an online interview

A few weeks ago, the co-creator of expatinterviews.com contacted me. She had discovered my blog through perusing the internet and asked me if I would mind interviewing for their website. I agreed.

Where were you born?
Washington, D.C., USA

In which country and city are you living now?
Les Cayes, Haiti is the closest place you’ll find on a map but I am actually living several miles northwest in a place called Madame Combes/Castel-Pere. It’s farm country....

...Do you miss home and family sometimes?
I do miss my family – because they are the best in the world and I am very close to them. But then, we are close, so we keep in touch. I miss my girlfriends dreadfully because I live with a bunch of guys, the orphanage is mostly boys and my co-workers are mostly male. I miss getting a good glass of red wine with my best buddies on a Friday night. I also miss warm showers.

Every Friday night, Pwoje Espwa personnel get together for a “fête.” I think it’s modeled on the Peace Corps weekly tradition of getting together with your fellow Corps buddies to have a drink. It also helps solidify our family-ness...

...Do you have other plans for the future?
Right now, I am leaving the future a bit open-ended. I committed to 6 months to a year with Pwoje Espwa but have told them that I am flexible as well. Grad school is a possibility but then, so is finding work with an NGO. I continue to reach out and research while remaining committed to my current work here.

If you are interested in reading the full interview, first one for an expat in Haiti, check out expatinterviews.com. It's also cool to see what other "expats" are doing all over the world.

I'll be headed back to the States to recover my sad road burns for a couple weeks. If you are in the area, come pay me a visit or help me raise more money for this project! The kids still need clean water, electricity and better housing.

See you soon!

by the grace of God I live

Last Sunday after lunch, my friend Nick and I took a 40 min journey to the beach at Port Salut, Haiti for a little R&R. We enjoyed the sun and the warm Caribbean Sea and left to go home just before the sun sunk below the mountains. We made it through the mountain passes and the views were breathtaking. From time to time, we chatted over the sound of loud wind blowing past our ears as the motorcycle sped on. On the road below the mountains, as we neared Les Cayes and home, we passed a few small towns where people hung out by the side of the roads watching cock fights and celebrating saints days.

On a long straightaway we saw another motorcyclist pull out slowly on the right. Another man ran to catch up to the slow moving vehicle and tried to hop on the back. The rest happened instantaneously: Nick moved to the left of the road to avoid the slower bike. The slower bike popped a wheely and lost control, veering further and further left. Suddenly, impact.

The noise was metal clashing together and human bodies hitting the ground with force. I remember falling and feeling my head bounce twice as Nick and our bike fell on top of me and the other bike skidded over us and into the ditch. Nick peeled himself off the pavement and pulled the bike off me. I reached for my helmet and frantically tugged it off my head. Nick helped me up and I felt an incredible pain shoot through my whole body. Once we dragged ourselves to the side of the road I lay down and Nick played crowd control while simultaneously trying to call everyone we knew for help. After 30 minutes, some of our friends showed up.

At the first hospital we went to, Haitians lay dying on every bed in the ER and crowds hovered near the entrances. A Cuban doctor felt my body to make sure nothing was broken, glanced at the road burns and cuts covering my legs and arms, asked how I felt. When I rather shrieked that I couldn't see or hear and I was going to throw up, he ordered some drugs be brought from the dispensary and told me to lie down.

A large, frazzled nurse sutured Nick's elbow in the doorframe of the entrance while 40 passersby looked on. A doctor guided me to a hallway by the records room and instructed me to lie down on a dirty, dusty plastic mat, "it's the best we can offer." I set my head on a friends lap and a few moments later, a mouse scuttled past my toes. When I shrieked, a few on-looking women giggled. The man standing outside gazing in at me through the glass door smiled.

After a half hour or more, my friends returned from the dispensary with a syringe, painkiller and an IV. As soon as the nurse had administered the shot and hooked up the IV, I begged my friends to take me out of there. One grabbed me my under my "good" arm, another grabbed the drip bag; nurse “Ratchet” wasn't going to get another rough go at scraping my wounds clean.
Alex, Nick’s roommate, works for the UN and is a trained EMT. He did his best to clean my wounds when we got home. The IV drip ran out, I took some oxycodone and went to bed. The next morning we got a lift from a UN friend to their southern base in Cayes and saw the medical director there. After taking another go at cleaning my wounds, she instructed us to go to Port au Prince to seek further medical help. She said the UN could provide transport there.

