Return to Haiti.

One week back after a lovely holiday in England and Denmark.

After 5 weeks in Europe with Dengue fever, hospitalisation, catching up with friends, spending valuable time with family and lots of lovely food as well as unexpected fabulous weather we arrived back on La Gonave last Saturday. The Journey from London takes 2/12 days including a stay over in Miami and on Haiti mainland. Matt was waiting for us in PAP airport and together we extended our holiday by 24h with a night at Kalico. The girls really liked playing in the pool especially when uncle Matt would play too. Julian and I enjoyed watching from a safe splashing distance as spending 24h a day for best part of a week together had made us a little tired. Boring old parents……!

The compound is eerily quiet with only Matt, The Edmonds and The Gould's here at the moment. This also means that the only children are Haley, Ella and Rebecca. Ella and Haley was soon back to playing intently and Rebecca enjoying some peace and quiet from her sister. Apparently it is both annoying and uncool to have to share beds and rooms for the whole holiday……!

The first week saw Rebecca's 11th birthday. She had been ice-skating with her best friend Ava and been out for pizza at home but I was aware that the day it self would still be difficult. Rebecca was not keen on coming back to Haiti and having to spend her birthday here was not positive. I think she had an OK birthday and was very pleased with all the “Happy Birthday” messages she received on Facebook. School also started back this week, that’s home school with teacher mum! We got started with all the subjects we did before the holidays. Teaching is not my forte and especially not my own children. I have to say well done to both Ella and Becca for embracing it and putting up with me. We very much look forward to our new teacher coming in hopefully October. Shortly before leaving Denmark we found out that Ms Kate, Ella’s beloved teacher was not coming back this year. Ella was very sad and will miss her terribly. This makes it even more exciting to meet Ms Andrea and her husband and we look forward to hearing they expected arrival date…..!

Julian went straight to work Monday morning and by the end of the first week the windows have been fitted in both wards and they had made good progress with the foundation trenches for the main building. Most of Thursday and Friday, though, was spent tiding up for what “promised” to be our first major storm, maybe even a hurricane. Julian and Ella was both excited like children. I was more cautious and didn’t know quite what to expect. For 3 days “Isaac” was all we talked about on the compound and we had a constant page open on the computer with the present position and expected path and severity. Friday was going to be the day and it looked like it was coming right over our heads. The funny thing, to us anyway, was that Friday was ever so quiet. We talked about the calm before the storm but being from Northern Europe we just are not used to weather like they have in other parts of the world. It started raining Friday evening, a quiet soaking rain which must have prepared the ground a bit for the drenching which was to come. We went to bed as normal and was woken at 4am by tremendous winds and hurryingly shut all the windows. By 5am all was CALM, no rain or wind, this must be the eye, just as the weather channel had predicted. Then the winds came and the rain and from 5.30ish am till 5pm the winds were howling through the compound with lots of rain in tow.

 

It was raining again when we got up Sunday morning but by 11am it started brightening up and at almost 4pm the sun was almost shining and everything was drying out a little. We have now had a full 48h with only 70degreeF/ 25degree C, the humidity is still very high but its very refreshing and we have been wearing long sleeves and feeling cold at night without the fan on! The storm, much as predicted, broke the water pipe from the mountains and so we currently are with our running water. We have drinking water bought in barrels and WISH have a large reserve of water from where we can get water for washing, toilet flushing etc. Julian has gone with Barry Gould from WISH up to the ravine to repair the water water pipe, if they succeed we should have water again late tomorrow as it takes many hours for the reservoir to fill back up.

While everyone else was getting ready for Isaac on Friday morning, I went to the hospital as usual to do my clinic. There were only few patients and as I had a few things to talk to Miss Vero about I went into the main hospital. Miss Rose, another of the senior nurses and one of the main delivery nurses was there and I casually asked if she would teach me to deliver babies???? She suggested we started straight away as there were a couple of women set to deliver that morning. She took me to the delivery room, gave me gloves and instructed in her improving English, much better that my Creole. By the end of the morning I had assisted in delivering a little boy and a little girl. Helped with freeing the head and cut the cord, as well as delivering the placenta and checking it. It was quite amazing. Just as we were writing up the last delivery, we got a call from the delivery room. A lady who had been labouring quietly all morning was now laying in a pool of blood. Something had ruptured. The baby seems fine but she was loosing a lot of blood. Every thing went a little crazy for a while but we soon had her in the operating theatre and I scrubbed in to help deliver another little boy. The mother is doing very well and all 3 children are doing well. Quite a way to start the weekend. I hope to do more and learn a whole lot. Thanks Miss Rose and the rest of the staff.