I know this will be surprising… but a portion of Day 5 involved….. fixing computers!
More computer repairs, in this case at the guest house due to a better internet connection…… and being ground floor and open door, we even had a chicken stop by to have a computer checked out!
The repair process was actually really easy to manage, thanks to the decades spent working on my own computers and then the two years I spent working IT at Yale Law School – where I often had to juggle 5+ laptops at any given moment. It might seem silly, but those experiences actually made me EXTREMELY efficient at the task at hand, and resourceful enough to know which files to have downloaded to bring with me assuming no/bad Internet (like anti-virus programs and Adobe Flash and the like). But I took a break early in the day as we headed off to Beaudouin:
Going to feed the poorest of the poor in Beaudouin
I can’t actually link you to a website explaining the history of Beaudouin… because it is a new “city,” or rather, a shanty and tent town which sprang up for displaced Haitians in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2010. The government and/or its international relief partners have continued to fail to rebuild or offer help in rebuilding the homes for these people; and so by the time our team arrived in Beaudouin, more permanent structures for homes and community buildings alike have sprung up. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that these concrete buildings have taken root – I do not think many of these local Haitians are going to be leaving any time soon. Some of the buildings, like the Lutheran church, are actually in excellent shape:
The Lutheran Church of Beaudouin, which is also used for the feeding program and also English as a Second Language classes
And so, our team piled into the van with a 30+ gallon container of soup and broth and some accompanying food items, as we went to help pass out meals at one of the twice-weekly feeding program events. The church puts on a vacation Bible school-esque performance for the kids while the food is prepared (and equally importantly, while the youngest/smallest/weakest and developmentally disabled kids are fed first – see below). Then, with VERY careful precision, food is doled out to the assembled hungry kids into the various buckets, pails, and bowls, to ensure that there is not a riot by the hungry (to keep the volunteers safe) but also so that the youngest and smallest, fed first, have the chance to eat their meal and not be beaten by larger children or teenagers.
I am going to again quote myself from my Facebook posted penned that same day, as it captures a certain emotional intensity that I do not want to dilute by memory:
Back from feeding the poorest of the poor; where the youngest and smallest (and especially the handful of children with mental illnesses or developmental disability) are beaten up and have their food stolen if no protection is in place. A church full of kids and a few moms, all clutching pails or bowls of the least sanitary sort, with that certain look of desperation that resides in the eyes with severe, prolonged hunger.
Particularly heartwrenching for me was a younger boy in a white Polo shirt, bearing a metal bowl and understanding it was time for food… but licking the side of the bowl as he didn’t understand what he needed to do to get food. He was fed far in advance of others, to give him a chance to eat his food and not be beaten and have it stolen, but we had to fight to prevent a riot in the food line and couldn’t properly assist him. As we drove away, dozens and dozens fed, he had most of his meal on his face and neck, as he was struggling to control his movements… and Haiti has a strong culture of abandoning those with disabilities, there was no help to be had from his peers. All I could do was wave and smile, and insist in French “tu dois manger, maintenant” (you must eat now), to no effect.
Very much, a worthy readjustment of “I am hungry” and what that can mean for those without anything at all… and those without means or capabilities to protect themselves.
The sad fact of the matter is: Haitian culture does not have a place for the developmentally disabled. In the capital of Port-au-Prince, the stark reality is that infants found to have development disabilities are left to die on piles of trash, sometimes in the streets. I am not sure if that practice is copied throughout Haiti; but I do know that those parents of a disabled child will have no chance to even consider providing special care as needed. They are too worried about feeding themselves and the family to even consider anything else. And the need to feed one’s self, as I call out above, can and does lead to a very real “survival of the fittest” scenario amongst human beings, as the young, the weak, and the disabled are preyed upon and beaten to have their food stolen.
For anyone who feels a call to donate to help the continued feeding program of these kids in Beaudouin, please consider donating to Ministry in Mission, as it costs ~$1200 per month to feed these kids twice weekly. I know that for me personally, I suddenly looked a lot more discerningly at an $8 Chipotle burrito after being in a place where $2 per day was a pretty damned good wage; please consider skipping a meal out per week and donating that saved money to feed kids for whom food is a VERY uncertain prospect.
