Friday, October 29, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Haiti Update #4
Hello!
I hope you all are having a fantastic week! Thank you for all your prayers and support and e-mails. I think the supposed food poisoning opened the door for some other bugs so I’m still struggling a bit health-wise but on a positive note, Seguin is absolutely beautiful and I did have one day that I felt pretty good and was even able to help out in the clinic instead of being the patient. I finally broke down and started a couple different antibiotics yesterday morning when things got worse instead of better so I think I’m on the up and up now. We went for a hike through the mountains and national forest today and I did fine. Clayton’s puppy came with us- Ti Chen – which translates into “little dog.” I’m trying to figure out if the best part of the hike was when Ti Chen charged a sheep that subsequently did a flip and somersault in the air or when it started sprinkling and a beautiful rainbow appeared on our already gorgeous backdrop. It was awesome.
In case you’re interested in taking a look at Seguin, I will be posting some photos at this address: http://jnomides22.blogspot.com/. There you will also find a link to my Picasa site with other photos. I will let you know when I am actually able to do this as right now I don’t have access to internet that will allow me to upload stuff. Tomorrow I head back down to Jacmel so maybe then…
Anyway, I want to spend most of this e-mail talking about the history of the clinic I mentioned above, as well as some of what is going on here now. There are many of you receiving this who actually may be interested in coming down and working/visiting/supporting this place so feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions about opportunities. If you don’t want to know about the clinic, you can skip to the last paragraph. ; )
So the clinic here in Seguin is called Cloud Forest Medical Clinic (recently named when it was reopened after the earthquake). It was originally built by Farsight Christian Missions from 1998-2000 and staffed by a young American physician’s assistant (Theresa) who lived and worked up here for eight years before she moved to another part of Haiti. Farsight Christian Missions initially came to Haiti and partnered with Pastor Roro to build a church in Seguin in 1996. It’s a small world because I actually was introduced to Pastor Roro awhile ago through his connection to Pastor Daniel and his wife Marlaine, the ones I’ve been working with in Jacmel for the past four years. My friend Kyle, the one I’m up here with, first came to Seguin in 1996 with Farsight because the director of the organization is a member of Kyle’s church. He continued to come back with his youth group in middle and high school to help with various projects Pastor Roro had going on in Port au Prince.
In 2001, one of the men who had been on the original Farsight trip to Seguin in 1996 and had led many of Kyle’s youth group’s trips to Haiti decided to start another organization, Raincatchers. Kyle was asked to be and remains on the board of directors. Since that time, they’ve built over 600 water collection systems. Part of what Kyle is doing up here now, in addition to training community health workers, working in the clinic and other projects, is investigating these systems. He began to travel to Seguin for the Rain Catcher’s projects 2-3 times a year starting in 2001. He never intended on going into the medical field but when Kyle met Theresa in 2003 and returned a couple of years later to do a photo project on her and her work. The short story is that he ended up scrapping the story and helping out in the clinic for three months, returned to the states and changed his classes to pre-med so that he could eventually apply to medical school. Kyle continued to travel down and help out in the clinic whenever he could from 2005-2008.
In 2005, Farsight shifted focus to their projects in Costa Rica and Pastor Roro’s supporting organization, Haitian Christian Outreach, bought the clinic in Seguin. The clinic remained open until Theresa felt called to leave in 2008. In 2008, yet another organization started a community health project which included building latrines, water filtration systems and running mobile clinics. Kyle was asked to visit each of the homes that had the water filtration systems. Now, there are over 400 homes with these systems. He also continued to work with Theresa at her new location near Leogane.
With the clinic closed, quite a few organizations and individuals ventured to Seguin after the earthquake in January, including Humanity First. Among those individuals on the Humanity First team was Clayton Bell, now a recent medical school graduate who ended up returning in June after Clayton and Kyle were introduced and teamed up to reopen the clinic. There was a Haitian doc up here for awhile too who left recently to take care of his sick sister in the Dominican and never returned. Margaret is a Haitian nurse who sees patients here as well. Other physicians come in and out for short term trips but one huge need is to find another Haitian physician to staff the clinic. There are other projects going on up here too, including an orphan relief program also sponsored by Humanity First, who have committed to supporting Clayton and the clinic for at least a year. Qasim (Haitian) is the one who is running this program; he lives here at the clinic as well.
