twins, teeth, and MJ

this morning was an eventful morning bc someone found two 4-day-old twins on the side of the road that the mother had left to die. someone called the mission and we took the tiny boy and girl in. the babies are so tiny, just the length of my forearm, but they were surprisingly healthy...they got a check-up and formula in the clinic this morning. i don't know what steps are going to be taken from here on out, but at least they are in good hands for the time being. it makes you realize how often stuff like this happens and how many innocent babies are left to die this way.

the clinic was really busy today...apparently the news is spreading that there is a free dentist in town. it's heartbreaking to have to turn people away. i was with the nurse practitioner again...we saw a lot of kids today....same awful diseases as always....we saw one little girl who had impetigo so bad that both her ears were completely encrusted over and partially eaten away. another little girl had rickets so bad the both her legs were so bowed out that it made it difficult to walk.

another thing that i've seen time and again is injured toddlers and babies who are brought in by mothers that don't know how the injury occurred. it's extremely common in Haiti to see tiny babies on the hips of single digit girls walking through the streets. siblings take care of siblings at a very young age. the mothers are pregnant or working or no longer living. it makes treating the child difficult bc most likely they will be right back in that high risk situation. we can treat an injury, but we can't change what the culture neccessitates.

after lunch was really great bc we went through the market in Cabaret and then brought the medical/dental team to the Good Samaritan Orphanage. i'm really beginning to know my way around! the story behind this orphanage is pretty interesting....it was originally located farther away, but had been destroyed by the trio of major hurricanes which so devestatingly tore through Haiti this past fall. most of northern haiti was completely destroyed by the flooding and the destruction is obvious. apparently the flooding had risen up over the walls of the orphanage and the pressure caused the facility to completely collapse around 2am in the morning. miraculously, all 120 orphans somehow survived (babies included!). but now they were all orphans again. when MOH found out, they came together and bought an old disco nightclub which they transformed into an orphanage. it is basically one giant open area with a dome-like roof...the kids sleep, eat, and live there now...

i've been to this orphanage 3 or 4 times since i've been here and there has always been one girl especially whose gravitated towards me. Her name is Cearnsuze and she hardly ever smiles, but she is always holding my hand, sitting on my lap, wanting to be held. she barely ever talks, today she actually fell asleep in my lap despite the loudness and excitement that was surrounding us. it's so cute bc sometimes she tries to scratch off my freckles. i don't know what it is, but she is always my little buddy when i'm in the area...her face is one of the many that i won't forget.

another thing i've learned about haiti....nothing ever starts on time, nothing ever works the way it should or when you need it, plans fall through all the time, and you have to expect that at least one thing will go wrong that day. issue #1: digicel, the poor world cell phone company towers were completely out today somehow, which made communication nearly impossible. #2. we waited for about 45 minutes before our vehicle came, but somehow it was too small to fit us all so then we had to wait again for something bigger. they came back with a full old fashioned bus to carry the 10 of us...it was the only vehicle available and working. issue #3. the dentist needed a small generator for giving sealants to the orphans, but then the generator couldn't fit on the bus, so we had to have that driven separately...somehow we found another vehicle, still no cell service, just a lot of walking. #4. when we finally got to the orphanage we couldn't get the generator to work....two mechanics worked on it, but it was shot. at this point i'm getting used to this kind of thing...you really just have to learn how to roll with it :)

we ended up having to brush all the kids teeth with flouride and the dentist triaged the children according to how bad their mouths were. it was really cute setting up an assemly line of teeth brushing, the kids really liked it. cearnsuze is actually being picked up by the doctors on the way to the clinic tomorrow bc she needs to get a tooth removed that is growing under her tongue. i'm excited to see her tomorrow morning and maybe i will be there to comfort her. kids in haiti are so tough and they barely cry about anything. fall down, get back up....get hit, hit them back...anyways, we were there doing teeth until about 5 so it was a pretty full day.

i let one of the little boys just take my camera while we were there and he ran around taking a ton of pictures. he was pretty young so there are a bunch of pictures of the floor or a foot or the ceiling or people w/ their heads cut out of the photo...i was cracking up when i actually looked through the pictures. he must have also accidently zoomed bc there was a whole series of pictures in a row that were just face shots, sometimes just a nose and an eye. there was one of me and it showed sweat pouring out from every pore. but he got some good ones...kids being silly, the ladies on the side preparing supper (the kids eat a plate of rice and beans twice a day every day), some action shots of the dental team. at the very least, i got it all from a child's perspective!

i practiced french with sadrak again today.

we got a ride back on the back of laurence's truck and came back to an overflow of a group of 25 people that had just arrived on the mission. goodbye to the quiet time! i don't think i would recommend a 1 wk mission trip unless it was your only option. it is more of a spectacle....there is just too much to digest in such a short amount of time...you spend more time taking pictures than actually taking everything in...i'm beginning to think that even a month is not long enough! i don't want to forget even one moment of the time i've spent here, and i feel i've been better able to internalize it more and more as the days go on.

we had haitian food for dinner and i ate too much as always. who knows when i'll be able to eat authentic haitian again! after dinner was really funny bc me, roger, mal, madame anise, and some other workers were outside and JR (one of our interpretors) was singing/acting out michael jackson (rip) songs....considering the thick haitian accent and the completely botched lyrics, it definitely had us all in stitches!

tomorrow is another full day...then on saturday 4 of us have the day off so we are trying to get wiki or cadrak to bring us to the beach.

yesterday was anti-malarial-pill-wednesday and i had dream after dream about crocodiles.

bonswa! on se verra demain!