Day 8- Donna’s birthday and Travel to Hinche
I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog about the goat and the pregnant lady. After seeing the goat, we asked Randall about it. He said it was the security guard’s goat. Oh okay, so not for us we thought. But, later in the day when we were having nothing to do, I went down to the kitchen hut to offer help with dinner. Most people know that I am not that type of person to just sit down and relax. I always have to be doing stuff. I thought it would fun to go help them cook again. When I went down there, Michelle has a placenta basin with a goat head and what looked like ribs at a quick glance. Oh no!! I am not eating goat head for any meal. That was one of the things I told Randall on our way up to the birth center for the first time. He asked what kind of meat I liked. I said anything but organ meat. He agreed with me, he didn’t like it either. So here, I see the midwives preparing baby goat head. Oh gosh, thanks but no thanks. Michelle hands over the basin to Nelta who was in the hut. I don’t think she wanted me to see it. Nelta and Sheila hand me some garlic and a pestle and mortar. I smash the garlic up until I think it is good enough. But it wasn’t and Nelta tells me to do it some more. After a minute or so, Randall comes to tell us there is a pregnant woman here. I had just told the midwives I was sad that we didn’t have another birth. I joked and said ‘oh you’ll have 5 the day we leave. Just our luck’. Nelta and I stop what we are doing and go see the lady. Randall says she is here for diarrhea. I pull her prenatal record, 38 weeks. We do the usual assessment. Fetal heart tones, vitals signs etc. Nelta does this weird finger rub thing to the ladies belly prior to placing the doppler on. I’m thinking, is she trying to wake baby up first? Nelta asks me to go get the patient water. I go get a cup and fill it with our water upstairs. I bring it down and the patient chugs it in 5 seconds flat! Off I go and get more. It’s not easy to pour water. Its the 5 gallon culligan water bottles. It’s inside a holder made of rebar. It has a handle you grab and pour down. The bottle cant slide out. We replace the bottle with its original lid. I fill her cup again with water and bring it down she again drinks it quickly. I ask Nelta if I should get more? She said no. She asks me what kind of prescription she should give the patient for the diarrhea. I said azithromycin, flagyl or cipro. She likes the flagyl idea and I locate it for her. She gives it to the patient and she leaves. I am wondering if she is having loose stools because she is starting labor soon. She isn’t contracting but I am hopeful. I really want to have a birth! Unfortunately, she leaves and doesn’t come back in labor. I go back to offer help with dinner but they don’t need it. Back to the patio I go to relax before dinner. After dinner when we brought down the dishes, Michelle had the basin again and had what looked like lime that she was squeezing over the meat. I couldn’t make out what kind of meat it was. Someone said they thought it was goat organs. YUCK. We will not be eating that for lunch tomorrow. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and they often start to prepare it the day before.
Good morning! The bells have rung again. I sit there, half asleep, counting them. They are so loud. I fall back to sleep but not for long. They ring again. I think, well in Hinche I won’t have to wake up those as this is my last morning in Cabestor. We slowly get up, shower and get ready for the day. We all start to pack. Little by little we gather our stuff and place in carefully back into our bags. We brought alot of stuff and it all needs to fit back in. I have used up some of the things or eaten them so I do have a little more room and offer for others to use my bag if they need to. No one needs it though and are able to fit everything in their bags. We can tell breakfast is ready and Sheila comes and gets us. We walk in the room with the food. This room is actually Nelta and Michelle’s room. But Mario has been sharing the room with them so Shani and Tiffany don’t have to share with Mario. The room has 2 bunk beds and a single bed that he sleeps on. There is a table in the middle and that is where we eat. Normally volunteers eat at the Father’s house at his table. But, not since he changed his mind about the arrangements. Breakfast for the third time this week is a traditional Haitian breakfast. Spaghetti noodles, hard boiled eggs, fried hot dogs and veggies. We all pick through and just take the noodles. We don’t trust anything else. Well, I guess I had a slice of the egg. Noodles, coffee and bread with peanut butter. Sheila brings us fresh squeezed juice. So yummy too. But again, scared to consume it. After we eat, we take everything down in the basket they use as a bug screen over the food. Sheila and I wash the dishes.