The clinic is pretty busy. Its officially open Monday through Friday and there is a usually good crowd gathered outside the door by 8am. Having said that, people still arrive whenever so in a sense, this place is always open because there really aren’t any other options. For example, there was a young girl brought here a couple of nights ago after being hit in the face with a rock, a fight that happened after a funeral of all things. Her shirt was soaked in blood and it was no small feat trying to hold her down while Kyle sutured up her face. These guys don’t really get a break since they live right above the clinic.
Anyway, pregnant women, patients requiring chronic care, REALLY sick patients, orphan children and school kids from the school next door and the local Catholic school are all seen for free. Otherwise, patients are charged 50 gourds for the first visit (a little over $1) and 25 gourds for each subsequent visit.
On a more personal note, I could seriously spend hours just sitting on the roof of this building looking at the countryside. Being up here is way more relaxing than the time I usually spend in Jacmel. I know that a lot of people picture Haiti and see piles of rubble and starving children and deforested hillsides but man oh man, that’s not Seguin at all. The land is so beautiful; it doesn’t even look real, especially when you look up at the national forest and the fog/cloud cover. Kyle says it reminds him of Jurassic part; I would have to agree. A couple of mornings ago I was watching these hills and saw the most joyous funeral procession. Perhaps those words don’t typically go together but in this case, its perfect. Everyone was dancing and singing and the people carrying the colorful coffin over their heads were spinning it around and dancing too…celebrating life.
That’s enough for now. Tomorrow I head down to Jacmel to see the kiddos at the orphanage and hopefully meet up with Marlaine. I’ll continue to keep you updated! Thanks again for all of your support…
With love,
Jen
I hope you all are having a fantastic week! Thank you for all your prayers and support and e-mails. I think the supposed food poisoning opened the door for some other bugs so I’m still struggling a bit health-wise but on a positive note, Seguin is absolutely beautiful and I did have one day that I felt pretty good and was even able to help out in the clinic instead of being the patient. I finally broke down and started a couple different antibiotics yesterday morning when things got worse instead of better so I think I’m on the up and up now. We went for a hike through the mountains and national forest today and I did fine. Clayton’s puppy came with us- Ti Chen – which translates into “little dog.” I’m trying to figure out if the best part of the hike was when Ti Chen charged a sheep that subsequently did a flip and somersault in the air or when it started sprinkling and a beautiful rainbow appeared on our already gorgeous backdrop. It was awesome.
In case you’re interested in taking a look at Seguin, I will be posting some photos at this address: http://jnomides22.blogspot.com/. There you will also find a link to my Picasa site with other photos. I will let you know when I am actually able to do this as right now I don’t have access to internet that will allow me to upload stuff. Tomorrow I head back down to Jacmel so maybe then…
Anyway, I want to spend most of this e-mail talking about the history of the clinic I mentioned above, as well as some of what is going on here now. There are many of you receiving this who actually may be interested in coming down and working/visiting/supporting this place so feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions about opportunities. If you don’t want to know about the clinic, you can skip to the last paragraph. ; )
So the clinic here in Seguin is called Cloud Forest Medical Clinic (recently named when it was reopened after the earthquake). It was originally built by Farsight Christian Missions from 1998-2000 and staffed by a young American physician’s assistant (Theresa) who lived and worked up here for eight years before she moved to another part of Haiti. Farsight Christian Missions initially came to Haiti and partnered with Pastor Roro to build a church in Seguin in 1996. It’s a small world because I actually was introduced to Pastor Roro awhile ago through his connection to Pastor Daniel and his wife Marlaine, the ones I’ve been working with in Jacmel for the past four years. My friend Kyle, the one I’m up here with, first came to Seguin in 1996 with Farsight because the director of the organization is a member of Kyle’s church. He continued to come back with his youth group in middle and high school to help with various projects Pastor Roro had going on in Port au Prince.
