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

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!

part of the family...

It finally clicked. The kids at Canaan finally realized that we aren’t a part of the teams that come and go every week. It’s been neat to see this happen. I can’t describe how cool it was to walk into the “cafeteria” and have 3-year-old, bow-legged, Winchell jump up on my lap without me having to first invite him. How exciting it was to walk by clusters of kids and hear them yell out “Mergan!” and “JesEEca!” before we even tried to get their attention (they have trouble with the “o-r” combination, thus I am Mergan). This transition has made Canaan begin to feel like home. Jess and I have just accepted the fact that we’re sweaty all the time, the Haitian women will always be better at washing clothes no matter how hard we try, and that our fans will die in the middle of the night regardless of how long we charge our batteries. The community here feels similar to home, except with 60 little brothers and sisters. The kids laugh with us, laugh at us, and even have moments when they storm off after losing a round of the “hand game”.

We’ve settled into somewhat of a routine this week. We’ve spent a lot of time learning how to update the files in the computer for the malnutrition clinic. It’s tedious work and took a long time (especially the first time doing it), but we know how rewarding it will be to see the kids in the program begin to gain weight. We’ve been going to the medical clinic every morning to see Neslie (the 4 yr old burn patient) and assess his arm. We first peel the dead skin off (debride it), rinse it in normal saline, put on antibiotic cream, and then put on a new clean dressing. He doesn’t even make a sound, but instead watches every single thing we do. His temperature has gone down every day (praise the LORD) and we started him on oral antibiotics instead of IV. Our goal is to continue to keep the wound clean and free of infection until an American doctor comes on Monday. Please pray for Neslie this weekend. Pray that the skin on his arm would continue to grow and heal and that the doctor will know how to best treat Neslie’s arm next week. Neslie is such a cool kid- beyond brave. It’s gonna be a long healing process, but I get so excited when I think about him being able to be a normal little boy again- without gauze and bulky bandages on his arm.

It’s been a really good couple of days. We’ve received a lot of encouragement from a group of girls and their moms from a church in Arkansas. We have worshipped together, worked in the medical clinic together, and even done yoga together on the roof of a building (Ms. Kelli, one of the moms, is a yoga instructor back in AR). They have been a very sweet group, and made me feel SO at home on my 21st birthday. The combination of banana birthday cake, green icing, 60 kids singing to me at breakfast, a package from my family (that mom sneakily hid in my duffle bag- thanks mama ☺), and many sweet emails from friends made for the best 21st birthday ever. Thank you Jessica and Chelsea for making my birthday an absolute blast. Thank you to all you guys back in the states- I really felt so celebrated. What a huge blessing June 10th was!

Okay, I think that’s the spark notes of this week. It’s movie night (we’re watching Yours, Mine, and Ours?) and I’ve gotta turn off this computer because the kids keep nudging me because I’m not paying attention!

-Morg

One week mark

Typing with sore knuckles right now, me and morgan have been out by the well learning how to wash clothes with some of the older canaan girls. Not a task for the faint hearted that is for sure. This past weekend was more than refreshing. It was the perfect couple of days to ease us into the weeks that lie ahead. Saturday we deep cleaned our humble abode followed by a little yoga by our instructor in training, chlesea. She didn't have to ask us twice for us to be her suspects, though yoga in Haiti might as well be called hot yoga! On sunday we got to spend the day on the beach. Most of the time when teams come to stay at Canaan they will spend their last day at the beach, so we gladly accepted the offer to join. It was a great chance to just relax as well as a wonderful reminder of the beauty that IS found in Haiti. God's presence is here. You just have to open up your eyes a little bit, listen to the laughter, listen to the singing, look past the rocky ground and up at the mountains and it is there you see Him.

We hit it full force on monday in the health clinic. The majority of our day was spent taking care of a 4 year old boy, named Nesly, who had third degree burns covering his arm. It apparently happened two days before in a gasoline accident. Because they waited so late to bring him, he was pretty dehydrated and we think they had put toothpaste of all things on the burn. I guess they thought that would help? We got an IV going to get some fluids back in him and began to debride his wound. This little one was such a trooper, he barely even winced and was totally occupied with watching us work. After we got him all bandaged up, elsie decided that the wisest thing to do would be to take him into St. Marc hospital just to prevent any infection and get another opinion of how to best treat him. Luckily, everything the Dr. did at the hospital was what we had been doing. We sent Nesly and his grandmother home with instructions to return to canaan once a day to get a dressing change as well as some antibiotics. And thankfully they did return yesterday and today giving us great opportunity to continue checking up on him and watching to see how his arm is healing. Please be praying for Nesly and that his arm would not become infected and that new skin would begin to form. Also that he would not be in unbearable pain throughout his recovery.

Tuesday was a crazy day in the mamba clinic. This was kind of our crash course in how everything runs on a normal mamba day at Canaan. Bobbi, the lady who runs the clinic, is leaving next week to return home with her husband. She was so patient with us as she trained us and dealt with our million questions as we prepared to take the whole program on for the summer with the help of a few others. The patients that we found in in mountains at Fon Baptiste came to be admitted as well as all of the other patients currently in the program, making a total of 37 patients yesterday. We are so excited to begin to watch these little ones grow and come back to life as well as begin to form relationships with the mothers, encouraging them and supporting them as they take on this huge task.

One week down.

And guess what....it's morgan's birthday tomorrow! Gettin ready to celebrate haitian style baby.

LOVE YOU ALL!

-Jess