The Center of the World (or "Oo! Geography Pop Quiz!")

There aren't too many times in your life when you can look out your window at the Washington Monument and the White House, and think, 'huh, this time yesterday I bouncing through the backstreets of Port-au-Prince on the way to the airport.'

The last morning in Haiti, many of us were up a little early.  Personally, I was up at 5:45 for a 7:00 breakfast, not because I was especially hungry but just...because.

Well, okay, here it is.  For some summer-camp reason, a plastic, though still slightly felted, tarantula was making its way to various pillows, instigated, apparently, by Lynn.  Since it had last appeared on MY pillow, I felt obliged to get Lynn's friend back to her, lest she be sad.  I'm thoughtful that way.  So, the truth is, I was up at 5:45 putting a plastic tarantula in Lynn's pants as they hung on the drying rack.

One could say the team had become comfortable with itself.

Breakfast was as filling as ever, but lacked (sadly) The Blessed Porridge.  Nearly every breakfast up to that point had featured some kind of fresh fruit, and sometime eggs, but always The Blessed Porridge.  We never got the recipe, though we maybe could have, so I can't tell you what's in it.  Best guess:  oats, cream, vanilla, (cane?) sugar, star anise, and possibly nutmeg.  It was the consistency of warm tapioca pudding but without the chewiness of tapioca.  Divine.

Despite, or possibly because of TBP's absence, we were out the door on time.  7:30.  Boom.  Bye.  We threw all the luggage and young people in Big Blue, the flatbed truck, and piled all the old people (yes, Lynn, I'M self-identifying as 'old') in the minivan which apparently seats...16?  but you wouldn't want to hit a bridge support with that size crowd inside.  Though that scarcely mattered, given the pace of traffic.  I'd guess Thomassin, our village, is no more than 10 miles from the PAP airport, and it took us nearly two hours.  We used a bunch of backroads I'd never be able to explain to you, which also meant we got to see how folks live in the city:  more crowded, fewer resources, more traffic and I see that our experience would likely have been very different in Port-au-Prince proper.  The insulation that Thomassin and Willem provide makes many things possible.

Anyway, we made it through two complete security checks before sitting down at our gate, and, other than a half hour delay for (whoops, sorry, we forgot) FUELING THE PLANE, we were away on-time.  I suspect that 30 minutes late qualifies as on-time departure.  And, given the later events of the day, I say that with love: I intend it to convey some fondness for Haitian efficiency.  I was impressed, too, that when we had taxied into position, we simply did a 180-degree turn, and hit the gas.  As noted earlier, in Haiti, the taxiway IS the runway.  This is somewhat like driving to the end of your street, stopping, signaling a right turn, and then turning.  Onto the interstate.  You just really hope everyone else is paying attention.

And in this case, everyone was.  The flight seemed to go pretty well, right up until about 1/2 an hour before our 3pm arrival JFK, when we started circling.  Mmm.  At 3:15, the pilot came on to tell us the rain in New York was still too heavy for us to land, and that we were diverting to Dulles in DC.  At about 4:30, after sitting on the tarmac for some time, we were told we were going to be taken off the plane, sent through customs and...wait for it...put on buses back to New York.  Those of us with 8:30 connections felt somewhat skeptical of this plan.  By 5:30, we were all in the terminal.  It took another hour for our luggage off the plane.  You see where this isn't going, right?  Yeah, not to New York.

Finally we made it out to the baggage claim for regular people, where a single JetBlue employee tried to make any difference in our connections, or even hotels for the night.  I well understand the difficulty of surprise events, but there were simply no contingencies in place.  The time and apparent difficulty of these operations created a certain wistfulness for Haiti, its many foibles notwithstanding.

Many of us went on to Portland the next morning, most of the rest simply stayed in Washington until 2, when they picked up the next night flight.  All of us wound up at the Hilton Tuesday night, none earlier than 10:15.  Sigh.