In 2001, one of the men who had been on the original Farsight trip to Seguin in 1996 and had led many of Kyle’s youth group’s trips to Haiti decided to start another organization, Raincatchers. Kyle was asked to be and remains on the board of directors. Since that time, they’ve built over 600 water collection systems. Part of what Kyle is doing up here now, in addition to training community health workers, working in the clinic and other projects, is investigating these systems. He began to travel to Seguin for the Rain Catcher’s projects 2-3 times a year starting in 2001. He never intended on going into the medical field but when Kyle met Theresa in 2003 and returned a couple of years later to do a photo project on her and her work. The short story is that he ended up scrapping the story and helping out in the clinic for three months, returned to the states and changed his classes to pre-med so that he could eventually apply to medical school. Kyle continued to travel down and help out in the clinic whenever he could from 2005-2008.
In 2005, Farsight shifted focus to their projects in Costa Rica and Pastor Roro’s supporting organization, Haitian Christian Outreach, bought the clinic in Seguin. The clinic remained open until Theresa felt called to leave in 2008. In 2008, yet another organization started a community health project which included building latrines, water filtration systems and running mobile clinics. Kyle was asked to visit each of the homes that had the water filtration systems. Now, there are over 400 homes with these systems. He also continued to work with Theresa at her new location near Leogane.
With the clinic closed, quite a few organizations and individuals ventured to Seguin after the earthquake in January, including Humanity First. Among those individuals on the Humanity First team was Clayton Bell, now a recent medical school graduate who ended up returning in June after Clayton and Kyle were introduced and teamed up to reopen the clinic. There was a Haitian doc up here for awhile too who left recently to take care of his sick sister in the Dominican and never returned. Margaret is a Haitian nurse who sees patients here as well. Other physicians come in and out for short term trips but one huge need is to find another Haitian physician to staff the clinic. There are other projects going on up here too, including an orphan relief program also sponsored by Humanity First, who have committed to supporting Clayton and the clinic for at least a year. Qasim (Haitian) is the one who is running this program; he lives here at the clinic as well.
The clinic is pretty busy. Its officially open Monday through Friday and there is a usually good crowd gathered outside the door by 8am. Having said that, people still arrive whenever so in a sense, this place is always open because there really aren’t any other options. For example, there was a young girl brought here a couple of nights ago after being hit in the face with a rock, a fight that happened after a funeral of all things. Her shirt was soaked in blood and it was no small feat trying to hold her down while Kyle sutured up her face. These guys don’t really get a break since they live right above the clinic.
Anyway, pregnant women, patients requiring chronic care, REALLY sick patients, orphan children and school kids from the school next door and the local Catholic school are all seen for free. Otherwise, patients are charged 50 gourds for the first visit (a little over $1) and 25 gourds for each subsequent visit.
On a more personal note, I could seriously spend hours just sitting on the roof of this building looking at the countryside. Being up here is way more relaxing than the time I usually spend in Jacmel. I know that a lot of people picture Haiti and see piles of rubble and starving children and deforested hillsides but man oh man, that’s not Seguin at all. The land is so beautiful; it doesn’t even look real, especially when you look up at the national forest and the fog/cloud cover. Kyle says it reminds him of Jurassic part; I would have to agree. A couple of mornings ago I was watching these hills and saw the most joyous funeral procession. Perhaps those words don’t typically go together but in this case, its perfect. Everyone was dancing and singing and the people carrying the colorful coffin over their heads were spinning it around and dancing too…celebrating life.
That’s enough for now. Tomorrow I head down to Jacmel to see the kiddos at the orphanage and hopefully meet up with Marlaine. I’ll continue to keep you updated! Thanks again for all of your support…
With love,
Jen
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