So, I had my first ride in a helicopter ride. We traveled with some of our UN friends that we met with at the beach on Sunday afternoon.
After some planes, trains (not really) and automobiles, we arrived at the best hospital in Haiti: Canopé Vert. To make a long story (a 4 day and 3 night story) short, we had an amazing doctor who fixed us up well. Except for Nick, who needed stitches on his elbow, all the wounds were superficial. More reflections on the experience and conditions in Haitian medical facilities to come but for now, know that we are fine and will continue our work in Haiti tomorrow, after a five day hiatus. Come next week I’ll be bandage free and ready to rock.

volunteer ESPWA!

This is Nick. He’s a photographer and a dern good one at that. Two years ago, he began working with Espwa. He’ll be here for another year at least. This morning, he took a break from Photoshop-editing to get in a little morning stretch.Dan lives out at Castel-Pere with me. He’s been here for one year and will stay on for another two as Vistor and Volunteer Coordinator. If you’re thinking about coming down for a spell, he’s the man to talk to. Here he’s pensively listening to another Espwa employee.
Then there is Andy. He left us on Monday and will be sorely missed. He left some big shoes to fill: seriously awesome grant writing skills, baseball program and English classes. We had a big party for him on Sunday night and here he sits listening to the rap-poem that one of our kids wrote and performed for him. By the end of the month he’ll be in East Timor working with the UN.
And finally, me! I arrived at the end of December… the rest is yet to be written. We (now minus one) make up the core of long-term volunteers at Pwoje Espwa.

The Crack Cocaine of the Caribbean

At the small airport in Port-au-Prince from which one catches an in-country flight on the Caribintair, Tortug’air, or Samaritan airlines, my friend Rob and I ran into Dr. Cool Dad (here to fore, Dr. CD). To be fair, this guy has been coming to Haiti since his father built a clinic here in the ‘70s, which is how, he says, he discovered his impetus to minister to the ailments of the poor, but he’s truly the quintessential “cool dad.” We met him when he inquired, as many are wont, about the nature of our visit to this lovely (but admittedly dangerous) isle.

Dr. CD, Rob and I stood in the bright sunshine outside the airport, sucking down a tall Pepsi Cola and cold bottles of water, respectively. He explained to us how he had been coming here since the 1970s with his dad and now, in turn, brings his own children along with him. On this trip, he explained, a vacation to Cap-Haitien, his son had brought his all-American, Colorado girlfriend who, before this, had never been out of the country. A vacation in Cap-Haitien, eh… My family thinks I’m slightly daft for wanting to volunteer here; what would they say to this tall, blond American fellow in his faded pink Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, heading off to the north for a little R&R?

If visitors in Haiti have two things in common, it’s an (slight to extreme) eccentric personality and an inability to forget the first time they ever came to the west side of Hispaniola. Dr. CD helps diagnose this phenomenon by calling Haiti the “crack cocaine of the Caribbean islands. After you see Haiti, everything else seems too sterile; Haiti’s so pure and real.” Once you experience the intense smells, clear, bright colors, vivid sunshine, warmth of the people and everything else that is Haiti Cheri, there really is no going back.

So here I am, back getting my fix of Haiti. And as a nod to Dr. CD, who is by now enjoying Cap-Haitien with his two lackadaisical children and young Haitian girlfriend (who explains away their vacation to the dry north-country), I was up at 3:45am, buzzing with thoughts and ideas. My room desperately needs organizing, another chapter of D. H. Lawrence beckons me, thoughts in my head scream to escape onto paper; so I acquiesce to the self-nagging and get out of bed. Why not? We all retired by 9:00pm.

While I have to pinch myself on this sunny, breezy, 88º F, December day, the dream is somewhat funk-i-fied (for lack of a better term) by certain realities. For one, my little room in the visitor’s quad where I will reside for the duration of my time with Pwoje Espwa desperately for attention (something it’ll get a lot of this week). The lack of hangars, shelves, and table space would drive any anal-retentive personality into a fit of madness. Fortunately, for me, in addition to being quite anal, I can be quite innovative. My suitcase, coupled with a sarong, may prove to be the ideal bedside table.

From my outpost on day one, the work ahead looms a bit daunting; there is so much that I would like to accomplish here. Still, nothing will quell a feeling that began to grow from the moment I stepped foot onto Haitian soil. Perhaps it is the feeling of my soul expanding or my spirit celebrating or my body relaxing, perhaps a combination of all these things. Whatever the cause, the sensation is at once wonderful, exciting, spiritual and addictive. Neither will it be ignored nor forgotten.