English as a Second Language (ESL) courses in Beaudouin
We traveled back to the guest house to clean up ourselves and mentally prepare ourselves for the next project… going right back to that Lutheran church in Beaudouin, to lead some of my brother’s ongoing courses in English for Beaudouin kids and adults alike. English is a vitally important skill for Haitians, and the fact that my brother has set up a program to teach it for free AND in such a way as to stay running long after our volunteer teams had departed. By working to ensure that the most proficient local Haitians were able to greatly grow in their English while we were there, and by leaving both the lesson plans and the associated materials (flashcard sets, for instance)… our hope is that hundreds will continue to learn English for weeks and months to come!!
Andrea doing a bandage wrap on Mark’s big toe (medical matters always seem to attract Haitian folks to see what is going on, based on my experience with my infected blister a few days prior)Steven giving an explanatory spiel to the assembled ESL students, prior to splitting into groups by age and ability
The church sanctuary was split into the varying levels of ability, and the church was awash in the gaggle of a word said normally by an American tutor; that tutor pronouncing the syllables and sounds slowly and VERY carefully; and then a slew of Haitian folks trying their hand at correctly speaking the same word back. The flashcards were very helpful as well, as they had images on them and thus the language barrier didn’t prevent the tutors from giving clues as to the word – in this and many other ways, it was a very streamlined process for both tutor and student.
A local of Beaudouin, his amputated arm is almost certainly the result of an infection from some other medical procedureSome Haitians have enough of a command of English to help teach – which is really the whole point of this ESL program. Help teach people… but help prepare them to teach their peers for a long time after the volunteers departSome of the kids in Beaudouin with Peterson (the security guard at the Guest House) and I
Checking out the Beaudouin orphange
While the remainder of the team continued to teach and tutor English, I walked over to the nearby Lutheran church’s orphanage for the orphans of the Beaudouin area. That is a bit of a misnomer, I suppose, as I was told that Beaudouin is a developing permanent residential area derived from a tent city made in the aftermath of the earthquake… so the orphans are likely from a bunch of different cities and towns across Haiti.
The view of the Beaudouin orphanage from the main road entrance
One of the other core tasks my brother set out with for the teams he led over 4 weeks: 1) install a rock foundation; 2) build a cement block wall; and 3) in the finally week, top that wall with the permanent installation of razor wire, all around the orphanage. In general this is a wise idea in Haiti, for the safety and security of person and property alike. The orphanage was in many ways the opposite of the typical Haitian structure – a wall is usually built FIRST. This new orphanage was a replacement building for a very old and unsafe prior orphanage building, and the decision was made to build the structure first, to get the kids into a structurally-sound building and THEN worry about the security provided by a wall.
My brother and his 4 teams had built the foundation and wall prior to our arrival; the final week of volunteers was to install the razorwire atop the walls, as you can see here
This was the first time I got to visit with the orphans myself, and they were all VERY excited at an American who could speak French. They also insisted on asking (as almost all the orphans did of me the next morning) relatively similar questions: if my mom and my dad are alive, what their names and ages are; if I have siblings and their ages; and how many kids I have (!).
The orphans in Beaudouin were SUPER excited that I could speak French with them, and were all the more insistent on a photo of themselves by their beloved blue homeThe kitchen and main dining area within the orphanageThe Gals’ Room in the orphanage; the director of the orphanage is on the right in purple, she was proud to show off the operation (and also excited that I spoke French!)
It was great to visit the orphanage and meet several of the orphans; it was really uplifting to see the presence of a Haitian social safety net being supported by a combination of local people and funding with external funding and volunteers from abroad. Given the lackluster performance of the Haitian national government when it comes to the provision of ANY service regardless of how much funding comes in from abroad, it is my contention that this hybrid model of local initiative and staffing with external expertise, funding, and volunteering will be the only successful path forward in many aspects of the slow improvement of the Haitian quality of life.
