The Beginning

Yesterday, I landed in Miami at 1:30pm and was on my way to meet my fellow "internmate", Andrea, at our final departure gate to Port-au-Prince. We sent each other our photos in advance and found each other quickly. In the middle of getting to know each other, they announced our flight to Port-au-Prince had been canceled due to mechanical difficulties. We were rescheduled to fly out the next morning at 7am which gave us time to get to know each other before our summer together!

The flight today was smooth into Port-au-Prince but we landed in a wet land. It has been raining ALL day. The weather is a bit chilly with a dash of thick humidity. Water and mud are everywhere. When it rains, it pours here...for days.

Andrea and I were relieved to see our bags had made it all the way to Haiti. After collecting our bags we headed to customs when Alexi, employed by WWV, greeted us to pick us up. We were both relieved to see him because we had both talked about dreading walking through all the airport workers outside. Andrea and I met Randy, WWV President, at the end of the walkway outside of the airport and headed on our way to the guesthouse.

We arrived to the guesthouse, settled in, and got right to work. We met a variety of people; an auditory doctor, translators, Randy's wife Patricia, the president of TOMS, and another distribution rep from TOMS. Jane, the auditory doctor, Andrea, and I were sent to a community full of deaf Haitians to help troubleshoot their new hearing aides that were dispersed earlier in May. We saw around 50 patients with broken aides in a couple of hours and fixed all of them. I learned a lot about fitting, testing, molding, basically everything there is to know about hearing aides. It was a great experience and also I'm excited for tomorrow because we have the opportunity to treat 250 children at a school with hearing disabilities. They have already been fitted with hearing aides but will need assistance in repairs and teaching. We have two Haitians fluent in sign language and creole which will help things run smoother tomorrow. I'm excited to work with children again! I'll post photos tomorrow...

We made one last stop after finishing work up in the community. We traveled about 30 minutes north to an area called Wuzabeh (sp?). There, we assessed two young girls with hearing impairments. It was interesting because the girls were not always deaf but developed the impairment after a high fever when they were both younger. We fitted them with hearing aides but even the strongest aides on hand did not cause a reaction. We plan on having a neurologist look at them for treatment very soon but until then we are focusing on their learning needs in school. We will see them again tomorrow with the other children at the school.

 We taught them to store their hearing aides in a bowl of rice every night to help pull moisture out of them and keep them dry. The rice needs to be changed out every 2 months. This is a problem for some Haitians because many of them because cannot afford this extra rice.

 Troubleshooting hearing aides

 This is ANDREA the other intern!

 In the green is Jane, the auditory doctor.

 Normally in the states the hearing aides would not be trimmed with scissors but resized specially by a company. Here in Haiti we do not have the time or access to this luxury so we improvised and it still worked out just as well in the end.

 This was the route we took to reach the two girls in Wuzabeh. It's wet everywhere!

If you look hard you can see the massive puddles of water behind the walking woman. I'm hoping for sunshine tomorrow!