What we did all day: Part 2

No sad stories this time.

There were a lot of people staying in the house during the last couple of days of our trip. It seems like we were invaded by every midwife in a fifty mile area. Have you ever spent much time around a gaggle of midwives? The conversations are eclectic, to put it mildly. There are images etched on my pre-frontal cortex that I will never be able to erase.

Dolly and I were sleeping in the pharmacy, which has curtains on two sides, one of which overlooks the downstairs post-partum room and the other the upstairs common area. We had no privacy whatsoever, so we were feeling the need to hide out. Luckily, there was a birth room downstairs that was needing some TLC.  Here are the results of our artistry. Some new curtains had been hung in the window and we used the design for inspiration. 

Formerly know as the hibiscus room, we laid odds on how long before it becomes "the bird room".

Sarah was very happy. She said that this room used to be the least attractive, with bare concrete walls and no curtains. Now it is a cheerful room and will be our little legacy at MamaBaby Haiti.

Look for a barrage of posts in the next few days as I catch up on some things I think you will find interesting.

Thanks for reading.

What we did all day: Part 1

Can you endure another sad story?

Mma (madame) Claudine, my new Haitian friend, is a lady of great dignity and grace. She came to the clinic a few months ago with her daughter, who was pregnant. Her son had killed himself and, as a result, her husband abandoned the family. She was forced to move in with a male relative in order to provide for her family. The relative raped her oldest daughter and she became pregnant. The two left the relative's home and had nowhere to go. She begged Sarah to help her and Sarah, in her compassion, found them a place to live and allowed them to come to the clinic each day to eat. The house is really a tiny room with no space for the other children, so another teenage daughter remains at risk in the home of the relative. Claudine makes herself useful around the place, gardening and tidying and helping every time she sees a need. I love that she doesn't expect a handout, but is willing to work. 

Sarah has also taught Claudine to give a chair massage, so sometimes at lunchtime the volunteers and midwives will sit for a massage and pay her. 

 Dolly and I spent some time in the mornings working on sewing projects.
Well, Dolly worked the treadle machine, because this handy seamstress just could not get the hang of it, and I measured and cut. We made baby slings and cut post-partum pads from the left-over fabric..

The slings were in high demand with the new moms and we didn't always have enough to go around.

This young lady sat and watched us for a few hours and Dolly handed her a sling as she finished it. She was so enthralled that she wore it all day and she hasn't even had her baby yet!

Isn't she beautiful?

One morning, the machine was vacant for a few minutes and when I turned back to it, Mma Claudine was gesturing to me as if she wanted to sew. I smiled and gestured for her to go ahead.

From then on, this sweet lady was the new seamstress.

And that, my friends, was what we did in the mornings.

Well, some of them.

Mamas (and daddies) and babies

This is Inocent, whose wife died after she gave birth (not at MamaBaby Haiti!) to their third child. He said she went crazy after every birth and ran away. This time, she didn't come back. He came to the clinic looking for help because he couldn't look after the children and also work, so he had no money for food. He had been feeding the baby sugar water and she was pitifully malnourished. The two older children were not in school and he had nowhere to turn. 

Sarah gave him some work painting around the clinic and formula for the baby. He is such a loving Dad and his helplessness in his situation is palpable. 

While we were in Haiti, several options were tried and there is hope that he will be able to put his baby in an orphanage for a few months until he can take care of her. 

There is hope that his two older children will be sponsored by World Vision through the church of one of our translators and be able to attend school. Sarah already arranged for their schooling and had uniforms made. When the children turned up for school the first day, they were told that the school had run out of money and would be closing. And so it goes in Haiti.

There is hope that he will get a micro-loan through Children of the Promise, the organization that runs the orphanage. 

There are no guarantees, only hope. And so he sits and waits for his hopes to materialize.

Here he is, carrying his baby as he walks the dusty roads of Mourne Rouge with his baby in a sling that was given to him by Sarah.

 

More babies that passed through the clinic during our stay.

These lucky mamas, who came for baby clinic, were all given baby blankets that were made for MBH babies by some of you!

In a later post, you will be seeing our sewing friend. This Mom took her baby home in a sling that was made from two receiving blankets. These slings were a hot item, as you will see, and so helpful to young mothers who carry their babies for miles.

