Just sayin'

Tonight was a beautiful night. The day was warm, sunny, idyllic. The night was cool enough to be comfortable, not cool enough to be uncomfortable driving home with the windows wide open.

I spent the evening with a few really good friends from home, amid lots and lots of well to do educated folks, medical and engineering-type people, and people who think like I do. I spent the evening with people who come from backgrounds like mine. It was dark out and the kids under the age of 4 were still safely running around the yard, swinging, and sliding. It was dark out and I felt no fear, no threat, not even the need to be aware as I walked down the street. The lawn we were on was thick, lush, and could have easily served as a perfect bed for the night. The houses on the street were all lit up, welcoming, and I'm willing to bet that many of them keep their backdoors open late into the night, if not all night.

Walking away from an incredible meal of hush puppies, coleslaw, banana pudding, peach cobbler and the best barbeque one could ever ask for (think entire pig roasted on a spit where the mesquite coals were made that morning on site) I veered a little bit as I tried to look up at the stars. "You know, I was just reading an article about white privilege this week. ...Just sayin'." The artist next to me, also there purely by association with one of the hosts, nodded. It's good to get the ideas out there. We both knew it was true. Neither of us had done a thing to deserve or even work for this. We were just there. Just sayin'.




And you know, I'm not sure I can make a judgment call. I just know it's there. It's been a long time since I've walked down the middle of a street at 10pm and felt completely and totally secure. Unless of course I was with a group of people.

I live in a neighborhood that would be considered unsafe. Neighbors told us to put a fence in our backyard so people wouldn't cut through the yard to get away from the police. I've lived in neighborhoods like that for years. And I don't feel unsafe at home... but I know what's going on around me. I feel safe because the neighbors know me. I know they'd take care of me, like they have so many times before. When the neighbors saw the guy who hit my car and helped the police find him. When the neighbors used their own chainsaws and cut the tree off my car. When the neighbors watch for the UPS man and hold my packages until I get home. When they threaten the person using our yard as a shortcut.

I feel safe because of my community.

And yet, I don't belong in this community inherently. I'm an outsider coming in with all these default privileges. Going to college was expected, so I did. Someone else is paying my health insurance. I can afford to take a volunteer job that I love so I can get more experience to have a real job that pays me to do what I love someday.

I fit in the crowd that was there tonight. Even though I don't make millions. I belong. Even though I don't dress in the latest, greatest brands. And I am cared for, because at least one family there tonight has taken me in as their own. I am so incredibly blessed.

It's funny... I want to work in Haiti, work in Africa, work in the city. But I think like a rich person. I was raised to think like white, upper-middle class America. Spending 2 months in Tanzania last summer was where I first started to realize who I was. And that's hard to change. Perhaps it can't be changed. Or maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the question is, how can this be used? Where am I supposed to be? It's not an accident that I was born into this family, this neighborhood, and these associations.

I've got a crazy dream (that's totally a good idea!!) of finding the funding to go teach hospital technicians in Haiti. It wouldn't be an entire degree or certificate type program. We would only present the most essential skills, hands-on practical things. As my musician friend put it, "things we should all know so we can actually fix our own stuff." Exactly.

The reason I bring this up, is that if I had managed to get into the right conversations with the people tonight, I probably could have had the whole dream funded by the end of the week. Discouraging? Or maybe now I need to get serious about this crazy idea. I know it could work. (By the way Mamma, this is what I was talking about.... not the haircut) ;)

That's enough thoughts for tonight. I think more will come soon... just sayin'.

Thankful for Spring

I wrote a few weeks ago about a rather unpleasant biking experience, so I thought I'd give a post about a day that was as ideal as one could hope for.

Today, I rode my bicycle to work, still trying to finish up paperwork from our week in Haiti. Fortunately, I'm moving past the debilitating shock of being back in the US (and feeling unable to do anything). Now I feel focused and directed - trying to do the best possible work reporting, assessing, and recommending next steps. There are quite a few NGOs still in the Port au Prince area who may be able to help with some of the needs we're pointing out.