I took a slightly tack.  I already had a reservation to leave Portland Thursday night for Savannah.  Since flying for hours for a 24-hour turnaround seemed silly, I asked JetBlue to advance my entire itinerary 2 days.  They agreed.  So, after 4 hours of sleep, a shuttle to Dulles, and a 5am, $65 taxi ride to Washington National (thank you JetBlue), I waited for my flight to Savannah via....Boston.  Yes.

So it was that I found myself in an 80-passenger jet, launching into a clear blue morning sky over Washington, on the most remarkable flight I've ever had, or may ever have.  There, out my window is the Jefferson, oh, and Washington, oh, and Lincoln Memorials.  There's Congress, and, lurking behind it, the Supreme Court.  There're all the buildings of the Smithsonian, marching along the Mall, Lincoln Center, the Watergate, and there, plain as day, the White House.  Having just left what is arguably the least influential nation on Earth, I was now floating over all the symbols of the most influential nation on Earth.

And it didn't stop there.  We couldn't have gotten much above 10,000 feet, so, there's the NIH, there's the entire Delmarva Peninsula.  Is that Atlantic City?  Why does New Jersey have that odd color:  ah, snow.  Then, shifting briefly to the other side of plane, New York City comes into view.  Look, I can SEE the Statue of Liberty from here.  Ah, that's how Brooklyn fits in.  There's the George Washington Bridge, LaGuardia airport, Cold Spring Harbor...Providence, Rhode Island?  Cape Cod, all at once.  And lots of squared off ponds with a reddish cast to them.  Lots.  In the bogs of Massachusetts.  Could it be...?  No..... Yeah, maybe.  After all the grousing and uncertainty, after all the grief and irritation, a maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

And perhaps one of the longest blog posts ever created.  I don't feel like I'm done talking about the Haiti trip, but dinner calls, and I've found everyone is happier when I don't ignore it.  I'll have some closing thoughts in the next installment.  Be well....

Getting Around Town

It's really hard to know what needs to go in this last post from Haiti.  I'm learning a bit of blog craft along the way and I recognize that many of the vignettes and stories require more context than a blog provides.  So I will try to edit somewhat.  I feel like yesterday kind of ran on a bit.

I will start, though, by wrapping up yesterday, in which we waited for ages for the 'hurry up let's go.'  What followed was an invigorating ride to a spectacular viewpoint of PAP in the ritzy suburb of Petionville.  Petionville is essentially Beverly Hills to the rest of Haiti's Appalachia.  The evening kind of wrapped up with a surprise trip into town for...wait for it...pizza.  And not bad pizza, at that.  Not worried too much about the pizza dough being shipped in from anywhere, right?  That's a reference to my own private anaphylactic allergy.  Anaphylaxis in Haiti:  bad idea jeans.

The rest of the evening was kind of our personal tap-tap ride.  Tap-taps are personal taxi/buses, commonly Toyota trucks with seats built into the back, and the bed cover balanced on top.  It was weird to see my ratty little pickup times 100, trolling the streets of Haiti.

Anyway, the ministry has rigged up a couple trucks like this, with no seating for transporting large numbers of folks.  Quite entertaining, and a little adventurous: great for bonding.  Also the source of such games as Name That Smoke, which I will elaborate on later.  For the moment, though, my fat fingers are done fighting with the spellchecker, so...more later.

A Day in the Life

Lounging around the guesthouse on a Sunday afternoon gives a guy a chance to cool off and reflect a bit.....

It's been a busy week for the team.  By mid-afternoon Saturday, when we knocked off work at the clinic, our 4 doctors (Mari Kay, Jay, Kristin and Kendra) had seen 630 patients.  Mind you, this is the total range from goiter to prenatal to possibly colon cancer to maybe PTSD.  Galen is filling a new role for the team this year as counselor, and he's had some really moving (not to mention interesting) interactions.  Sara has been checking eyes and prescribing glasses where possible, while our scribes (Rachel, Nixon, Nikki, Natalie, Paul) have been busily taking notes.  All this is in the back half of  the clinic.  

