Adventure in Artibonite

Today was to be the Grand Opening of the Artibonite/Point Sonde clinic. A community center was recently built in the small village of Pointe Sonde through a partnership with Wisconsin churches and CONASPEH. The building was dedicated this February, and school is planned to commence there next fall there. The building was designed to host a variety of community activities including a small school, a medical clinic, a seminary as well as other community events. The Central Committee for Health decided that CONASPEH would sponsor a clinic in Point Sonde one day a week to begin a medical presence in that community. Today was our first day and boy was it a day.

My alarm went off at 4:30 am and by 5:30 I was driving through the streets of Port au Prince on the way to meet our medical team heading to the northern town of Point Sonde. I was surprised, driving through the city, how much activity was already underway on the streets at O’dark hundred. The markets were busier than ever, the tap-taps full, the foot traffic as thick as mid-day along the side streets. The city does sleep, but it doesn’t sleep in.

Arriving at the school, I met up with Miss Fano—the school nurse, Dr. Charcot—a young Haitian doctor who finished his primary education at CONASPEH and went to medical school on CONASPEH scholarship, Pastor Guy who was coming to represent the board, and three nursing students. There we loaded up the white truck we were to take to Point Sonde with desks, chairs, spare tires, medications and exam equipment.

The vehicle of the trip was a CONASPEH car that, like many vehicles in Haiti, has been around the block a few million times. I hate to say this, but the white truck made the Galloper look and feel like a new car. Already at 6am, it was discovered that one of the tires was flat. So, on the way out of town, we picked up water, snacks and air for the tire. All in a days shopping.
We were tightly snuggled into the extended cab pick-up with 4 nurses in the back, Pastor Guy at the wheel, and Dr. Charcot and I squeezed into the remaining space on the front seat.

Not 10 minutes outside of the Port-au-Prince city limits, Guy noticed the temperature gage heating up. We pulled the rattley white truck over, hopped out, lifted up the front seat to stare at the engine (you read this correctly… engine UNDER front seat). The radiator was spurting and steaming. So, the new water we had bought to fight dehydration was delegated instead to refilling the radiator. This stop would be one of 4 on the way to Artibonite to cool and quench the thirst of an old, tired, leaky and dirty radiator. If the decision had been mine, I likely would have aborted the operation in light of the obvious car trouble, but my colleagues reminded me to have faith and patience. Sure enough, with lots of water stops, we rattled and tumbled up the national highway, past public and private beaches, through sleepy and bustling villages, weaving through markets and past vendors, passing donkeys carrying loads and farmers tilling fields. We eventually arrived late, but in one piece at Point Sonde.

The last time I was in this little village was for the community center dedication. At that time, it was a building freshly constructed with construction supplies still decorating the corners, the concrete barely dry. Today, it looked like an active center. People streamed out of the front door. Fritay vendors (fried food) lined up outside the building serving hot food to people long waiting for our arrival. We were met by the two pastors in charge of the project. “Many have been waiting,” they announced, anxious to get us inside and start working.

Prior to coming to Point Sonde, there had been only discussion on what supplies to bring, what medications to purchase. There was no detailed meeting on each person going and their delegated role. But the minute the truck was put into park, we poured out of the cab like clowns in a slug bug and everyone went right to work doing what needed to be done to get things up and running. The nursing students set up and manned a triage station where they did patient intake and vital signs. Miss Fano quickly set up a small pharmacy station. Dr. Charcot and I set up our consultation tables, designed an exam table with the help of a large desk and a sheet, and in minutes we were in business.

Over the course of the next 6 hours, we saw a steady stream of patients. Babies, children, young and old adults, preganant women, and grandparents. We saw the chronically ill, the acutely sick, the worried, the curious and everything in between. We did minor surgey on a woman with a huge thigh abcess who stated she could not and would not go to the hospital leaving us no other choice but to intervene. We checked blood sugars, looked in ears, listened to coughs and dopplered for fetal heart beats.

The afternoon went by in a blur of happy and busy activity. I was thrilled. We were busy, overwhelmed but all dedicated to the task. And no one went unseen. As the afternoon crept later and later, Miss fano started seeing patients using Dr. Charcot and I as consults so we would leave no person left behind.

At the end of the day, we all re-grouped tired, sweaty, hungry but happy with thanks for a day well spent serving the health care needs of an underserved rural community.

And while we had been working, storm clouds had been building.

The rain started falling as we turned to pack up the truck. The supplies that had road up in the truck bed now had to be balanced on laps in the cab so as not to get wet and be rendered useless. So we piled hot and sweaty back into the cab with boxes and bags stacked on our knees.

After stopping for dinner at a road-side stand, we ventured out onto the road just as darkness descended on the day. As the clouds opened up, we were quick to realize that the windshield whipers on the ol’ white beast were no longer of any use. They made a hideous screaching sound, but did nothing much for wiping away water. Instead, we used rags and batted the windshield at regular intervals to help Guy peer through the rain-battered glass in order to snake the truck around gaping pot holes and past bustling traffic. As the heat from our bodies crammed together started fogging up the glass, my job became window-wiper.

The truck also surprised us with its two functioning head lights, but like Magdalena Hagdalena, it had one pointing north and the other pointing south. I got a nicely lit view of the passing rain-drenched vegetation.

And here we were, in the dark of night, inching our way down a pot-hole pocked highway, through a torrential tropical down pour with me, wiping down the condensation inside, Guy—sporting a scrub top as a hat to protect him from the rain blowing in from a crack in the driver’s side window, Dr. Charcot hanging his head out the passanger window directing Guy around road hazards, warning him of parked cars or drop-offs in the road, the nurses in the back smooshed under the weight of medical supplies, sending up audible prayers for a miraculous safe return home while getting the giggles thanks to nerves and slap-happiness from a long, exhausting day.

The rain, at least, kept the radiator cool.

As we pulled into Port-au-Prince in the dark of night, we all cheered… An experience was certainly had, and we are all bonded together in the way that such experiences tend to do.

We plan on having a weekly clinic presence in Point Sonde in order to offer a continuous presence to the people in the village, continuity care to the patients of the clinic, a learning opportunity for the nurses at the school, and a source of adventure for all brave enough to make the voyage. We’ll likely hold out for a more reliable car or at least have whatever vehicle is assigned to us well-serviced before then next voyage.

But as Dr. Charcot told me with a smile and a shrug, “sometimes Haiti is like this.”