We just arrived back in Port Au Prince, which means we are back online, and almost done with our trip (we return tomorrow!). It has been a week of different pacing – Cabestor is a small, fairly remote mountain community and the site of a new birth center opened by Midwives for Haiti last November. Women are slowly starting to come there to have their babies, although many are still born at home, either by preference or circumstance (look for Leona’s post later today about our Sunday hike). There is a daily clinic at the birth center, and the midwives make home visits for postpartum follow-up and baby checks.
Hinche gave us lots of exposure to healthcare in Haiti, but we were basically in a bubble when it came to the culture and community. In Cabestor, we slept on the 2nd floor of the birth center, essentially in the town square. A school and the Catholic church make up the other 3 sides of the square. So every day, we had women and children coming to us. And 4 of our 6 nights, we had laboring moms and new babies! I believe we were there on the busiest week since the birth center had opened, in fact. We had 5 babies, which includes one set of twins (a first for the birth center!). I personally caught 2. 🙂 And we went to women’s homes in the community to do home visits. And sat under the mango trees in the front yard talking with the staff, the incredible midwives and nurse who staff the center, and anyone else who came along.
It was also wonderful to be offline for the week. Our pace slowed down. We played games. We talked. We napped. We marveled at the dedication of the two MFH midwives – Michelle and Nelta – who live at the birth center almost full-time, only returning to their families for 2 weekends per month. We saw the cooks making our meals over charcoal fires. We conferenced about medical challenges and how we would solve them, since calling for backup and help wasn’t an easy option. We caught babies and did their home visits and then saw them later in the week at the clinic for well-baby checks. We also woke to the church bells as they rang (32 times) at 5am for morning services. And some of us played soccer with local youth and got a bit schooled in the heat (sorry Lamar and Leona!).
And now it is almost time to go. This trip has given us much to think about – a process I suspect will go on for awhile. This has been an amazing group of young adults to be traveling with. All of them met every experience head on, and aside from occasionally venting about the heat and bugs in our mosquito nets, I didn’t hear a cross word the entire trip. If these people are the future of healthcare, indeed if they are the future, we are in good hands. I wrote them each an entry in their journal, and assigned each one a word that, to me, describes them. Those words are: Heart, Authentic, Conviction, Spark, Soul, and Steadfast.
Amen.
–Ann
emuinhaiti 