Greetings from Haiti! The trip has been quite an adventure so far. On Monday we held a clinic at the church, which was CRAZY. I loved it! We were only doing small things for most of the people but hopefully we helped a little bit. We're holding a follow-up clinic at the church tomorrow.
Yesterday we drove 4hrs to and from Chaveneau and were only there for about 2hrs. It was pretty cool to see the school and we taught hand hygiene to the kids using glitter as our "germs". We had to hike a bit through the village and countryside, which was awesome. It was SOO beautiful out there.
This morning we visited the hospital in Carrefour, which is mostly a maternity hospital. As an aspiring midwife, I loved seeing everything. We started off in the NICU where I saw a premature baby, who I was told weighed 1kg, or 2.2lbs. She was born at 28wks and was TINY. They had a heat light on her and she was hooked up to an IV and O2. We also saw the delivery room, which was insane. No patients were in there at the time but the delivery room consisted of about 8 bed/chairs all in a row. A woman could be giving birth 4ft away from another woman in labor. The hospital also has an AIDS clinic, gives vaccinations to children through a program funded by UNICEF, and has a nutrition clinic funded by another organization. The whole hospital and clinics are free. I am really, really, really hoping that we'll be able to go back there on Friday.
The hardest part of this trip is wanting to be useful every waking second. I keep having to remind myself that a little bit of teaching and a smile are worth something. Going into the trip, I thought that I would want to do international medical work someday. This trip is just a taste of that but it confirms that international medical volunteer work is something that I want to strongly pursue in the future. --Kim
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