Haiti

I am happy to report my safe return from Haiti!   It was quite an experience and I am SO happy and grateful to be back in the states!!   I have never been so  proud and felt to blessed to  to be an American!!:) 

I worked Thursday morning, and started the journey that afternoon.  Our flight left Thursday March 1st and we landed in Port-Au-Prince Friday morning.

All I could take is a backpack for the 9 days...I have never packed so light in my life!  You would have been impressed to see all I managed to fit in this bag.  My sleeping bag and mat are attached to the outside.  It was heavy and I am so happy not to carry it around any more!

Friday morning arriving in Port-Au-Prince.  Our group was about 20 people, 2 from Canada, 3 from Arizona,4 from southern Utah and the rest was from the Ogden area.  There were approx. 4 general physicians, a pharmacist and his son, an eye doctor, 3 hygienist, 2 dentist, Dr Ford's son came as a dental assistant, 4 or 5 nurses, a  lab tech, a few people to do all the data in the computer, and a lawyer who oversaw it all who also is a co-owner of HHI.

The colored truck above is their version of a taxi, and cram as many people on it as they can.   YOu see them everywhere in Haiti! 

Here is our part of our dental group.  Liz who is Dr Ford's sister and one of the hygienist I work with, Dr Ford, his son Jared, me and KaTy, also a hygienist.  We all loaded in a couple different vans.  Each van had an interpreter that could communicate with the driver and we headed off to Timo.  The next bunch of pictures are taken in Port-Au-Prince from the van window so they are not the best but it will give you an idea of what the city is like. 

There is still a lot of trash everywhere.  Some of the people in our group that came last year were so impressed on how much better the city looked.  They said there was a lot less trash...many more dumpsters...and this time you could see people cleaning up and working.  It still looked like a huge mess to me but it is slowly getting better!  Above you can see some of the tent cities where people having been living since the earth quake.

The Haitians line the roads all day trying to sell whatever they can to make some money.  The unemployement  rate is 95%.

I was impressed with how they carried everything on their heads! 

This is an old funeral home.

Piles of trash still in the roads.

More people living in tents. 

Here is the governor's  palace that was and is still destroyed from the earthquake.

This is another taxi service.  They cram as many people as they can on the bikes and cruise around the streets.  There are no traffic rules. They drive as many cars that will fit on the road.  Most of the time is was a 3-4 lane road of cars going in any direction.  If cars were in your way they just honked and passed them.  It was CRAZY!! 

More people out selling stuff.

After about a 3 hour van ride through the city and up  a windy  mountain, I was SO car sick! I was more then excited to see we had made it to Timo.

Liz and I happy to be out of the van and happy that I made it with out throwing up!

The kids and people from the village came up with there donkeys and helped carry all our supplies and luggage down to the village. 

Cute little baby!

All of the kids that go to school wear uniforms. These girls came after school and helped us carry stuff down.

Another colorful truck crammed with people.

The hike up and down from the village  took about 45 to 50 minutes. 

These bags weighed about 50 pounds each and they put them on their heads like it was no big deal and took them down.  It is a steep hike too and they balance them and walk down like it is nothing! 

A few pigs on the side of the trail.

There were chickens EVERYWHERE!!

Timo was beautiful!

Here is our clinic where we spent the next few days.

The clinic was set up in between two houses.  This is where the dental team worked.

Another horse bringing down luggage.

The people were so helpful and so excited to see us come.  They all gather around. 

Dr Ford brought these little footballs for the kids.  They loved it!

This lady lived in one of the houses were we had clinic and she was so excited and proud to tell us and show us her house.  She was so sweet!

That night all the Haitians in the village came and we had a little party.  They sang some Haitian songs and danced around.  Dr Mulligan is in the middle dancing with them.

The next morning the fun began.  People start lining up at 3 a.m. to get in line to be seen at the clinic.  They walk for hours and many miles with there babies and children to see the doctors.  And at the end of the day there are still many people that we still have to turn away.

I told Spence I was going to bring home a baby so I took a picture of as many babies as  I could.  I wanted to take them all home.  It broke my heart!

Working in the dental clinic.

I got to hold this sweet baby while her mom had some teeth pulled.

This is inside the house  by the dental clinic.  They are very small. This is also where we had the pharmacy set up.  You can see behind us the hanging shelves with bottles of pills in them. 

The 3 Hygienist. Me KaTy and Liz.

The next morning we went down to "shower" in the river.  I say "shower" because it was not deep as you can see and I am not sure how clean we got but it did feel good to try and wash up.  These 4 girls above would follow us down to the river watch us shower and laugh at us then  follow us back up.  I am sure they had never seen so much white skin before. haha

Me and Alisha washing up!

Sunday morning we went to an LDS service.   We sang hymns, and they blessed and passed the sacrament.  The spirit was there and I was grateful to know that no matter how far away I am from home the spirit and the church is the same and it  was a huge comfort to feel and know that!

After the LDS service we  hiked up the the Baptist church.  Alli and Frasier the 2 from Canada slept in these and if I go back to Haiti I am investing in one it looked like a much better way to sleep the the hard rocky floor of the tent.   Frasier is an ER Doctor and his sister Alli is a nurse.

