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Housing: think of "Out of Africa" HAS
is located on the 1920's Standard Fruit banana plantation, which
was abandoned after WWII. During
French colonial days sugar cane and fruit was grown here.
Our team of eight is housed in one of the plantation's
original stone cottages; it reminds
me of US national & state park buildings. A swimming
pool was added in the 50's when the property was dedicated
to the HAS project, and along with other short term staff, I swim
daily. On 85º days the longterm staff members decline,
saying it's too cold. Many houses have a fence of candelabra cactus
to keep the roaming goats from eating the grass, plantings &
laundry.
Meals We
eat promptly at 6:30 a.m., noon & 6 p.m dinner, so the cooks
can serve, clean up and go home.
They work six days per week, and even leave us food for
Sunday. The food is familiar, interesting variations on American recipes
made with tropical foodstuffs.
We try plantain, fried & in soup; rice; beans; pastas;
fruit salads of juicy papaya & mango, anemic watermelon &
truly fresh pineapple; cabbage salads. The milk is powdered, the
juice thin, the coffee thick, and the Haitian beer excellent,
appropriately named "Prestige." Meat
is infrequent, tough and fried in cubes, then disguised in a tomato
sauce. The chicken is free-range par excellence -
they run the meat right off their bones.
One momentous day I add some extra money to Lucienne's
budget so she can serve us a Haitian meal,
and she happily makes us a delicious casserole with greens and
goat -- the only tender meat during the month.
The
sun sets suddenly and decidedly in Haiti about 6:00 p.m. After
supper we become homebodies, influenced by the threat of being
eaten alive by the mosquitoes and our total exhaustion due to
the intellectual effort required to work in an unfamiliar environment
and culture. When we do
venture out as dinner guests on campus, we are impressed by our
inability to see in the black Haitian night. Lack of electricity in the nearby village of Deschapelles assures
total lack of light pollution!
We watch amazedly as Haitians walk confidently in the dark
– do their eyes see better than ours? Mail
is transferred between HAS-Haiti and the HAS-US office in Sarasota,
FL via the next person who is arriving from or leaving for the
USA, and by the weekly benevolent Agape air transport organization.
If communication by satellite were working, there would be e.mail
twice a day for short periods when the satellite is in the correct
position; it last worked in January 2000. Phone service is limited to communication between
the HAS buildings.
Our Team We
are a highly qualified & enthusiastic group.
Our two physicians (Drs. Joseph Kiely
and Bill Nichols) and nurse practitioner
(Burdett Rooney) see patients along
with the two HAS general internists (Dr. Beth Dowell, American,
at HAS for one year, and Dr. Ronald Charles, Haitian, longterm
staff). Dr. Phil Karsell,
radiologist, reads all the X-rays.
Kadee Watkins, a physician's assistant student in a Mayo-linked
MA program, begins by
observing, and by the end of the month feels she is contributing,
too. College seniors Ben
Kiely and Kelly Tennison spend
their morning hours doing research projects for administration,
and happily spend their afternoons playing with the children in
the Kwashiorkor, or malnutrition ward.
My job is to help the Haitian hospital staff who work as
physician assistants or physician extenders to improve their English,
since English is often the language of the visiting medical staff
they assist. Later we
are joined at Kay #11 by Peter Johnson,
an administrator from Manitoba, and Dr.
Douglas Beall, a Mayo Clinic radiology fellow, whose most
excellent photos supplement my own on this website.
All but one of us have extensive longterm overseas travel/living
experience, and no one seems to be depressed or experiencing culture
shock.
Other Volunteers During
January 2001 a total of thirty-five short term volunteers work
at HAS for varying periods of time.
This group includes members of Mrs. Mellon's family.
Her daughter Jenny Grant makes a project of cleaning up
the recently-installed Peace Garden.
Her granddaughter Kate Kellogg and husband Rico are here
from Colorado; they clean out, repaint and re-organize the gift
shop. André Locquet, an
engineer from Cherbourg, France is here on a one-month Rotary
International sponsorship helping plan a new building for Community
Development; his wife Marie-Claire works full 8:00 - 5:00 days
helping in the Kwashiorkor ward. Mrs.
Mellon's family contributes to the support of HAS while in the
US, also. Her grandson Andrew Rawson is president of the Milwaukee
Chapter of the Friends of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer, an organization
established in 1999 to help raise funds for HAS.
One of his interests is to import Haitian art for an annual
Friends of HAS Haitian Art Show and Sale. Boldface within the text = photo links in progress 6.26.01 |
International
Volunteers at HAS