peanut butter anyone?

Mamba Mamba Mamba! Tuesday was our first day to run the “Mamba” clinic solo without Bobi (she just moved back to the states with her husband to have their baby). Chelsea and I headed down that morning, still feeling like we were ran over by a semi truck thanks to the stomach bug from the day before (Jess was unfortunately still down for the count). Elsie (the RN from the clinic) and Sarah (a missionary who lives down the road) came to help- Praise the Lord. We had no idea how busy the day was going to be. We saw over 45 kids, many of them gained A LOT of weight this week and are already beginning to look so healthy after only 2-3 weeks of being in the program. A few of the severely malnourished kids came in sick with diarrhea and respiratory infections, so Elsie sent them to see a team of American doctors who are in for the week.

Okay, let me give a spark notes of the “Mamba” program that happens every Tuesday. Bobi (who just moved back to the states to have her baby) has been running the “Mamba” program for the past 2 years, so needless to say, she spent the last three weeks training Chelsea, Jess, and me on everything and anything Mamba. This program is designed by Meds and Food for Kids, who specially designed a formula called “Medika Mamba” that means peanut butter medicine in Creole. It’s produced in a factory here in Haiti and is packaged in .5 or 1 kilo bright green re-sealable plastic bags (kind of like what trail mix is packaged in). This formula is made of peanut butter and packed full of all the essential vitamins, proteins, fats, and oils that kids (ages 6 months- 5 years) need for proper growth and development. It tastes like the inside of a peanut butter cup, except a bit grittier in texture.

Every Tuesday, kids come to the clinic from Montrouis or surrounding towns. They have either heard about the program by word of mouth or been referred by the nurses at the medical clinic. We “screen” each child to see if he or she qualifies to be in the program by finding their weight, height, MUAC (middle upper arm circumference) and then plugging all those numbers into a chart that determines their nutritional status. If the child qualifies as severely or moderately malnourished, then we start the child on the Mamba immediately. The child comes back every Tuesday to be re-weighed and we do a quick interview with the caretaker to see the child’s response to the Mamba (if the child has had diarrhea or vomiting etc). The child continues to come into the clinic every week until they reach their goal weight; this normally takes 8-10 weeks. Jess and Chels have mastered the interviewing, while I take care of getting the kids weekly weights and snapping a photo for our files. Then at the end of the day, we take all the files and new pictures and update each kids file with their current weight and picture. It’s incredible to see the change in just a few short weeks.

However, we have to be very stern with the mothers/caretakers if the child isn’t gaining the proper amount of weight each week. It’s often hard for the moms to understand that they can’t (for example) leave their 9-year-old daughter in charge of feeding the Mamba to their malnourished child while the mom goes to the market all day. The child has to be fed the Mamba in certain dosages at certain times. It’s a big commitment to be in this program, and if the moms don’t take it seriously, then the child is discharged. We are all learning how to make that call and when to give leeway. And even though the idea of discharging a sick child (because of the mother’s irresponsibility) seems harsh, Bobi explained that we can’t waste the Mamba on families who won’t take on the challenge when there are MANY other families/mothers that will use the Mamba in the proper way to help their kids gain the weight!

Okay- that was longer than spark notes. But that’s what we do, well, starting to get the hang of doing!

Everybody please keep on praying! Pray for Neslie, the burn on his arm is healing so well (an American doctor saw it and was VERY pleased with the progress). Also, shoot up a prayer that Jess and I would be able to find encouragement in the little things here at Canaan. The stomach bug definitely kicked our “routine” out the window and I find myself tempted to fall into a funk of some sort. So anyways, just pray that our eyes will continue to be open to the little joys of Canaan and how we can best serve while we’re here. Love you all much.

-Morg

p.s.- Searcy, Arkansas Team- we miss you guys already and are praying that you will have QUICK recovery from the stomach bug. Jen, enjoy that pedicure for all of us :). Ms. Kelly- thank you for the yoga mats and skirts- we have already washed and worn them! And the chocolate cookies were delicious!!! Thanks for leaving us all y’alls goodies, you have no idea how much you all encouraged us during your time at Canaan. Love you guys. We just might need to make our first Searcy road trip.