Outside, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and we're sitting right around 72 degrees Fahrenheit (~22 C). I rode home today through spring trees beginning to open their leaves, some in full blooms of whites and pinks. Even traffic seemed more friendly - a traffic cop at the entrance to the University let me turn left without even having to put my feet down to stop. The somewhat tiring uphill on the route home passed without my notice because I was so caught up in looking at the houses on the hill with wild ivies, tulips, daffodils, and lots of flowering trees. There's a particular yellow house on the corner of Duke University Rd and Swift Ave that has a particularly wild, joyful garden. The plants bloom wildly and every which way - just the way they seem happiest. I've seen someone out digging and moving things, so I know they work on the yard. What fun to see something not in neat lines or constrained by borders! It's these kind of gardeners who were probably the children who colored outside the lines in kindergarten.

And to top it all off, I came home to find J sitting outside in the sunshine on our back porch. We spent time talking, planning, and thinking about what to do with our shady, very wild, unable to grow a lawn, yard. I was particularly excited when she suggested putting up the hammocks, getting a compost bin, and getting a rain barrel (that is either already painted or a blank canvas to paint!). All three of these are things I've hoped for in my yard. I think I'll renew my lease.


(Photo from Chicago Art Museum garden during trip with Magali and Jeannette. But I promise I have some of these exact flowers around my mailbox right now)

Justin's Post

Check out our group post on DoSomething.org from the last few days. This may be a little out of order since we lost internet for a day somewhere along the way.

http://www.dosomething.org/news/ground-haiti-2-months-later

Pictures of Life after an Earthquake

Besides all the physical damage around us, the psychological damage to the people of Haiti is astronomical. I’ve heard it referred to as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on many occasions, and with my very casual knowledge of psychology, I won’t deny the presence of PTSD here. Today I learned a little bit more about what it means to live in the wake of a devastating earthquake.

• We arrived at L’Hopital Communaute Hatienne today and were led into the main waiting area by our Haitian driver. He seems confident enough, but as soon as we entered the space, he walked into the center area that is open to the sky and some tarps rigged across the opening. Standing under a roof is still a frightening prospect.

• While sitting amidst a pile of suction machines in the hallway at the hospital, we were joined by a curious 16 year old boy. Demitri turned out to be a great help with removing and replacing screws, practicing his English as we did some troubleshooting together on a somewhat hopeless piece of equipment. We learned how to salvage tubing off an abandoned suction unit and learned how to use a continuity tester to verify the integrity of a power cord. While sitting together on the floor at the end of a productive few hours, he started to tell me about the earthquake. Demitri had been at home at the time – changing the channel on the TV. Though his house remained standing, he faced a near death experience in one of the aftershocks while respecting his mother’s request to stay home. Fortunately the eager student is still around to hope his school continues soon. I’d like to think that someday he’ll be working in an engineering or technical field making a difference for someone else. (Perhaps I should just be considering teaching??)

• On the way home, from the hospital, we dropped off another Haitian driver for the night. As we drove along his street, he pointed out his house, his grandfather sitting on the steps, and his tent. Despite the fact that his home survived the earthquake, he remains sleeping in a tent. I’m hoping the massive down pour tonight didn’t wash out everyone’s tents.

• Our team member, Jean, got a call from his sister this week, saying that she was back in Haiti. After watching her house fall down in front of her just as she came home from work, Jean’s sister went to stay with family in Miami. Finally, they’ve returned to the country they love, living with family here whose home survived the earthquake. Like Justin mentioned earlier, the quake is no respecter of persons.

On a more personal note, as we near the end of the week I’m getting more and more tired. My perspective is also changing, to one that doesn’t really understand how the western world works all the time. I’m acclimatizing to the heat and humidity, falling in love with the people on the street, and wanting to be in the midst of everything again. Emails and news from the US seems trivial and sometimes ridiculously frustrating. I find myself challenged to extend grace, understanding, and patience to those both near and far. Fortunately, those around me extend grace in so many little ways. I guess if I had it all figured out life wouldn’t be worth living.

Oh the humanity. ... in jars and vials, that is...

