Exciting News

Once again, a lot has happened since the last posting and I've been delinquent in communication.
First of all, our last few days in Haiti went wonderfully. The kids at the orphanage really enjoyed the VBS and learned a lot. It was impressive to listen to some of the older kids answer theological questions!
On Monday, my cousin and I flew back to the States.The first leg of that journey, a flight between Cayes and Port au Prince on a tiny plane with Tortug'Air, is always exciting. There's invariably a couple times during the flight when you're sure you won't land in one piece. But it sure does have scenery.
It's wonderful to be home with my family and loved ones but I'll miss Haiti a lot, and not an hour goes by that I don't think about it. Surprisingly I haven't been experiencing a huge amount of culture shock for someone who spent over three months in a third world country - especially since nearly all of that time was spent in a mountain village four hours away from any native English speakers other than the Bustins.
Last Friday we received wonderful news from my sister, Jana. She and some others had been searching faithfully for a hospital or organization that would take on Steven's case and fund the surgery for his myelomeningocele (the outpouching of his spinal cord through his vertebrae). Through some contacts, she was put in touch with Mending Kids International, an LA based charitable organization that helps fund surgeries for children from all over the world. Mending Kids agreed to take Steven's case! This is an answer to so many prayers. We all hated leaving Steven up there in the mountain village with no medical care accessible should anything happen to him and it's important for his future health that this surgery be accomplished as soon as possible. After we found out about Mending Kids, the word was put out that we needed a family to house Steven and be his guardians through this long process of getting him the medical care he needs. At least 5 families in Orange County stepped up and were willing to host Steven. I was just humbled and amazed at this. So many people have been praying and helping him that have never even seen him. He will be staying with a wonderful Christian family that lives about 10 minutes from where I live so I'm pretty excited about the prospect of being able to see him regularly.
A few days after we found out about Mending Kids accepting Steven, we got word that another patient that the Bustins and some others have been trying to get to the States for about a year now was likely to be accepted at a hospital in North Carolina to have his surgery without cost. Jacky is 28 years old. Up until 2006, he was a school teacher at the Bustin's mission. At that time, he developed a large facial tumor. He had the tumor resected in the States, but it grew back about a year ago and is now large enough that it is squeezing his wind pipe. This picture was taken last March of Jacky with the neurologist who worked on getting him surgery both in 2006 and this time around, along with his daughter. Since then, the tumor's gotten so big that we got word it's starting to press on his eye. He's one that just breaks your heart to look at and imagine how painful it must be.
We are waiting on paperwork from both cases, but if all goes well, I'll be going back to Haiti in a couple days to work on getting their visas and returning with them to the US possibly as soon as next Saturday. There are still so many factors up in the air that could determine how soon we are able to get Jacky and Steven out, so we could use a lot of prayer still that things would be expedited.
God is good. I'll try to keep updating on our progress.

Back to the Mountain

I had to do some follow-up with a couple patients back on the mountain, so on Monday Chip and I found a ride with a friend who is part owner of a camionette (MACK truck used for transport). Fortunately, we were able to sit up in the cab of the truck so the ride was actually more comfortable than other treks I’ve made up the mountain sitting in the back of SUVs in the past. Other than one minor break down and a fight that broke out amongst a few passengers, the trip was pretty smooth. Once again, Chip impressed me with his willingness to go along with the whole Haiti experience.

It was wonderful to be on the mountain again. Things weren’t the same without the Bustin family, but it was so good to get to spend a little more time with everyone up there. We packed a lot into a couple short days!
It was a blast getting to see the kids again. We brought a few gifts with us for the 10 kids who live at the mission and they had a lot of fun, especially with the bubbles! Natasha, one of the 10 kids, invited us to her grandmother's house and we spent a little time visiting with her as she prepared the evening meal.At another friend's house, we were offered some sugar cane and Chip got to hone his skills with a machete.

The neighborhood girls have started their own soccer team. While the bigger girls played on the field, some of the younger kids caught tadpoles.

