2 nursing students, 3 med students, and 1 nurse practitioner...

Tuesday we were late to both lunch and dinner. This never happens. But this Tuesday was a different story. Not only was it Mamba day, but two med students and a nurse practitioner are in for the week from the states, which meant that we set up the clinic outside under a tent. So the day began…. We saw over 40 Mamba patients, with many of them gaining a whole kilo in one week. It was really encouraging to see such an improvement in just a few weeks. Jessica and I interviewed the moms and their kids, while Chelsea did some serious crowd control and snapped the weekly photo of the kids.
We saw all the kids, gave out over 80 kilos of Mamba, and then began to help in the clinic. As soon as we walked into the clinic (a cement building with steel bars over the screened windows and no electricity), we found the med students taking care of a five-year-old little girl who was TEXTBOOK for congestive heart failure. For any Ida V. Nursing School people reading this- she literally looked like the cartoon character that we learned last semester in adult 1. She sat in tripod position, she had ascites in her abdomen, her chest was contracting, her legs were very edematous, her arms were stick thin, and her heart was beating so fast it was difficult to get a pulse. Then we looked over and Elsie was putting in a catheter for a urine sample in a different little girl whose entire body was unexplainably puffy. I THEN looked over to see Chelsea interviewing a man, who looked to be about 75 years old, but claimed to be 50 as he explained how he fell out of a tree last week and broke 2-4 ribs. Goodness…

Plan of action? No idea. Then the nurse practitioner, Stephanie, walked by and said, “Calculate that drip rate!” Drip rate? What drip rate!?! We looked behind the curtain that she had come from and found a very malnourished and dehydrated 6-month-old little boy who Stephanie had just started an IV on. So we began calculating the rate for the IV fluids to drip into this tiny little boy on the wrapper of sterile gauze sponge. Jess was able to figure out the drip rate as we also gave an antibiotic through his little IV… We continued to monitor the boy and his fever started to decrease, it was so exciting to see this little one FINALLY break his fever (he has been in the Mamba program for the last 2 weeks and has had a high fever on both visits). Praise Him!

I’m now sitting at a table, waiting for dinner, with one of the med students and Stephanie, the nurse practitioner. We’re talking about the power of prayer versus the use of medicine. Quite the topic for pre-dinner conversation. I’m just listening, trying to soak it all in…. everyone around has so much experience- I wish I knew a fraction of what they knew or had see a little of what they’ve seen. But, one thing I do know is that I (more often than not) rely solely on the little knowledge that I have when we are down at the clinic with patients. I immediately turn to the bit of knowledge I’ve gained through nursing school, or I ask Elsie a question (RN at the clinic who lives here at Canaan), or I look to the med students/Stephanie for the answer. And while I know that this is so valid and I know that I am supposed to use that knowledge that the Lord’s allowed me to learn, I never think to pray for the patient when I’m down in the clinic with them. It’s often not until I blog about our day or I write in my journal that I think to pray for the people Jess and I saw. Gosh, I wish prayer was the first thing I thought to do. I’m not sure why it’s not. I haven’t thought about this long enough to write it in an eloquent way. I’m not sure what to write now. I want Christ to constantly be on my mind as I interact with patients alongside the med students. Please pray that the Lord would increase my faith. Thank you for all your encouragement and prayers. We feel them, big time.
Welp, that’s all I’ve got for now… off to dinner to eat some pumpkin soup…

Missin you guys.

-Morg

Cannot believe that it is week 4 already. Time is flying. We decided a blog post was needed to re-cap our top most haitian/adventurous moments that we have experienced thus far. We have narrowed down and in no particular order.

1. St. Marc. One thing that we have said is a must-do before we leave haiti is to ride a tap tap, and saturday we had our chance. Tap taps are Haitians main mode of transportation, they are usually colorfully painted trucks with a built in wooden roof over the bed of the truck and two little benches on either side underneath. We needed to ride into town to get groceries for cookie ingredients so we talked two of the oldest Canaan girls, Carleen and Fabien, to come along and be our tour guides/ translators/ body guards. After flagging a tap tap down, Chelsea and Carleen snagged a seat in the front and Morgan, myself and Fabien hopped in the back with about 12 others already in there. Within the first 15 minutes, we had about 22 people somehow crammed in this little truck, including the three hanging off the roof. Me and Morgan were trying to play it cool and act like we were regulars, but every time we made eye contact we would bust out laughing. So immature. To get off you just tap tap, they stop, you pay your goudes and go on your merry way. Seems easy enough but when I tried to do it they said I tapped too hard and gave them a headache, totally butchered my chance to prove my Haitian-ness. When we got to Saint Marc, Carleen and Fabien led the way to the grocery and then to Epidore's for lunch (Haiti's version of Mcdonalds). We had our first cheeseburger since we have been here AND fries AND coke. It was heavenly! Such a treat to get away for a few hours and spend some time with the girls.

2. Soccer game. All of the churches in the surrounding towns and villages are pretty dedicated to playing soccer and basketball against one another. They have been competing in a big tournament these past few weeks and two weekends ago was the soccer championship. The Canaan kids love to play soccer so they were all about loading up in the truck to go watch. When we got there, the scene that we came across was unforgettable. We walked through a random path in the middle of a village, ending at a soccer field completely surrounded by banana trees, a cow tied up by one of the goals, and about a hundred supportive fans waiting for the game to start. The two teams, black team and white team, were all suited up in their gear warming up in the middle of the field. The atmosphere seemed harmless, everyone was munchin on pop tarts, I was teaching the girls high school cheers to support the guys, and Morgan was hangin with the Arkansas crew. Somehow we missed the memo that there was tension between the two teams, and it wasn't until about half way through the game when the canaan kids simultaneously stood up to leave that we got the hint. Before we knew it, two large groups of men standing on the side line had formed and they were yelling at one another- they seemed angry, to say the least. That was our cue. We slung on our backpacks, hightailed it back into the cattle truck, and drove away before it got too rowdy. We are still not too sure what happened or why but it was definitely not your average church league soccer game.

Alright I'll let those 2 be the start to our list, we hope that this will paint a better picture of what we are experiencing here. Today Nesly came in for the first time in e few days and we were so encouraged with what we saw! His arm is healing so well, we barely even had to bandage it. He will most likely have pretty bad scaring, but that is the trade off I guess for his situation. We will try and post pictures sometime soon of how he has progressed!

We have a big week ahead of us. We will be doing a 2 day seminar with the nurses dealing with things like professionalism, team building and also to encourage them for all their hard work. Please be praying for us and that they would be able to walk away reminded of their purpose and feeling very valued. We also are starting to do bible studies this week with the Canaan kids. Chelsea, Morgan and myself all have separate groups of different ages and will be meeting with them every morning for a little devo time. Pray for wisdom in how we should lead our groups and that the kids would be willing to participate. Also pray for our patience, it is going to be hard to get these little rascals to sit down in the middle of lazy summer days!

About to start another mamba day! Missing our people. We think about you all the time!

Jess