happy birthday easter bunny!

In the last few weeks I have been so blessed to first have Jan and Betty-Anne, midwives from Canada and then Kristen and Dave, my sister and brother-in-law, here with me. All of them have provided with me new eyes for which to see Haiti, and thus new energy to power through and actually enjoy my final weeks here...thank goddess, as Jan would say.

Kristen and Dave were here for 6 days, which flew! We rode motos through the countryside: visiting a fort from the times of independence, we went to the beach a couple times, walked around a lot, and poked around some old buildings. It was so nice to have people to explore with and to be with people where were still amazed by say, taking public transportation that included a live turkey. I also during this time discovered rum punch, which is a delightful mix of Haitian rum, grenadine and orange juice.

Betty-Anne and Jan are still here (3 weeks total) and I continue to learn a lot from them as they've been midwives for 30+ years. Now that it's a boy-free zone again, we spend lots of time lounging around nude--doing laundry, reading, or just taking in the sun. It's very fun living with midwives :) We've also had several births recently, and I've had the opportunity to hone my suturing skills, which thankfully I don't need to use too often. I've been inspired by Betty-Anne's positivity about and success in (midwives) changing birth practices around the world. She teaches classes in letting go of fear of vaginal breech delivery for doctors and has worked in Afghanistan, Guatemala, ETC, written books and done research, and really seems to be chipping away at the backward birth practices that exist in varying forms all over the world. And Jan keeps me smiling and grounded with her honest, joyful, straight-forward manner and her stories about living in Sri Lanka and the Philippines, being a vagabond hippie in the 70s, and her family. Kristen and I decided that because of her love of maps and sense of adventure, her easy-going-ness and ability to get along with anyone, her blonde hair, and a bunch of other reasons, she really belongs in the Olsson family, alongside our own Aunt Jan of Kansas City :)

The last few days have been full of parades here. No one works and the kids are all out of school for several days before and after Easter. And would you believe it? They don't believe in the easter bunny here! haha, as such, they just go to church, parade around the streets, and traditionally eat fish. And apparently people go out dancing, which is what I'm getting pulled away to go do now... Happy Easter!

zombies

Tonight "someone" called Ninotte's phone. Marianne answered it for her as she was on the way to the bathroom. All she heard on the other side was someone moaning, so she ran and gave it to Ninotte, who heard the same and hung up.

If the situation described happened to me, I'd probably 1st assume that someone was playing a practical joke or prank calling me, and then 2nd think: oh! I hope that person wasn't having a stroke and just called whatever number they could and I couldn't help him!

But we are in Haiti, and people come to different conclusions...

Marianne freaked out and started crying. She said that a zombie had called her. I kept a straight face--not cracking a smile nor looking terribly concerned, and she got upset, saying "I told you about zombies!!" And she did: she told me how if you kill someone with vudou, then you can go to their grave-site after they're buried and wait for their spirit to rise, then you SLAP the spirit and it becomes your zombie, which you can use to protect your storefront or house or put onto someone to make them sick. I said, "Yes I remember what you told me! and I've in fact seen many American and foreign zombie movies..." She was happy to hear I knew something about zombies.

Alas my differently trained/cultured mind has a hard time wrapping my mind around it in a practical way. I feel I'm incredibly open-minded and I believe that basically anything is possible, but this one is hard for me to wrap my mind around. She wanted me to pray for her to protect her from the zombie. I told her I could believe that there was some kind of bad spirit calling her up, but maybe it wanted something from her, like to be told that it was respected or loved or understood or maybe it was looking for a simple apology. Maybe if we tell it that, it won't mess with her... She and Ninotte laughed and laughed. In the end, I found myself participating in a group prayer led by Melinda with one hand on Ninotte's head and the other on Marianne's. I just tried to bring in some good energy and tried to tell the "zombie" that it was loved...

Meanwhile in the streets the neighbors are playing the usual evening 90s love song mix. Tonight it's Whitney Houston and Kc and Jojo...other nights it's Celine Dion or Lianne Rhymes. Gotta love it all.

And the winner is...

Michel Martelly! Haiti has a new president....and I learned about it hours before the rest of Jacmel on the NY Times website, haha. People were freaking out this morning because apparently US Marine planes were flying all around Port-au-Prince and everyone thought that for whatever reason, the US would try to instate the other candidate, because Michel Martelly wants to do things like kick out the UN and drastically change importing/exporting.

