It’s been two days without power! Then at 5pm the power came on, everyone yelled “fill the buckets” (I’ll explain later), three people jumped in the shower of three bathrooms, and no lie, the power was gone 5 minutes later. 15 people with no real shower in at least two days. What a tease! And three people with shampoo in their hair that had to finish with a bucket shower.
It has been incredibly hot! No news there. Yesterday was prenatal day. I met many beautiful pregnant Haitian women. Some with babies ready to be born in the next few weeks. One woman was expecting her fourth baby and cried when she told hus the father just left and she has no where to live. A 40 year old woman with many children was relieved when we told her she wasn’t pregnant! She is probably going through menopause, since she hasn’t had a period in three months. Just like the pediatric clinic, most of the women eat very little food, drink coffee, soda and Tampico and drink very little water. We give them all vitamins and tell them to drink more water!
Yesterday was the village clinic so after prenatals and a late lunch I decided to head over there. The walk is probably at least a half mile, and just as soon as I arrived I ran into the ND student midwife and one of our interpreters, Santo. I forgot that we had a meeting with a village midwife, Madame Bwah (really don’t know about the spelling!), and had to turn around to head back to the house. After waiting for nearly an hour and she didn’t show up we decided to head back to the clinic. (Did I mention how hot it is here?) When we were with our second patient we got called to head back to the house because Madame was there waiting for us. Oh, Haitian time! (and now two round trips to the village clinic) When Suzanne and I were already headed back we realized we didn’t have an interpreter with us! This would be interesting for sure.
When we first arrived we each grabbed a Haitian/English dictionary and started saying various words. It was pretty crude and not successful. But after some time we got into a groove and really got some information from her. She has attended 75 births in the last two months. We asked what she did in a hemorrhage, how they disposed of the placenta, if she carried medications or herbs. We were quite proud of ourselves, but finally found an interpreter and found out many more things about Madame Bwah. She is quite well known and had done a substantial amount of advocating for women’s healthcare. She was willing to send patients to our clinic and even let us go to some births with her. We planned to have a family planning clinic next week if she sent some clients our way, because she said many of her clients have many babies and don’t want to have any more.
Today Susan arrived, but her luggage was delayed. After attending another village clinic we headed back to the airport with Santo and a driver. A real car this time! Not the danger of a tap tap, but an adventure still! Driving through Cap Haitien is always an adventure. The airport was tiny and when it was time to take our bags outside we were swarmed with young men trying to carry the bags and wanting money. I was warned about this but it happens so fast! Susan gave a few men a dollar each, but it was difficult to know if she paid the ones who actually carried the bags, as there were about 8 men surrounding her with their hands out.
Dinner is ready! Susan asked what we were having and I had to laugh. Beans and rice again!
P.S. When the power comes on we need to fill the buckets in the bathroom so when we are without power we can bucket shower and flush the toilet without having to go to the well and carry it in.
P.S.S. It has taken many attempts to get this posted as the power continues to come on for about 5 minutes each time. One time I did get a shower in. Each time the power goes off we get up and open the windows, each time it goes off we need to close the windows and turn the fans and air conditioner on.
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