Dental and Medical teams

Here are some of the doctors and some of the crowd waiting this morning to see the doctors and dentists.

Foizon Visit

So yesterday I went and visited Foizon, the area Annelies and I would eventually like to go and work. We visited John who many of you know just to see how he was doing. Foizon is really dry right now, drier than I have ever seen it. Please keep them in your prayers many are hungry. Johns family seems to be doing well. They where playing dominoes when we got there. There field is ready to plant as soon as the rain falls. You can see how dry it is in the first picture. I am down in PC today and we have two large teams of dentists and Doctors. We are waiting on delivery of the dental tools today so that the dentists can begin seeing patients. I would estimate we have about 200 patients waiting at this point down at the hospital. We probably have a team of 24 doctors and dentists at this point.

Back in Haiti

So I am back in Haiti, it has been a while since I have updated this blog. I came back to Haiti to finish installing a sattelite antenna that I did not have the part for earlier. I will try to do short daily updates since time is limited. Yester day I went with Rob to the house of Pastor Mike to deliver supplies for the housing project, boards and 2oo sheets of roofing tin. On the way we were going up a steep hill and all the roofing tin fell out along with selifor, (the guy on the trailer) so he was bruised up and we had to reload the tin as well. We also brought a trailer load of water to Pastor Mike becuase they have no water yet after the hurricane. Hope to go to the church in Foizon today if I can find a motorcycle to rent. Please pray for the people here, especially Foizon, they have not had much rain since November and many people have lost crops. The hills look really dry. There is hunger in Foizon.

Here is some of the corn I was talking about, this lady will get a harvest out of it but not much. I looked around and could spot the occasional ear of corn.

F-100

Hello Everyone, It has been a while, and for that I apologize. Things have been very busy here. We have received a large shipment of F-100 and F-75 from UNICEF and that has been a big help here. F-75 and F-100 are therapeutic milks for children with malnutrition. The F-75 has 75 calories per 100ml. When a child gets to a certain point with malnutrition that child no longer wants to eat which is where F-75 comes in. F-75 gets a child from the point of not wanting to eat to having an appetite again. Once the child has regained the desire to eat they get switched over to F-100 which will help them to rebuild the weight they have lost. I go with Annelies on her rounds in the Hospital occasionally and have seen this stuff work. It is amazing, kids that almost had to be force fed are now happily drinking down their portion of F-100. They change drastically from being sad and having no energy to running up and down the hall of the hospital playing and laughing. One child in particular named Regiles has had a great turn around. Some of the other patients tease him by pretending they are going to take his milk away, well… he is only about two years old but I think you would have a big problem on your hands if you did manage to take his milk away from him :] A sincere thanks to UNICEF for their generous response and sincerity!

In my last blog I told about the discouraging 2 weeks we had with loosing so many children. I am happy to say that we have not lost any little children to malnutrition since then. But, we are still looking to ways we can help prevent some of those types of cases. Annelies and I have been talking about the possibility of starting a little extension clinic up in the mountains near where many of these patients come from that would be able to refer patients down to the clinic here where Dr. Anne-Marie works. Last Sunday we went up into those mountains to visit the church and some patients in the region. While we were on our way to see John Little, the kid two posts below, a man stopped us and asked if we would stop by his house and take a look at his wife who had an infection. There is a real need for some simple medical help up in those mountains and it pulls heavily on both mine and Annelies’ hearts. Annelies and I are getting married next year and have a lot of changes happening in our life at the moment so it is not even certain when we will be able to return to Haiti. But I see a clear need up in that region that Annelies and I could be of great help in.
In other news we made a request to FAO for seeds for the farmers here, we asked for seeds for about 9,000 farmers and received a commitment for about 500 farmers. We received the first shipment of seed from FAO about 2 and a half weeks after planting season. Of the committed 200 bags of seed we have received 40. It has been a bit difficult working with them and a large amount of our time and resources have been spent holding their hand coaxing them to do what they should be doing without our help. We are still waiting for the remaining 160 sacks of seed and where told that they would be here a week and a half ago. But the farmers here where happy to get what they could at the distribution, we are loaning the seed from them and expect them to return it with an increase if they get a good harvest. We would like to start some sort of seed bank here so the farmers have somewhere to go when they need seed. Storing seed is complicated and risky however. But all in all we are thankfull for the help FAO has been giving the farmers.
Annelies and I visited John little, you can see his house here. It has since been replastered. His family situation is complicated and while we would like to build him a new house with a tin roof and a water storage tank we are not sure that he would benefit in the end. His house is about a half hour uphill hike from the nearest water fountain. We may be able to help them out with a new house once we get back and get to know them better. Please be praying for John Little and his family. Also pray that we would have wisdom how to help and how not to help them.
Annelies and I have only two weeks left here in Haiti. December 31st we will be flying to the States for two weeks in California with family and friends. Then we head out to the Netherlands to be with our family and friends there. I may come back to do some work in March in California and Annelies has a job lined up in the Netherlands. We look forward to seeing all of you soon, but we already know that we will be missing the people here in Haiti a lot. Please pray that we would be open to where God leads us in the future.

