So, where was I when I so rudely interrupted myself with that outburst of photography?
Wait, it's coming back to me...
Roosters.
Church bells.
Daybreak.
That's it. It's Saturday and the last clinic day.
One thing to mention about Friday night that I left out of the last post was that as Greg and I arrived back at the Barracks we found a local amphibian hanging out - quite literally - outside the front door. It was kind of big, perhaps 4 inches long. Not sure if it's a frog or a toad, but I'm leaning towards toad because its skin isn't slimy and its not near water, two froggish traits. Either way, it's an amphibian that ribbits in Creole. It posed patiently for us before we headed in for the evening.
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| Kermit the Toad |
It's the last clinic day and the rush is on. There are a host of people outside waiting to be seen and they are less patient today than previous days. This is because they know it's our last day and they are desperate to get the basic medical care we are providing.
We spent less time on triage today and more time on crowd control. It seemed that about every 45 minutes or so there would be a spontaneous rush for the waiting room. If it weren't for Diana's choke point, the waiting room would have been flooded with people.
There were more kids today. Many, many more kids, because it's Saturday and they are out of school. This added significantly to the overall ruckus. Rebecca, Diana and Liz worked wonders keeping them occupied with games.
The kids also loved having their pictures taken and then seeing them immediately on the camera's preview screen. They would laugh and squeal with delight at the sight of themselves and their friends. As Greg noted, for many of them the digital camera is their only mirror.
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| Say "Fromage!" |
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| Rebecca's valiant - but futile - attempt to quiet the squeals |
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| Some of my new friends |
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| Derek and Diana chatting with some Scouts |
Over the past three days, the locals Father Yves hired as translators were doing a good job for us. Today, they really brought their A game. They had learned our system and worked it without needing instructions or prompting. There were also more of them than before and we were initially at a loss with what to do with them, but again they stepped up and sorted themselves out, distributing themselves effectively within the established system. One guy, whose name I never did learn, did traffic control in the waiting room. He did a magnificent job running the room like a well-oiled machine. The extra help in triage moved things smoothly there, as well, and was especially helpful in quelling the spontaneous rushes. They really earned their pay. God bless 'em.
One lady came in on a canvas stretcher, they type you see being used on the battlefield. She went straight back to the ICU and was placed on a bed. She wasn't at all well. Her blood pressure was 60 with a pulse of 120. She was so dehydrated that she wasn't sweating. We started two IVs and buffed her up with 1.5 liters of Ringer's. She wound up being able to walk home at the end of the day, with her family carrying the now-empty stretcher behind her.
By the time we were done we had moved twice as many people through as any day before. It was an incredible amount of work and is now mostly a blur. I'm really not certain how the physicians did it.
Once we packed up we grabbed dinner (with the now-uniform Prestige beer). Afterwards, we had our final debrief. We all had a lot to process emotionally. Rebecca spoke first and really summed it up for all of us. She was moved to tears by the exceptional need we saw, the aid we provided being accepted with such deep and genuine gratitude, and by the happiness of the kids. I added that I was impressed with the quiet dignity of the older people - as Sarah pointed out, it's all they have - and the respect they showed for us by coming in their best clothes (go back to the picture from the first day inside the church and look at the number of hats being worn). We all agreed that it was an amazing experience and we have a lot to sort through in our heads and in our hearts.
Tomorrow is Sunday. Father Yves will be the guest celebrant for Mass at Ste. Jeanne. He invited us all to be guests of the congregation and said that the service would be bilingual. Of course, he said those languages would be Spanish and Latin.
Tomorrow is also national election day in Haiti. They are electing a new President. This radically changes the plans we had for traveling back to PAP in time for the Monday morning flights back to the US that many of the team have. I'll get into that in my next post.
