This is our last day of this trip to Port Au Prince. I am in Haiti with the organization Homeopaths Without Borders. We can always use your donations to further the work here in Haiti, click here if you wish to make a donation.
We really had a great day today, working at the Baptist Mission in Delmar, a section of PAP.
It was a Jesus kind of day
It was our first time treating people directly from the tent camps and neighborhoods of PAP. And we definitely saw some things you could never see in the states, recurrent, periodic fevers (malaria? dengue?), skin afflictions that were rampant (see the photos), LOTS of scabies, and tons of fungus of all types and severities.
These are the guys who teach the Bible school
Getting people to give us the info we need is definitely a challenge. Most people sit down, say they have a headache and stomach and then wait for medicine. When we ask things like “what makes it better and worse? describe the pain? what was happening when you got this sickness?”, they are dumbfounded at first. Then they catch on that this is a bit more than just a laundry list of complaints,
Scabies on an infant
that we are here to truly listen to the whole story. That WHO I am matters as well, with questions like “does the sun affect you? how have you felt since the earthquake, any new symptoms since then? what makes you anxious?”.
We saw many children today,
Only one of the many fungus cases
from the child who was clearly in perfect health, beautiful skin, no digestive problems to the one covered, absolutely covered in scabies and just recovering from a bout of diarrhea.
Sometimes the remedies are crystal clear in the first 2 sentences, and other times we just hope that we have found something close, because there is so little to go on…
We will definitely go back to this place, I can’t help but wonder about that little one with the cracked lips and fingers covered in fungus of some kind, will the remedy help?
She had the worst case of cracked skin I had ever seen
Does she need another dose before I can get back? Sitting here tonight, packing my bags and checking out of the hotel, I feel ambivalent. Sure, i am ready for some creature comforts like a good cup of tea, but today was really the reason I came here and I am filled with gratitude. Many of the kids we saw today do not go to school because they do not have the $250 required to pay for school for one year. One of the volunteers with us, Greg Meyer, is gathering funds to help pay for some of the kids to go to school.
She confounded us all, how could she stand the heat in that dress????