Letter from Haiti #1

A quick update from Jeff Smith writing from the Haiti Health Ministries compound.

3 Sept 2017

I am writing this in the early morning from the small clinic compound here in Gressier (pronounced Gres-say) in Haiti. I have been hearing the rooster crowing for sometime and a screeching thing, far away, that seems to say, “what-what-what” a lot. Whatever it is it has been reading my thoughts I guess. Right now the sun is just warming things up and the green hills and rainforest around me looks pretty peaceful and pastoral. The area around the clinic compound is quite open and spacious with surrounding fields tilled to produce some kind of crops; not sure what. There are a few cattle tied up in them. The low lying hills surrounding us have a some of these walled, concrete buildings on them, that remind me of those villas in Italy that surround their vineyards.

The power is off right now, so I am relying on the emerging sunlight and the battery power in my iPad to type this. It is just me and this rather uncommunicative gecko lizard in this cinder-block house, and there is no internet so I cannot get the latest from Fox News, This means the world may just have to lumber along without my input for awhile.

The house is a horseshoe shaped affair, sort of in the old Roman style with three stand alone rooms, a bedroom, kitchen and living room surrounding a small courtyard that leads to the eastern facing lockable gate that opens to the compound proper. I am in the kitchen where the Cabella’s coffee pot is percolating on the gas stove working on my second cup of coffee.

Next door to me is the house to Jim and Sandy, the doc and the nurse who run the place and I count, let’s call it five, other houses, plus a visitor’s dorm along the border of the fenced in compound. To the North of me is the clinic, the largest building here and there is a grassy area in the middle with some brick paths suitable for walking and gravel walkways for chatting from door to door.

I landed in Port au Prince yesterday, climbing off the plane with a number of Creole speaking, affluent looking, friendly African folks. Haiti is populated mostly by former African slaves who threw off their French masters over a century ago. It is tempting to look at the trim, lithe looking black men anxious to carry my suitcases to my driver’s van and conclude that these folks workout to some video, regularly. Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, so the lack of obesity is much more due to that, I am sure.

My driver was named “Junior” and he drove me through the broad streets of the capital city where I could get my first glimpse of the country. I have seen the poverty of rural Bangladesh, but this was down a notch or two from that low level on whatever scale there is to measure such things. The amount of garbage that people walked through and lived in was stunning, and I am hard to impress in that regard. Yeah the traffic was crazy, the people generally skinny, but the garbage that covered the streets and filled the one river I saw was pretty high up there. Yes, I also know much was destroyed during the earthquake in 2010, but still, this is a lot.

At some point, Junior told me we had passed into the city of Gressier, although I didn’t see much difference. Then we did a quick left turn to follow a bunch of narrow, rocky, uneven, winding streets in between various concrete houses and back yards. Street signs are a new thing and a sign of progress. Perhaps having flat, straight streets will come later.

The compound is surrounded by cyclone fencing and there is a full time security staff, but within the compound there was a nice sense of order and stability. Jim and Sandra have been in Haiti for 18 years, but have pioneered the clinic for 6. Jim retired from the US Navy after doing his 20 and has been doing this work since. Sandra is the administrator, managing the books and making the schedules. Most of the staff pictured on their web site have moved on to other things and if you go to their site is has some malware that tells you your computer is crashing and please send money to someplace. They can’t get it off to update the thing, but that is low on their list of things to worry about. I may be able to write more about them later on, but for now they have been very friendly and helpful. Sandra assures me that learning Creole is “easy.” I remain a hardened skeptic, but she does pray to God who has not sent judgement upon her for saying that, so we will see.

As I now write this, late in the evening, I feel like the hot, humid climate has wrapped itself around my like a large, hot, wet blanket. I am sort of dragging, probably due to the time change and all the other things. I should get used to it soon. Work starts tomorrow at 8AM.

Friday, September 8, 2017

I am supposed to be at work, but called in sick. Actually I walked next door to tell Jim that I was feeling better but thought that going to work today would be premature. He said that with the storm it should be light there anyway. The ol’ bod is used to Colorado germs and there is this inevitable bout of illness when your body must adapt to the micro-vermin in the area. Knocked me for a loop it did, starting yesterday afternoon. I am on antibiotics for 3 days and this AM, coffee in hand, eating crackers, the fog is lifting.

Haitians have this remarkable, dark skin color that reminds me of highly polished ebony. They are also lousy historians when you have to ask them about their illness or why they have come to the clinic. Sociologists describe this as being event oriented, rather than time oriented. When you don’t have much of a future, you don’t think in terms of time so much. Some of the questions I need answered are things like “How long have you had this?” “When did this start?” “Have you ever had this before?” “Is it getting worse or better?” These things really catch poor folks by surprise. It hurts now. Fix it. Asking my questions via an interpreter is another wall to climb over, so I am gathering up some creole phrases to make the process faster.

I know this will sound kinda gross, but since it IS hot here and the clinic does not have air-conditioning, we all walk around with our shirts sticking to us after awhile. Even the light weight scrubs I brought from Bangladesh don’t help much. Sandra told me that after many years, they recently got a small air conditioner for their house. I still feel like they will go heaven someday, despite this. (Ha-ha) She also told me of the glories of cold showers during the day as a way to deal with the heat. I think this was her way of saying they don’t have hot water on the compound.

Before the trip I was reading up on the tropical diseases I might encounter and found the various hemorrhagic fevers and crippling diseases interesting. I tried to share my interest with Betsy who only heard that I was going to a biological hell-hole. Her main stipulation for my going was not to come back with some dreaded disease. Since arriving, most of what I see are the regular, bread-and-butter kinds of things; diabetes, hypertension, sore backs. I did see a woman on my first day with filariasis, also known as elephantiasis. Jim and Sandra tell me that in their many years out on the field, those tropical diseases are pretty rare. I am sleeping under a mosquito net though. And taking my malaria meds.

Jeff Smith