Haiti Trip, Part 2

... I know it's been several days since I last posted a tiny bit about our trip. I said I'd post more in a few days, but I've been so tired! Here's the next installment...

Thursday

We got up around 5:30 am. (by Jock’s internal alarm clock – we hadn’t brought one, and the hotel room didn’t have one). We had to get ready, eat breakfast, and the men had to be ready to leave on the first van trip at 7:00. Breakfast at the hotel was good. They had a buffet-style breakfast, that was included with our nightly room price – or you could order eggs for extra cost. We most days had the buffet – I think Jock ordered eggs one day – but most days we didn’t take the time for that. The buffet had pancakes – and not like your normal fluffy pancakes – they were flat. They had regular syrup to put on them too. They also had a great selection of fruit – bananas, pineapple, mangos (if you got there early enough), and melon (red or green). They had corn flakes, and a pitcher of milk, but me being raised on a dairy farm, I didn’t want to even try their milk – I’m very picky about my milk, and I know most of the milk in Haiti is from powder. They also had bread (the kind we had at dinners, or regular sliced that you could toast) that you could top with crunchy peanut butter, butter, or some sort of jam that I didn’t try. I stuck with pancakes or bread and fruit. Elijah loved the pancakes – I think he ate more than I did, and of course the bananas – not so much the other fruit.

I left on the first van at 7:00 with Jock, since we were ready. Once I got Elijah settled back into his room and checked in Josephine, I went out and helped empty tools from the storage shed. Once that was completed, the team that was assigned to that task got started organizing things while a few of the guys put shelves in the shed. By that time, the rest of my team had arrived, and I got to work. I worked in the “pharmacy” room (basically a room with cabinets storing medicines, and an examining table, etc).


All morning we worked with the nurse, as she and the nannies brought in a couple babies and toddlers at a time. We weighed and measured (head circumference and length/height) each of them. We also took hand prints (or foot prints if they were really tiny babies and their hands were curled up) on some cards that will be sent out to their adoptive parents. It was really neat to be on this team, and be able to spend a tiny amount of time with each child. Some of the toddlers were really scared of us – after all, we were complete strangers to them! A few of them we had a very difficult time getting to sit on the baby scale without clinging to their nannies, but I think for the most part their measurements were accurate.

Identifying each child proved to be a bit challenging to us, for logging the measurements and handprints to the correct child. We had a list, so if we couldn’t understand the nurse's or nanny's pronunciation of the name, we just had them find the child’s name on our list and point to it. We did this for a total of 69 children that morning: 18 girls and 10 boys that reside in Baby Room 1 (Josephine’s room), 11 girls and 5 boys from Baby Room 2 (Elijah’s room), and 15 girls and 10 boys from the Toddler Room. There were only two that we couldn’t do that morning, as one was sick, and the other was hanging out with her adoptive mom who was also on the trip – we caught up with them later in the trip though. It was a busy morning, but we finished with a little bit of time for a break before lunch.

Lunch at the O (if my memory serves me well), was rice and beans, with a stew sauce over it. The stew had fish bits in it for protein. I’m not a big fish eater unless the flavor is pretty mild, so I ate a little light that day. The sauce of the stew and the rice and beans were really good though. (I wish we’d taken pictures of lunch at the orphanage – but too late for that now…)

That afternoon, we couldn’t do any measuring or handprints, as all we had left were the older children, and they were in school. So, another part of our task was to work with the younger babies on their motor skills, as one of the ladies on my team was a physical therapist. She’d worked for years with babies and young children that had some motor delays, so we got out a floor mat (the tile floors are hard for the babies!), and started working with them. That was a lot of fun. I got some pictures and videos of Josephine crawling. She mostly scoots on her hands and legs, as her knees don’t stay together very well, but she did crawl a bit with Carolyn holding her knees up! Some of the other babies she worked with on sitting up and moving from sitting to tummy positions and back.

An interesting thing about Haiti’s culture is that they believe that if you hold a child up in standing position and put weight on their legs before they’re ready to walk, that it will cause problems with their legs, so they won’t walk right. I think one of the adoptive moms got scolded for holding her baby like that, which seemed strange, considering what we know about muscle development in legs being key to being able to walk. But, we had to be a little careful and respect cultural issues like this. They do use walkers/play saucers/jumpers in Baby Room 1, so that probably helps out in this arena as well.

By late afternoon, everyone was ready to go back to the hotel and relax a bit before dinner. It was a hot sunny day, probably about 90-95 degrees (Farenheit). Jock and I decided to leave Josephine at the orphanage to sleep another night, as she didn’t seem to be getting over her wheezing and cold very well yet. When we got back to the hotel with Elijah, we relaxed a bit, Jock showered, and then we went upstairs for dinner. I think Elijah was much more comfortable with us the first day, as he started coming out of his confused shell a bit. He’s really a funny, silly little boy. He has a really funny little low-pitched chuckle/belly-laugh, and you have to laugh yourself at the fun he seems to have with being tickled. He’s really a joy to us!

At dinner, I think we ordered chicken spaghetti again, but with a pepperoni pizza to go with it. The first night we were a little reserved with what we ordered, just on recommendations from some of the travelers who’d been there before. The second night we had more options, as what people had ordered the night before looked good. We also ordered a fruit plate instead of the fruit salad we’d had the first night. The salad had the fruit all chopped up in tiny pieces with more liquid that fruit, and I think it had a little wine in the sauce, which gave it a funny flavor. It was good, but we just wanted the fruit! The fruit plate was great. Elijah loved the bananas, and again enjoyed the spaghetti.

After dinner and devotions, we were beat, so we headed back to our room for the night. We were again amazed by how well Elijah sleeps – nine hours straight! Basically, when we turned out the lights he went to sleep and didn’t wake up until he saw lights and/or heard us getting around in the morning. Amazing! And, we had yet to experience the nasty, runny, blowout diapers that we’d been warned about! (Elijah must take care of his business during the days at the orphanage.)