The rest of the morning we all just sat around quietly. Reading, blogging or resting. We are ready to go but have a few hours til it’s time. We have to plan leaving at the right time so we arrive on time, not early or late, to the meeting place where we will transfer into different cars to Hinche. I am sitting on the patio and I hear the boys down there. I stand up and say hi to them. The ask me to come down, but I don’t feel like it. The take their hands and make motions towards their mouths like they are eating. They are asking me for food. I would love to give it to them but we’ve been told not to do that. I sit back down and blog some more. Around 10:45 Sheila tells us that it is lunch time. We are like ‘already’? But we realize that since we are leaving at 1pm, lunch needs to be sooner. We all cross our fingers that its not the goat head. We walk in the room and see boiled carrots and beets, rice with seasoning and peas and...goat meat. The goat was partially for us, Randall was wrong.. I fill my plate with rice and veggies and I think I may try a piece of meat. I grab a piece and put it on my plate. The more I look and think about it, I don’t want it. The skin is still on and I can see a few pieces of fur on it. Yuck. Also, they killed that goat 24hrs ago and there hasn’t been any way to keep the meat chilled. I was wondering, maybe Michelle squeezed the lime juice on it to help with preserving it. Or maybe it had been cooking low and slow overnight? Either way, I am not eating it and neither does anyone else. I do feel bad though. I look outside and there are so many people around that probably won’t eat today and I have plenty of food in front of me but I don’t want to eat it. We gather the dishes up. Donna has been feeding one of the many, many stray dogs. Or at least we thought it was a stray. She takes some of our fried hot dogs, noodles and some goat meat and finds the dog. We find out that this frail, skinny dog who is near death from starvation, belongs to Father Blot. I couldn’t believe it. The way the ‘pet’ animals are treated are horrible. We take the dishes down and finalize getting ready to leave. We bring our suitcases down and put them in one of the cars. They all fit but we still need to take 2 cars. It isn’t ideal for MFH because if someone needs transported to the hospital from the birth center, no one is there to do it. The red car’s battery has been dead. They have been charging it, I am not sure how, maybe solar? They place the battery back in and start it up. They let it run for a few minutes. Loud music was playing form the stereo. We haven’t heard music all week and it’s nice to hear it. It is 12:45, we are eager to go. I don’t want to leave Cabestor but I am excited to get to Hinche too. Randall says we need to wait now til 1:15 to leave. So ,we wait a while longer and then we get some group photos with everyone in front of the birth center. We climb in the car and make our way to the meeting place. Michelle rides with us as it is her weekend off. I call Niles on the way. I want to talk to him and the kids. I miss them so very much!! It is nice to hear their voices and for them to tell me they miss me. Dylan asks me how big the ship is that I am on. LOL, not sure how he got the idea that I was on a ship. I tell him I am not on a ship that I am in a car driving in Haiti. Maybe I should show them on a map where I was when I get home. It is election time right now. Election day has been postponed from the hurricane. There are alot of people out today campaigning. We are almost to the meeting place when Mario gets a call saying we will get there sooner than the rest. It is Donna’s birthday today and Mario wants to buy her a drink. So we go to a restaurant and bar. We walk in and it’s air conditioned and pretty nice. Music is playing and fans are blowing. Mario orders Donna a rum and coke. A small bottle of rum and a bottle of coke are served! She shares that with Tiffany and Emily. Randall orders one for him and Michelle. I order a Prestige beer and we all cheers to Donna. After a while, I tell Randall to translate to Michelle for me. I tell her that I am so grateful for her and what she is doing for these woman in Haiti. She has dedicated her life to helping these ladies. She is gone away from her husband for a week at a time. I am just inspired by her and I want her to know about it. it is about 2:05 and I ask Mario how much longer we are waiting. He gets this look on his face and says, the plane hasn’t even landed yet. What?!? It took us 2-3 hours to get here from the airport. Does that mean we will be waiting at least that long? At 2:45, Mario tells me that it has landed. So, the volunteers need to get off the plane, get their belongings, go through customs and immigration. Then they have to find the driver and load up the car. We are looking at least 3 hours. Mario says ‘noooo, if you drive like me and take the roads I know, it’s 45 mins.’ No way Mario, I don’t believe you. That would mean they would arrive at 3:30. I am think more like 5:45. So, since we are going to be there for awhile longer, I ask Randall what is on the menu I can buy for us all to snack on. He says fried potatoes. That sounds good so I ask him to order 2. The lady says it will take 20 mins. You see, she has to peel and slice the potatoes. It is not like home where they pour it out of a bag into the fryer. I also try to order a rum and coke but they have ran out of the small bottles. The only one they have left is a big bottle and Mario says is expensive. You can’t just buy a drink, you have to buy the bottle. One of the girls offered to share hers with me so I had a small drink. The fried potatoes come and are gone quickly. They are good. A while later I ask Mario how much longer til they get here. He says an hour. Ha, I knew it. I want another drink so I go ahead and order the bottle. We all say we can share the cost. I don’t want Randall and Michelle to pay though and Mario isn’t drinking. We also order some real food. 2 Chicken sandwiches for 4 of us and a plate of chicken and rice for Donna, Randall, Michelle and Mario. Mario just wants the rice that comes with it. Randall and Michelle share the dish. Soon, Mario says they are almost here. The bill...$40. For the bottle of ‘expensive’ rum, 2 fried potatoes, 2 sandwiches and 2 plates of chicken and rice. That’s a great deal! The girls and I share the cost, $8 each and no tipping in Haiti. Well worth it! It is time to go and we are urged to hurry from Mario, He says 2 mins! We all start to grab our things and the rice is still not eaten from Donna’s order. Randall says its expensive rice and it needs to be eaten and not wasted. We all start shoveling in this rice haha. Me first with a couple bites, then Emily, Tiffany and finally Randall. As we are eating it Mario is saying, 1 min 30 secs, 1 min, 30 secs haha. We grab our stuff and head out. I tease Mario and say we will probably wait for them when we get to the meeting place. We arrive and he says 1 min, I jokingly said noooo, but sure enough they came in 1 min. But it was after 5pm! Definitely not the 45 mins like he said it would take. Nonetheless, I had a great time at the restaurant and it was nice to be with the birth center staff.
The 3 volunteers arriving into Haiti get out of the car and we pull out their luggage. We take our luggage out of the 2 cars we came in and put it in the other car that just arrived. We are switching everything out. These new volunteers will go to Cabestor and we will go to Hinche. We say our goodbyes to Mario and Randall. I get teary eyed again. I hate goodbyes and these gentlemen were part of a life changing experience for me. We load up in the car and we leave. Michelle is with us and we have a new man and a new driver with us, can’t recall their names right now. We drive a ways and I realize I left my favorite water bottle in Mario’s car. I am sad about that and now I am concerned with how I can transport safe drinking water from the house. Totally bummed, I loved that bottle. After about 1.5 to 2 hrs drive we arrive to Hinche. We drop Michelle off and say goodbye to her. I really liked her even though we couldn’t communicate. Not far from there we pass by Ste. Therese, the government hospital we will be working at. The MFH house isn’t far from there. We arrive at the house, the heavy steel gate is closed...beep beep and the guard on the outside of the gate opens the door. This house is amazing. Much bigger than imagined. We walk in and see Joanne, the volunteer coordinator. The men get our luggage and bring it in. Joanne gives us a brief tour of the house. She says lunch and dinner are waiting for us if we are hungry. They didn’t know what time we would arrive so the left both of them for us. She tell us we will have a meeting Sunday to talk about our schedules and the plan for the week, what our role is. We settle in and pick our rooms. On the beds are our orientation packets and name tags. There is also a towel, washcloth and hand cloth. A couple of us take a few bites of the fried plantains that were on the dining table. We don’t really know how long the other stuff has been sitting out so we don’t want to try eating it. The food at the house is probably very safe. We have heard from other volunteers that it is wonderful. We all sit down and don’t talk much to each other. You see, we finally have internet access, electricity and we all have alot of catching up to do. I have 96 facebook notifications to go through and a couple hundred emails. Before long, the lights are out and we are all settled into our netted beds. Malarone has been taken by all. We have 2 large fans in the room and it is very hot and humid. I place my small fan on and next to me and give Tiffany my other on. I can’t sleep. I am pretty sure the girls are though. I mess around on my phone for awhile and post pictures on facebook. It takes a very long time to do it because the wifi isn’t the best. After a while, I hear the Haiti phone we bought ringing. I get up and try to answer it before it wakes everyone up. I answer it and it’s Niles!! What a nice surprise. He says he misses me and wanted to hear my voice. I tell him I will call him right back so we don’t have high international call bill. I walk out of the room because I don’t want to wake anyone up and have a nice talk with my honey. We say goodnight and I go back to the room and climb into my bed. It is on the lower bunk. I play on my phone a while longer and soon it is 1230am. I am not tired but know I need to go to sleep. So I put my phone down and eventually go to sleep.
