strangest birthday ever

Well, it didn't go exactly as I laid out earlier (admittedly the blog entry was written last night and was supposed to be a positive affirmation/manifestation for me to get well and have a night out for my bday). Yeahhh, well I feel better than yesterday, but alas was still making frequent runs to the bathroom today.

There was a point in the afternoon where I felt truly pitiful--lying in bed, with my intestines cramping, I moved in a weird position and ripped my shirt. Disgusted with my thrashing around, I went downstairs. The other midwife immediately noticed that I have a spot of ringworm on my arm (what!?) And in that instant, all of my "germaphobe" fears were validated....I generally try to just close my eyes when I see the cooks doing something I'd rather not think about or with clinic workers who have questionable hand-washing records despite all the nasty skin things and infections we see. But oh no....I will no longer feel crazy in my seemingly OCD handwashing. Indeed with rodents and skin diseases and the heat and moisture to breed anything on any surface, it only seems smart....When I got here the other midwife had staph infections on her leg and some upper respiratory virus and GI issues. No thank you....this can be avoided, people! (And No I am honestly not a germaphobe--ask anyone I travel in Peru with: I eat everything I see on the street--but compared to people here, who have literally never considered the concept of parasites, bacteria, viruses, etc, I feel like serious germo).

Anyway, beautiful Melinda slapped a clove of garlic on my arm over the ringwormed spot and covered it with a band aid. I don't doubt its efficacy, but I've subsequently reeked of garlic all day...though I'm growing quite fond of it at this point, and am thinking I'll carry it around on my arm like a patch all the time to ward off evil spirits and such, since apparently that causes much more illness here than "germs" :)

The best part of my day occurred shortly following the above incident. Here as well as in the DR, ladies wear incredibly tight pants and actually admire the "muffin top" look that is so disdained and avoided in the US. One of the apprentices came to sell some clothes she had bought in Port au Prince that day (a side job for her), which of course included some bling bling shirts and TIGHT ass pants. I had no intention of buying them, but was encouraged to try them on. Part physical exhaustion from sickness and not really eating for a few days, and part practical issue of the tininess of the pants, I had to stop several times in my pursuit of trying to get them on. We were all dying laughing. Toward the end, I was literally jumping them on. At last they came to a point where I could button them, and indeed the muffin top look was achieved. The girls loved it. They thought I looked fabulous.....they made me buy them...I don't know how it happened....I'm not proud, haha. I've decided I can write it off as a bday present to myself since we didn't get to go out to dinner, and I barely spend $ here anyway. And it was certainly worth the laughter. + Now I can "fit in" at the HUGE Carnival celebration this weekend (ha!).

And to finish it all off, right before midnight hit, I caught a baby. Good stuff! So to review--today I turned 26, continued to empty myself into a Haitian toilet, did prenatal exams, got ringworm, walked around with a clove of garlic band-aided to my arm, bought some $20 sexy pants that I can barely pull on, had a cup of tea, caught a baby, and now am going to bed!

Trying to get the damn pants on...seriously it took a good 5 minutes!

Melinda (Canadian Midwife) Ninotte (apprentice and Administrator) and Me in our fancy pants!

Happy birthday to me!

If you'd like to treat me to something for my birthday, please consider making a donation of whatever size to Mother Health International (the clinic where I'm volunteering). We've got rent made for March, but are still trying to pull together money to pay the staff (translators, cleaners, etc) for the month. For my birthday tonight, we are heading to Jacmel's one and only Mexican/Italian/Pizzeria! I cannot wait to see what even means! haha.

The other day I had an amazing day at the beach with Melinda (Canadian midwife) and Ninotte (Haitian administrator/midwife apprentice). The water is so warm and soft and clear. You can walk out a long ways and there aren't waves to knock you down, so you can just float. Mmmmm. We did some acrobatic playing around in the sand and met a group of Haitians in their 20s and sang songs with them. Later that night however, I got really sick--fever, chills, terrible headache, sore throat, and all over achiness. It lasted throughout the next day and I thought I might have malaria or something...thankfully I only had to spend one agonizing day in bed and another much-less agonizing day out of bed. It's hard to pin-point what exactly made me sick--the rats/mice that frequent our kitchen? The water? The intense sun? The mosquitoes? Emotional strain? Vo-dou??? It's certainly not out of the question here. One of the employees at the clinic recently had to be let go, and people had the genuine fear that she would ask a vodou priest to curse the clinic or certain people here.

