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.