Positive Negative Positive

The weeks in Haiti seem to fly by as time goes on. I sometimes forget how long it has been since my last blog post. This past week we said goodbye to our friends from Seattle whose main focus was in Luly and Williamson. They put on a soccer clinic for the children while teachers from the village attended a teacher training program. There they learned different techniques on how to teach children in order to keep them engaged and interested. I attended the soccer clinic and unfortunately didn't get to witness the teacher training but our coordinator and intern Stephanie said it went very well. Here is a link to her blog to read about her experience with the teachers this past week www.fromhaitiwithlove.blogspot.com. You should also check out Alex's blog because he shot some great photos of the soccer clinic http://web.me.com/alexherbig/Alex_Herbig_Photography/Blog/Entries/2011/6/30_Sol%C3%A9y_la_cho!_Mwen_fatige.....html. I want to say thank you to the Seattle team for putting on such a great program for the children. I was only able to experience one day but thoroughly enjoyed seeing how happy it made the kids.

After saying goodbye to our friends from Brookeview Church in Seattle we spent the rest of the week working on our survey project for Luly. We finally finished the survey itself but are now learning how to approach the village people. Approach is most important! Stay tuned for more details in the near future.


We all had our week planned out perfectly but in Haiti anything can happen at the last minute and change your plans. Our fellow internmate Stephanie had been having digestive issues throughout the week which became severe Saturday morning. After hearing her symptoms and examining her I concluded it was best to go to a hospital to get the correct supplies we needed for her relief. After this decision, it took 3 hours or more to finally find a doctor and get treated. It was a cluster of finding the correct facility to getting referred to another facility to fighting through traffic that took up most of our time. The time it took to get from the house to a doctor was extremely frustrating for me. I turned around to check on Stephanie numerous times in the car and grew more and more frustrated because I knew exactly what she needed but was without the tools to provide relief. We ended up getting referred to a local doctor by Doctors Without Borders. This doctor specialized in the GI system and saw Stephanie right away after seeing her exhibit extreme pain upon entering. I was asked to enter the room 2 minutes after he examined her to hear the prognosis. He stated Stephanie had appendicitis and that she needed to return to the States as soon as possible. He told me dealing with this issue in Haiti would be a mess and advised to get back to the States as soon as possible. The diagnosis shocked me and I refused to believe it. I tried to share what I thought it was and asked him to prescribe the correct medications. He refused to hear me out and ended up prescribing Stephanie a medication that would have made the situation much worse. I told Tipap I thought the doctor was crazy and asked him to take me to the warehouse to get supplies to care for Steph. I wouldn't have wasted 4 painful hours in search of a doctor if I knew he wasn't going to give us the time of the day. To make this long story short I retrieved a few supplies from the warehouse and ended up treating Steph at the guest house. As of right now she is STILL in Haiti and feels much better!

Sunday we traveled up to the mountains to enjoy the cool weather and great view.

 Crystal

 Bonel saluting us goodbye.

 On our way to the top

 She bought a machete

 And so did Alex..

The interns and Tipap