Fat Tuesday

We arrived into Haiti yesterday, on Fat Tuesday, but Carnival has been canceled this year. 

Today, we heard shouting and music coming from a parade of people marching through the streets below our make-shift clinic in a downtown church. I initially thought this was homage to carnival, though I soon found out this gathering was part of a demonstration crowd who had paraded in front of a government buildings, asking for food, water, shelter...and all things lost in the earthquake.

Our clinic is located in the Bel Aire district in a Church that is one of few standing structures bordered by rubble all around. To the left is a three story school building, leveled to the ground with over 200 children killed, to the right a five story apartment building, similarly leveled. A body was pulled from that rubble yesterday. Despite all this, the people have a resilient spirit.

An easy smile came from most clinic patients today whose ages ranged from 4 months to 87 years. A colleague who has been here for the past week tells us he saw a patient who was 103 years old the other day. Despite age, the complaints are common: itcy rash (scabies), stomach ache and heartburn (acid from stress and not eating for weeks), insomnia (hard to sleep on the ground), heart palpitations and headaches (anxiety and post traumatic stress), yeast infection and thrush (malnutrition for weeks with little immune reserve). We have also treated dysentary in infants, STI's, wound abcesses, dehydration.

Though we have been here for just over 24 hours, we feel more ingrained into it, as if we have been here much longer...in a good way. We're looking forward to going back to 'our clinic' tomorrow.

As they say in Haiti, Bon Soir (good night).

~Mc