Another source of bad juju could be Justin (kidding...maybe), who went back to the states on the 23rd. We had some issues that needed to be worked out independently, and so are parting ways for 3 months. He's going to focus on family time and meditation and I'm going to focus on midwifery, and we'll meet up in Guatemala in May.

In other news, I'm going insane with the neighbors, who not only continuously blast music, but repeat the same songs over and over again. Sometimes I'll naturally assume that I've been listening to the same song, until I realize that 20 minutes or more have passed, and they simply have the song on repeat. I don't think I can bare any more Sean Paul...please!

Me feeling proud of all the laundry washed by hand.

Visiting the amazing fresh water pools outside Jacmel.

2 weeks here

The full moon passed without any babies being born...we are all staring up at the sky with anticipation...all we need is a breeze and babies will start dropping like crazy.

My legs are persistently itchy and covered with bites.
The other day we got into one of the stored suitcases, which had some soap and vitamins etc, to find that a rat had taken up residency. The Rat had actually chewed through the back of the suitcase as well as through the zipper...thankfully we don't have nearly as much to bring back as we brought, as the suitcase is basically destroyed, along with some of the surprising items the Rat took for his meals--some probiotics and vitamins (as if we needed a more vital rat), plastic bags, etc... Justin pointed out that the manner in which it destroyed our stuff and then took giant poops all over everything was akin to how the ancient Anasazi pooped in the middle of a dwelling where they had just eaten the people, to effectively send an FU message to anyone who would return. He basically saw it as the rat saying "look here, blan* this is MY house!

* Blan means basically: "whitie" and we hear it about 50 x a day walking through the streets, mostly from children

fording a river by motorcycle....

Remember as a child playing Oregon Trail how fording a river by oxen was a fairly precarious option that often ended in the death of a few of your clan?

Today I had the most terrifying moto ride of my life. We were heading up to a waterfall in the mountains, across the river from Jacmel. As we approached the river with people bathing and washing clothes in it, I wondered, where is the bridge? Then we plunged into the water, up to our ankles on the foot rests (the water was seemingly inches from our bums, though probably more like a foot). We made it across and then bumped along the rocky dirt road with lots of potholes, blind turns, and piles of rubble. As the driver went around turns he blared the horn. Occasionally goats, pigs, donkeys, or women carrying various things on their heads would scoot out of the way. I'm not sure if it was scarier going up hill or down...I'm just glad Justin was squeezing me with his legs from behind (yes 3 adults weighing down the motorcycle).

When we arrived to the waterfalls, I was delighted to see the most gorgeous clear BLUE water I've ever seen. We swam in pools and jumped from rocks. We were all by ourselves, which was lovely, if not a little scary, as we were supposed to be with a "guide," who left us and told us to bring the rope back when we came back (used for climbing up a rock face). Thankfully we found our way back to the road to meet our moto-man again and head back the way we came, over and down the treacherous winding hills, through the beautiful Haitian countryside, and finally through the river...this time the driver took off his shoes. When we arrived back to our place in Jacmel, Carnival preparations were in full swing. It's the last Sunday before the big Carnival parade, and everyone is already trying out their costumes and practicing their musical instruments. It's even more of a mad house than usual...

What can I say? Another beautiful and interesting day in Haiti.

koman ou ye? byen byen

I like to imagine some of the things happening here going down in the American clinic setting... a goat walking into the clinic, for example. Or the parents forgetting their baby's name entirely at a postnatal visit. (Often the baby is named by a family member or member of the church, so I guess it's not too uncommon to not quite remember what the babe's given name is.)

One day I had to give a girl an IV because the hospital told her she had malaria, wrote her prescriptions for meds, and gave her some bags of fluids but told her she had to find someone to do the IV. She came to us because she'd had her baby with us a month ago, so she laid down and breast fed her baby outside in the shade, while I got her going on IV fluids....

Even stranger, we had a woman come in with baby who had infected breasts (yes the baby, not the mom). I should be able to stop there with the strangeness, but it continues with the cause of infection. Folk tradition dictates to squeeze the baby's breasts to ensure that the babe doesn't smell badly when he/she get older... The mom had been doing this every time she changed the baby and as a result, the baby's chest had swollen so much that it looked like the poor child had breast implants. They were hard and red and huge.

Another mom came in saying that her child hadn't gained a pound since it was born 6 months ago! She decided that the baby was allergic to her milk and so started feeding her tea and some small amounts of food... This child will now be living off of "medicated mamba" aka peanut butter enriched with vitamins and a whole bunch of other stuff to re-nourish her quickly.... I can't imagine anyone feeding peanut butter to a 6 month old baby in the US, let alone the background story..... BUT I suppose the US has it's own crazy myths, like that male circumsicion is beneficial or that babies need to cry a lot when they're first born, or that baby's benefit from artificial supplementation (formula feeding).

Other than the few oddities, I'm happy to report that we have had a baby for almost every day I've been here, and every single one was born very healthy, without any medical intervention (except a few who needed some stitches following). I am so pleased to be able to be witnessing life coming into the world in a non-violent, non-invasive, mamma-driven, beautiful way. Yay! And Justin has thoroughly enjoyed his part in the process, which is burying the placentas and planing things over them :)

for more photos, see:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2594174&id=14805993&l=7c5ae6230

1 week here

Sunday, we were awoken around 5:30am by what sounded like a street cleaner scraping the streets without a brush--only a large piece of metal--in reality it was probably someone dragging a bunch of rebar behind them. We lazily got up eventually and hit the street to try to find a church out of curiosity. We never found one, but enjoying wandering and seeing all the people dressed in their Sunday best and others selling breakfast foods like boiled eggs or hot chocolate in front of their homes. When I got home, I had to brush my teeth because I tasted so much dirt and dust in my mouth from all stuff being stirred up in the streets. Later we went out again because every Sunday is a big pre-party for Carnival, which is Feb 27th.

Yesterday for Valentines Day; I caught 2 babies: a boy and a girl. I like to think they'll one day be in loooooove. As for my valentine, Justin cut out little hearts and hung them in our room with the message: Happy Vday Hon. He said he wanted to buy me a box of chocolates, but all he could find was a $50 box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, probably intended for a UN or other aid worker...I can't imagine who here would buy it. So instead, we ate left over rice and beans and had a swig of our prized duty free Dominican rum.


A friend Justin found (one of many on the grounds)

Jacmel

So much has happened in 6 weeks—packing up and leaving Santa Fe, visiting Denver, Lawrence, Kansas City, Des Moines, Iowa City, Chicago, the vipassana meditation retreat outside Dallas, San Antonio, the Dominican Republic, and finally here….Jacmel, Haiti… In between there has been a couple near breakups, a lot of friend/family time, so much good food, blizzard conditions, Caribbean sun burns, 3 buses, 7 flights, and countless miles in my car and taxi/moto/colectivo rides.

We ventured out into Jacmel a couple times since we arrived on Monday. Today we had quite a time bumping into people and being hustled through the busy market-place to find Justin a pick-ax for working the garden. After we finally found and bought one, he proudly strutted through the streets with the pick-ax slung over his shoulder—dodging motos and piles of this or that, the guy carrying raw meat on his head, etc. While the streets of Jacmel are not as bad as I’d expected from what you hear on the news, it’s definitely representative of all my intense travel experiences in Mexico and Peru rolled into one, with the street markets being much busier and more aggressive, and generally more action. I will say however, that there are fewer stray dogs here than I’ve seen elsewhere. Yesterday we went to the beach, which was lovely, except kids kept asking us for money and we didn’t feel like we could abandon our stuff to get in the water, so we just looked out at the pristine water and the green hills in the distance.

The clinic is a little oasis amidst the chaos of the streets. Our bedroom faces the street and there’s basically never a moment of silence. People yelling to eachother in the streets, cars and motos honking, music from houses and store fronts, animals, etc. Inside the little clinic compound is a house with an outdoor kitchen, dining area and bathroom which is shared by us, the administrator, the other midwife and the various people working during the day—a cook, a cleaner, midwife apprentices, and translators. The shower is just a huge closed in tiled area with a spigot with cold water. You could literally walk a cow in there from the street to shower it if you so desired (not sure that’s been a desire however), so on nights when I’m not up at the clinic, Justin and I have adopted the custom of team showering .