He won with a 66% majority. Most of the people I know refused to vote because they thought that one candidate was unqualified and basically an idiot (see cocaine doing, cross-dressing, rock-star/gangster shenanigans), and the other was just like the rest of the fancily-educated, very rich people who had always run Haiti and done it no good. It reminded me a lot of the Bush vs. Kerry election. And it had the same result. In the end, the guy who won was the guy that people thought they could have a beer with. When word hit Jacmel that he won, motos honked and sped down the street and excited citizens paraded. People are really happy that someone "like them" without a college education and who came out of nothing could win a presidential election, and they have hope that maybe he can do something for their country, since no one else has. I can't say that I blame them for trying something new.

48hrs in Haiti

I was planning to write about a crazy 24hr time period here, as it seemed to be wrapping up...and then I got swept up in more madness, so now to tell the tale of 48hrs here in Haiti (a week after the fact, as I am just now recovering):

• I awoke minutes before Ninotte called me to the dome because a baby had a slow heart beat and they were worried they might need help when the baby was born. The baby was born just fine however, with a cord around it's neck
• I stayed up at the dome as another girl was in labor
• Swafet (grounds-man) cracked his head open. He wouldn't let me stitch it, so I steri-stripped it...
• Another girl came in labor...and then another
• Meanwhile the water ran out up at the dome and I had to go down to fetch water in buckets so that we could wash our hands and flush the toilet
• That night I slept up at the dome with the 3 labor patients all egging each other on with labor pains. In truth, only one of them was in active labor and the other were just getting infected with the energy... One of the patient's parents started to sing a prayer... another patient's mom started to chant very loudly and frantically (I assumed it was vudou-related by how it sounded, but the apprentice told me that's just how some people pray to Jesus) ...the dome's energy was out of control. We kept trying to ask people to keep it down so as not to provoke the other patients further/let everyone sleep, but it just keep slipping out of control. Somewhere around 3am, I think I fell asleep for an hour. I was up and down a million times though: massaging, consoling, doling out homeopathics, and trying to get them to just sleep!
• In the morning, I helped apprentice, Marianne, clean the clinic, and then we went down to shower and eat. Then the post-natals visits till noon, but not before a fight broke out in the tent camp, which is squats on our land....
• At post-natals I was so tired, I felt like I was in another world. I got to amputate the little hanging extra pinkie of a baby born a few days prior (no bone attached it to the hand). The baby had actually had another extra hanging pinkie on the other hand, but it fell off in transit from the shower where babe had been born (see earlier entry) to her room in the dome...may those pinkies find each other to rest in peace... Another woman brought her baby for a visit, who we'd seen the week before and referred to the doctor, because he was making a very odd noise in his throat. She told us that she did not go to the doctor, but her husband went to the vudou priest and did a ceremony, and the baby has been cured since... On a similar note, we've had fewer births recently and apparently the women aren't coming, especially if they go into labor at night, because our neighborhood specifically has a lot of "bad spirits"...
• We transfered the patient who had been actively laboring for 3 days to the hospital and sent the other two home to eat/walk/bathe/etc since they weren't really active in labor.
• Later that day we heard that a guy in the tent camp has been sick with a fever for 22 days and won't go to the doctor because a vudou priest told him that someone had put 5 zombies on his head and that he needed to keep coming to him (and paying him) to fix it...in reality he probably has malaria, which is a fairly quick and inexpensive fix...
• Every Sunday in Lent there are Catholic-Vudou parades, which are loud and crazy, and just happened to take place during this 48hrs
• We got the 2 laboring patients back later that day, plus another who delivered quickly.
• I went to bed, thinking, great! A good night's sleep after an action-packed day and night (Melinda and Ninotte were up at the dome). Just before I was about to crash however, I got a call because both women were about to deliver at the same time-ish and so I may as well be there. I caught the first baby, who scared me a little with his tight-fitting shoulders... 4 MINUTES later, the other baby was born and needed resuscitation... I had to leave my mom and babe to the care of an apprentice to help. Thankfully the baby did fine, but just about then, my mom started to hemorrhage (big baby, long labor, probably not great nutrition). We all had to hop back to my patient's room (thankfully they're only actually divided by a sheet), and throw in an IV, give her shots of pitocin, catheterize her bladder, squeeze her uterus....it was like being back in the hospital...Crazy!! Thankfully we were all up there!
• ....and then another mom came in labor! Much to our delight, she wasn't really in labor and we told her to just sleep... The moms and babies all ended up doing great, and we headed to bed around 4:30am...
• The following day was a class day for apprentices, so we just called it off. I slept till 10, and then we discharged the 3 moms and sent home the not very active labor, and cleaned the clinic. I was still running on adrenaline that day and continued going (without having anything to really do, but feeling too strung out to sleep) until the evening
• The following few days I felt like a total zombie (but not of the vudou variety who harm people)... Only today would I say that I finally recovered (several days past)