Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Imagine

Being here has taught me many things. The other day I had a conversation with my friend Jen who has been coming back and forth to Haiti for over the past 10 years. We talked about a lot of things but the one thing that she said that rings in my head every time I sit down to write this blog is how we, the "we" being people like me who recount and tell you all stories about our trips down here...and how "we" may not be representing the people and events properly... and that everyone, myself included need to really think before we write about the lives of others...

She was/is so right..

I started to look at myself and this blog like it has the potential to become like the old school game of telephone, where one person starts a story and it travels around a circle changing with each person it goes through...

Imagine you meet someone and have a brief encounter with that person, say they care for your child during a brief hospital stay. Now imagine unbeknownst to you that person has taken pictures of themselves with your child. That person has also read the hospital file that reports the vague details of your's and your child's case. Now that person has left their position in the caring for you and your child.. Imagine a year later you stumble upon a website with your child picture on it and a very inaccurate description of your hospital stay..a very inaccurate accounting of your child and your lives and how the person's brief encounter with the both of you had affected them so much they just had to write about it...

How would that make you feel?

I know in the past I have written a number of blog posts about people... for the most part I would say I was pretty accurate about the stories.. "pretty accurate" isn't good enough.. I know that now... I will do better!

I will however continue to write about me and how the situations here make me feel...how the people here make me feel...

Tonight a very sick man sang a song to me... had to hold back the tears...because people have the potential to move you if your open to them..in Canada or Haiti or really anyplace....

night from Haiti...
Lise

Friday, June 15, 2012

Emaciate

Emaciate..it's a verb..

"to make or become extremely thin, especially as a result of starvation...

TB/HIV...

she's younger then me..she has children, the youngest is 14..he comes every Saturday and Sunday to sit by her bed and beg her to "please take your medication mom....please, so you won't die..." It's still a fight...

Her mother comes to wash her each morning...her mother's not well so this week i make it my job...
"lave, Miss?"... "wash, Nurse?"

oxygen off..she'll be ok for a short while without it...I go to lift her from the bed...skin and bones...

I might break her....

short, slow walk to the showers...past all the patients, sitting, waiting to see the Dokte...
 "will that be me one day?" must go through their minds...
"surely not..."

Spigot that is the "shower" leaks continuously...
undress..disrobing of urine soaked clothes..no one to help her get up and pee into the bucket that sits beside her bed...
sit on 3 half concrete blocks in the corner...lowering her gently..no cushioning to speak of

standing in the water in my running shoes I glance down at this women...this mother...
take the bucket, fill it and run it over the skin and bones...

just cruel...

no energy to wash...gently over the bones...rinse....

"encore"

"again"

the water must feel good...

lift her to standing...lifting a bag of flour takes more effort....

sad...

walk past the waiting area...getting more full of people waiting to see the doctor..
"regade a li"... "look at her"...does she hear them..
probably not, she's too focused on getting back to her bed where she will lay all day

...making herself extremely thin....

Emaciate...
wrong....

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Don't have it in me...

Hi everyone, Sorry I have not been keeping up with this blog... Days here are long, hot and to be honest I am generally not in the mood to sit down and write... Usually my evenings entail in no particular order, shower, cold drink, food and maybe a little reading. I can honestly say I that I have no idea how Megan is able to keep this up and has kept it up for the past 2.5 years!! She truly is amazing and I don't know how to even describe a day in her life. I am happy to report my bug bites have all healed, I'm sleeping good, have not lost much weight and am getting to work with amazing people doing such awesome things in crazy conditions.. I'm off to bed... Stay well... Lise

Saturday, June 2, 2012

the tap-tap touch..

Today was fully day 5 here in Haiti on my fifth trip to this island nation. Aside from a bad bout of bed bugs, which were eradicated today with much adieu,  I have settled in fairly well.

Each morning and evening I ride a "tap-tap", which is the Haitian equivalent to public transport. Tap-taps can take pretty much any form from mini-buses down to the back of a pick-up in varying states of disrepair. I take these rides with my new found friend, Jeremy, a 19 year old kid from North Carolina who is also helping out Megan at the hospital. These rides have proven to be interesting in many ways and I just have to chuckle to myself that most north american's would consider this form of transport too and from work each day as a form of torture. Imagine if you will, a morning that is already hot (30+) and still, a mini-bus filled beyond capacity by about 5+ individuals,  all trying to maintain an air of disconnectedness while practically sitting on each others laps..all the while listening to multiple cell phone conversations and if your lucky, a sales pitch from the, quite literally,a travelling salesman...

Today's rides were extra special in that not only did we get to hear the sales pitch about how Amoxiacillin was the cure for whatever ails you and if that didn't work well Zantac would surely be the winner. But next we moved onto the gentleman who hitched a ride for a few blocks quite clearly focusing in on the "blancs" at the back of the bus, welcoming us to his country now could we please give him some money so he could get something to eat for breakfast..which of course we did and all went well... So much entertainment for the bargain price of 0.45 American each way. Tonight's ride home proved to be slightly uneventful unless you count the fact that I was sitting next to the wide open door as the tap-tap careened through mud puddles and down roads at what felts like breakneck speed in a machine quite clearly not meant to travel at such speeds (sorry Danielle..your voice was ringing clearly inside my head but there was no where to go...)

And that is only what is inside the tap-tap... the sights, sounds and smells are indescribable and need to be experienced to be valued.. Children off to school in pristine uniforms, men pushing wheelbarrows full of construction supplies down the middle of the road, smells of sewage on one block only to be replaced by the smell of fresh baked bread or frying banana's on the next...

I must admit I was a little apprehensive about riding the public transport system here in Haiti but I think it's opened my eyes to a little more of what life is like on a daily basis for many Haitians. And it has shown me how in many ways I am disconnected from my fellow Canadians when I am at home. I see now that I come from a world where we barely even look at each other, we ride in cars alone too and from work, many wouldn't dream of touching a stranger let alone be squished in a car for 45 mins in +30 heat unable to escape, we value our space from one another but after the past few days of travel I can't help but wonder if in some small way I am missing out....that although during our rides in these tap-taps we are not engaging with people on any really deep levels maybe in some small ways I am becoming more connected to the city, to it's people and to the reality of a life I have only stood on the fringe of and will never fully appreciate... but maybe in my own way I can once again become more engaged with my life back home in Canada and more further from the fringe and more into the core...

Just where I'm at tonight....

Night all...

Love Lise

Friday, June 1, 2012

Day 4

Day 4 spent washing,bleaching and boiling clothes and sheets... Not the way I would have chosen to spend the day! Off to the clinic in the am... Life is always strange here... Currently, sitting on a dark room writing this and playing with a very skinny kitty cat... About to go to bed before we lose power! Night everyone!