The orphanage is a handsome shade of blue, and the crisp lines of the wall really makes it look like a great compound from afar. The two entrances to the new walls will eventually get lockable rolling metal gates, to ensure the safety of the orphans
In short: a very emotionally-charged day, and a tiring day, but another edifying day trying to help those around us better help themselves.
Preface from the night before: Unfortunately, I apparently picked up an abrasion on my left foot climbing onto or off of the rocks in Bassins Bleu… and then put that abrasion into a wet sock, into a wet shoe… and proceeded to hike back to the dump truck. As a result, I got myself a genuine infected blister on the side of my left foot, which became increasingly more inflamed and painful to walk on.
Not everyone does well with medical anomalies in photographic form, so here is an externally hosted photo of the “Surgery Room” (the porch) whereat my brother Steven and Andrea (a registered nurse from the IL group) used a alcohol-sterilized pocket knife to excise the infected pus and clean the wound. You can see the inflamed red circle with the white pus in the middle on the side of my foot in the photo, just prior to its cleansing. It wasn’t pleasant, that I can guarantee. But it needed to be done the night of Day 3, to let it air out and be able to start to heal… on Day 4, as I made sure to not walk a lot or put weight on it. As such: expect a much shorter and less photo-laden post for today!
The local (Internet) radio station
So I spent most of my day working on laptops brought to the guest house for me, after sneaking over to take a closer look at the Radio Concordia International setup, the third of three portions to the church compound (alongside the church and computer school). This station has been in the works for a while now, and is still not up and running. It costs something like $800 per month to run this station (though it was not made clear to me how that cost breaks down into fees versus power consumption or the like), and it was my understanding that the radio is just starting to run. That said, at the same time as the main radio antenna, I believe that the back room of the computer school is the mixing booth for the associated Internet radio station. I headed back there to ask for a couple of power cables for the laptops I was taking to work on; you can imagine my delight at seeing that guys and girls both were contributing to the radio show at the time!! It is my understanding that this radio station is predominantly for spreading the Christian gospels, in the Lutheran/Haitian mode, which is a noble cause by itself for the growing church there. It is my contention that once better established, the radio station could take on the additional responsibility of sending out public health missives to the listeners, many of whom have no source whatsoever for good health practices. Diabetes and high blood pressure are the two of the biggest health concerns in Haiti, and those problems are firmly in the realm of “could be prevented by habit and diet change” whereas a disease like cholera requires medicine to cure, and cannot simply be removed from the local water supply. Perhaps one day, I’d like to think, the radio station could pair the good news of the Gospel with the good advice of healthier living for the body.
Some of the helpers and students at the computer school, running a segment on the Internet radio station in the room at the back of the computer classroom
Teaching Haitians about computer repair and administration
So, armed with laptops and their associated power cords, I limped my way back over to the guest house, whereat I found the remainder of the team making a PILE of PB&J to take to a feeding program:
The team preparing some PB&J sandwiches as part of a local feeding program
I didn’t want to push them out of the way, but I also wanted to both get started with the repairs for the day, and also to get the chance to teach my local Haitian friend Williamson about computer administration as much as I could in French. With Williamson and other Haitians, I did my best to not only do the work of fixing software, adjusting hardware, and generally trying to set their machines up for long term success – I wanted to try, in the limited way that I could given the language barrier (my technical French is, frankly, non-existent), to teach the how and why of the computers at hand. It is only part of the problem, that the computers stop working. In my eyes, entrusting the care of the computers to their owners requires the key to true ownership: understanding how to fix what you’ve got. I was genuinely touched by how much the trust I was investing in my impromptu students seemed to really make them glow with a certain pride. In my own small way with the computers, I was emulating the pattern that Steven took with ESL and other programs, in which outsiders came to teach and help but MOSTLY to help Haitians become able to teach and help themselves and their fellows. In doing this repair project, I feel that I managed to escape the thousands of pages of international development criticism and pitfalls I learned about in my first master’s degree – I created no local dependencies, and instead created the core of some local experts. It is my hope, however, to go back next year better armed with specific gear and some lesson plans to set up a genuine core of educated computer gurus – this is very exciting to me!!