Internet has been out for a bit all over the city, so I've got a short note and will hopefully do more of an update tomorrow:

I may have spoken too soon about repairing equipment following the earthquake. Yesterday was our grand adventure to the main state-owned teaching hospital in Port-au-Prince. The drive to the hospital passed by the Palais National, which although still spectacular, is spectacularly at least a full level lower than its original height. The surrounding parks are full of tents and make shift homes built primarily out of scrap wood, corrugated metal, and tarps sometimes labeled with the names of different aid organizations. Passing by countless piles of rubble, leaning walls held up by one or two bars of rebar, and mangled nests of iron I understand the general fear of sleeping under roofs. It’s still difficult to imagine the scene of watching buildings rapidly become piles of rubble not only in the first earthquake but in multiple aftershocks.

The hospital itself was quite damaged, though most of the buildings are still standing, as far as I could tell. Large operations have been set up in tents under the trees, while the large concrete buildings stand empty. The entire clinical lab is being run in a tent, where I discovered a rather innovative use for babyfood jars - holding urine samples!

The operating theater is actually in a building, fortunately... though it is also a temporary setup. The contrast is striking between the folding tables, piles of boxes containing drugs, and makeshift hand-washing stations and the eerily empty hallways leading into the well built operating theaters with designated prep rooms. We had a rather satisfying quick fix on an x-ray view box in these empty operating theaters, but one wonders how long it will be before hospital operations return to the building. I've been told that this particular building has been approved for safety by a team of engineers, but people are still hesitant to return to working indoors.

Another building that stands abandoned is perhaps even more disturbing. The clinical laboratory building is still standing, but there are broken windows and open cabinets among the rooms. Chairs and tables have been removed to set up the tents. We were shown empty rooms where microscopes once lined the counters. Now there's a box in the corner with the expensive pieces piled on top of each other. Incubators and refrigerators have been strewn open and vials with blood are broken all over the floor, some mounded high in the sink. Everything in the building is covered in dust and remains to be tested. Our later trips may involve a trip back to this hospital just to plug machines in and find out whether or not they work.


I suppose it's not really my place to try and make light of things, but with such a beautiful tree as your waiting room, things could be worse.

Earthquake up close

Since I’m not often not home long enough to properly care for a dog, my pets of choice have become plants. Having forgotten to ask my roommate to water them, I’m anticipating that my ‘pets’ will be somewhat wilted when I return from Haiti. But I also know that they are all succulent plants, built to withstand periods without water, and that after even a single watering they will markedly perkier and hold themselves up straighter. That dramatic resurrection exactly describes how I felt in the process of sitting down for dinner tonight. At the beginning of the meal, unable to do more than smile in response to conversation; gradually gaining strength as I worked through Tasso (Haitian beef in a wonderful sauce), green beans, rice with beans, and fried plantains; to significantly much more energy and so much happier at the end of the meal. Today was a long, productive, and wonderful day.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about our work here is that we are fixing everything that was damaged in the earthquake. Yes, we were brought here as part of the relief effort. But I hate to break your bubble: Most of this equipment was in very bad shape before the Richter scale read 7-plus. Only one of the pieces of equipment had problems from the earthquake, as far as we could tell. Justin spent a large part of the day tracing the circuitry on this autoclave, resealing the door, and adding a grounding wire to the casing so it wouldn’t shock the person who was trying to sterilize the equipment. Come the end of the day, we were testing the equipment with some of the nurses… and lo and behold… found another problem. It’s exactly like the Tom and Jerry type cartoon where Tom is trying to stop a leak with is finger when another breaks out and before you know it he’s covered in water. The door of the autoclave no longer leaked, but of course now water was leaking out the corroded back of the machine.

Overall, we managed to fix 7 pieces of equipment in a half day at one hospital. We recorded touching 15 pieces of equipment, some of which could easily be fixed with the correct parts – like a halogen bulb. The pieces that were fixed were addressed largely because of some knowledge beforehand that allowed us to bring the appropriate tools and replacement parts. Unfortunately, the hospital we visited today does not have a trained biomedical staff to do regular equipment maintenance. The designated technician wasn’t around quite enough for us to train him all that effectively. Fortunately, the nurses were well versed in their equipment and very attentive to details. It’s exciting to see someone bring you something that is an easy fix, repair it, and in the process show them how to prevent or solve that problem in the future.