In the front half, Lacey and Diana have been checking folks in with height and weight while Jeff and Diana S-C have been doing blood and urine lab work in their space to one side of the entryway.  On the other side, Debbie, Lynn, and Margie scurry all day in the pharmacy.  Connie, our dietician, was working with classes of kids during school time, and doing consults after school, while Cherri has been helping out with other classes and just jumping in where possible.  Matt has blown everyone's mind by jumping in with the construction guys who are working on the future vocational building next door.  These guys are out in the sun mixing concrete, moving rock and assembling rebar, and Matt was right in the middle of it.  We all have a new appreciation for how hard folks work here, but none more than Matt.  A nice Haitian lady told him he needed to slow down, though.

As for me, I'm very much the rover.  On good days, there's a lot to do and I can jump in to get stuff done.  On other days, there's a lot of backtracking and poor communication and just sitting alone in a room counting pills.  Ooof.  If nothing else, on those days, I feel like I'm getting a good dose of Haiti: roundabout, complicated, and frustrating.  Things work very differently here.

In the meantime, we are well-fed and thoroughly watered.  The guesthouse is fairly posh for Haiti, with good backup power and not-too-shabby wifi.  We are still asked not to brush with tap water, and TP goes in the trashcan, like most of Central America.  The views off the back patio remain worth writing home about (hey, Mom, the view here is great!), and there are little lizards everywhere.  The largest is about 8" long and has been named Rupert.  We haven't had much of a chance yet to leave the compound, though there's rumor of a possible trip out tonight.  'Cause...yeah...it's a compound:  10' walls, check; padlocked gate, check; 4 Rotweilers, check; a couple guys who walk around at night, check check.  Compound.   

Which makes the daily walk to and from the clinic that much more of a highlight.  Most of the team rides over in the truck (described Wednesday).  No problem, but a little more skittery than I like.  I don't feel like rain actually improves the odds for the truck, not that rain has been much of an issue.   The rest of us, and it ranges from 6 to 10 people, walk up to the main road, down through the village to the Goat Path (featuring several actual goats) that leads to the riverbed.  In the morning, it's all in shade, and quite lovely.  Crossing the river bed to the main road puts you right in the sun, and the hike up the other side is a little strenuous.  So, yes, after the walk, I don't smell so good and the locals get a nice chuckle over the sweaty 'blan.'  One lady, who had ALREADY walked up to the clinic in the cool of the morning, and I had a good laugh at my expense.   I was hands-on-knees and pretty red-faced still;  she told me the walk uphill was "good for me."  'Builds character,' you might say.  I couldn't agree more.  This walk, while tiring, has been my primary exposure to actually Haitians, who have been quite friendly. 

The big highlight for the trip was Sunday service.  We walked BACK up to the clinic this morning, since the church IS the school, and right next door to the clinic.  We talked at length with Dave, a Haitian kid who work on his English every Sunday with the visiting teams.  Super-sweet guy, 23 and very funny, although the conversation took kind of an unexpected turn.  Dave wants me to come back next year with a wife.  Yes....Dave.  

The service itself was, unsurprisingly, heavy on excellent music.  Two drummers, three guitars, a flute and a keyboard (Derek Lamson in the house...).  Our own little group provided a nice rendition of Wailin' Jennies' "One Voice," as part of the music program, and what sounded like extended singing prayers.  The high point was a passionate sermon delivered by the leader of the Lawrenceville, GA, team, which was working at the nearby orphanage.  Willem, who runs MountainTop, and who got his start as the lead CNN translator when US marines came ashore in 1994, translated completely on-the-fly, and frequently before he had finished his sentences.  They were gesturing in unison, pausing in unison and nearly speaking in unison.  It was something to see.  The content didn't go over so great with our diverse group (who, at the very least are Quaker, Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, atheist and agnostic) but there was no denying their speech craft.  Going to a Haitian Creole service, I little expected Southern Baptist fire and brimstone, but I can't say as it felt out-of-place.  

