Mesi (Thank you)

A father brought his four month old baby boy to the clinic for persistent diarrhea. The next day as we were loading up the taptap to go home this father found me and grabbed the interpreter. His baby was better, he wanted to say "Mesi" ("Thank you" in Creole).

A young woman who had given birth to a baby girl just days after the earthquake, came in for some of the "usual" post-earthquake complaints. Among other things, she was anemic. Her one month-old baby girl was beautiful, but did have thrush, like so many of the children here. As I sent the mother away to pick up multivitamins to strengthen her and her baby through 'fortified' breast milk, she flashed me a big smile and said "Mesi, Mesi".

We sat in the taptap mobile clinic as Aaron patiently explained the next steps (which hospital to go to, how to administer antibiotics) to the family with the septic two-month-old baby, as I dressed the wound with antibiotic ointment. The father, who had been turned away at the national hospital looked to us both and said "Mesi, Mesi, Mesi".

A 39 year-old carpenter came in with complaint of back and sciatic pain. He had palpable muscle tightness in his lower back and hip muscles. I told him I'd prescribe ibuprofen, but I let him know the true solution for this problem was stretching out those tight muscles. I taught him modified yoga stretches. As he demonstrated the chair twist, a big smile broke out on his face. He could feel how this stretch was working on his aching back muscles.  "Mesi!" he exclaimed as he left.

While 'touring' the devastated cathedral grounds, two young girls living in the nearby tent city asked us if we had anything to eat. We split the only remaining food we had on us at day's end, a lone granola bar. "Mesi" they said in unison, with a big smile on their faces.

As we gathered supplies out of the storeroom on our last day, we gave bouncy balls and jelly bracelets to the children living on the Nazarene grounds. As I placed a purple jelly bracelet on the small wrist of a five year-old girl she said to me, in English, "Thank you, Thank you", and blew me kisses saying "mwah, mwah".

These stories are just a few of the many expressing our patients' gratitude. All of this thanks, I pass along to you--our family and friends, friends of family and friends. Your generous support of us and the Haitians has changed lives. Mesi, Merci, Thank you.

~ Maryclaire

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We returned from Haiti late Wednesday night. We are well, though exhausted. We have both joy and sadness in our hearts. It was simultaneously wonderful and devastating to work with the Haitian people, and hard to leave with so much work left to do. My dreams are filled with the people of Haiti, and the need that we left behind.

We will continue to post remaining blogs and photos. Please see our previous blog posts that have now been updated with photos.