The inevitable bump in the road

All is well here at Canaan, finally! Unfortunately some kind of throw up/stomach bug spread among about 15 people here. It started sunday and slowly began to take out person after person, morgan and chelsea got it on monday and just when I thought I had escaped, I came down with it yesterday. Of course the only people that get sick are the people not from Haiti, the weaklings. Haitians have the most rockin immune systems. Luckily it only lasted about 12 hours and we are back on our feet today. The poor group from arkansas left here with some still feeling pretty miserable, we hope you all survived the trek home! One thing is true, being sick at home with a mom is so much more comforting than being sick while you are hot and sweaty and getting eaten up by bugs. I guess it made it a little better that we had been planning on being sick at one point or another, it was just bound to happen. Morgan and Chelsea were wonderful replacement moms though and went out of there way to be sure I had what I needed.

Before all of the sickness, we had a lovely weekend. Saturday we spent the day organizing the pharmacy. It was entertaining the things that we found in that place, including living things with tails, and actually very satisfying to clean and sort all the clutter. I feel like much of what we fill our time with when we are not in the clinic are odd jobs like this...cleaning out storage buildings, taking a kitchen inventory, filing folders, etc. I think once we began to realize that though these things seem unimportant and silly at times, it is what they need. And it is things that will help them function better. And that is why we are here, to be some kind of blessing and hopefully bring relief to them in any way possible. Having the opportunity to help the people at Canaan, like Sister Gladys and Pastor Henry, who spend there lives pouring out to others is an absolute joy. SG and PH are the two founders of Canaan, they are incredible people and it is such a treat to even be in their presence. They just both exude love for the Lord and have an aroma about them as if they know God in a way I can't imagine. Such great faith, so much prayer, living through countless struggles and victories, this has sculpted them into the wise yet so very humble servants of the Lord that they are today. I kind of wish I could just follow them around all day and hear what is going to come out of their mouths next. The first thing that I heard Sister Gladys say when she arrived was "The Lord told me once to start using the corners of my eyes, both physically and spiritually." And this was just a side note to one of her stories of God's faithfulness.

Saturday night was one of those memories that I will never forget. We have been having trouble with our toilet, you see, it does not seem to want to flush...ever. So Morg and I decided that we were going to try and fix it, bad idea. Here we come marching in the bathroom, tweedledee and tweedledum, and attempt to plunge our sad little toilet. In the midst of trying to put together every bit of plunging wisdom from our dads, the power went out because around 10 o'clock every night the generator shuts off. So it's pitched black, we are doubled over in laughter, totally disgusted with our hygiene, and in an effort to escape the madness we ran outside in the pouring rain. We might not have been successful in our toilet maintenance, but we did have ourselves one hilarious night and a ton of fun goofing off in the rain..with head lamps. If you could have only seen us.

On monday, while morgan and chels were sick, I headed down to the clinic to see some patients with a couple ladies from the arkansas group. While I was there I think I finally began to realize the point of helping sick people in Haiti, as simple as that may sound I have been thinking a lot about it. In this part of the world, good health care is not just around every corner. There isn't a doctor right up the road, and if there is it is hard to get there because you have to catch a tap tap, which requires money. Here at Canaan there are no doctors, there are about 4 amazing nurses that work 5 long days a week seeing patient after patient. Every week there are a handful of cases that they know are just too complicated to take on so they get sent to a hospital. At times the whole concept of health care here is really hard to wrap my mind around. Why does it have to be like this? Are we even doing anything here? Does prescribing medicines and bandaging wounds and getting vital signs do anything? My conclusion? Yes. It has to be yes. One lady came in that was having sharp pains in her ribs and had trouble breathing. After we got done talking with her, her eyes swelled up with tears and she said goodbye as if she was anticipating her death around the corner. We told her that she wasn't going to die, she was going to be ok. We were going to figure out what was wrong with her and she was going to get better. Just having someone tell her that changed her whole attitude, she was beaming ear to ear as if she had just been cured of whatever sickness she did have. And that is why we have to do what we are doing. Offering people hope and showing them that someone on this earth cares makes it all worth it. We just have to pray that they will see there is a hope greater than what we can offer, and eternal everlasting hope in christ that will give them a reason to live day in and day out.

We had a great mamba day yesterday, I'll let morgan fill you all in on that, I didn't make it. Craving some sonic ice today, make that any ice. Shall we try fedex-ing a cooler of ice to Montrois? Oui!

Aure voir!