Jacmel

After a wonderful long weekend, I was back at the clinic full swing again today. After 20+ patients, we still had the Mamba clinic. We had a great turnout today. Our little marasmus child, who looked like skin and bones had gained a whole kilo!!!! Amazing! Especially since his mom is a bit mentally handicapped and we didn't know how much she was getting what we were telling her. But we drilled the "12 tablespoons, 8 times a day" into her so much, she was answering that for other questions as well. She was really in a good mood, and we made a huge happy deal about him gaining so well. You could just literally see the difference in one week. I looked at him before weighing him and thought "wow, there's some fat on him - I bet he'll have gained".

Another good but kind of heart wrenching patient was Matiana. She's the one who's little brother we buried a couple weeks ago. She graduated today, which is awesome, but it means we won't see her sweet smile anymore, now that her brother isn't coming either. She didn't want to leave. The mom's like "you could just keep her". We get that so much. The sad patient we had today was a little 4 yr old that looks like two. He is SOOO thin but he's been in the program only a couple weeks. Now the mom said she has to go up in the mountains and won't come back till January. I don't think he can survive that. He came to us swollen, which means his heart is having a hard time. The swelling has gone down pretty much, but he's still so thin. Keeping him here is also such a responsibility! If anything happened.... or if the mom didn't come back.....



So I'll talk about my weekend. Last Friday I took a 5 yr old patient to Port that has been having throat problems. His airway was almost obstructed a few weeks ago. I gave him enough medicine that that cleared up and he was able to breathe ok again, but now he can't talk out loud, so I want to take him to a specialist. Though I didn't get much done, it was good to get out.

Then Sat. morning, Bobi and I went with our friends, Chris, Leslie and Matt to Jacmel. Jacmel is a city about 1 1/2 hours over the mountains south of Port. The area hardly felt like Haiti. The city is much cleaner than what I've been used to here, and the people seemed more relaxed. It's an old city, used to be a port city, so maybe a little more well-to-do.

We had lunch at a nice resort but decided not to stay there. We went on to a different area and had a fun couple hours in the water, floating on tubes, after which we checked into an old hotel that used to be a home for a rich family in the 1800s. It was all kind of victorian. It was about 2 1/2 blocks from the ocean, which we again enjoyed Sunday afternoon. The waves there reminded me of home - about 5 foot waves, and tubes didn't really work.

The most fun part of the weekend: Sunday morning we rented 4 motorcycles with drivers, and they took us about an hour or more up the mountains - through a wide river where our feet of course got wet and some of us had to walk across, up and down such steep hills they asked us to walk them :( , pass all the Haitian people staring out wondering how many bikes there would be I'm sure. And finally after getting to the top - a 10 minute hike down to 3 wonderfully blue swimming holes, which came from a waterfall into the last one. It was absolutely beautiful and oh, so refreshing. I've never seen such blue, almost aqua colored fresh water pools!! There were some jumping off spots too, for the "high jumpers". The water was like 75 ft deep.

We took a different route back since the first one was really washed out by the hurricanes. It was still really steep at times. One hill was even wet, with slippery clay. My driver was in the front and by the time he realized it, it was some ways down the hill before he was able to stop, and in the process I got a nice muffler burn on my leg (ouch!). I was so grateful to stop our sideways descent, I hardly minded. WoW!

What fun it all was! On the way back, we stop in Port for some errands and culminated the trip at Epidore - the Haitian version of American fast foods place. We even had ice cream!

I'm going to post this without pictures since I don't know when that will get accomplished. Hopefully by this weekend!

We are all very busy getting ready for a team of 32 coming in tomorrow. They've never had one that big, so it's a bit overwhelming for everybody. Please pray that everything goes well, and that everyone can be blessed.

I'm praying that God will touch your heart with a special touch right now! He loves you, you know!

Elsie