There were lots of graveyards.

The Baptist church.

The "bathroom" at the church! 

We tried to get a group photo of those who came up to the church. 

On our way back down to clinic. 

   This baby has sugar cane in her hand...no wonder all there teeth are so bad!  Look how they start them out! 

Another casket.

This next house in one of the translators for HHI.  HHI has helped him get water to his house and many other houses in the village by finding springs and running pipe to feed the homes and gardens.  One of  the goals of HHI is to teach the people how to garden and grow fruits and vegetables to feed their families and to sell it to make money to live.  They helped him set up this green house with a drip system to water it. 

This was one of the bigger and nicer houses.

Their bathroom.

Another house on the same property.

Here is his garden.  You can see the pipe in each row to water the plants.  It was very impressive!

Above you can see bananas growing in the tree and below are oranges.

Another house

and another graveyard

This lady was giving her little boy a bath.  He was splashing in the water laughing it was super cute!

Some of the people that don't have a line to dry their clothes they lay them on the side of the trail to dry.

Back to clinic Sunday afternoon.

Baby (His name really is Baby) and Dr Ford.  Baby has been trained to extract teeth. 

After waiting in line all day the first thing everyone had to go through was education.  All the people are educated on oral health, nutrition, personal hygiene and many other things. 

There were lines of people everywhere!!

Some of the locals would sell stuff to people waiting in line to make some money.

Setting up clinic for the day.  I was laughing at Liz for putting Starburst out on the table.  Nothing like coming to get some teeth pulling or filled and getting a candy!  What are we teaching them?! haha

Sammy, me and Prince.  I found out the last day that Sammy was an ex con who escaped from prison after the earthquake...he says he was set up for a murder!!  Ya, good thing I didn't know that until after.  He helped assist Dr Huntington the other dentist that came.  Prince was one of the translators  that helped in dental the whole time!

It's hard to complain about your dental office when you see how it was here.  And the people where so trusting and grateful for the service!  I gave more shots in Haiti then I have in my 5 years of being a hygienist!  The three of us hygienist would get the next person in  line, find out what was hurting them, numb them up and send them to another line to be worked on by the doctors. 

The doctors table...organized chaos!!

More lines of people...

Oh,  this fun  HUGE bug was on the side of  the bathroom wall one night when I went to go to the bathroom.  They were not kidding to not go to the bathroom as night...that is when all the fun spiders and creatures come out!!

The two bathrooms and on the ends were 2 showers. 

I extracted my first tooth in Haiti!!!  It was fun!  This poor man was loosing all of his teeth to perio disease from not taking care of them and all the bone that supports his teeth was pretty much gone.  His teeth were really mobile it was not hard to pull them out! 

I went to the schools with a small group part of one day and we taught them about brushing and flossing and the importance of taking care of your teeth.  I would speak and then the guy next to me would translate.  The first school we went to was a private school. 

Here is the public school.  There was for sure a difference on the private school and the public school.  The private school was more strict and the kids you could tell were learning much more then at the public school.

The kids lined up in the halls trying to hear and see what we were teaching. 

Kathleen who is a dietitian was teaching about nutrition.

I found it interesting what they were using for an easier for the chalk board. 

A shoulder pad and a bath scrubber.

The group of us that went to the schools. 
Hiking back down to clinic...

These cute kids were walking home from school.

Back at clinic...this lady brought her baby to see the doctors.

Junior was one the translators that came to the schools with us. 

Oh, check this bad boy out!!  Another spider on the bathroom wall... I avoided going to the bathroom until I absolutely had to!! 

Another picture of the lovely  bathrooms!  Apparently this in a HUGE upgrade from the bathrooms last year.  The locals built them just for HHI and really they are much nicer then anything they have. 

Here is the old bathroom... yikers!!

Here is the oldest man in the village and probably in Haiti  he  is 98. 

Oh, this might make your stomach a little sick.  Apparently having 6 fingers is common in Haiti.  While we were there the doctors took off 3 or 4 of them on babies that came through the clinic.  This girl was probably 17 but said she liked it and did not want it taken off!! It even has a little finger nail!

I had to numb this  girls whole mouth and she did so good and was so brave!!  She melted my heart! They are tough little kids!

Is this not the cutest little face ever!!  It probably is a good thing it is hard to adopt from Haiti or else I would have brought them all home!

This is where we set up to do cleanings.  He would rest his head back on the pole I would stand and clean them up.  I could not believe how much build up some of the kids had all over their teeth!! 
It's sad!

So many of the people had huge cavities on all there front teeth we did hundreds of fillings to save their teeth.  It was sad to see the young teenagers who did not  want to smile because of the big black holes.  Some of the cavities were so bad we had to extract their front teeth. 

I took a before and after  picture on this girl. 

Here is the after picture.  I showed her this picture after the Dr fixed them and her whole face lite up! Those are the moments that kept me gong through the long days!

Dr Huntington and Sammy working

Rudy and Dr Ford

Jared caught a chicken, you could not pay me enough to touch them... they all looked liked they were diseased!