My Haitian friend Williamson as I taught him about administering laptops in a way to prevent viruses and ensure system stability. Another dusting-off of my French language skills (and integrated use of Google Translate)
The following rant is based on being a computer science minor/almost-major and generally from having worked on computers for a very long time: Windows and Mac operating systems are generally incompatible with developing countries if you want to run them in a safe sort of way. Their software updates in general are wastefully gigantic – if you’re in a place like the guest house, you’ll have intermittent electricity and Internet connectivity that maxes out at 300 kb/sec… and isn’t always running even if the electrical grid is working. So, as you can imagine, a culture which is all about sharing data and software and doesn’t entirely understand the best practices for preventing computer viruses… is in the weird situation whereby viruses are less prevalent due to lower Internet connectivity… but are also more easily able to spread as infected files are shared. You can understand my frustration, then, being faced with 15 laptops in need of reformatting and generally being updated… and struggling to even download a single antivirus update on a single machine, much less the whole set of 15. This is one of the core reasons why I brought down one of my own laptops to donate and some CDs to install the Lubuntu flavor of Linux. Lubuntu is designed to run on very old computer hardware and thus it is a very lightweight operating system; as a Linux OS, it also doesn’t find itself susceptible to the viruses which have long plagued Windows and are beginning to plague Mac. Perhaps equally importantly: it is 100% free and legal to use by all interested parties, which is an important standard to begin to set as the Haitian people grind their way to a better economy and a better life.
That said… the Lubuntu option was appealing to a couple of local pastors whose machines I fixed (“faster and virus-free? Why don’t we all have this!??”); but not to the teacher of the computer school, who rightly insisted on having a Windows environment to teach Microsoft Office. I am just glad that I was able to teach the teacher about the importance of careful administration of all the laptops in the classroom. Just like the other sustainable programs my brother sought to set up over time to keep running long after our teams had departed… by setting the laptops up freshly and safely, and teaching the local teaching how to maintain the laptops software and hardware alike, it is my hope that my volunteered time will help dozens, and then hundreds, and perhaps one day thousands of Haitians in that area of Jacmel learn the computer skills which could get them a job and change their lives. One of my followup projects after getting home is getting a set of 15 laptop cooling pads donated and brought down to the computer school, as it is FAR too hot and humid for those laptops to last a long time without some extra active cooling. More on THIS as it develops!
So: a short blog post for what was a single-task sort of day (namely, healing… with any spare time spent working on those laptops in the heat). The day which followed… was one of the busiest and most emotionally-draining of the week. Keep an eye out for the next post.
Getting to know the John 3:15 Guest House and its immediate surround
After sleeping rather heavily and also doing a fair amount of sweating, even in the air conditioned room… I awoke and began to explore my base of operations for the week ahead – the guest house:
‘Guest house au soleil’ (prints available to interested parties)
The walled-in nature of the property renders it more of a compound, one which is surprisingly (and to my thinking, delightfully!) self-sufficient. The city power grid, as mentioned in the preceding post here, is terribly unreliable – and so the compound features the below diesel backup generator (and behind it is a well, while in front of it is a water tank)…
Rainwater is collected next to the diesel backup generator within the guest house walled compound. The parking lot held all manner of bikes, trucks, and vans as the week went on. The well is visible in the background; but we only used it for showering. All water we drank had to be bottled, to avoid severe gastrointestinal problems!!
… and while I never got up on the roof to get photos, the guest house also features solar panels and a large series of car batteries, so it will at the very least have lights and electric fans 24/7 (the bedrooms’ AC uses more power than the current solar array can provide). The exterior of the house is very neat and clean, but pales in comparison to the gorgeous interior of the building, with its fun use of bright colors and my personal favorite – wooden paneled ceiling tiles:
View from the front door of the living room and dining area within the guest house. A gorgeous building, with 3 square meals per day at only $55 per night.