These sweethearts are female twins. Their mother died after a Caesarean section at the hospital. The story involves a couple of falls, a split incision, and a motorcycle, and I never did quite get the whole thing. But the babies are now two months old and dearly loved by their Dad and Aunty. He also cannot work and look after the babies and came to us for help. We tried to get the sisters into COTP but they refused, so the babies' future is uncertain. MBH has been supplying formula and doing what they can to help the brother and sister to take care of the babies. The love is strong, their gratitude is great, but what will become of them is unsure. When I last saw them they said God bless you, and I hugged them and said God bless you back.

One of Dolly's little friends, of whom she had many.

Marie, the Haitian midwife at the clinic, met "her babies" everywhere we went.

Dolly was sad to say goodbye to this little girl, who hugged her and wouldn't let go.

If you have a mind to, please pray for these families. There are many more heartbreaking stories of families divided and fighting for their very lives. Their love and dignity is great, their faith in Christ is strong. It is hard to know how best to help them, but we do what we can and hope that God's grace will fill in the gaps. 

Totally tourist

On Sunday, Dolly got up early and went to the local Baptist church.

I slept in. Are you surprised? We are sleeping in a room that is only closed off with curtains, so the two births that night managed to create enough noise that I couldn’t go to sleep for hours, tired as I was.

Later that day, ten of us piled into the Toyota Land Cruiser (we were squished in a way that I have never been squished before) and took a trip to an old fishing village.
Feast your eyes on these babies.

Old boats lay abandoned on the sand all along the coast.

Here is a new and innovative use for old shoe soles.

Should you ever need one.

This is Rachel.

If I ever have another daughter, I want it to be her.

We walked along a narrow pier. Sunday must be net-fixing day and this pleasant gentleman was happy to have his photo taken.

Not so all Haitians. Today, I took photos of some children who were begging me to take pictures of them. I complied and they were enormously amused at the images of themselves. Then along came an older lady with a bundle on her head who kept calling me blan and making sideways motions across her throat with her hand. I think she was telling me to give her money, but I fled. With great dignity, of course, but fled nonetheless. I later found out that that particular gesture meant that she was hungry.
I felt bad.

I couldn’t help but think that his afternoon on the boat was pretty idyllic, with the sunshine and the quietness of the sea all around him. No doubt, to him it was just work, but he could do worse.

This boat is, I fear, beyond hope.

Pop bottles are used as floats for crab or lobster traps that are made from some kind of reeds or leaves, perhaps banana leaves.

This gave me a chuckle.

This post took me five days to upload, so feel free to hit the "like" button in appreciaton.

Mesi.

We arrive

Our first view of Haiti. We were running late, as first there was a problem with the manifest, which held us up for about 45 minutes while they checked everyone’s passports. Then they had to top up fuel because we had sat on the tarmac with the engine idling for so long. Then they had to take out a few suitcases because we were too heavy. Yup. I think that was our fault. Somehow, they got those cases to Miami and they arrived at Cap Haitien only an hour after we did.

Serendipitously, we didn’t have to go through inspection at customs, so after trusting our bags to a MBH employee, we piled into the official MBH car and went on an adventure.
Cap is its usual appealing self.

Sarah took the five of us new volunteers to the Hotel du Roi Christophe for an orientation.

The outside of the hotel is so interesting that it took us a few minutes to get inside.

This is Henri Christophe, who was one of the leaders of the revolution against French rule. True to Haitian form, he was ironically proclaimed Henry I, King of Haiti in 1804. He was an unpopular monarch and shot himself with a bullet rather than face a coup.

There is something about Haitian art that speaks to me.
It says Susan, buy me.
And I answer, But my husband will hate you!

This is Sarah, the hard-working midwife who directs the clinic. She gave us the low-down on daily life at the clinic and gave us time to unwind after our long-winded travels.

After a bumpy, dusty, hot, crowded drive to the clinic, it didn’t take Dolly long to find a baby to cuddle. This little cutie’s mother died and when the dad brought her to MBH she was almost dead. She’s two months old and is the size of a newborn. Sarah has hired Dad to do some painting around the house and sends him home with formula for the baby. Hooray for all our friends who donated formula! Baby is doing much better, smiling and eating and acting curious. Her hands and feet are so tiny.

By the time we got to bed on Saturday night, I was so exhausted that I couldn't sleep. The nocturnal noises of the clinic and the neighbourhood kept me awake most of the night. Imagine birth noises, midwives talking outside your room, cocks crowing all night, dogs barking, and crickets striking up the band. 

Ah, Haiti, how I have missed you!

This post was going to be a lot longer but it took me four days to get these pictures loaded.

So there ya go.