made the arduous journey from the airport in Port Au Prince to our destination, a rural village so small that even people who live within 5 miles of it do not know it by name. The roads in Haiti do not make for easy travel, the first 120 miles from Port Au Prince to the city of Les Cayes takes 4-5 hours and the last 30 or so mile stretch takes another 4 hours. We arrived at the village and were greeted with a spread of Haitian food, most likely rice and beans with mystery meat on the side. The village had no electricity or running water. Our bathrooms were latrines not sanitary enough for us to sit on and we slept on cots inside small huts. I don’t remember what was going through my mind as I processed all of this, my strongest recollection from that night was lying down on my cot and being lulled to sleep by the peaceful sound of rain on the tin roof. It was then I decided that I really liked this place.

Now I find myself just a few miles down the road from where I listened to the rain that first night and enjoying the sound of the rain for other reasons. There is no water on this mountain. When the teams were here, every day or every other day David would make the 5-6 hour round-trip drive to the river with the big Deuce loaded with about 16 55-gallon barrels and who knows how many 5 gallon buckets to fill with water for the mission and many neighbors. This rain’s a huge answer to prayer! I can’t help but be concerned though. I’ve seen so many leaky roofs; I hate to imagine how many people are spending this night cold and wet. There is so much I take for granted.

We got back last night from spending Easter weekend down the mountain in Cayes. We drove down on Saturday morning and along the way saw several groups of people dancing in the streets in full traditional costume. RaeLeen said these people are RahRahs who are celebrating the death of Christ. It doesn’t get much clearer than that to show that Haiti is a spiritual battleground! Off and on over the weekend we would hear drumbeats but overall Easter in Haiti was much more normal than I'd expected it to be! On Saturday the kids dyed Easter eggs and had a hunt for them in the yard. The kids had Easter baskets and the girls and I made cupcakes. Sunday morning we went to a sunrise service held on a rooftop with around 30 or 40 other missionaries. It was really a beautiful service, watching the sun rays peaking out over the hills as we sang and a lot of missionaries shared a short message or song. This picture really doesn't do it justice. After a brunch, we spent the afternoon at Port Salut beach. It doesn't get much better than being able to park right on the beach and having the restaurant set up a table and chairs in the shade for us.

On Monday morning RaeLeen flew out to the States, she'll be there for a week. As David took care of things in town, I got to take the girls and Joel over to go swimming at a friend's house before we headed back up the mountain Monday afternoon. As always, it was a tough ride, but the scenery is pretty amazing. This week I am splitting my time between doing homeschool with the girls and miscellaneous healthcare issues that crop up. Everyday there are people showing up with wounds to assess and dress and other ailments of every kind.

Here are a couple more images from our last couple days of clinic........

This little boy was five days old when this picture was taken. He has spina bifida, a developmental birth defect where part of the spinal cord protrudes out of the vertebrae. He needs an operation to put the spinal cord back into his back, but even with the surgery there will likely be long-term complications. It will be a long process to try to get him to the States for surgery. Until then, he'll be needing daily dressing changes and antibiotics to prevent infection from entering in through the small spot where a skin covering has not formed yet. We're praying that the skin covering will grow fast, that area's difficult to keep from getting soiled. The baby's mom is only 19 years old and lives about an 8 hour walk from here so she and her mother-in-law are staying at a house nearby in order for us to be able to properly look after the baby.



This baby had six fingers on each hand. I'm not sure why, but that seems to be relatively common in Haiti. The sixth fingers had fingernails but fortunately they didn't have bones so it was simple enough for the physician to tie sutures at the base of the fingers so that they will eventually fall off from lack of oxygenation.

Another girl came to us with completely raw hands, which had been that way for about 2 years. Apparently it was just a severe dermatitis from soap she had been using. Hopefully if she avoids the soap her hands will get a chance to heal.


Some people waiting outside the gate to be seen by the doctor.


One of the ladies on the dental clinic team brought her yukalalie (sp?) and had a good time playing for the crowds waiting.



This is the local midwife. She delivered the baby of the lady I mentioned in my last blog, Rosemon. Rosemon would have been all alone for the labor had a neighbor not run get this lady to help. She came up to RaeLeen the week after the baby was born, hoping to be payed for delivering the baby. It turned out she had been so bad off, all she could afford to eat was salt for who knows how long.


Kenley would spend a good bit of each afternoon hanging out with us after he finished lunch at the nutritional program. A huge bright spot in my days.

The teams left yesterday morning and it's been relatively quiet around here. We referred a lot of the clinic patients to return for further treatment, so I've been following up with things on that end and have been enjoying catching up on rest a little and spending some time with the Bustin girls, helping out with homeschool. Tomorrow we will head down the mountain to spend Easter with some other missionaries in Cayes.