Walking upstairs from the dining/living room area on the first floor you will find the two main bedrooms and associated bathrooms, all of which can get PRETTY warm on even a nice day (as I mentioned in the first post, concrete architecture doesn’t lend itself to weeping heat or humidity):
View of the second floor balcony (two sets each of bedrooms and bathrooms); the opening in the center left of the frame is to the roofed porchTemperature and humidity within the second floor bathrooms… was a bad match for me, but I survived
The kitchen features some new appliances but the core cooking implement used is very forward-thinking for a Haitian kitchen – a propane stove (off to the right in the below picture, not visible unfortunately) rather than a charcoal grill as is the national tendency. More efficient, cooks faster, burns cleaner, it is the hope of our teams and our local partners to help encourage the expansion of propane use for cooking over time!
The kitchen!
The bedrooms are eerily reminiscent of those I encountered in Zambia back in 2008 (featuring some mosquito netting, bunk beds, and the camaraderie born of close quarters and shared sweat), and were yet another bit of evidence in my life that “electric fans are one of the best things ever invented”:
The guys room for the week, complete with some long-expired treated mosquito nets for that Genuine Malarial Flavoring!
The view from our back porch was of one of Haiti’s gorgeous mountains and then a mixture of some sort of feeding program warehouse (mid distance in the frame); agricultural fields (foreground of frame); and humidity (all of frame):
The mountain and some sort of feeding program warehouse, visible from the second floor porch at the back of the guesthouse. What a view.The first of MANY skinny livestock we encountered while in Haiti
Stepping outside the large rolling gate of the compound and turning left towards the main road on which we drove into town, one gets a quick sense of the uniformity of concrete as building material; the roughness of many roads off the main road; and the creeping desertification of the island in the absence of sufficient tree cover:
Our side street was a VERY rough road (some hybrid of cobblestone and rough dirt). Ubiquitous walled compounds all the way down, so we were in a relatively well-off part of town.
Walls are always topped with the cheaper option (broken glass bottles and shards into dried cement) or the more expensive option (razor wire) for added protection… but sometimes, our walls can’t keep everyone out of the compound:
One of our scaly roommates, running away from our team across some of the razorwire atop the compound wall. Perhaps a cousin to Ike?
Pausing from the current week of work to consider potential future projects: a vocational and technical school
One of the first tasks of the day was to jump onto the back of a dirtbike driven by my brother to go down the road to an unfinished building site to get the following photos. There is the future possibility that we will try and create a vocational school teaching something between 9 and 12 different trades on this very site (the abandoned foundation of the replacement church building – the original church was destroyed in the earthquake, and this site was abandoned in favor of moving closer to the main road to attract more visitors). Haiti has something like an 80% unemployment rate (which is INSANE), and this is exacerbated greatly because the easiest and most important subsistence jobs (farming, and to a lesser degree, gardening) are looked down upon as being the lowest of the low (Haiti doesn’t have a caste system, but if they did, farmers would be something like the Untouchables of India). This is so sad to me, as the environment here is perfectly suited to grow many sorts of foods very easily – but our job is not to change the culture as outsiders, but instead to work with local people to help them decide how they’d like to proceed in bettering themselves and their neighbors.
The front view of the unfinished foundation and walls to the replacement church building; our trusty dirt bike steed
Therefore, given that this building is partially done, and that offering a variety of skillsets will enable the graduating students of this eventual school will go on to hopefully get jobs in their local economy but more importantly be able to help themselves and their neighbors over the length of their life… this is FAR more important than the “weekend warrior” mentality of many groups of people who go abroad to try and help others. Playing with orphans = very important in the short term for those kids. That pales in comparison to building structures and programs which continue to help locals far after the team of volunteers depart… so it is Steven and my hope that this vocational school might one day become an exemplar of this sort of project in Haiti.
