sweet, young girls who have helped us a lot. I think things still get lost in translation sometimes, but I think that is a good incentive to learn Creole if I ever returned to Haiti. It would be a little less about a game of telephone and a little more direct. On the upside, we have a nurse on our team who fluently speaks Creole and French, so she is able to communicate well with them.
I have struggled all week with the work here with the NGOs (non governmental organizations). There are so many...USAID, Samaritan's Purse, Feed the Children, Save the Children, The Red Cross....and it keeps going. Haiti is a desperately poor country for many reasons and no doubt has vast needs. However, I wonder how much harm they are doing. The Haitian people constantly ask for things and are never satisfied. There is a mentality that I am sure has come from years of assistance that it doesn't hurt to ask. Sense girl asked for my glasses and my hat yesterday...while I s wearing both. I told her I couldn't see if I didn't have my glasses, since my back up contacts are still in Port Au Prince. We are giving away our clothes in a clothing raffle today during Women's Group. We hope that this will eliminate jealousy and help make things fair. It has worked in other weeks.
We are leaving the hotel tomorrow at 6am. Even though our flight does not leave until 2:30pm, we want to allow plenty of time. One teams have had several problems, including one who had three flat tires, and another who spent 13 hours in the car because the president was parading through Port Au Prince and they did not have a way to get through the traffic. Please pray for safe, smooth travels, especially since the 50km trip between Jacmel and Port Au Prince may be hindered by the potential landslides from all the rain.
We visited the hospital the other day. It is a courtyard with dilapidated buildings from the earthquake, a tent that served as the waiting area for the teeny ER, a Cholera area, and a maternity ward with open doors and windows that the chickens can walk through. Our leader said it has greatly improved since he was there immediately after the earthquake. The families still have to serve these privileged people their own meals and everything has to be paid for out of pocket. If the pharmacy does not have the medicine they need, then it will have to be ordered and could be very expensive. I think that happens very often. Our small donation of meds to the hospital may have been a small help to this problem, but only a few people can even see a doctor, because it is so expensive.
We are going to a waterfall today after we wrap up a short day at camp. I don't know what all we will have to do to wrap up, but there still will be a significant amount of medicine to distribute and arts ands crafts things to either give away or store. It will be sad to leave all of our Haitian friends, but I look forward to having days where I am not sweating as if I was running and the heat is not so hot that my socks stick to my toenail polish.
No comments:
Post a Comment