3/21/2010

Friends,

HSC is progressing. The most exciting thing that has happened is that we may have our first ‘real’ guests booked into the new guesthouse area. Pere FanFan, the hospital administrator has made contact with a group from Stamford, CT that is interested in sending groups of doctors to help in the clinics that are going on at the ‘old’ hospital. We are hopeful that the first group will come in 2-3 weeks. That means that John and I must get the water and drains working in the 10 bathrooms on the floor, put some cabinets in the kitchen, move in the fridge and hook up the stove and washer and dryer. Plus find some silverware and do a second cleaning on all the rooms, wash the linens salvaged from the old guesthouse, etc. Exciting, but daunting. Janine, our guesthouse cook will come back on the 22^nd. She has been working at the Canadian clinic tents, and they are leaving on the 21^st. She may need to do double duty for a couple of days. The Canadians have been very friendly from the beginning. After raiding our pharmacy and orthopedic supplies, they invited John and me to dinner and brought out their satellite phone so we could make a phone call to our family, the first contact we had with them.

One of the hospital employees had an accident last weekend on a moto. That’s a motorcycle taxi that will take you anywhere in Leogane on the back for 25 gourdes. John and I haven’t had the nerve to try one yet, but with our vehicles serving both the ‘old’ hospital and the annex hospital, we may resort to one before long. The injury turned out to be a cooperative venture. Simeon went first to Medicines sans Frontiers, working behind the hospital. They sent him over to the Japanese clinic, working out of the nursing school building, because they had an x-ray unit. Ours was damaged during the quake, and we haven’t repaired all the broken pipes, yet. After Simeon had his x-ray, we took him around the building to have the American clinic associated with the annex hospital put the cast on and give him a set of crutches. We had used an old wheelchair we found at the hospital to move him around, and while we were at the nursing school site, we shared the wheelchair with another elderly gentleman who also had a bad leg. And, while I was there with Simeon, I traded some extra Omeprazole that HSC had for some Amoxicillin that we were completely out of. Both pharmacies were delighted. Patient received good care. Ecumenism and multiculturalism at its best!