I’ll see you on the other side.

Good afternoon everyone! I hope you all enjoyed my last blog, and that it gave you some insight in to how tough life can be some days. This blog is actually going to do the same just on a different topic.

          Well as we you all know people die every day. It’s just part of life, and we can’t change it. I knew going to Haiti I would hear of people dying, but I never thought I would know the people personally. Before we came to Haiti, there was a little girl being taken care of by the sisters. Her name was Keuttra. I knew her because her she had been in Kan Klodin when I was a counselor back in 2013. Her uncle was one of the counselors, and he had helped me out a lot. She was such a sweetheart, and she was so shy. She cuddled up to her uncle all the time. When I came back for the year I had heard the news that she was sick, and our sisters were doing everything to help her. I had no idea what was wrong with her until her uncle brought her to the house, and one of our past volunteers took pictures to show me. She had a huge growth on her arm, and it was the size of a basketball. I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t even hold her arm up on her own. She had it all wrapped up in a little white sling. Sister Jackie, and Sister Pat got her in to one of the best hospitals in PAP. They paid for everything for the little girl, and family. The family traveled to the hospital, and had to consult doctors. Now, I was not there or with the family, so what we heard was all by word of mouth. The doctors meant with the family, and told the mother that they needed to amputate the little girls arm. The mother then had to call the father of the little girl to get permission for the doctor to do the surgery. Now, again I was not there to hear this conversation, but supposedly the father said “No, we can make another child. She could die either way.” So the mother then had to make the decision to obey the father, or go against him. She decided to listen to him, because if she didn’t he would stop supporting her in every way. She brought the little girl home, and that was it. We were all pretty upset with her decision, but you have to respect the culture here in Haiti. We didn’t hear much of anything about the girl, but then I decided to ask her uncle. I would ask him every other day how she was doing, and he would usually say she was hanging in there. I knew that wasn’t a good sign, so I told him I would come to visit her. Of course I was nervous because I had no idea what she looked like at this point. I told him on Monday of that specific week I would come Tuesday, but then of course I got busy. I then told him Wednesday, and I promised I would be there right after school. Well Wednesday came, and I went to the school, and was doing work outside of a classroom. He came up to me and I said” How are you? I am coming to visit her today.” He looked at me, and said “No, she’s gone, and I said “Where is she?” He looked at me, and responded “She died, and is at the morgue.” I was shocked, I felt like I could have thrown up right at that moment. I mean are you kidding me? I was going to see her that day! Then I had a million thoughts running through my head. Why didn’t I go on Monday? Could I have saved her life? Why didn’t I see her when she came back? The list of questions can go on. I honestly felt as if a piece of my heart had been ripped out and stomped on over, and over again. An innocent little girl lost her life, and she had no say in it. I decided to go to the funeral to show my respect to the family, but I didn’t know how I would react to her father. The funeral was during the week on an afternoon. I went with Katie, and Sister Pat. The church was pretty crowded with people. Now, funerals in Haiti are much different than in the states. People do something that is called “Wailing.” Wailing is literally were someone is whining, and sobbing. It honestly is horrific, and just gives you the chills when your around it. Most people who wail, can make themselves pass out because they are so upset, and at this funeral a lot of people were wailing. I thought I was going to have to walk out, but I held it together, and set through the whole thing. The only time I felt like I was going to be sick was when they carried the little coffin right by me. It shock me up pretty well because I knew that little girl was in there. Having gone through this experience left lasting footprints on my heart. I will never forget Keuttra, and I hope she is having the time of her life up in heaven.

          Now, you would think one death would be enough, but no it didn’t work that way. After having experienced Keuttra’s death not a week later did we experience it again. Katie, and I had gone out to the village to spend time with the children. Katie had disappeared, and then one child grabbed me, and said I needed to go to where Katie was. They had grabbed Katie, and I into a home where a sick man was laying on the ground. There were probably 15 people shoved into the house telling us multiple different stories. Katie said she couldn’t get much out of them, so I tried. I asked the same questions, and they just kept saying his legs were swollen, he couldn’t eat, or move that well. We told them that they really needed to take him to the hospital, but of course we got we don’t have any money. We told them that the hospital won’t turn people done who are severely sick. They just looked at us, and we knew they wanted us to do everything for them. We couldn’t though. We offered to leave the family with water, and we then told them they could come to the house, and talk with Sister Pat. The man truly didn’t look that sick. He was talking, and drinking a little. I mean he was laying on the ground, but if you were to tell me that man was going to die in 3 days I would have told you that you’re crazy. We left the house, and came back home. We told Sister Pat what had happened, and that they would probably come to visit her. To no surprise a young women came. Sister Pat gave her a slip to take him to the hospital to help them pay for medical expenses. Maybe two hours later the women came back, and told Sister Pat he had died. He didn’t even make it to the hospital. When Sister Pat told us this story, we were shocked! I mean are you kidding me? How does this happen twice in not even two weeks? Again, I just wanted to throw up! I felt so besides myself. I felt like I was failing these people. That I wasn’t helping anyone at all. I just wanted to break down, and cry. I held it together though, and put it in the back of my head. I mean what else could I do? When people die here it’s not like it is in the states. People mourn, but it’s different. They don’t put their lives on hold, the next day they are back to their normal routine trying to survive in this country. So that’s what we did. We put it in the back of our heads, and moved on.

          Now, you would think that two would be it, but nope. It just kept coming our way. That dark, gloomy, cloud I swear was following us. This death didn’t hit me as hard as it did our hospital community. Katie, and I had gone to the hospital one week to get some information. We meant a nice, older doctor there, and he helped us get the information we needed. He told us he would be leaving for the weekend, but would be back the following week if we needed anything. He, and another doctor went down to PAP for something. We heard that while they were in PAP the one doctor had gotten out of the car, and was on his cellphone. While he was on his cellphone, we heard that a robbery had taken place. The robberies saw him on his cellphone, and they must have thought he was calling the police, and they shot him. I am not sure where they shot him, but they killed him. We had found out the news later that day, and we couldn’t believe it. I mean honestly how many deaths can one person deal with? You don’t have to know them for it to make a huge impact on your heart. It really was starting to get to me that people we knew were just starting to pass away left, and right. Another young man was taken from this earth way too soon.

RIP to the cutest little girl.

 

 Well you already know what I am going to say, and yeap believe it! The little boy that is my whole entire world here in Haiti, had a little baby half-sister that had been born a few months ago. She was absolutely stunning! The mother would let us hold her, and feed her. She truly was a perfect little angel. Although, she did have a horrible cough, and we knew it wasn’t good. We encouraged her to go the hospital, but we knew she probably didn’t have money to pay for it, but thank God we had a mobile clinic that was pretty cheap. She decided to go, and the doctors took a look at her. We don’t think they found anything to alarming, because they didn’t send her on to the hospital. They gave her the normal medicine, and that was it. We saw her every day, and she still had that cough. Then one Saturday afternoon I headed down to the school, and LeLe came running up to me. He told me that is little step sister had passed away, and didn’t know what to say. I was pretty confused to be honest, and I just couldn’t believe it. I made him to make to his house to see it for myself. When I got there I heard the mother crying inside of the house, I was pretty nervous to go in, but they wanted to me. I walked in and asked her about the baby. She told me that they baby had passed away, and was already buried. I couldn’t believe it. I honestly wanted to pass out. I thought really why God? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you allowing for all this innocent people, ad children to die? The thoughts ran through my head for days. I of course never got an answer.

          These deaths honestly all have left a different footprint on my heart that will last a lifetime. To be honest in a way it has harden my heart, and soften it. It has harden my heart in the way that when people complain about life being so hard I just want to freak out. When people complain about hospitals being horrible, and the doctors suck. It kills me it makes me want to become a nasty person, and tell them to go experience medical attention in a third world country. I know it’s horrible to become this person, and I try not to be, but some days it really is hard. I mean death isn’t an easy situation in any case. These deaths have soften my heart in way that showed me how life is truly so precious. It showed me that you never know when someone could just pass away. How one day a person is alive, and doing wonderful then the next they are dead. It has taught me to live my life each day with no regret, because you never know when your time is going to be up. I have learned some valuable lessons here in Haiti, and these are definitely some of them. You have to know in the end that you can’t save every life. That people are going to die, and you have to entrust in God that he had a greater plan for them. Trust me I know it’s hard, and there are days I question my own faith, but in the end I know it will be ok.

 

I hope you all enjoyed, and will be on the lookout for my next blog.

 

Love always, Beth

A harsh reality of life.

Good afternoon everyone! I hope you all enjoyed my photos in the last blog. In this blog I am going to be pretty blunt, and honest about the past few weeks I have had here in Haiti. These few weeks have hit me pretty hard, but have been a wonderful blessing as well.

          When we arrived back from the beach we knew we were going to have a lot of work to do. We had a medical group that had arrived from John Hopkins medical school in Baltimore. Most of the time when medical groups, school groups, etc. come we offer to translate for them. I for one am not big on translating, because it’s pretty difficult to be honest. My creole is pretty decent, but not in translating medical terms. I offered to translate the day they came to Lekol Jezi Mari because they would be seeing our kids, but I didn’t think they would need me after that. Along with the medical group coming we had to finish handing out Tom Shoes for our children, and oh boy let me tell you that was a real treat in itself. Now you may be thinking to yourself how hard can it be to translate some medical terms, and hand out some shoes? I mean seriously you would think it would be a walk in the park, but nope not in Haiti.

          Well I am going to first start with the wonderful, amazing Tom Shoes. A few months ago we knew we would be receiving a few thousand pairs of shoes to hand out to local schools around the area. I took in to my hands to measure every child’s foot to make sure they would get the proper size. Well I thought that for sure this would workout, but boy was I wrong. When we got the shipment of shoes, they didn’t even send us all the sizes they had put on the chart. I couldn’t believe it, but that was one small minor problem that we could make work. We sorted all the shoes by schools, and made sure that each school would get some boxes. After that long process we finally took our shoes to school. We had to wait two weeks to hand out the shoes though because the organization, Food for the Poor, wanted to hand them out to the kids. This organization worked with Tom shoes to get them here. Before they came Katie, and I sorted all the shoes by classes, and let me tell you it was one hell of a task. We have over five hundred kids at our school, so sorting out that many pairs of Toms got old pretty fast. Finally the day had come though were the Food for the Poor people came to hand the shoes out to the children. They picked out three classes they wanted to hand them out too, and well this is were things got ugly. They first started to hand out the shoes to the preschoolers. They lined them all up and had them sit down in a line in front of their classroom. We gave them a paper with all the children’s names and next to it was their size. Now, you would think they would follow that paper, but they decided to do it their own way. They just started giving each kid a random size, and my jaw dropped. Katie and I had put in so much work to have all those shoes organized, and they were just messing it up within seconds. They then turned to us, and said none of the shoes were fitting properly, and I wanted to say pretty nasty things, but I didn’t. I explained to them calmly that they need to give the sizes we marked done on the paper to the right kid, and that they didn’t send us the proper sizes. Of course they didn’t want to hear this, but hey we were just being honest. Well as they keep handing out the shoes the sizes we measured were off by a lot. I couldn’t believe everything just kept going wrong. Katie, and I both looked at each other because we knew there was no way we measured every child’s foot wrong. There was no way! So we took one of the shoes and measured it to the paper, and we immediately found out the problem. They sent us the wrong sizing chart, and every shoe size was off by three sizes. We couldn’t believe it, every child was going to get the wrong size. We couldn’t change it though, we had to make it work with what we had, and we did. We switched around sizes for most of the kids. Some of the shoes were two sizes too big, but the children took them. It really wasn’t a fun situation at all, as we had pictured it. We made the best of it though, and it really showed us a different side of Toms shoes. It took us over two weeks to hand all the shoes out, and I was supposed to be working on them when the visiting doctors came, but that changed for a week.

          As I said earlier we had a group of young medical residents from John Hopkins medical school here in Haiti. They were mostly all pediatrics, but there were some specialists. They would be traveling to different schools/churches during the week to see children. The first stop was Lekol Jezi Mari (The school I work at).  Now, I wasn’t even supposed to translate this day, I was only supposed to help guide the children, and be the parents for some kids. Well that didn’t work out. We had over 200 kids show up, so they needed all the help they could get. I had to translate for one doctor. His name was David, and he was one of the doctors who was not a pediatrician. He was actually a naturel disaster emergency relief doctor.  He was so interesting, and he explained everything to me as we were checking the children. The day was pretty difficult for me because it was our kids. It was hard to see some of our children come in with huge open sores, or infections that got out of hand, and the list could go on. This honestly broke my heart because I know deep down inside the parents care they just can’t afford to take them to the hospital. To give you more of insight into how the day ran I will explain step by step what the process is of a mobile clinic. We had a check in were people had to sign in, pay 50 gds, and get a number. Their number would then be called, and they would go to a check in. After they got to that check in, we had someone standing their sending them to one of the doctors. Then when seeing the doctor we would ask them specific questions. Typically the questions we ask are: What is your name? , How are you?, Why did you bring your child to see the doctor?, What do they have wrong with them?, and How long have they been sick? These are the typical run down of questions, and then we hope we get concrete answers from the parents. Now, what I mean by this is that most parents don’t know how long their child has been sick, and don’t always know what is truly wrong with them. It can become difficult to be honest. As I said though this day we started out with our school, and it killed me. The kids I work with day in day out were coming with sickness that I had no idea they had. It broke my heart. One that sticks out to me to this day is a little boy in first grade. His father brought all his kids in, and he said his one son was covered in sores, so the doctor asked to see them. The little boy pulled down his pants, and his thighs were covered in them. He had them everywhere, and they were so infected. I couldn’t believe it, I honestly wanted to throw up a little, but I didn’t. I had to hold my expressions back, because I know the children, and the parents. This was just one case though.

 Then the one little boy I hold near, and dear to my heart came up. I was terrified at first because I thought that something seriously could be wrong with him. The doctor did the check up, and he looked great, except for one thing. His right testicle had not dropped yet, and it should be by now. Now, this is pretty common in places where malnutrition is serve because this is why their testicles do not drop. The doctor decided to send him to the hospital because he could have surgery done. The little guy was terrified, but I told him it was vitally important for his health. I sent him off with his mom, and to the hospital they went. After that experience with my favorite child, I was honestly ready for the day to be over, and thank the lord it was. It was such a long mentally exhausting day. It really hit me hard today to see some of things that the children are suffering from. On the other hand though I was proud of the parents for taking the time to bring their children to make sure they got the proper medical treatment. I guess you could say it was a “Bittersweet moment” for me.

          I didn’t mind translating one day for them, but I honestly didn’t want to translate anymore. I wasn’t ready to see more children who were severely sick, but I knew I had to suck it up. They asked me to help for the rest of the week along with Katie, and Frankie. We traveled to a new spot each day for the rest of the week. Our next stop was up in the mountains to a very tiny school. When we arrived there were maybe 25 people waiting outside, and we thought for sure we would have a fast day. We went in, and got set up, and started to see the patients. We again saw pretty common things, such as colds, fevers, upset stomach, and etc. We flew through these patients so fast, and had no one else to see. We waited for a good 40 minutes, and decided to call it a day. We packed up, and headed back home. The next two days were pretty similar, and then we got to Friday. Now, you would think Friday would be the best day ever right? Ha, well that doesn’t exist in Haiti. We headed to a small town across the river, known as Compeche. It’s a pretty poor area, but has a lot of people. When we arrived there were a ton of people waiting to be seen. We went in, and got set up. As we were waiting to start Sister Doctor Karen pointed out a very sick little girl waiting to be seen. She had been laying on a piece of matting underneath a tree. You could tell from far away she was pretty sick, but not to the extent that she truly was. Katie, and I had no idea what was wrong with her, but we wanted to know. We asked Sister Doctor Karen, and she explained to us what it was. The little girl has “Kwashiorkor.” Kwashiorkor is when a child has serve malnutrition. Now, it’s not always the case that the parents aren’t feeding the child enough, it can also be related to the fact that the child’s body is not breaking down proteins properly. They get huge bellies, their hair turns orange, and they can lose their skin, which results into open sores. It’s a horrible disease, and once it’s to fair gone you can do nothing for them. We asked Sister Doctor Karen if she thought the little girl was going to make it, and she said no. We couldn’t believe it. It honestly was just another slap in the face. It was horrible to think that this innocent little child has no future. After the doctors got done examining her they sent her to a hospital a few hours away to get some type of treatment. Virtually the treatment is just to make her feel comfortable, and she could be there months before she dies, but her end result is dying. A shock to the heart right? This hit me hard because you feel so helpless. You ask yourself why over, and over again. You question why are you here? Why can’t you cure the world of disease, and hunger? I wish I had answers to these questions, but I never will.

          After seeing that little girl I was pretty unfocused, and I just wanted the day to be done. It only got better though. We had babies come in with TB, a child with a bone infection, and so much more. This area had the most serve sickness we saw all week. It was beyond heart breaking, but honestly it’s what I call the harsh reality of life.

Living in Haiti has taught me the harsh reality of life over, and over again. You see things that you would never see in the states, and experience things that will be imprinted in my mind forever. Dealing with the Tom’s shoes taught me that even though a company is trying to do good doesn’t always mean it works out that way. It showed me how a company can make mistakes working with other companies to achieve one common goal. It’s sad, but unfortunately I think it will never change. As for working with the medical group it showed me a whole need world. I learned so much about different diseases, and saw the true struggle of parents trying to take care of their children. As I said earlier it was a bittersweet moment.

Life isn’t always sweet, and things aren’t always fair. You have to keep your head up, and push on through no matter what.

I hope you enjoy the blog. My next one will be out soon.

 

Love always,

Beth

 

 

A journey through my photos.

Hello everyone!!

I hope everyone is doing well, and that the cold weather is leaving you all. We have been enjoying some pretty hot days over here. As I said in my last blog we got to embark on a journey of a lifetime. On New Year’s Day we set out! We took public transportation the whole journey, which consisted of tap taps, and boats. It was such an experience, but I went to share it with you all by just using my photos. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I did taking them.

(These photos are from Gros-Morne, Cap- Haitian, and Labdee.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you all enjoy these wonderful photos and get a taste of how truly beautiful Haiti is! It was a wonderful experience for us to travel, and have a few days to ourselves!

Be on the look for my next blog because it’s going to give you  a pretty harsh reality to what life can truly be like here for us.

Love always,

Beth