Thanks to a generous donation, there is enough money to keep the feeding program going for the next month! It's pretty amazing seeing these kids enjoy full bellies when it's not uncommon for kids here to wake up hungry and go to sleep just as hungry. We're so grateful for God's provision! These are some of the ladies who prepare the food for 300 children 6 days a week. They show up at 7am, work at preparing the food until the meals are served at around noon, and stay until about 4pm cleaning up. The camera wasn't blurry here, the area they work in is just incredibly smoky because of all the cooking fires.

Next Phase

I had a wonderful break last week in Port au Prince at Haiti Children’s Rescue Mission, an orphanage in Petionville. It might sound a little strange to describe 3 days at an orphanage as a break, but having nothing to do but some grocery shopping and playing with kids was a wonderful reprieve from my normal daily responsibilities. I got into town on Tuesday, June 3 to find out that it was a good thing we had chosen that day because there was a city-wide demonstration planned for Wednesday that would essentially grind things to a halt for the day. I was told that the demonstrations were to push for the death sentence for kidnappers, as kidnapping has continued to be a big problem in Haiti. I found myself trying not to think about the high crime rate a couple days later when I was brought into a bad part of town to buy some meds to bring back up the mountain. Fortunately, I didn’t realize just how bad the area was until after we had gotten back into the car and the driver, native to Port au Prince, said, “Yeah, this neighborhood is not so good. I always avoid it, this is my first time here in 5 years. Just right now before you got into the car, I saw a lady being robbed from the back of a tap-tap. She looked really frightened.” Apparently, God had his protective hand on us that day!

My cousin Chip arrived in the country on Friday and we flew to Cayes where we’ve been doing a VBS at a small orphanage there. Chip is incredibly gifted with working with the children. I’ve been so impressed with his adventurous spirit and am grateful for his flexibility. On Sunday we got to join a missionary family as well as some local Haitian youth for an outreach that they’ve been doing every week for a few months. They go out to a slum of Cayes and do Sunday school and pass out meals for about 500 kids there. It was great to be a part of things that day. Of course, wherever I go, medical emergencies seem to follow me, so we ended up bringing a little boy back to town to go to the hospital for stitches after slicing his foot open.

Phil 4.4

For those of you who haven’t gotten my emails, here’s the latest on Steven and brief re-cap of what’s going on out here. I haven’t had the greatest internet access lately so haven’t been able to keep this blog as updated as I’d like…

Well, it looks like things are at a standstill for getting Steven to the States. For now. The US Embassy absolutely will not grant him a medical visa until we have proof that the costs of his medical expenses are covered. This means we'll either the hospital will have to waive his fees or we need to wait until the funds are raised. Despite the frustrations of the past couple weeks, to have gone through so much work only to have this door closed, I believe God has to have had a bigger plan here. This does give us some more time to pursue leads on other hospitals that may be able to do the surgery for free or offer us a much reduced rate. Steven and his mother, Janice, will be staying in the room we've rented for them next door to the mission for awhile longer so someone can continue to see him everyday and be able to get him help if he gets any worse, but he does appear stable at the moment.

In a few hours, I'll be driving down the mountain to Cayes with the family I've been staying with. The Bustins will be heading to the States for two months and I'll fly into Port au Prince and spend a few days at an orphanage until my cousin Chip joins me, then we'll fly to Cayes and work at an orphanage there, doing VBS-type activities with the kids. After that, we'll head home on June 16.

