Caribbean Vacation

“Caribbean Vacation” might not be the words you would use to describe our last 6 days, but I’m going to use them anyway. We left last Friday to go to Mole Saint Nicholas, Haiti. The Costello family has started a new campus there for NWHCM. It is a beautiful, sleepy little ocean front town on the very west end of northern Haiti. It has what is most likely the most beautiful public beach in Haiti (one of the cruise lines now owns part of Haiti east of here and has built up its own private beach).


I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve mentioned before that I like roller coasters. Well, we left Friday morning on a six hour old wooden roller coaster with no safety bars, belts, or straps, with 8 others and our luggage. Also known as a Haitian tap tap (the back of an S10 pick-up truck). I know some of you reading this have been on longer, rougher tap tap rides, but it was my first of its kind, and it’s my blog. The “road” is horrendous. Ruts as deep as the truck bed, the crew stopping at some that still had water in them to scoop it out and cool the breaks and fill the radiator. We stopped at Billy Joe Jim Bob’s Garage and Coffin Designs to fill a tire using a bicycle pump so that we could make it to the real repair shop/road side restaurant, where they melted part of an old tire on to our leaking tire (It is a “garage” because it had an air compressor). One of our crew didn’t bother to mention his 100+ degree temperature which only rose in the 100+ degree temperature since he didn’t bother to drink water either. Thought we had our first case of heat stroke. After 6 days we took the return ride, which was a little more exciting after a couple days of rain storms to fill the ruts and make getting stuck a real possibility. I threatened to get out our snorkeling gear, but Lori wouldn’t let me.

That brings up the “Caribbean Vacation” part. We had nothing scheduled Saturday, and managed 2 other times during the week to get in the water. The snorkeling wasn’t great, some fish and huge conch shells. The water and the down time were fantastic. We also took Cinnamon swimming. Not sure still if she liked it or not. I know she didn’t like it when daddy accidentally dropped her down-side up in the water and she got a snoot full of salt water. You know that look a child can give you that screams “you can’t be that stupid”? Dogs have it too.

This trip was first and foremost to help with a medical clinic being offered to the people of “The Mole” by some very good PA students and instructors, which is why I would do it again today, even if it meant getting back on the roller coaster. The clinics were very successful and well attended. The students got great experience, but more importantly got great exposure to the human interactions necessary to be good practitioners. They were very good about sharing their motivations for coming to Haiti, both at the clinics and VBSs. You can never have enough, nor do enough at these things, so you do what you can and pray that God takes care of the rest.

Sorry, I don't have a good internet connection right now, I'll add pictures later.

Latest from Haiti

Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged. Lori and I took a quick trip to the states. We had a meeting with the Surgery Committee from NWHCM in Atlanta last weekend and spent a couple days in Myrtle Beach with friends relaxing. We were not planning on going to the meeting because we didn’t want to spend the money, but we eventually decided it was necessary. Turned out we really needed a break too. Of course it turned out travel wise to be one of the longest transits. We were supposed to be in Atlanta by 9:00PM but got to our hotel around 3:00AM Saturday and had the meeting all day Saturday starting at 8:00 (we didn’t get there until 9:00). Coming back into Haiti we were supposed to be in Port au Prince Friday by 10:00 AM local. After waiting in the Miami airport until 3:00PM we rebooked for the Saturday 6:55 flight. Our original flight canceled an hour later and everybody started scrambling for flights, but we already had ours. In Port au Prince the next morning we waited 5 hours for someone from the mission to pick us up, but they didn’t know we were coming (we are buying a cell phone today that will work here in Haiti so we can call for help when we need). We finally ran into someone from the airport that helps the mission a lot, and he got us booked on Tortuga Air to Port au Paix and someone there got us to the mission after calling one of the Haitians in charge of the mission (we were the only Americans there until Sunday, and nobody knew we were coming in).

Other than the travel problems the trip was very relaxing and much needed. Sorry we couldn’t visit everyone, just wasn’t time. We will be out November 20(ish) for at least 6 weeks and we will try to get around to see everyone.

Since we have been back we have grown by one family member. Duke is a black lab who lives here. I have said several times down here about Courtney that the cat Peter IS HERS, even though she denies her (yes, Peter is a girl), because she houses and feeds her. I am declaring here and now that Duke is not ours even though he has decided to sleep in our apartment while nobody else is here. There was a thunderstorm the first night we were back and big Duke is a chicken. He pushed our door open, we threw him out, he pushed our door open again, and I caved. He slept in our shower and ate Cinnamon’s food. He has slept there every night since too. But HE IS NOT OURS!!!!!

I’ve also had my first driving experience here. No one hurt or killed. No damage to the truck. We were flagged down after leaving by one of the mission employees. He chased us down on a motorcycle to tell us there was no brake fluid in the truck. We misunderstood him to say there was no oil. We checked the oil while he went back to the mission to get, we thought oil. There was very little oil in the truck. When he came back with brake fluid we had a laugh, filled the brake fluid, bought oil from a road side vender, and went about our tasks with no incidents. Lori says I did fine driving, but thought I might have been going too fast at times. Judging from the number of people that passed me, I think she is wrong about that!

So I have learned to drive a forklift here, and driven on the “roads” without any problems. Starting to feel at home!!!