A typical Steven for scale of the current building height (Haitians are to scale)
Diving into my main project for the week: computer repairs at the local computer skills classroom, called the “Cinfora Ecole Informatique”
Back at the guest house, the team departed for their first shift working on the razor wire to be installed atop the new wall built by previous teams, around the orphanage in Beaudouin (pictures and full story of that project will be in a later blog post). I, however, walked down the street to the Lutheran church compound, which includes a local computer school for teaching typing and Internet skills to all ages:
The radio station (trailer on right of frame) and associated computer school (situated on the second floor of the building to the left of frame). At present, this new radio station is only an internet radio station, until funding can be secured (it costs upwards of $800 per month to operate a radio station in Haiti)
Haiti, as my first post indicated, DOES have some extremely rich folks; what I didn’t mention is that there is also a swathe of people who are doing pretty OK, not starving but certainly not flourishing. It is my understanding that that “middle class” (which is really not a good term, as most of those folks do not have permanent work) is the people who mostly attend the classes offered in Microsoft Word and Excel, and Internet skills. And that might seem odd, to support that sort of project a few miles down the road from where people are starving… but only by offering programs and efforts to help all people in Haiti to improve themselves and therefore their quality of life can things grind their way to being better. I have a lot of building and fixing skillsets, but computer work is something that not many people can easily dive into doing… so this computer classroom, with its virus-ridden machines, was to be the core project ahead of me personally for the week.
The process was an interesting one – I used English and French, to explain to a NON-technical person, who then used French and mostly Creole to explain my suggestions, intended tasks, and questions to Alex, the teacher of the classes. The computer classroom is the second floor of the building in the photo above; as you can imagine, with no computers running it was *hot* in there. With laptops running and my running audience of 5-15 onlookers… it was **HOT**. Nevertheless, I dove into the project. To put it mildly, Haitian culture doesn’t understand (or possibly doesn’t care, I suspect the former) the notion of software licenses and the costs involved. It comes down to “well I have this program/file, my friend needs it, so I will share it.” This means two important things: 1) people use the bricolage sort of mindset to make their machines work with whatever software is passed to them, even if it is an illegal copy… and 2) therefore, computer viruses are passed around like wildfire. As with everything else down there, my job was not to judge, but to help – so the machines were reformatted and wiped clean in most cases, after which I ensured that the correct anti-virus software and the like was installed. Most importantly (and requiring the most strenuous of my French speaking the week long), I made SURE that Alex understood two key points about making the computer classroom hardware last long (at the very least they needed to prop up the laptops to improve cooling underneath; I will be sending 15 cooling pads with the soon-to-depart team of people going down next week) and the software to stay virus-free (by creating user accounts for students which disallow them from installing ANY programs, intentionally or otherwise).
The delightful little computer classroom where I spent a good portion of my week in Haiti. Note the projector screen (importan to show the students what is being taught, a great innovation on behalf of any visual learners in the group). As you might imagine – it was VERY hot in there WITHOUT the computers running. Then we also added in the body heat of all my fascinated onlookers… and it was *hot*
Traveling to and visiting a rural Haitian outpatient hospital
Later that afternoon, we departed to do a couple of hospital visits. Our group steed was this really new Nissan mini-bus, with some AWESOME (in my humble but correct opinion) steel push bumpers on front and rear. As a general point, Haitians seem to have a national talent for welding (more on this later).
Piling the team into the Nissan van which served as our steed for the week
The diesel stick shift bus ( ❤ ) didn’t quite fit all of us, so Steven again took the motto “Safety Second” to heart and traveled the Haitian way – on the back of a little bike across some ROUGH roads:
Steven modeling the unofficial Haitian motto “Safety Second” on the way to the rural hospital
As per ever, the trip itself was very interesting and again showcased aspects vital to Haitian culture, not least of all… talented local artwork…
Beautiful local artwork on a random set of walls
… but also gorgeous natural scenery featuring lush vegetation and mountains alike.
Mountains and wilderness to the left; a symbol of the very real patriotism across Haiti reflecting on the windshield of our van. Haiti is a beautiful country in its own way.