The trip home from our hospital seemed surreal. We had spent the night in the Dominican Republic the night before, so it was a rush from hotel to airport to hotel to first hospital this morning. When I finally got a chance to take in the scene on the way home, it was as if the news reels were running outside my window. Except they were life-size, complete with the smells and humidity, and the reporter’s narration was satisfyingly absent.

Our third team member, a biomedical technician in the US, grew up in southern Haiti. We stopped on a rubble filled street in front of a two-story house with collapsing balcony and crumbled foundation strewn about. This was his mother’s house, his home during high school and college. Now it was not even remotely liveable, all his belongings having been looted. As he mourned the loss of his personal library, we asked if he would tell his mother about the scene or show her the pictures we’d taken. “No, no… she doesn’t need to know this.”

Since I did a bad job blogging last time I went...

Tickets were purchased yesterday for a departure the day after tomorrow. And no, it's not for a funeral...

I'm going back to Haiti for a week as part of a team of Biomedical Engineers/Technicians to assess the equipment situation at 4+ hospitals and do as many fixes as we can sight-unseen. Well, sight-mostly-unseen except for some photos. It's incredibly exciting, intimidating, thrilling, and overwhelming. My approach at this point is to be as prepared as possible without sacrificing rest beforehand, do the most thorough job possible while we're there, and write a kick-butt report when we return. Hopefully it will be an impactful project, and not just some disaster-tourists out for a joyride.

In the past I've tried not to drop names of organizations in my blog, but I was told to on this trip... and it makes sense. The more publicity and awareness there is of our cause and related ones, the more we'll be able to affect change. So here it goes:

I'm traveling with Engineering World Health (EWH), based out of Durham, North Carolina. This is the same organization I traveled with in Tanzania. But no, this is not a 2 month stint involving swahili lessons. And since an English-Haitian Kreyol dictionary is not possible to find last minute (as I learned this afternoon), I'll be relying on my French and incredible non-verbal communication skills. Fortunately or unfortunately, my stomach usually lets people know when I'm hungry. I'm hoping that will work in the positive next week.

EWH is not initiating this project all alone. AmeriCares has asked us to partner in this (potentially) multi-phase project to improve the state of medical equipment in and around Port-au-Prince. They may be addressing other needs too, but I don't know about them. Do your own research.

Since this trip has been pieced together so last minute, you'll learn more details as we go. I'm really enjoying the challenge of getting to think through the whole process to make our work effective. This is in contrast to being a student with a set packing list, scheduled itinerary, and pre-established connections. Next week in Port-au-Prince all the preparation will have been things that our team has thought of, designed, and intentioned. It's exciting to use the knowledge I've been learning over the past year while compiling guidelines of how to donate medical equipment effectively. Now it's time for the practical exam.

To give you an idea of the preparations -

• Spent this morning distributing travel insurance cards I bought yesterday
• We compiled and refined a list of pertinent questions to ask the hospitals. For instance, we can get their wish list, which might include an ultrasound. But we've got to ask if they have a doctor trained to use it AND if there's even electricity to make the ultrasound turn on.
• Found a connection with a Clinical Engineer from the University of Arkansas who has been given donations by Siemens, Drager, and others... talked about how we could help him identify appropriate recipients.
• Looked for the non-existent English-Haitian Kreyol phrasebook (and the even more impossible medical phrase book)
• Bought silicone sealant to fix a leaky autoclave. Picked up WD-40 and superglue as impulse buys. I'm guessing they'll be useful.

But what am I talking about? I've got all day tomorrow and even Sunday morning to prepare! Ha... oh dear. Keep praying!



Photo: From my first visit to Haiti. This is the sign we put on a half-fixed autoclave. The next day I found it on my bag. "Dange: Pa touche wap mouri." "Danger, don't touch. You'll die."




Oh, and before I forget, the views expressed in this blog are solely the personal views of the author. Unless of course I'm quoting or misquoting someone else.