First week thoughts

It’s a bit discouraging at times walking about the streets observing the endemic poverty of Leogane and the lasting earthquake damage. Every street has some buildings still partly destroyed or abandoned and although the number of tent cities has been decreasing steadily, they still seem to be all around and can feel endless once you enter. Yet despite the relatively meager living conditions (or what we’d subjectively consider meager) that most of the people we see live in, almost all of them appear content and happy. Maybe reasons for this could be attributed to religion/fate or acceptance or not having known any better or something entirely different. But whatever it is I was definitely surprised and I guess it’s a testament to the resolve of Haitians living in a country that’s been through so much political and natural turmoil.

Another interesting discovery was about the two-sided local view on NGO’s and the Red Cross and other aid organizations. They are of course delivering aid and often treating people for free providing a great service for the city, however they also have detrimental effects to other institutions. Dr. Delson and his ob-gyn clinic business, for example, suffered greatly after the earthquake with the huge influx of aid organizations providing free care. His private services, necessary to provide for himself and family, lost many patients to the free care offered by MSF among others. Likewise the local nursing school graduates found difficulty in obtaining stable jobs. While free care from NGOs is a very commendable and necessary service, its also hurting the local health infrastructure that will become the only major health services once most NGOs leave. I have no idea how this could be fixed but it was just something interesting to think about.

On another note I’ve been picking up many basic Creole phrases and am now getting a decent grasp of the language. Speaking is much much easier than understanding due to the fact that local Haitians blow through sentences incredibly fast and blend so many words together. One of my favorite conversational phrases is the common response to “sak pase” which is analogous to ‘what’s up’. People respond “m’ap boule” which is our version of saying ‘I’m chilling’ but, thanks to the lovely weather here, its literal translation is actually ‘I’m burning’ which I found hilarious.

To end with an inspirational thought, I’ve been reading Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, the biography on Paul Farmer. Kidder paints Farmer as a global health and human rights champion and saint, which is exactly what most of us in global health classes have come to know him by. Since he was a med student he’s been completing a lot of admirable global health work in Haiti and other countries. When reading the book I was surprised to find that on one of his first trips here he volunteered at L’Hopital St. Croix, the hospital right below us! (although he did later leave because he didn’t like the patient payment system) Nonetheless it was still quite inspiring to find out this global health hero volunteered right here years ago.