Each night we had to clean up...Jared had to dump the bloody spit bottles!  Yummy!!

Then you go from dumping bloody spit to dinner!  haha  Over all the food was OK, I never did eat breakfast or lunch but the dinners were OK.  I brought lots of protein bars to get me through.  Each night we would have rice, beans and chicken.  It was a little disturbing eating a chicken leg while chickens ran all around you!

This starving  dog hung around clinic hoping for any food to fall on the ground.

Next day bright and early back at clinic.  We would wake up about 6 am and start clinic at about 7 each morning and work until dark. 

WARNING: This  next picture is a little graphic!

The doctors  removed a cyst from this lady's back.

This is Grusard.  He is one of the locals HHI trained to do sealants.  We placed as many sealants as possible to help save their teeth! 

She was adorable, she was sucking her thumb!  You can see they use towels as blankets for their babies because that is all they have.

Another little trooper that had to have a bunch of teeth pulled!

This was a weird type of fruit we had for lunch one day.

A chicken had got on one of the beds by the food and layed an egg... nothing like fresh eggs for breakfast!!

Berry was one of the translators that came from Port-Au- Prince to help.  He is leaving  for a mission next week and was such a good, awesome  kid.  Liz had the Ensign and he asked  to read it!

The last day some of the locals brought paintings to sell.

He also was selling these  that he carved and painted out of rock.

I gave Grusard the scalars I had brought so he could practice cleaning teeth.

This was our last night in Timo, the locals but on a program for us.  They did skits, danced and sang.  Dr Mulligan and his son brought a guitar and sang too.

Saying goodbye and getting a few pictures with them before we left the next morning. 

J-My was another translator who stayed in our tent with us.

The Ford and Draper Dental crew! 

Our tent we stayed in.  They had tarps all around us and they also had security  at the doors and all around each night to make sure we were safe.  I never felt scared or at harm in Timo! 

The next day and our last night we went back through Port-Au-Prince and visited the hospital on our way to the orphanage.   This is one of the nurses from the hospital.

Jared, me and Liz outside the hospital.

Daniel, me and Berry these are the two boys leaving for missions next week!  They go the the MTC in the Dominican Republic. 

We saw the missionaries at the hospital.

After another long van ride we made it to the orphanage. 

We even have Jazz fans in Haiti!! haha I am sure he had no clue what his shirt said but it was fun to see it so far from home.

The orphanage was HUGE!! 

Here is our clinic set up at the orphanage.  We were waiting for the kids to come home from school.

Our first little patient.

How often to do you see kids lined up and excited to come see the dentist?!!

This little boy had cerebral palsy and was in a walker.  His little face would light up when you smiled at him.  All the other kids in the orphanage made sure he was taken care of.  They all took care of each other.  Some of these children's parents died in the earthquake and they have been here ever since.

They craved attention and would just come up and hug you.  We played with them all night!

And this was the beginning of the worst night in Haiti!!!  I was so exctited to sleep in  a bed and have flushing toilets and a shower but the toilets and  showers were disgusting. And the mosquito's were a NIGHTMARE!  I thought Hooper had bad mosquito's they are nothing compared to this!!  I didn't have anything to hang my mosquito net so I thought it would work like this...but oh boy was I wrong!  I got ate alive, literally!  I hope the medication I am taking for Malaria is working because it was awful! I would fall asleep for what I thought was at least an hour and I would look at my watch and it had been 10 minutes it was like that ALL night.  I counted down the minutes until 4:30 am until I could get up and get the heck out of there!  I was SO ready to come home!!

All of us preparing for the worst night of sleep ever!

You cannot see it very well but there were hundreds of little dead mosquito bodies on my bed when I woke up!

My face was swollen and I had a rash all over from  the bugs and my net. Apparently I was allergic to whatever was on the net and I broke out in a rash!  Good thing this was the last night!  I would not have made it one more!

All the cute kids were up early getting ready for school when we left. 

Jared got ate alive in his bed too.. his whole body is covered with bites!   He was by far the worst out of all of us! 

I felt every emotion possible in the 9 days I was there.  There were times I would stand there with tears in my eyes because I felt so bad for them, we laughed with them, there were times I got so frustrated because there was so much to do and so many people to help it felt so overwhelming.  I thought there is no way I would come back here and in the same thought I would say how could I not come back and help.  I have never been so grateful to live in the states.  The last night we were there, there was a riot  in downtown Port-Au-Prince and all the roads and airport were shut down. I had never prayed so hard that we would be able to make it home the next day. 

One of the nights we felt a 4.1 earthquake. 

When we landed in Miami I had never been to grateful to be back on American soil.  I was so excited to be home in America and to take a shower in warm water and to SIT on a normal toilet and lay in a nice warm comfy bed. 

I know material things do not make you happy but while I was there I truly saw that.  They do not have anything but yet they always have a smile on there face and are so grateful for the services we gave them.  It was for sure an eye opener and an experience I will never forget and  hold close to my heart!  In the 9 days I was there, I grew to love the Haitian people and they will always have a place in my heart!