Uh, more later...we're off on our excursion.

Crossing the Valley

Awesome, awesome, awesome day at the clinic today.  Just really incredible.  Got to ride the truck on the way over, and, well, the roads we bounced around on in Costa Rica look like fresh asphalt by comparison.  QUITE impressive.  And, there was a miscommunication about when the clinic was opening, so many people (meaning MANY) camped out not just one night waiting for us...but two nights.  Ooo, felt bad.  So, when we got there, we almost couldn't pull the truck into the driveway.  On one side, a crowd of sick people, on the other, a three-foot deep ditch.  We made it work but it was sure invigorating.

Today, in general was a slow-ish day, but I think we still probably saw a hundred people.  I mostly confined myself to the upstairs storage room, working with Linda, who lives here now, and has implemented a full tracking database.  Didn't have that before.  How do you effectively run a pharmacy with no tracking system?   Answer:  you don't.  In years past, it took the team a whole week to unload and shelve its drugs and materials.  We mostly finished by the end of the day today.  One goal for us is to do a top-to-bottom count of the storage room, in anticipation of the last visiting team in May.  Since the mission closes for the summer, that last team tends to prescribe a lot more medication, and having an exact inventory helps the mission tell that team what to bring.  I guess this highlights my own egghead tendencies, but it's kind of a thrill to be able to do that kind of task, which does little for me or my team, but makes a real impact on the larger goal.  This whole inventory system is goes galactic distances towards improving the efficiency of the clinic AND all the visiting teams. Mmm, I'm almost waxing poetic about medical inventory databases. 

Dork.

So, it was a reasonably full day, followed by...well, most of us walked back to the clinic.  It was warmish, and a bit humid (not by Southern standards), and the road is not in good repair.  It's quite rocky terrain and way steep;  I'm not sure how anyone gets any farming done here, though I did see some short corn stalks.  And the thing is, the intact concrete portions of the road have mostly filled in with sediment.  So when they get wet, say, after a late afternoon rainstorm, there's a curious kind of surfing to be done.  You don't really want to wipe out on the rusty can lid there on the shoulder.  Again, invigorating. 

But the plants here are....what are they?  Some kind of acacia, a lot of trumpet-flower, some kind pea family plant, and some comfrey cousin, plus who knows what else.  Took a bunch of pictures of plants in flower that I'm going to try to ID.

And then there are the all the folks you pass along the way.  Unbelievably friendly people, and very funny kids.  I have a pictures of a kid who wanted his photo taken, though I couldn't catch his name.  Mostly folks just seemed quite good-natured;  greeting people is deeply ingrained in the culture.  It's so Midwestern.  Who knew?

Tomorrow:  day 2.  We're told the pace picks up as folks settle into their routines.  Stay tuned....

MountainTop Ministry

Well, we're here.  Our night flight to JFK got in on-time at 6am (oof) and we got away pretty much on-schedule, despite SOMEone having to be dragged away from his breakfast to get on the damn plane.  In my own defense, this headcold kept me from popping my ears during the descent, so I couldn't hear the, ahem, multiple calls for me [by name] from the gate.  So embarrassing.  I guess it's part of my punishment that I didn't get breakfast.  More to this story if you want it, centered around efficiency and customer service New York area airports. That's whole blog in itself.

The rest of the flight went off without a hitch.  I was particularly entranced by the clouds over the Atlantic, which consistently formed long lines.  Not sure what that's about.  I was also intrigued by the distinctly spiral path of our descent into Port-au-Prince (or PAP, 'cause I'm already sick of typing it all out).  The captain explained on touchdown that, since the PAP airport has only one runway and no taxiways, you sometimes find planes where you shouldn't.  Ah-ha-ha.  Good to know.  Don't tell Mom that part.

