OK, I obviously failed my experiment of attempted blogging again! I am back in Port au Prince and nearly 2 weeks have passed since I last popped on here to update. We have been quite busy, nd it was difficult to sneak away to take the time to type out our daily activities. I was able to take some notes the first few days on paper, to remind me of what I would want to elaborate on later- but that, too, only lasted so long. I will try to get back into it before too long so that I dont forget! Today was a travel day, leaving Jacmel to come back into Port au Prince, so we didnt have any work arranged (that and it's Sunday so difficult to arrange any work.) We had our last breakfast overlooking the ocean this morning and then enjoyed a swim in the ocean after packing our rooms up. I borrowed Caryn's goggles and swam around to explore. I only had one minor panic moment when I was over on the rock edge farther than I had ever gone before, but I did some deep breathing and calmed :) I did see some fish, little blue ones, a middle sized orange one, a big white one and a lot of yellow and black striped ones. It was really interesting.
We left Jacmel at around 12:30 and arrived at our guesthouse at 3:30 (not bad.) I always enjoy the drive over the mountain (and the cool air) but I may have gotten too much sun on one arm- its not sore though. Michaelle made me a list on the drive of her favourite kreyol musicians, so it will be neat to see how many of them I can find when I get home. I also studied some kreyol on the drive from my iPhone app, and on one of the stops Hero (our driver) and I played a quick game of him reading the english and then me trying to guess the kreyol before him. A little girl came over and played along as well, but I dont think she had any english.
When we got to the guest house we packed a bag to send back down to Ile a Vache and then we took a tour of the new clinic! It's exciting to see how much progress they have made since May. We were able to walk around all 3 levels and imagine what it will look like. Andy says they are hoping to have it open in March. We came back to the house and had supper, set up our bug nets and now we are playing games and catching up with our technology. My iPhone is also no longer responding. I had fixed it this morning, but then right after supper it stopped recognizing my touch. This happened to me on Friday as well, so I had to let it die and recharge. Hopefully letting it die will resolve the issue again (its a lot closer to death this time fortunately)
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Arrival in Port au Prince
It has been a long day, as is the case each time I travel to Haiti. Always such an early morning :) My alarm went off at 2am this morning and we were up and at 'er! I managed to forget to bring my water bottle which is laying in the drying rack next to the sink at home. Thankfully I realized this on the drive to the airport and was able to message my friend who had a later flight out of Ottawa and she packed me an extra bottle! Great team-work! I spent the rest of the drive remembering all of the other things I forgot :)
I met up with the rest of my team (physio, speech, ortho and RN) in Montreal. I didnt have too much of a wait between arriving in Montreal and boarding the plane to leave for Haiti. As we were about to board we noticed that boarding along side us was the honourable Michaelle Jean. When I got to my seat I found that it was occupied by another woman, and Caryn said that they had just had to do a big shuffle themselves because most people were in the wrong seats. Through broken Kreyol I discover that it is a woman and her mother who did not have seats together, but because the mother was elderly and not well she wanted to be close to her. WHo is going to be the bully in that situation? Not I. I was trying to figure out where her seat was, but she wasnt following my questioning because she just continued to repeat the info about her mother not being well. Luckily a flightattendent was able to get her to finally prodce her ticket so I could find where her empty seat on the plane was. It was way in the back in the middle of the middle. Convenient. I made my way back to her seat and tried to explain the switch but, again, communication difficulties and they werent letting me get into the seat which was pretty confusing. In the end someone else switched to that seat so I got an aisle seat which was preferable to the middle of the middle. I napped on the plane and played peek a boo with a little boy in my row and then we were here! Once through customs we all actually located our luggage pretty quickly, both of my hockey bags of supplies arrived. Big hugs for Gail. We then played a fun game of "find Allen" which is much akin to where's waldo, only you have no idea what Allen looks like. We didnt find him easily so we decided to head out and load up the van and Gail would go back for the mystery person when more people had cleared out. Big hugs for Noel. I bought a couple of waters in the parking lot, oh yeah, Haiti heat! And then we were off to the guest house! Big hugs for Andy. We unloaded the van and I picked a bed and then we headed out to the grocery store. It took us a very long time to get there because of traffic. We all bought most of the things we would want to bring home, in case we didnt get a chance to come back to the store before we left. I got the usuals and a few new things that caught my eye. I switched over some money into gourds as well. We had plans to go to Montana after supper, but everyone is exhausted and cant find the energy to leave. For supper we had a spicy pasta with pikliz, salad and frites and cherry juice. As we were sitting at the supper table we started to plan for tomorrow morning and came to the conclusion that if we were going to hit the road early in the morning to beat traffic to get out of town, we needed to get the wheelchairs out of the cage and organized. Mention wheelchairs and it means I get to work :) The light in the cage isnt working, just for an added challenge. All the equipment is piled into a small room, this is the same pile of equipment that we organized 6 mos ago. It is no longer in any shape or form organized. I climbed in and decided to get down and dirty to get the job done before I crashed. Luckily it didnt take us too long once we decided to be ruthless and just tear things out. I have a chair set aside for the teenager in Bellevue and I picked one out for Enrico by eyeing it and not having any measurements. I'm hoping these work out. We picked out a bunch of random parts and supplies in case we need to make repairs at the orpahange.