We even got a relatively rare glimpse of the beach (Jacmel is a town on the coast, but many properties on the beach have the typical high walls and therefore block our view of the ocean):
The ocean immediately to our right, not typically visible during our time in Jacmel but often making itself blessedly felt for the breeze it createsAnnoying that the photo came out a bit blurry, but Haitian vehicles consistently continue to explore new vehicular frontiers of what is denoted by “overloaded”
Arriving at this rural Haitian hospital, we soon learned that it was actually an outpatient hospital and therefore didn’t have many patients. At the time, this made some members of the team feel disappointed as they wanted to visit and show those patients that we care for and about them. Interestingly, the hospital visit we did the next day caused many of us to feel like some sort of sick tourists, as we wanted to wish well and chat but the language barrier prevented us from doing more than viewing the conditions and then departing the room.
The Team at the rural hospitalA beautiful flowering tree…… and the gorgeous yellow-and-black birds therein, which I managed to capture with my telephoto lens. I *love* my Pentax camera.
The very first room we saw was indicative of the remainder of the hospital visit – a small cubbyhole of a room with “Laboratoire” (Laboratory) handwritten above it, we walked in to find a neatly painted but far from sterile area with a small table and a meagre handful of supplies needed to do blood testing and the like. As I have said before and will likely say again though: this is fully in line in doing the best they can with what they have.
The “laboratory” for blood tests, which was neither climate controlled nor sterile so far as I could tell. As per many of the comments I am making along the way on this blog, I am not judging, merely reporting aspects of my experience which fell short of being the best they could be. In short: doing the best they can with what they havea Creole health poster advocating for covering your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing
Far more staccato in both its concerning but hope-giving elements was finding the below 1950’s era X-ray machine. On the one hand, this means that broken bones and other diagnostic procedures are actually possible in an area where people don’t even have enough to eat… on the other hand, aside from the pair of protective lead vests in the corner, the room and door appears to feature zero (0) lead armor to protect the surrounding area from all the excess radiation given off in the process. On the whole, a net medical gain for the patients here… and bad news for staff consistently working around the X-ray room.
The 1950’s era X-ray machine in the hospital (good) with some lead protective vests (great)… but the door to this room was normal and I couldn’t detect any lead shielding in the walls… so I worry about the health of those working adjacent to this room
The main surgery room was in really good shape, although one can definitely see a mosaic of different time periods from which the different donated equipment here was brought in.
The primary surgery (in French, “Chirurgie”) room at this outpatient hospital
Another one of the portions of the visit which was very depressing but “best that can be done given the circumstances” was the sterilization station for the surgical implements. A hospital really ought to have and make consistent use of an autoclave, a tool which is able to quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly clean implements before they can (or ought to) be used on the next patient. Below you see a manual cleaning station, which means that 1) implements stay in the open air and thus accumulate dirt and worse over time; 2) the cleaning by hand means it will be unevenly cleaned at best; and therefore 3) at least some of the people who come in for one surgical procedure… will end up coming back for the follow-up amputation required to purge infections from their body.
Attempted sterilization of tools (as this involves scrubbing by hand and then hanging to air-dry… the majority of these surgical implements are FAR from sterile)…… and here is the sink with local water also used in an attempt to sterilize implements. This likely makes infection rates climb even higher, which is heartbreaking. After all: amputation is the #1 most common surgery in Haiti, required after a wound is badly infected.
Walking outside again we were an odd combination of impressed with what had been built in this backwater rural hospital; but also saddened that so many amputations and infections could be prevented if it were just possible to get the donated goods to the outlying areas of Haiti (see here: rampant corruption in the capital as primary blocking factor).
The Brothers Repas, outside the surgery wing of the hospital. That black bandolier camera strap I bought was worth every penny of $60, as it made carrying it at my side but swinging it up quickly and effortlessly to get a photo… was golden
Visiting a Cuban goodwill hospital (and its integral classroom for teaching Fidel’s Life Essentials™)
Our next trip took us to a Cuban goodwill hospital in the same relative area of Haiti.
