Share Your Experiences - Team 1 & 2

Greetings ,

I'm anxiously awaiting other posts. Please share your thoughts and experiences while there still fresh and your emotions ( frankly ) "raw".

This blog will gain momentum as you contribute , I'm sure of it.

Since you've probably had a ride on Breezy Sea , I'm posting a few pics (UN , Brooklyn Bridge , Chesepeake Delaware , Captain Colpitts & friends) of the trip from Saint John, NB to Haiti , 22/11/09 - 29/12/09

I look forward to meeting you all and planning more trips and more teams.

Cheers for Haiti !

Charles McNair
(506) 391-5392

Back Home!

Good morning!! Ravi, Colm and myself just finally got home--I will post some of my experiences and pics within the next few days. It was the most fulfilling week of my 25 year nursing career--laughs, cries and grieving--we all survived nd are going back!!
Cathy

The People of Haiti

Haiti 2010, The People of Haiti

This is a land of children; they can be seen and heard wherever you are. Curiosity and smiles are omnipresent, and in the smaller areas hordes of children will run after yu calling out "blancs, blancs.." They love to tell stories, ask questions, and are natural models in front of the camera.

We spent a little while in an orphanage in Anse a Galets run by by the Wesleyan church, and the children seemed genuinely happy and full of life, well cared for and very friendly. Unfortunately, there were a few who lost both parents in Port au Prince, and they had that lost look, that thousand mile stare.

The Haitians are very polite; it is important to greet someone properly before asking any other questions - "bon jour" before lunch. and 'bon soir' any time after noon. A friendly greeting is often all it takes to start a conversation. Most educated Haitians speak French, as that is the language of the schools. If you speak French, many doors are opened into the lives of these people. Having a few words of Creole opens those dorrs a little further...time to see if Rosetta Stne has Creole lessons!

The men are probably the physically strongest people any of us have seen. When you see a line of relatively small men unload a large truck, emtying it of 50 pound rice bags in a few minutes by tossing a bag to the next man every few seconds, it's pretty hard not to be impressed. Most of the men we saw in the operating room had physiques that North Americam men might spend thousands at the gym and with personal trainers to achieve, only to fail miserably!

Heading Home

Haiti 2010, Almost home!

Our trip was capped off with another memorable experience for me anyway. We did manage to get out of Haiti on an MFI flight to Fort Pierce, and thence on to Miami. The trip wasn't a typical 21st century commercial flight, though. We flew on a 1943 DC3 twin prop aircraft over water for 5 hours with a refueling stop in Exuma in the Bahamas. This aircraft had flown in WW2 and taken part in the Berlin Airlift! Incredible! The cockpit was open for us to visit and photograph, and the crew came back to serve us and chat. Like the MAF pilots we had met in Haiti, these pilots not only volunteer their time, but have paid for their training and often pay more for the privilege of flying for MFI.

In Florida, it was an old pilot who volunteered his time to drive our ragged crew to Miami, a 3 hour drive for us and a 6 hour journey for him! We have met some incredible people on this journey.

Tomorrow we fly to Orlando, the Newark, then home to Moncton, where we'll no doubt have to radidly adapt to the cold and shovel out the car, before driving ourselves the 2 hours home. Patti and Laura leave us here and head back to Ontario. with the rest of us going our seperate ways when we get to Moncton.

Out with a Bang - Aftershock

Haiti 2010, Last Day?

Our final day in Haiti started with a bang, literally. We were all woken at 1:30 am with a very loud rumbling and with the ground doing a little dance under our backs. Those who had slept inside shot outside almost as quickly as the tremor had started, and after calming ourselves down we drifted back to sleep for another few hours.

After sharing our experiences over breakfast and saying goodbyes to our hosts and the folks who were staying in Haiti, we loaded uo in the back of the truck for another dusty, bumpy, noisy and smelly ride back to the airport. The people of Port au Prince were going about their lives, cleaning, rebuilding and selling. Maybe almost normal for Haiti.

Another typical Haitian adventure waited for us at the airport. We had been dropped at the international terminal, but should have been dropped at the other end of the main runway in a smaller terminal. The base terminal used by MFI had been switched 3 times in 3 days, and nobody knew where we were supposed to be until an official from MFI luckily drove up from the other terminal and collected our bags - but no room for us. We amused some of the locals by crawling through a hole in the fence to avoid backtracking another half mile to get out of the main airport. Then it was a very hot half mile or so dodging Humvees, motorcycles, UN vehicles, and the ubiquitous Haitian tap-tap buses.

Now we are sans passports, and waiting to see if our names are called for the MFI flight to Fort Pierce, with a refueling stop in the Bahamas. We'll either be on a 6 seater or a 29 seater - whichever one it is we hope it has 2 engines - we'll be too far from land to glide in!

Haiti 2010, Last day on La Gonave

This is a quick post. We are leaving for POP in a few minutes. There was too much work for us to finish before the boat left, so are booked on the single engine airplane again.

We started our day with C-section before 8 am, (a small tremor of 4.5 strength woke some of us up before the section). Then had a quick bite and resumed our list. More stuff is coming in as we plan to leave...

Some new folks coming in today, but no one sems to know if a surgeon is with them. It may be a while before another surgeon returns here - Dr. Ferdinand will need to do his thing and handle any sections that come in. These are quite amazing people, actually.

I'll drop a line again tonight if I get a chance.

Colm

Teaching at La Gonave

Haiti 2010 - La Gonave surgery, Day 2

Today we did 3 more cases that had been waiting for us, and another unexpected... Ravi did a great a job with the C-section we were anticipating all night - a beautiful baby boy of 2 kg and his lovely sister of 1.7 kg came into the world. They are doing well enough, but would be definite ICU babies back home.

Diane. one of the folks running the guest house here, is also a Physician Assistant. She came into the OR today and learned about doing spinals; she indicated a need for teaching here so we figured we'd put it into practice today!

Miss Vero, the very competent Haitian RN who performs most of the anaesthesia for emergency cases when visiting docs aren't here, is also very keen to learn. We went over some airway stuff and pharmacology - she is a quick learner, and as keen a learner as I've ever seen.

Tomorrow we have a few more cases, and the boat off the island back to 'mainland' Haiti has been delayed a few hours to let us finish our cases. We are slowly winding down with mixed emotions.; though the fatigue is rapidly catching up to us, we almost don't want to leave. I think we could work every day here doing surgery.

Children of Anse-à-Galets

Children of Anse-à-Galets, La Gonave:

Twins by C-section!

Ravi and Dr. Ferdinand: delivering twins by C-section: