Old Lady Peanuts

I was on the bus from my house to Santiago to pick up our third and final intern (Jamie is awesome!) and sat beside a sweet old lady (pushing 95) chewing on a cigar. Her skin was akin to a baseball glove and she barely had any teeth in her skull. I notice she is chewing on something and we do that awkward "I'm looking at what your doing but don't want you to notice so i turn away at the last second as to not make eye contact". We do that a few times before she puts her hand out to me. I turn, finally making eye contact with Oldie McOldison and she asks me if I want the rest of her peanuts. I said sure as to not turn down a free snack (shameless) and before i know it she is spitting up all the peanuts in her mouth onto her shirt and eventually my lap. She shrugs her shoulders and justifies her actions by saying, "I can't chew anything, because i have no teeth." Well, peanuts was a bad choice there lady. It was all i could do to not laugh out loud.

So, our latrine budget finally went through and the money is on the way!! You may have remembered me mentioning this project in February, well its finally happening. We did our preliminary walk around to evaluate homes in need and have about 10-15 in mind for our initial project. As you may recall, this project is in response to a cholera outbreak in the grey area between the DR and Haiti, and the sites for these latrines were strategically selected based upon family size, # of children, current sanitation situation and proximity to major water source. Out of the 15 possible homes, 15 are Haitian immigrants with an average family count of 12 living in a house the size of your bedroom. We would walk into the "yard" of a house like this......

.....and find a gaggle of children.......

.....unattended. The parents were usually not around so we asked if we could see their bathroom, and on more than one occasion we would come across something like this.....

-or this-

Raise your hand if you would prefer to poop in that or in an open field. In between houses we would often blaze our own trails, braving the tall grass in a "children of the corn-esque" scenario......

....only to arrive and have to see hungry, lonely children like these beautiful girls.....

....and not immediately be able to help them and turn that frown upside down. A humbling morning that resulted in crazy "razor grass-burn" and an even stronger burning to help the situation in this vulnerable area. Luckily, we will be able to contribute something to improve their style of living. 

This project aims to educate the families about proper sanitation and the need to poop in a covered hole, not anywhere you want. The families have to attend sanitation training, dig their own 10ft. deep hole and provide manual labor. It is not a handout, but a collaboration. Their improved sanitation will impact the lives of everyone around them, so they need to take responsibility.

On a separate note we installed our first "Boutequin Escolar" or School First-Aid kit. Many of the schools have no such thing, and approximately 0% of schools have a nurse. We sat down with Catalino, the professor at Los Indios basic school, and led him through a simple first-aid training and showed him how to use the material in the kit. The idea with this project is to empower the teachers to be able to treat very basic situations such as cuts, stomach aches and head aches, which end up being some of the reasons kids don't attend school. We can treat a headache so the kids can stay in class and visit the clinic afterwards. We have a lot of things going on! Not to mention......

Our newest group of Supermen!

I am super excited about this group (i know i say that about every group). This group is a little older. We even have a 15 year old. But how cool is this: Our boys empowerment course is held in a dugout! It seems so fitting. Our class coincides with recess at the local school so we get some visitors.

We have a full house with 3 full-time interns who look like this:

Miguel in the back is a medium-term volunteer and Hannah is not pictured because she does not like to be photographed. On the same note all photo credits go to her. 

Anyways, that's our life for now. Adios!

The Giant Moth Effect

Fluttering. Fluttering was all I could here. The electricity is gone and I am under the protection of my mosquito net, but all I can do is listen, while the mystery animal flutters around the room. Is it a bat? Giant moth? Pterodactyl? Should I get out of the net and brave the unknown? Can it penetrate the net? What do I do if it does?

Third world problems, am I right?

A lot has happened in the past month but here are the highlights:

•   2 groups of volunteers that assisted in EKG training at the hospital, improved nutrition courses   with mothers groups, personal hygiene presentations at local schools and one beautifully          painted school cafeteria.
•      Superman Graduation and Wonder Woman class.
•      The arrival of our new wonderful intern, Maghan (yup that's the correct spelling) !
•      Hired 2 local town residents to act as our new Community Operations Assistant and Community Health Advisor.

We are kicking butt and taking names! I DO want to highlight our EKG training and implementation program, though.

An EKG machine was recently donated to FIMRC. A volunteer nurse came down and led a small training for all the Doctors and nurses in the area. Up until this point the latest technology the Hospital possessed was a tongue depressor (exaggeration, but eh Hospital is a dud), so an EKG machine is a big step up.

The training was great and I sacrificed my ample chest hair (it took 3 nurses to shave it off) in order for the Doctors to practice. The machine paid dividends almost immediately. The next day a Haitian woman was brought to the hospital. She could barely move and looked so weak. They ran an EKG on her and it resulted in a Myocardial Ischemia, which is a blockage that could lead to a heart attack. She was immediately rushed to the nearest adequate hospital. Now that we have this machine here it is amazing the Hospital was able to function effectively without it. Working in preventative health/education can be frustrating sometimes as we hardly see the fruits of any labor, so it’s nice to be able to facilitate something that has an immediate impact and can help improve a local health system.

Its like a forest up there!

Proud of their new equipment! My heart is clean :)

In other news, our house has flooded twice with 3” of water. I was in a meeting when Hannah called to tell me that, “there is water everywhere”. We swept it out with brooms. It was laughable. I think the problem is solved. Time will tell.

Anyways, that’s about it. There is really not a whole lot of cool things going on, and I know you guys don’t like to hear about work, bleh.

Here is the winner of this weeks most adorable photo of Eddy:

vroom vroom!

Adios

P.S. There is nothing worse than having full blown diarrhea with no running water/electricity and a full house of volunteers sleeping in the room attached to the bathroom. Just saying.