Our journey through the airport and customs went, compared to other years, very smoothly and within a half hour we were loaded up:  1 SUV, 1 van, and 1 flatbed truck with 42 bags and three of us.  It's worth noting there's seating for 3-4 on top of the cab.  Don't tell Mom that part, either.

The drive up to Mountaintop was...instructive.  Mari Kay commented that much of what we saw had been rubble after the earthquake, so it's quite encouraging to see how many shops have sprung up.  On the other hand, the traffic rules are really more customs, as you might expect, and are governed by horns (sort of) and inches (or less).  Fun, though, and made me think a lot about how many believe safety goes up and injuries go down when traffic slows down and is less predictable.  Haitian traffic definitely fits the latter, and it felt like the former, though, to be fair, the guy who was pulling away at a breakneck pace....was doing 45mph.  Everything's relative, right?

We spent the middle of the day shuffling supplies around at the house and resting up from travels (some folks got stuck next to .... family unpleasantness...and slept not at all).  It's really beautiful out our backdoor, with a view of the mission across the valley.  You can see that the track leading up to the mission runs at a 45 degree angle: innnnteresting.  But it also sounds some exciting new programs and initiatives are in place there.  Tomorrow is the first day at the clinic, so I'll have more details soon.

Meanwhile, it's pretty well dark (it's 7:30) and blissfully cool (it'll be low '60s tonight;  we're up a bit).  No luck finding a local bird or plant list, unless someone out there can make a recommendation.  I'll be quite intrigued to see what, if anything, is indigenous. 

I would, I guess.  Be well, all.  The adventure continues....

Tomorrow: Port-au-Prince, or ‘Did anyone check that the stove is off?’

The worst part is, the metaphorical stove ISN’T off, and by that I mean, of course, garlic mustard continues grow and flower.  I’m going to try not to obsess too much, but, of all things that could be bugging me, this is one.  Alas.  I will continue to hope for cool, wet days for Portland while I’m gone (sorry Portland), even while the 10 day forecast calls for 65 degrees and mostly sunny every day (yay, Portland).

Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince weather seems squarely set on 96 degrees, with a low of 72.  Mari Kay reports temperatures are typically 10 degrees cooler where we’ll be in the mountains, so….that’s bearable, anyway.  The prospect of having scrubs provided for the clinic folks (that’s me) means I have less to pack, so….sweet.

And it seems like I’ve gotten out of spacey head cold land just in time.  You may have seen a post that went up for 6 hours and then came right back down.  I’ve come to the conclusion that one should be fully in possession of one’s faculties (or as fully as one ever is) to blog responsibly.

At the moment, my throat feels great, though a fairly wracking cough shredded my voice last night.  Apparently there are no nerves in your voice.  Much of the morning at work was spent whispering (with everyone whispering in response [power of suggestion, right?]), because it wasn’t clear if my speaking voice would be Barry White’s or Pinocchio’s.  And very often it was both.  Oh yeah.  The memories.  And since there’s only so much time a guy wants to spend with his 13-year-old self:  whispering.  

Meanwhile, the packing is nearly done (ahh, scrubs).  Margie, with whom I’ll be working in the pharmacy, will be swinging by in an hour en route to the airport.  Margie and Debbie have worked pharmacy for all or most of Mari Kay’s Haiti expotitions, so I’ll be in good hands with them.  The first hurdle will be getting our …. 40 CHECKED BAGS through to the plane, so we’re giving ourselves a lot of time.

By the way, the current tally for the team, if you’re keeping score at home, is 23:  21 from Portland and 2 from San Francisco.  We were sad to learn that Dennis, our dentist, had a family crisis and had to withdraw on Thursday or Friday.  Better luck next year, I hope.

And finally, it’s not clear to me, yet, if there’s any way to get online and update while we’re there.  Got the camera, got the voice recorder (so you can hear my fantastic new zombie voice), but may not be able to pass it along in realtime.  Wish us luck and watch this space…..