I'm faced with mixed emotions thinking about leaving this mountain. It'll be a nice change of pace to be back in a larger area but it's so hard to think about leaving the many wonderful people I've gotten to share in the lives of out here. I've also grown a lot in the area of healthcare working out here, I even put my first sutures in yesterday! (I think I put on a pretty calm front for the patient, but inside I'll admit I was just about ready to freak out.) I have to admit though, I am looking forward to being able to walk in public without people coming up to me saying, "Mis Estefany, souple bay mwen ti cado gren pou..." or "Nurse Stephanie, please give me a little gift of a pill for...(insert anything under the sun here from 'pain' to 'help my baby to start walking')". Every day after I've finished working and am heading back to the house, during that 3 minute walk about 8 people will come up to me asking for something. It's interesting, they'll sit for hours in the mission yard, not saying anything while I work with other patients. I'll even purposefully wait outside the pharmacy for a few minutes before closing up to give anyone a last chance to ask me for something, but there is always a group of people who waits until I close up and head home to make their needs known. I've learned to only keep a small amount of money in my pocket because whatever I have I won't be able to resist giving it away when people ask people ask me for money, especially when it's kids asking for money for food. The mission is able to do a lot, but it's hard when we have a whole mountain full of people with hunger pangs that I can't even imagine, and not being able to feed them all. RaeLeen's had a tough week because she got an email a couple days ago saying that the lady who's been giving the $2,000 needed each month to provide a hot meal everyday for the 300 children on the nutritional program is no longer able to continue to support the program. There is enough food left for about 2 and a half weeks. This program has made a huge difference in the community, the villagers remark that there are hardly ever funerals for children anymore now, when they used to be so common place. As many verses as there are in the Bible about feeding the hungry, I believe this work is very dear to God's heart and as He's been the one making provision for it all along, I look forward to seeing how He will provide next. "Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as non. The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring." Isaiah 58.10-11.

Have a wonderful week!
Stephanie

"Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again--rejoice!" Phil 4.4

Kendy

Every morning Mita waits under a tree for me to bring bottles of formula for her to carry back to her house and baby brother, Kendy. Her mom has 7 children and 'shares' a man with another woman so the result is that neither of the man's families are adequately cared for and the mom isn't sufficiently nourished to provide milk for her baby. This is their home, a single-room dwelling with the bed in the back partitioned off with a hanging sheet. In the middle of the house is a circle of rocks, used to hold a cooking pot off the ground over a fire. The baby sleeps in the bed with his mom, the rest of the children sleep on the ground.Several weeks ago, when Kendy was about two weeks old, his mother first brought him to us and told us about her inability to feed him. The baby had been subsiding on sugar water and was pretty pathetic looking. Over the last few weeks he has grown wonderfully and looks to be a healthy, happy baby. When we leave, we'll hire someone to be in charge of preparing the bottles, as the mom's not able to clean the bottles and prepare the formula in a manner clean enough for a newborn.

Hurdles

This week has been a roller-coaster of emotions, emails, phone calls and prayers for us here. Dinel, the mission's assistant director, spent the week in Port au Prince with baby Steven and Steven's mom Janice working on getting a medical visa for Steven. In their past experience getting people to the States, the Bustins have never had this much trouble getting the medical visa. The first appointment with the embassy was on Tuesday and we were denied until we could get more specific letters from both the hospital in the States where Steven will have his surgery, and a hospital in Haiti stating that the surgery cannot be done in Haiti. After a day spent trying to find a working fax machine in Port au Prince, another day waiting while our American embassy was closed to celebrate a Catholic/Voodoo holiday celebrating God's birthday, and Friday being spent fulfilling new requirements the embassy presented to us (once our people in Haiti and the States scrambled quickly to fulfill one requirement and Dinel returns for another interview, the embassy would prevent us with a new requirement that we could have finished long ago if the embassy would have told us about it earlier), we are still without a medical visa. It's amazing the way the embassy has been picking this to pieces. Our latest requirement is a notarized letter from the surgeon who has volunteered to do Steven's surgery. We will not likely get this letter before Wednesday, so at that time I'll head to Port with Dinel, Janice and Steven and go with them to the embassy. It might take a few days to finish up with the embassy and working with the Haitian IBESR to get a paper allowing Steven to leave the country but hopefully I'll be able to take him out by next weekend and get him safely to the States. Thanks for your continued prayers!

