She sits alone and why that means I won't be going to Haiti this summer...

She sits alone in a Subway Restaurant

Dressed in a matching blue outfit, her walker by the table

I can see her worn wedding ring on her left hand, yet she sits alone

She has a conversation, with whom I don't know

Her lips move and I try to read them but can't make out the words

She looks so familiar,

like my nana did

did my nana also sit in a restaurant, talking to herself,

seemingly all alone

Will she be alone tomorrow, for mothers day...

 

 

I smile at her as I leave

she smiles back, as if she knows me

her face lights up a little

I should go back and ask if I can sit

but I don't and as I walk away

I start to cry

 

 

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, I have a mother and I love her. I had another mother I knew for 7 short weeks and whom I miss everyday. I had a Nana that I knew and loved for almost 27 years and whom I miss with all my heart.

 

This summer I have chosen to not go to Haiti, a nation filled with mothers. Mothers, who, this year will find it a little more difficult to feed their children due to a food crisis that's occurring there as a result of a number of different factors (You can read about it here http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/19/food-crisis-brewing-haiti).

 

 

This summer I chosen instead to send the money I would spend travelling there ($1200 in flights alone) to organizations that I know will need the money to feed their patients.

These organizations include TiKay Haiti (http://www.tikayhaiti.org/) an organization that spend over $1000 a month in feeding hospitalized HIV/AIDS and TB patients in Port Au Prince.

Heartline Ministries (http://heartlineministries.org/) whose women's program provides weekly, nutritious meals to expectant and breastfeeding moms.

Real Hope for Haiti, who provide medical care and a rescue center for malnourished children in the mountains of Haiti (http://www.realhopeforhaiti.org/). Check out their blog for some amazing and heartbreaking stories.

And last but not least, to an organization that is run by a young Canadian women from the Yukon called Little footprints, Big Steps (http://littlefootprintsbigsteps.com/). I have never met Morgan but know people who have and who speak highly of her. Her goal with her organization is to reunite street kids and child slaves with their families and to help them get an education.

 

 

It has been a difficult decision to make, to not go back... Haiti and everything that I know of it has become so precious to me. Yet today, as I watched this beautiful senior sitting alone, I knew deep in my heart what has always been my calling... and therefore I know that I will commit money and my thoughts and love to the little Caribbean country, but for this year I will commit myself and my time to the needs of people back here in Edmonton. I have chosen to spend the better part of my summer volunteering here, at home with 3 different groups: Seniors Assisted Transportation Services, a group that provides transportation for low-income seniors and a group I have volunteered with for a few years now; Edmonton Meals on Wheels, love the idea of helping out in the kitchen as well as hopefully driving meals to the people who use their services and The Edmonton General Continuing care facility where I will hopefully be a friendly visitor to those who don't get many people visiting them (look for us out for walks along the promenade!) I feel this is where I need to be for right now and that today, the Universe sent me a message loud and clear.

 

I had initially thought of offering up a challenge in the form of donation matching but after much thought I am just going to say this: 

JOIN ME

Join me in volunteering at home or abroad (even a few hours a week can make all the difference)

Join me in learning about a cause and if you feel inclined make a donation to it

(Little footprints is a Canadian NGO so you will receive a tax receipt)

or just join me in giving me strength and your well wishes.

 

 

Happy Mothers day to the sweet, little old lady I saw today

May you know that you are thought of 

and 

I promise

the next time I will sit and talk to you

so that behind that smile, next time you will know me.

 

  

 

Life is good...

Yesterday I cared for a young women cut down in the prime of her life by a disease that I have developed a respectful hate for... It was a tough day and I really felt like crying when I returned home after my 12 hours with her and her ever supportive husband...

The past week I have watched the events that are happening all over the world (more specifically in The Gaza Strip) and I have been experiencing so many emotions ranging from anger to sadness. Watching as needless deaths occur on both sides of the conflict.

I have read articles about the destruction left by super-storm Sandy in both the US and Haiti and I worry about those affected.

This morning I awoke in my own bed, I took a shower with hot water, I ate bread baked using ingredients that are in abundance in my world, I am safe from violence, super-storms and cancer.

Life on this end is good.

Be grateful, be kind, educate yourself, lend your hand to those in need....

Little C

Life is hard when your 5.

Life is even harder when your 5 and live in Haiti but what makes life even harder then that is being 5, living in Haiti, weighing 18 pounds and having TB.

I know a few posts ago I talked about the delicacy that is required to tell another persons story. I want to tell her story from my perspective. Yes, this is about one little girl, but as with most of these types of stories it's a story about many little girls all over the world.

I met "little C" when I arrived to work with Ti Kay this past summer. Ti Kay is run by Dr. Megan Coffee and for those of you who do not know, Ti Kay treats TB and HIV patients in Port Au Prince Haiti.

When I first met little C, she weighed 18 pounds and this was her second hospitalization for TB.
5 year old children are:
a. not supposed to weigh 18 pounds.
b. not supposed to be confined to living in a hospital for months on end, separated from family (aside from a 13 year old sister who's sole job is to care for her)
c. not supposed crumble under their own body weight because their disease and lack of intake (as a result of treatment/disease induced nausea and vomiting) has made them too weak.
d. are not supposed to know such sadness that a smile is an exception not the rule.

5 year old children are supposed to run and play and laugh with the squeal only 5 year olds can do...

Over the 6 weeks I was at Ti Kay little C didn't appear to get much better. She would just stare at the caregivers with an empty look. She smiled, sometimes, usually at Jeremy cause he just seemed to have a way with her.
She threw up her medication almost every morning, her weight seemed to either stay the same or decrease in spite of all the extra chicken or hot dogs we bought her..

to hold her little fragile, emaciated body everyday, trying to coax smiles and words out of her (her vocabulary was severely lacking) caused me to try to find that place within me, (within all of us I am sure) that lets you love and care for people but that doesn't destroy you at your core...

After I left Haiti, little C did a big turn around.
She began to gain weight, she began to talk, she began to smile, to play... she became a 5 year old girl.

And soon she was well enough to go home....

The fact that this was her 2nd hospitalization was not lost on Megan and a few weeks ago she sent me an email asking me to look for funding to send little C and her sister (her caregiver while in hospital) to school.

Maybe in doing so they will have access to things like a meal a day or other services sometimes provided that will help keep her out of hospital for a third time... hopefully a positive outcome to a story that had the potential to be so different...

I have told Megan that I will fund school for the girls for this coming year. If you would like to help out let me know!

home..number 5!

I have noticed that as my trips to Haiti have increased in number my blog posts while there have decreased in number.. There are many reasons for that I think..

Aside from what I spoke about in my last post, not having the right to tell another story, I have come to see that my time there is MY own lived experience. It's not one easily recounted or shared.. I guess it's why I find myself seeking seclusion when I come home.
There are few that can understand what it means to be where I was, to see what I saw and to experience the return to "normal" life once home.
I am grateful for those of you who have opened yourself up to the trying... those who have been there for me as sounding boards and willful ears.. and I am sorry that yet again I find myself in that "place" where most of this doesn't make sense..

I'm not sure how life can keep going on in such a manner when the balance continues to be so off and although the little bits count, they never seem to add up to a whole for so many...

As it always does, life goes on, all be it a little skewed for me.. for the time being.

A smart man said..

Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each one of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them. I won't be gone for long... Peace out Lise

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

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....

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