The Children are dying.

This morning we lost our seventh child in the last two weeks. Betty's son Wolbinski died this morning of hunger. Hunger you say, can't we just feed them? By the time they make it to the hospital it is often too late. Which leaves me with the question, how can we prevent these deaths? Relief food is obviously not making its way to those who need it most because those people are the weak ones the ones without friends in high places of local government that will put their name on the list for food distribution. Meanwhile I see those who have the connections selling a sack of the relief food from a local USAID food distribution. The way the people here see it free food has no rules, how can you steal free food? My question is how do we help kids like Wolbinski? How do we find Wolbinski before his mother brings him to the hospital beyond the point of recovery? How do we help Betty the mother of Wolbinski without making her permanently dependent upon charity? Mortality should never be accepted for the sake of sustainability though. So what can we do about this situation as a whole? The people here need to be able to make their own food. In order to do this they need to have education. In order to have education they need to have a stable economy. In order to have a stable economy they need to have a stable government. In order to have a stable government the people need to be honest and trustworthy. In order to be honest and trustworthy the people need to have a relationship with Jesus. I know this may sound like cheesy pop Christianity but we in the developed world too often take the values and principles that Jesus teaches and that our societies are built upon for granted.

Still here

Hey we are still here. WFP has been delivering food to our village and that has been a blessing. We have a lot of TB and malnutrition patients in the hospital and are borrowing beds. This is John, we take him home once in a while to give him some extra care. He is not too happy with what is being done to his hair during bath time. His mom died and here in Haiti that is often fatal for her children. During the first month that we where here we lost 3 kids in one week to malnutrition. They just come to the hospital too late... The Doctor and Nurses are now scouting the villages in the surrounding area to try and locate some of these cases before they are so far gone but it is difficult to get away from the hospital. They are trying to take a look at all the kids in the area by having them come in to be weighed. We now have lights in the hospital hallway thanks to some dilligent work by several electricians (you know who you are) and some borrowed solar panels. This is very important because it reduces our use of oil lamps which are dangerous flame wise and breathing wise and are expensive. We still need to get some low wattage led bulbs for the individual rooms and hope to have them by December so that we can completely eliminate the oil lamps from the hospital.

Also of note, Annelies and I got engaged the 4th of September in the Netherlands. I had meant to make an announcement on the blog but things have been busy here. We plan to get married June 10th 2008!

Food!

Food has arrived! We had five loads of food delivered by the World Food Program today. We have one more that is supposed to be delivered but there seems to be some weather or mechanical problems. We still need food in two other areas that are more desparat than us because their roads are still impassable. We hear the WFP for Haiti is running out of food. I think the word will spread monday for the distribution and it will start to go out to the people who need it tuesday. Thank you for your prayers.

Water

Hi Everyone,
We have water! The guys here were able to repair the water temporarily the day before I got here. It broke again 2 days later but we were able to fix it more permanently. We are now working on re routing the water through a more secure pipeline. There is much work to be done. Today I will head up to the source with my engineer friend sadrack that I have told many of you about. We will see what is needed immediately to fix the water system now and what is needed for a long term solution so that it can survive the next hurricane.



In the photo above you can see where the water line is in danger of being washed out. This is our more secure waterline that will need to be moved before the next huricane. Things are bad here, many people in the clinic from hunger and malnutrition related illnesses. I will try to get photos up soon.

Whole gardens have been washed away. The problem here is most of the gardens that people get reliable food to eat from are in the valley next to the river since they can be irrigated and do not depend on rain. During the huricane whole gardens several acres in size have been wiped out. (see photo with palm tree) We are asking for assistance from the world food program, hopefully they will be able to send some food via helicopter. I spent my first days here surveying potential landing sites. The roads are bad but we have one that is now passable into our village. When I ask people what they need up in the mountains it is usually: food, roads, gardens, houses in that order. The people here need food now to survive until they can get the next havest, 2 months from now for beans.


Some have told me they need seeds to plant beans, and sweet potatoe slips to plant as well. Please pray for us, and please pray that relief food gets here. Much of it is going to gonaives but it is more difficult to delivere it here in the mountains where the roads are gone.

(the water is about 5 or 6 feet deep and 8 feet wide through the main road to Foizon.)

Many people have lost homes as well. Most stay with family.




These kids where helping me find Sadrack and check the temporary water line.

This kid told me he is not using this water for drinking, but he probably is using it for washing. But it kind of shows you how precious water is here.