An older-style Haitian license plate. Newer ones show a silhouette of the island and in French “La Perle des Antilles” (The Pearl of the Antilles)Our security guard Peterson, about to demonstrate some Haitian fording as part of normal driving conditons
This Cuban (and apparently Venezuelan) hospital was very well-kept and meant to be welcoming, with artwork on the front and a Haitian flag featured prominently between the flags of those who pay for this service.
The artwork at the entrance to the Cuban goodwill hospital (featuring the flags of Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela)
The building may also be an outpatient hospital as there was NO ONE there aside from 2 seldom-seen Cuban staff members. This meant we got to see very closely the sort of conditions available to local Haitians – and everything we saw seemed to be very clean and well-kept, albeit not especially new.
The back courtyard of the Cuban hospital, which featured a basketball hoop (NOT what I was expecting from a Cuban cultural outpost)
Obligatory diesel Toyota truck with a snorkel. Need one of these, one day….
A *gorgeous* Toyota Land Cruiser with a snorkel, hot damn I need to get one of these diesel 4×4 stick shift monsters here at home… one day. One day.
The top floor of the hospital building apparently moonlights as a cultural education center, with a classroom featuring all manner of educational/propaganda about the benefits of the Cuban way of doing things:
One of the informative Cuban propaganda pieces in the “Klasroom” as it was labeled…… Steven entertained himself (and me) thoroughly by saying thank you and goodbye to the Cuban staff in his most AMURKAN possible cowboy accent
On the drive back, we saw a couple of the ultra-rich mansions on the side of the mountain, which really evoke a certain sort of “amidst the wilderness” that is lost in the hustle and bustle of typical Haitian town living. But to be sure: between pockets of towns and handfuls of houses, Haiti definitely has some areas of untamed nature.
A VERY wealthy person’s mountain-affixed mansion
Of interesting note, especially at the tail end of a visit to a Cuban institution, was that I saw 2 openly-identified American institutional donations over the entirety of my time in Haiti – in both cases, including the below truck, I saw a reused USAID tarp. I am curious as to whether this means more US donations were food or other immediate-use items, or if Jacmel doesn’t feature much US-origin assistance.
The very few indications of direct American aid I saw in Jacmel was reused USAID tarps (in this case for a truck bed; in other cases for a porch off a shanty)
Summarizing Day 2
As I commented on Facebook that day,
Day 2: my developing country Spidey senses are miscalibrated. “Wear a long sleeve collared shirt to really stay out of the sun, it is worth the extra bit of sweat” is genuinely valid advice in Zambia and the Middle East… turning out to be not as valid in 90%+ humidity Haiti.
Additionally, it is fun listening to Creole and picking up plenty of French or derivatives in between other incomprehensible words. Especially satisfying to speak some rusty French to folks here and watch their eyes go VERY wide at an American who can speak more than American English.
Looking back on that experience, I stand by that appraisal as my general summary for Day 2. It was a real pleasure to get to use some rusty French and be able to start a week-long process of making a HUGE difference for that local computer school; I also really enjoyed the visits we did to the rural hospitals and getting to see some excellent indications of the weird way in which most formal intergovernmental aid flows into Haiti and is either corrupted to the point of not reaching end users; or is not implemented entirely rightly. I don’t have a good enough handle on the general effect of individuals and groups providing aid into Haiti, but I believe our experience was a good case study (bolstered by my brother doing 4 back to back weeks): you need to know local Haitian people and work with them to create longer term programs to have anything succeed. Just giving items out might be a necessary stopgap in some cases, but doesn’t do anything to create lasting local improvement over time. In short, good intentions are FAR from sufficient to effect good outcomes.
That said: it was even more enjoyable to be a part of my brother’s efforts in Haiti, aimed at creating programs and classes for local folks over the long term.
It rained 3 times in the month my brother was in Jacmel; 2 of them happened during the week I was there. I am not sure what this means or signifies.
A Jaunt Around the World - Haiti 