The “dome” as it’s called, is the clinic structure on the hill above the house area. It’s generally way too hot to be inside, so we do prenatal and postnatal exams outside in a shaded area and go in only if we have to do a vaginal exam. During labor, the women mostly walk around outside. When they get too tired or feel ready to push, they find one of the rooms sectioned off by sheets inside the dome. It’s really a nice set-up. It’s of course very low-tech, which has been wonderful: paper charting (and very minimally), fetosope instead of electronic equipment (though dopplers are available if need be), and mostly herbal medicine (though again pharmaceutical stuff is available as well). I’ve caught 2 baby boys already and I’m on for tonight with another lady walking around in labor.

Justin is getting used to the pronunciation of his name in Haitian creole, something like Jeau-ste, while my name is pretty easy: Ra-shelle. We’ve been trying to learn the language, but the pronunciation is damn difficult. One thing I’ve mastered however, is how to say chocolate. They make this dynamite hot chocolate for breakfast detanzantan (“from time to time”) and I had to learn how to ask for it. It’s made with Haitian chocolate, cinnamon, grated coconut, and love, I can only imagine. Yum. The food is pretty basic, but quite good. We’ve been eating meat since we left the states, and lunch every day consists of chicken stewed with carrots and onions, rice and beans, and boiled plantains. For breakfast, it’s usually oranges or papaya and boiled or scrambled eggs, and for dinner: leftovers or snacks. I was shocked to find that peanut butter is a popular snack food here, as I have never encountered it on any sort of popular scale outside the US. I like to eat it on cassava bread/crackers. They also eat a lot of fried plantains, fried meat or fish, and some boiled veggies.

Some of the challenges include: no testing in the whole city for Chlamydia nor Gonorrhea, lack of medical supplies, iffy electrical and water supplies (it goes off and on), mosquitoes and malaria, people’s unawareness of germ theory nor the idea of not throwing trash in the garden space or really anywhere and everywhere, no running water inside the clinic (though there is a sink outside), trash and rocks everywhere and lack of functional tools, which makes starting a garden difficult, and a tent camp right next to the clinic, so not being able to hang out laundry or plant food up there because it invariably disappears. There are many positives though. There are already almond, papaya, and banana trees growing. The outcomes at the clinic are very good and working at the clinic is much less complicated than the hospital with all the headaches of “covering your ass” in respect to hyper-charting and doing unnecessary interventions which cause more harm than good “just in case.” And presumably because of all the aid workers here—we often see UN or USAID trucks in the streets--you can get a surprising amount of American products—chocolate bars, natural body products, beer, etc, though with a hefty price tag.

That’s it for now! bon nwit!

The clinic "dome" and laundry on the line

where we do our laundry

Justin hard at work

A root veggie we dug up at Carlos' brother's farm in the DR

in Haiti

Just a quick note to say that Justin and I have made it safe and sound to Jacmel, Haiti. It is about as dirty and chaotic as I thought it would be, but the clinic is pretty great. Of course there is a lot of need and lack (to say the least), so all I'm going to say right now is that if you'd like to donate to a very worthy cause, pretty please donate to Mother Health International. They are trying to make rent for March, and the Haitian staff midwives are having their salaries delayed so they can stay on the land. I'm not sure how we're going to get supplies that we need here either, since there is no way to mail things and there are no more volunteers expected.....so if anyone wants to makes a trip to Haiti and bring supplies, let me know! :)

I'm overwhelmed with stories in the first 2 days of being here, so I'll have to wait on it for now, but I'll report that I washed a bunch of clothes today by hand by dipping buckets into a sistern. The sun is super hot and they dry pretty fast, assuming it doesn't down pour..... Also I learned how to use a fetoscope and caught my first Haitian baby last night, a little boy. Yay! And as a surprise bonus, I had the best hot chocolate I've ever had yesterday.... more later, xoxoo