I apologize for this lack luster update, but the best I can manage is the bare facts of the day- no delightful insights or witty commentary from this worn out chick. I think I will actually make my way down to my bunk and crawl under my bug net.
I met up with the rest of my team (physio, speech, ortho and RN) in Montreal. I didnt have too much of a wait between arriving in Montreal and boarding the plane to leave for Haiti. As we were about to board we noticed that boarding along side us was the honourable Michaelle Jean. When I got to my seat I found that it was occupied by another woman, and Caryn said that they had just had to do a big shuffle themselves because most people were in the wrong seats. Through broken Kreyol I discover that it is a woman and her mother who did not have seats together, but because the mother was elderly and not well she wanted to be close to her. WHo is going to be the bully in that situation? Not I. I was trying to figure out where her seat was, but she wasnt following my questioning because she just continued to repeat the info about her mother not being well. Luckily a flightattendent was able to get her to finally prodce her ticket so I could find where her empty seat on the plane was. It was way in the back in the middle of the middle. Convenient. I made my way back to her seat and tried to explain the switch but, again, communication difficulties and they werent letting me get into the seat which was pretty confusing. In the end someone else switched to that seat so I got an aisle seat which was preferable to the middle of the middle. I napped on the plane and played peek a boo with a little boy in my row and then we were here! Once through customs we all actually located our luggage pretty quickly, both of my hockey bags of supplies arrived. Big hugs for Gail. We then played a fun game of "find Allen" which is much akin to where's waldo, only you have no idea what Allen looks like. We didnt find him easily so we decided to head out and load up the van and Gail would go back for the mystery person when more people had cleared out. Big hugs for Noel. I bought a couple of waters in the parking lot, oh yeah, Haiti heat! And then we were off to the guest house! Big hugs for Andy. We unloaded the van and I picked a bed and then we headed out to the grocery store. It took us a very long time to get there because of traffic. We all bought most of the things we would want to bring home, in case we didnt get a chance to come back to the store before we left. I got the usuals and a few new things that caught my eye. I switched over some money into gourds as well. We had plans to go to Montana after supper, but everyone is exhausted and cant find the energy to leave. For supper we had a spicy pasta with pikliz, salad and frites and cherry juice. As we were sitting at the supper table we started to plan for tomorrow morning and came to the conclusion that if we were going to hit the road early in the morning to beat traffic to get out of town, we needed to get the wheelchairs out of the cage and organized. Mention wheelchairs and it means I get to work :) The light in the cage isnt working, just for an added challenge. All the equipment is piled into a small room, this is the same pile of equipment that we organized 6 mos ago. It is no longer in any shape or form organized. I climbed in and decided to get down and dirty to get the job done before I crashed. Luckily it didnt take us too long once we decided to be ruthless and just tear things out. I have a chair set aside for the teenager in Bellevue and I picked one out for Enrico by eyeing it and not having any measurements. I'm hoping these work out. We picked out a bunch of random parts and supplies in case we need to make repairs at the orpahange.
I apologize for this lack luster update, but the best I can manage is the bare facts of the day- no delightful insights or witty commentary from this worn out chick. I think I will actually make my way down to my bunk and crawl under my bug net.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Whoops
It seems I have fallen off the blogosphere! I did not do very well with keeping the entries up to date, but to be fair, I neglected to finish my personal travel journal on each trip to Haiti since! I often do well on the first couple of days, but then once things start to get really busy and you don't have time to get all of your thoughts on paper when it happens, you are continually playing catch up. I have quick jot notes about what happened for each of the days, scribbled in haste in hopes that eventually I would come back and give them more flavour. This never happened. At least I have high hopes for myself, right? So here I am, back. Ready to give it the ol' college try, as the kids used to say. I'm sure they don't say that now.