This sweet little girl came to the mission a couple days ago. She's one and a half years old and her mom brought her here because she can no longer take care of her so she would like us to put her into an orphanage. The mom is only two years older than I am, she has 5 children and her husband recently left her. With no job and no means of support she is wanting to give away her youngest child before things get worse. A small part of me can understand doing what you have to do to make sure your family is taken care of, even if that means making a huge sacrifice, although I can't imagine anything more devastating than giving up a child. I suppose part of where I still have trouble understanding the culture here is how the mom was smiling and acting very matter-of-fact about the situation. The little girl was singing and playing, clearly happy and well cared for. The mom was affectionate with her and I didn't see any signs of sadness or deeper emotion. I wonder if this is an example of Haitian stoicism or she really was as ok with the idea of giving up her child as she seemed.

Visitors from Ohio

This week we had the blessing of a visit from a team from Grace Church in Akron, Ohio. Eleven guys arrived on Tuesday night and practically didn't stop working until they left this afternoon to head back to Cayes. We had two docs on the team so some of us we ran a three-day- clinic while others worked on numerous things around the mission from building school desks to repairing water pumps and generators. I wasn't great about taking pictures while the team was here, so thanks RaeLeen for most of these pictures! I'm slightly in awe of people who can do handy-work because I'm completely lost with that kind of thing. The kids had a blast playing in the wood shavings from the boards the guys planed. During the clinic, the doctors saw many patients who came in with anything from skin infections to mental illnesses and everything in between. It was wonderful not to be the one doing the diagnostics! I stayed busy doing pharmacy, interpreting (with Jacqueline's help; the people would say what they have to say, Jacqueline tells me in more simplified Creole, then I'd tell the doctor in English. It took awhile but it worked), doing wound care and whatever else needed to be done.This lady was in a car accident nearly three months ago that killed two of her children and left her with significant abdominal wounds. I've been doing daily dressing changes for about a month and a half with her.My first IV-start in Haiti. After two months I was worried I'd lost the skill. This boy ended up getting sent down the hospital. A couple weeks ago he had a high fever and since then he's had a mental illness where he's been totally out of touch with reality. He came to us hypothermic. The doctors wondered about typhoid fever that was high enough to mess up his brain, including its temperature regulation. It won't be an easy life for him to live out here where mental illnesses are understood even less than they are in the States, but he's a sweet kid and seems to have a family who loves him.Discussing Steven's care with Dr. Eric. Steven's doing really well. He has an appointment at the US Embassy in Port au Prince on Tuesday to apply for his medical visa and from there the last step will be to get the IBESR (something like Haitian social services) to agree to let him leave. If either of these don't go well, it could mean delaying getting him out of the country for his surgery for months so we could really use prayer! I've been continuously working on giving this back to God, trusting that it's really ALL in His hands. If all goes well, I'll be taking Steven to Indianapolis next Monday the 26th, where we'll be leaving him in the hands of his State-side guardians until his surgery at Riley Children's Hospital.

