Jan. 7: Transitions

This morning was definitely difficult to say goodbye to Gabie (and our new friend Tina). To say that our team enjoyed our time in Cap Haitian and working with Sonje Ayiti would be an understatement; everything the organization does and the people who run it are so in line with our teams’ goals and missions that it made our time with them run so smoothly.

View of Haitian the countryside from our flight

We got off to an early start to catch an 8:30 flight out of Cap Haitian to Port-au-Prince (which was apparently running on Haitian time: about 30-40 minutes late). The flight itself was smooth and easy and it was really neat to be able to see the countryside from an aerial view. Haiti is truly a country of “mountains beyond mountains”. We could even spot the citadel on top of one of the mountains from the plane.

Rachel (the former trip coordinator from ICC) met us at the airport (and I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief! My biggest fear was that nobody would be at the airport to pick us up when we landed!) and we drove back to Walls Guesthouse in an open top tap-tap. I think Grace has been the only one to experience riding in an open tap-tap, so the rest of us were really enjoying soaking up the Haitian sun and breeze in the back of the truck.

After we got settled into the guesthouse, we took a trip over to Grace Children’s Hospital where we would be working for the rest of the day. I finally got to meet the new ICC trip coordinator that I have been in almost constant contact with to plan this trip- which was really great to finally be able to put a name to a face I’ve written so many emails to! There is also another group from Ohio that is working with ICC the same time we are so we got to meet them at GCH before we parted ways to do our own projects. Our good friend Robenson gave us a tour of the hospital, which does everything from Tb clinics and eye care, to gynecology and treating children. (more can be found about GCH in a blog post from last year when we visited the hospital). We walked across the street to where the old hospital used to be, and it was amazing to see a big empty plot of land where a collapsed hospital laid just one year before. Thanks to the generosity of Rachel and Emily, we were able to “supplement” our packed lunches from Walls with peanut butter sandwiches, fruit and chips. After lunch, we got down to work: surveying for the micro-enterprise program that ICC is thinking of implementing in PaP. We went around to the patients that were sitting in the waiting room to survey them, asking things ranging from their age, employment status, former schooling and their family situation to what their weekly expenses were and how they viewed loans/micro enterprise programs. I think that we all really enjoyed the chance to talk to the local Haitians.

Robenson and Melody at Grace Children's Hospital

After surveying, we met with the ICC director of Haiti- Dr. Bijou- to talk to her a little more about the micro enterprise program. ICC has a pilot program already implemented in the north and are now thinking about starting one in the south. The major objective of the program is to help with health conditions. The loans help these Haitian women to improve their economic activities which ideally then they will use to provide themselves with healthcare. I think some things may have been lost in translation, so a debrief with Emily really helped the team understand the terms/goals of the micro enterprise program, and how our role with conducting surveys plays into everything. After our debrief with Emily, we worked on consolidating all of the information we found during the day into one Excel document so we could keep adding to it once we collected more surveys and can easily share it.

The guesthouse gave us the option to put Brian with some random people, or to find a room where 5 of us could fit. We opted to stay together as a team, so after a long day of travel and work when everybody’s’ delirious and goofy sides came out, we had an interesting night. All in all, though it was sad to leave Gabie and move on to other work, the team handled the transition well and we are all looking forward to heading to Les Cayes tomorrow!

Haitilove,
Hannah and the HCTeam