Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

Does this thing still exist?! I’m not entirely sure where to go with this update because so much has happened since the last time I wrote…six months ago… So a brief synopsis: During April, May, and half of June, we ran mobile clinics. I basically went and checked out a bunch of tent cities and some orphanages, and then later we went back and did clinics there. At our very first clinic, we saw 140 patients. With four nurses. On the porch of an orphanage. During those clinics, we saw just about everything you can imagine. And most of the time, we had no doctor, so all the volunteers were turning to me for the final say on diagnoses or prescription. Interesting experiences.

            During May, we also got five dirt bikes which we will use in our EMS response. We can put a medic with a bag on the back of one and they can get through traffic a lot faster than a car in order to stabilize a patient until the ambulance gets there. There is a group of Haitians students who had received a bit of medical training and hope to work as EMTs (once EMTs exist in Haiti). We worked with them in February during Carnival in Les Cayes. Mid-May we began training them to be the medics for our motorcycles. For about a week straight, every day when I got home from clinic, someone was coming up to me with some injury they got while training on the bikes. Even the teacher got an injury. Not his fault, though, one of the girls injured them both somehow. By that point, I was just bandaging whatever wound came in front of my eyes next. But they all lived to attend the classes we began in the beginning of July.

            So finally, what we’ve been working towards for over two years is here! We signed an agreement with the Haitian Ministry of Health and are in charge of their EMS system. Whatever training curriculum we come up with they will accredit and make the national standard. We also sort of became responsible for a lot of other things, like procuring the supplies for their ambulances (a recent donation from Brazil…35 of them). In the deal, we got two ambulances of our own. They have State plates on them, which Adam says basically means you can run over a cop and no one can stop you. That also means I’m allowed to drive. We have a limited number of people here who can drive a stick shift, and I’m one of them. So State plates and stick shift was the key to me getting the keys. Not only that, but the ambulance that I drive is the one for official use if needed. So if the President goes down, he goes in my ambulance.

            But just so we don’t get carried away with things going well and falling into place, let’s just have a little reminder that this is Haiti. Our very first day of class, for some reason (which I can no longer remember), we had no breakfast. Not a problem for us necessarily, but we had agreed to feed our students breakfast and lunch. What most likely happened was that our cook ran out of supplies and neglected to tell us until we were asking where breakfast was that morning. She’s the sweetest woman, but for some reason just can’t understand why we ask her to let us know 48 hours ahead of when she thinks she’s going to run out of something. So Becky and Alex (an EMT who was here for the summer) ran down the road to a street food lady and asked if she would make us 30 peanut butter sandwiches. She agreed and they told her they would be back in 15 minutes for them.

We were rushing to get out of the house because we had to make a stop at the airport, as Becky was heading home for good and one of the volunteers also had to go back to the States. He had arrived the day before, promptly seized in the airport and then again in the grocery store later that day. We all had to pile into the pickup truck because our other vehicle needed a new registration. Which we couldn’t get because it had been backed into a Mercedes in the parking lot of a grocery store and the driver of the Mercedes wanted $1000 US. Because of that, there was a court date. Which our driver didn’t show up to. Therefore, there was a warrant out for our Defender. At the end of our road, we stopped by the street food lady to pick up our breakfast order. She hadn’t started making the sandwiches. Not only that, but we came to discover that she didn’t have peanut butter. So we thought if she just gave us the bread, we would buy peanut butter and the students could make the sandwiches themselves. She only had two rolls. So she had agreed to make us 30 peanut butter sandwiches without having any peanut butter or enough bread to put it on. Happy Monday, everyone.

            But we continued on, and, because it was rainy season, soon found ourselves stuck in a pit of mud. At this point, Becky, Alex, and I hopped out of the truck, and I started yelling for our volunteer to do the same. He was less than amused. He also didn’t seem to understand the urgency of getting to the airport on time and the way the car traffic was going to keep him from doing so. So Becky and Alex took off running down the road to flag down two motos so that by the time the slow volunteer and I got to them, we wouldn’t have to wait. We left the rest of the volunteers behind to dig out the truck. By the time he and I made it out to where Becky and Alex had the motos waiting, the truck had been freed and was driving up behind us. The volunteer wanted to just get back into the truck and drive to the airport. Again, for some reason he wasn’t connecting the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the fact that it wasn’t moving an inch to his inability to make his flight. So we forced him onto the moto, and Becky hopped on hers as well, and that is how I said goodbye to the closest friend I had here.