It’s amazing to me how much excitement we have in this far removed corner of the world. A couple nights ago, we got word that a lady had come to the mission to be seen for some injuries from a fall. I went down to find the lady waiting outside the mission gate with a crowd of people around her. Her family had carried her to us on a box-spring mattress-turned-stretcher with two long pieces of wood for handles. Her right leg had an open fracture, her collarbone was broken and I could see bone through the laceration on her head. It turned out that she hadn’t fallen; she’d had an avalanche of rocks fall on her. I learned that when people are working in their garden digging for yams, they dig deep holes and put rocks they find (some the size of small boulders) around the perimeter of the hole. David says that every year he’ll hear of people being killed or seriously injured when the rocks fall back down into the hole on top of people, and yet they continue to do it. It had taken her family a few hours to get her to us, walking part of the several miles, and catching a ride part of the way, so by the time she got here she at least had stopped bleeding. I got to work cleaning and covering the wounds and loading her up with antibiotics what little pain medication we have, while David made arrangements for his son, Josh, to drive her down the mountain to Cayes and the nearest hospital.
Another story I included in one of my emails but haven’t gotten around to putting on this blog happened a few weeks ago. A lady came to us just as we were finishing up work for the day. She had been pregnant but didn’t think the baby was due quite yet, so she walked about 9 miles to the market that morning. On the way home, she had walked about 2 miles, and then went into labor. The way she described it, the baby just slid out right away and passer-by’s helped cut the cord. This baby was very small and had a cleft palate as well as what looked like other neurological problems. So this dear lady walked another 3 miles to where we’re living for us to take a quick look at the child. She only stayed for a few minutes and then wanted to go home before it got dark. She would have walked (another 3 miles on the main dirt road and another mile on a slippery mud foot path) but a neighbor volunteered to take her by motorcycle. Of course I had to take a picture of this lady who had just given birth, walked three miles, was dealing with the shock of a child with serious deformities and was now straddling a motorcycle on a bumpy dirt road with her newborn in her arms! I visited the lady the next day and was really impressed with the way she was coping and caring for this baby in a culture where it would not be unheard of to call the baby a devil-child and throw it out to die. We ended up sending the baby down to the hospital for surgery to repair the cleft palate because he couldn’t have survived in these conditions as he was. I’m so grateful for the ability to send our critical patients to the hospital! It’s shocking how bad things can get for people when they can’t get any medical care because they can’t afford it.
On the whole I’m still doing really well out here. Every morning and into the afternoon I work with a Haitian girl named Jacqueline, who’s had training here in Haiti as a lab tech, and more recently, an American doctor spent two months training her in medicine. We don’t have an official ‘clinic’ here, but we usually see an average of 25 people every day anyway and as much to 40 people on a busy day. Jacqueline only speaks a couple words of English, but fortunately she’s smart enough to be able to figure out what I’m talking about as I butcher Creole. Our communication usually works with the patient explaining their symptoms in rapid paragraphs of Creole, Jacqueline simplifying it for me in Creole, my explaining treatment and medication in what must be pretty sad Creole from the looks that I get, and Jacqueline explaining to the patient what I’ve said so that they can understand it. It’s a little humbling when my Creole has to be re-translated, but I’ve only been here for two months so I guess I’ll need to have a little more patience. Fortunately, for the more complicated communication issues, David is often around and willing to translate. A lot of the people come for common complaints: headache, heartburn, a lot of asthma, simple infections or wound-care, etc., but every so often we do have more serious cases, like the one mentioned above, carried through the gate.
I’ve also gotten to spend a good amount of time getting to know people in the community. I love going for walks and visiting people at their homes. With few exceptions, living conditions in rural Haiti have improved very little over the past centuries. I took these pictures when I went to visit a man who works here at the mission when he was sick a couple days ago. On the way up to his house, we passed a few kids heading down to the mission for the feeding program. This is his mother-in-law as I found her when I walked up to the house, sweeping the yard. For pain, Haitians tend to tie tourniquets around the area that’s giving them grief. Sometimes the tourniquets will be simply strips of cloth, other times they’ll create a home-remedy compress of leaves, dirt and often more disturbing ingredients, and then tie the tourniquet over the compress. TiPelon had been having pain in his ribs so this is the compress that his mother-in-law had tied over them. It could’ve been worse, TiPelon is doing much better now.
Tomorrow, Steven will be going down to Cayes to get a letter from the hospital saying that the surgery he needs is one that can’t be provided in Haiti. That’ll be one step closer to getting him to the States!

Nearly two months old!

Steven, the baby we've been caring for with spina bifida, is getting so big! It's been so fun to get to see him grow from this tiny 5-day old infant to being now almost two months old and starting to show a little personality. Things are starting to move with getting him to the States for surgery, we hope I'll be able to take him out to Indiana in as soon as two weeks. He'll have the surgery at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis and some wonderful people in Indiana and around the country are working on raising the $24-32k (after a 20% discount given by the hospital) needed in funds to cover the surgery and hospitalization. If this is something you or someone you know would be interested in donating funds toward, please let me know.
It's really a miracle how things are moving but we still need several things to happen before we can get Steven to the States. Please join us in praying that things will continue to move quickly and smoothly!