As I write this, it’s about 9pm Monday night, but the internet is off for the night, so I won’t be posting it until sometime tomorrow. I’m enjoying some time right now just sitting on the front porch swinging, occasionally swatting the bugs off of my computer screen. On Saturday we had a neurologist and a dentist arrive with their teams so this week we have a medical/dental clinic going on. It’s been an unexpected blessing to be able to spend my first week and a half out here with two doctors and another nurse to learn from as I get my feet wet! I can handle simple things and wound care, but it’s good to see how a lot of routine illnesses are diagnosed and treated out here. This is the first dental clinic that they’ve ever had out here so people are coming in crowds to see the dentist. Most of the teeth that are giving people problems are already too far gone to do anything other than pull. Over 50 teeth were pulled today alone!

The kids continue to be a joy. This guy’s name is Anderson. His mom Olita works here and has kind of taken me under her wing and is helping me a little with the language. Joy practically exuberates from her, she is always smiling and laughing and Anderson takes after her in that. He’s so much fun to play with.
This is Kenley aka TiKen (‘little Ken’). His mom lives in Port Au Prince and he comes every day for a meal from the nutritional program RaeLeen has started. He has cousins who keep an eye out for him, but he’s latched onto me and I love getting to be his buddy.



This is Rosemon, a lady with a severe mental illness who is staying on the property for much needed assistance. She gave birth a week and a half ago (the baby is now in an orphanage, Rosemon said she was unable to nurse or care for it) and for the first 7 days after the baby was born, she stayed alone in a 10’x10’ hut with walls of woven sticks and a thatch roof and wouldn’t leave her sleeping mat that hadn’t been cleaned since the baby was born on it. Aside from that, she is afraid of baths and hasn’t bathed in about a year. The smell was unbelievable. On Saturday we brought her here (the process of getting her here is a story unto itself), bathed her and have been making sure she is getting food, pain medication and vitamins. Seeing and interacting with Rosemon breaks my heart, she is the epitome of misery in a country that has no sympathy or respect for mental illness. The picture below is the sack she carries everywhere on her head…basically a length of linen holding a lot of random trash. RaeLeen pointed out when we went to her house to bring her out here that she never asked about her baby, she just insisted on not leaving behind her sack.

First Couple Days In Haiti

The last week has been one big whirlwind. I finished my last shift at the hospital on March 5th and spent the next several days packing, running errands, soaking in time with family and friends and tying up all the loose ends involved in getting ready to be out of the country for 3 months. Saturday in particular was a special day with my family, my mom had our complex’s clubhouse decked out for a party and in addition to the nine members of my immediate family, a couple of cousins and an aunt drove down to join us and it was a really neat time getting to enjoy each other’s company.
I flew out of LAX on Monday and after nearly 24 hours of travel, arrived at Deye Mon Tuesday night, tired but otherwise doing great. A major blessing was getting my 200lb of luggage (most of it NOT for personal use, FYI-- just incase you were wondering why I needed 200lbs worth of stuff) down here without any problems! In addition to the Bustins (who live out here), there is also a retired cardiologist and his wife who is a nurse who have been here since January but will be leaving shortly, and a couple from Minnesota with their six girls and the wife’s father so it’s a full house! I was a little jet lagged today but I did get to spend some time playing with some of the kids from the area. The missionary compound is always full of kids, both a school and a feeding program are run on the property and there are about 10 orphans living here as well. Hopefully I’ll continue to pick up more of the language so I can communicate with them more easily but kids somehow always find a way to transcend the language barrier anyway.

Yesterday afternoon we went for a short walk on the mountainside to visit a sick woman who’s a member of the Bustins’ church and along the way we saw this lady with her baby.
On our way up the mountain during my trip here last fall, we were told that there was a woman giving birth at the compound. I saw one birth during nursing school, but I’ve never come close to delivering a baby, so I frantically pull out my “Where There Is No Doctor” book, study up on childbirth and pray. Fortunately, once we arrived, it turned out that there was another nurse from the States already working with the lady. We spent hours with her but she wasn’t progressing in her labor, so they finally brought her down the mountain to the nearest hospital, 5 hours away. One interesting factor with the labor kind of helps depict a bit of the superstition so prevalent in Haiti, even among Christians. The woman had been trying to make a bit of a living by selling kerosene oil to neighbors and one of the neighbors was mad about the price and ‘cursed’ her by saying she hoped the woman’s baby would come out of her nose! Even though she had faith in Christ and not in Voodoo, she still had a strong fear that the curse would hurt her baby, especially since the labor started several weeks before her due date. It turned out to be false labor (she was still 3 weeks early) and she delivered a healthy girl a couple weeks later who I saw for the first time today. I so enjoyed getting to meet and hold her!
One thing we could really use prayer for out here is rain! Every day or every couple days, David has to drive 1.5-2 hours to the river to get water so it's hard to imagine how people around here with no transportation are getting their water! It's been overcast off and on, and on the drive up the mountain to get here, it was pouring rain just a few miles from here, but it hasn't reached here yet. I'll try to continue staying in touch! (PS- thanks Debbie, for the use of your photos!)