BY KATHY
We often get asked what a typical day is like for us living
in Haiti. It is hard to answer, because
our life here is wildly different each day.
When we look back on any given week, it often seems like we have lived a
month’s worth of days! But to answer
this question, I picked a day at random (several weeks ago) and recorded the
day’s events:
6:00am We
load up the car, today with some suitcases and bags of items we purchased
in the US for the hospital, since we just arrived back in Haiti the evening
before. (We buy what we are able to in
Haiti, but many necessary supplies
and medicine are not available in Haiti.)
6:15am We
leave our house in Port au Prince to drive to the hospital in Saintard.
7:00am We stop
at a guesthouse on the way and pick up a lab tech friend who works at
a non-profit that helps equip medical labs in developing countries.
7:45am We
arrive at the hospital.
8:00am I
sneak to my secret spot to have devotions, then my morning prayer walk around
the hospital.
8:30am I make
arrangements for an interpreter to come for the training our lab tech friend
is providing for the laboratory staff.
9:30am I make
my rounds to greet each staff member.
This greeting time is more important
culturally in Haiti than in the US.
Today I greet longer than usual since
we had just returned from the US.
10:00am I am
visited by a soon-to-be father asking for a present for his baby.
10:30am I work
on financial reports for the hospital.
11:00am We are
visited by a community leader asking for help with a local need.
11:30am I
arrange for food to be brought to the lab staff during their training.
12:00pm We have
a meeting with the non-medical director about payroll.
12:30pm We check
in on the gentleman who lives at the guesthouse.
1:00pm I work
some more on financial reports.
1:30pm I
distribute printer ink and other supplies purchased in the US.
2:00pm We are visited
by another person asking for financial assistance.
2:30pm I begin
organizing and gathering things for the trip home.
2:45pm We
begin to leave, when 2 patients arrived with minor injuries. The staff has already
left, so Mark tends to the patients.
3:25pm We
leave the compound.
4:00pm The traffic
is still stopped; passers by warned us of
guns, burning tires and vehicles,
and to turn around.
4:15pm We see
riot police with guns, masks and armored vehicles driving toward us, so
we know they have broken up the riot and we can continue again.
4:45pm We
arrive at the compound to drop our lab tech friend off where he is staying. We see another friend there who works with
that nonprofit, and catch
up a few minutes.
5:00pm We
continue on our way, and get stuck in a traffic jam due to a broken down vehicle.
5:30pm We
continue on our way, and again we get stuck due to a broken down vehicle.
6:30pm We finally
reach our house in Port au Prince and unload the vehicle. The electricity
is on (unusual for that time of day!) so I quickly shred some papers while
I have electricity. The electricity is
on for a couple of hours.
6:45pm I get
the laundry off the line while Mark puts more duct tape on the loose fender
on our vehicle.
7:00pm I
gather supplies for a hospital staff birthday party the next day while Mark mixes
the cake batter.
7:15pm We both
catch up on emails.
7:45pm We read
our hometown newspaper online while eating dinner. (Our favorite part
today is the word jumble!)
8:15pm We make
pb & j for our trip to the hospital the next day.
8:30pm Mark
washes dishes while I prep for a language evaluation the following day for
a 2 year old child who is nonverbal.
9:00pm I start
boiling water to cook some vegetables for soup the following day, but we
run out of propane for the stove. It is
too late to walk to the corner gas station
to buy more propane, so we abort.
9:15pm I have a FB Messenger conversation
with a Haitian friend to arrange for drop-off of
some items that we carried
into Haiti from his US friend.
9:30pm We watch an episode of Star Trek: Next
Generation on my computer, then go to bed.
10:30pm The Haitian electric company gives us
a few hours of electricity, allowing us to cool
down enough to sleep and get
ready for the 5:00am alarm the following morning.
During this particular day, Mark was busy doing all kinds of
things I didn’t list above, like helping a patient jump start his car, helping coordinate
a new malnutrition program, tracking down a problem with our computerized
patient record system, arranging for repair of a sickle for the groundskeeper, gathering
some medicine to send to a Haitian nurse who works in the mountains, and fixing
a toilet.
Many days are very different from this one. We try not to work this many hours every day;
some days that works, others are long ones like this one. Sometimes we live in a guesthouse for a week
to host specialized teams, like the team that came to implement an inventory
system and teach a new employee to maintain it, or medical teams that can teach
or work alongside our Haitian staff. Some days we stay at home the whole day just
to catch up on paperwork. Some days we
run errands, like renewing our residency permit, or visiting other medical
facilities to learn from their experiences, or just buying groceries. Some days I walk to a nearby school and
provide speech therapy.
I hope my description of our sample day doesn’t sound like I
am complaining or looking for sympathy.
When we have had people visit us at our home in Port au Prince, some
have said “This is much nicer than I anticipated!”, and others, surprised at the conveniences that we don't have, have said “How
do you live like this?!”. We are
grateful for things like indoor plumbing and a kitchen with a propane stove;
these are things that most Haitians do not have. We are grateful to live in a place where we feel
safe. We are grateful to own a car. We are grateful for God’s protection. We are grateful that friends and family are
in the US, praying for us, and supporting the ministry in so many ways. We are grateful God can use our education,
past experience, and the talent he has placed within us to serve in this
way. And, if I am being completely
honest, some days I just plain feel sorry for myself that I live so far from our
family and long-term friends! But mostly
I try to stay focused on the incredible blessing it is to know the Lord.
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