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.