Well folks I was out of commission for a day. My computer froze up, and was nonfunctioning. Thank God there is someone here who was able to run diagnostics and software on my computer to fix it. It literally was going to become a nightmare if it didn't work, because I rely on my computer for so many things......checking the weather, paying bills, email to get important info from home, uploading pictures from my camera to free up its space, and most of all I need it to Skype an interview to line up a job when I return to the states.
A couple more clinic days and we've seen a couple hundred more people. Thursday I had a nagging headache, but began to learn how to do the pharmaceutical part of our trip. In that department we hand out the meds the doctors prescribe, give shots, do dressing changes, give babies their first dose of elixirs, give BP meds out for high BPs and recheck the pressure after the pill has taken effect, etc. Lots of wounds seen with bugs crawling over them. It sounded more disgusting when our physician's assistant used the M word, "Maggots!" But yes wounds with maggots. Many of them from children playing soccer. One boy had an infected foot. You could see it all swollen up around the wound in his foot, where infected lied. We also do malaria tests. In a way those tests are like pregnancy tests. We poke the finger, get a drop of blood that goes on the pregnancy test like gadget, add the developer, and within 10 minutes two stripes mean malaria. Fortunately for people it's like getting the flue in these parts of the world where malaria is more prevalent. For Americans it can be deadly. I was told by the African doctor here that many people don't have sickle cell anemia, but carry the gene on their DNA. Sickle cell anemia is often found in African Americans in the States, because it's a blood cell that is able to mutate itself in a way that malaria doesn't recognize it. It is an adaptive way coming from Africa to prevent from getting malaria or at least not as sick!
As far as language, I have been able to fluently give medication instructions in French. I had 4 years of French in high school. Most of the Haitians we see speak Creole, but it is broken French. It was developed to have a separate language from the French captors who brought them to Haiti from Africa for slavery. I laugh a bit, because it's like they are trying to speak in code, but there's really no code to it at all. The majority of the time the only thing that changes between French and Creole is the spelling of the words. For example in French it's "attention," in creole "atansyon," but pronounced the same way. In French, "soir," in creole "swar," but pronounced the same way. So most of the time when I speak French with them they understand.
Today is now the weekend! I won't get to watch the Iowa/Penn St game, but we do take the weekend off. The doctors on Saturdays take the helicopter and go up into the mountains where it would take a couple days by horse to get to. For the rest of us, we have to beg and plead for someone to take us off the base to go out to eat, the beach, the market, etc. On Sundays there are groups that go out into the community to a church service. I'm looking forward to worship in the Haitian churches. That's the news for now!
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