I haven't even checked to see where I left off, I just opened to the edit page and started a new entry. My intentions of coming here were to simply try and update myself on all the other blogs I follow- but then I clicked a button and ended up in the section where you can write...and well. I started writing. I think the last time I was actually updating was November of 2009. But don't quote me on that. I'll have to sneak back and check! Done. Yes, I was right. It was November 2009. A lot has happened since then, to say the least. The earthquake occurred 2 months after we left. What a shocking, frightening, gut wrenching time that was. It is almost 2 years later and I still cant believe how horrible it was to sit at home and watch that happening to a place you love from such a helplessly far away vantage point. I wanted to be there. I wanted to do something. Let me rephrase. I had to be there. I had to do something. I knew that as an occupational therapist my skill set was more appropriately suited to the clean up phase, not the immediate acute phase. As an OT we like to assess the situation, let things stabilize and then come in and clean up the mess. First lets get that sewed up, then I will come in and help you get back to your life. So I joined the team going in March 2010. We worked solely in Jacmel, setting up the first ever rehabilitation facility. And by facility, I mean we worked out of a large white UN tent that was kindly donated to our efforts. There is something to be said about the level of heat generated in a large white tent under the Haitian sun. That was an experience to be sure.
Then I came back home to Canada and I got married :)
My next trip to Haiti was May 2011, where I split my time between Jacmel at a school for children with special needs that runs an out patient rehab program for preschoolers, and at an orphanage on a small remote island off the south coast. We joined up with the school team to run a couple of outreach clinics in the Jacmel regions, traveling into the mountains to reach children that didn't have the means to come to the outpatient program in the city. We had busy, non-stop days, but I loved it. Perhaps I will go back to my notes and do a better update about that last trip, but don't get your hopes up. We all know my track record :)
I will be going back to Haiti next week. Back to the same places as in May and I am beyond excited to be able to do follow up this closely. I can't wait to see the same kids and continue with what we started in May, and to see how they are making out with the programs we implemented six months ago. We will be spending the first week on the remote island, we have spotty internet when on the island, but I'll see what I can do to give quick updates on what a typical day as an Occupational Therapist in Haiti is like.
I haven't even checked to see where I left off, I just opened to the edit page and started a new entry. My intentions of coming here were to simply try and update myself on all the other blogs I follow- but then I clicked a button and ended up in the section where you can write...and well. I started writing. I think the last time I was actually updating was November of 2009. But don't quote me on that. I'll have to sneak back and check! Done. Yes, I was right. It was November 2009. A lot has happened since then, to say the least. The earthquake occurred 2 months after we left. What a shocking, frightening, gut wrenching time that was. It is almost 2 years later and I still cant believe how horrible it was to sit at home and watch that happening to a place you love from such a helplessly far away vantage point. I wanted to be there. I wanted to do something. Let me rephrase. I had to be there. I had to do something. I knew that as an occupational therapist my skill set was more appropriately suited to the clean up phase, not the immediate acute phase. As an OT we like to assess the situation, let things stabilize and then come in and clean up the mess. First lets get that sewed up, then I will come in and help you get back to your life. So I joined the team going in March 2010. We worked solely in Jacmel, setting up the first ever rehabilitation facility. And by facility, I mean we worked out of a large white UN tent that was kindly donated to our efforts. There is something to be said about the level of heat generated in a large white tent under the Haitian sun. That was an experience to be sure.
Then I came back home to Canada and I got married :)
My next trip to Haiti was May 2011, where I split my time between Jacmel at a school for children with special needs that runs an out patient rehab program for preschoolers, and at an orphanage on a small remote island off the south coast. We joined up with the school team to run a couple of outreach clinics in the Jacmel regions, traveling into the mountains to reach children that didn't have the means to come to the outpatient program in the city. We had busy, non-stop days, but I loved it. Perhaps I will go back to my notes and do a better update about that last trip, but don't get your hopes up. We all know my track record :)
I will be going back to Haiti next week. Back to the same places as in May and I am beyond excited to be able to do follow up this closely. I can't wait to see the same kids and continue with what we started in May, and to see how they are making out with the programs we implemented six months ago. We will be spending the first week on the remote island, we have spotty internet when on the island, but I'll see what I can do to give quick updates on what a typical day as an Occupational Therapist in Haiti is like.
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