            The next details of the day are a bit fuzzy, but we must’ve dropped everyone off at the training compound and then Thony and I returned to the house to take Venese to the market. Alex stayed at the house to begin cooking what she could of lunch without Venese so that we could make it back to the training site in time. So the three of us get to the market, park the truck, and walk inside. We spent about an hour gathering all of our various items. When we went to return to the truck, it was gone. At first I thought it had been stolen (our back window was broken out…we got it replaced one time and that very night a doctor somehow broke it again). Anyways, after some investigating, we come to find (I believe from the sugarcane sellers we parked in front of) that our truck had been towed. Where to? No idea. Which police group? No idea. Well that’s great, so I guess we’ll just walk around the city until we find it?

            I sent Venese to go catch a moto so she could get back to the house and cook while we figured out what to do. Finally, I told Thony that we were going to rent a taptap. He looked at me for a bit, clearly not excited about the idea. There was one a few yards from us, and I asked him to go talk to the guy. Eventually we worked out a price and we headed for home.

            A very long time later, the food was finally ready. Alex and I got in our rented taptap and took off for the warehouse. When we arrived, we come to find that we are so late that all the students have already gone home. I hope everyone is incredibly hunger for rice and beans.

            Obviously, the days since have gotten better. Similar days occur every now and then, but that was probably the most ridiculous. (We managed to find our truck that day and get it back the next – it was taken to the police commissariat right next to our training facility.) We trained our own moto medics to the US equivalent of a first responder, and they are now working towards EMT-Basic. We are training the government employees (who are already working on the ambulances…I did a few calls with them to oversee and it’s a scary, scary thing) to the level of EMR for now and they will receive EMT training later. There are 80 MSPP (Ministry of Health/government) students. No one likes testing with me because they think I’m too difficult. I would rather call myself a perfectionist.

            It’s really exciting to see this finally coming together. We’ve all worked a long time for this, and we’ve done some strange and mildly disturbing jobs/patient transports to keep things moving. Obviously, it means a ton more work and me trying to put together EMS curriculum oddly enough, but so far it’s a good ride.

            Hurricane season makes things more interesting as well. They must’ve painted Isaac as a heart-wrenching story on the news in the States. I’ve heard from reporters that any time the media can connect a story to Haiti, they’ll do it. So despite what was said, at least for Port-au-Prince (where all the tent cities are that I’m sure they talked about), there was hardly any damage to think of. There was some wind and a continuous (but not heavy) rain for a day, but that’s all. It did manage to knock out one of the city’s main transformers, though, so we were without city power for a week. Apparently Joyce is heading our way next, so I look forward to whatever excitement that might bring.

            And in the midst of all these happenings these summer, I got a kitten. He is a spaz. I’ve never met a kitten who gets so wound up about things. Anything. Toilet paper, contact cases, coins, fans. He loves being with people and being held, but not like a normal cat. He likes to sit on my shoulder and nuzzle my ear. Or bite my earrings, depending on his mood. I have a shelving unit in my bathroom, which he has gotten quite good at climbing up. But getting down is something he still needs to master. Because of that, he’s taken to leaping from the top shelf (about 5 feet tall) onto my back while I’m brushing my teeth or doing something else unsuspecting. I do not find it amusing.

            We’ve had some trouble thinking of a name for the kitten…nothing seems quite right. So it was kind of like he was a Jewish kitten, not being named until the 8^th day or something, and therefore I thought he should have a Jewish name. My dad suggested Abram, but I felt like Mo (short for Moses) was the better option. But my name choice was vetoed, so (for now) he remains just Kitty. I thought Mo would’ve worked nicely, because it sounds just like “NO!”, which I say to him all the time.