Bonjou from Haiti!

This was an email I wrote to some friends and family.. I think it sufficiently summarizes my stay in Haiti thus far. Enjoy!

It’s been over 2 weeks since I arrived in Leogane, Haiti so I’m not quite sure where to start with this email. It’s kind of long and goes into some detail about why I’m here and what I’ve been doing so far. Everything that’s happened since we arrived has been surreal—including the sheer amount of mosquito bites I’ve gotten. Everything has far surpassed any expectations I had of Haiti or the experience I was to have here.

My three-hour journey from JFK culminated in a roar of praise and applause as the wheels of the jet touched ground in Port-au-Prince. This would be my first taste of Haitian pride, something that I soon learned was engrained into the identity of everyone I’ve met thus far. I stepped out of the plane with the two carryon bags that contained my only belongings for the next 8 weeks and was greeted by a strong blast of warm Caribbean wind. We walked down onto the tarmac and passed by a konpa band into the smallest airport I’ve ever seen.

The 30km journey took us through the potholed roads of Port-au-Prince, past garbage-lined slums, where hundreds of civilians sat idle seemingly with neither care nor purpose. Women maneuvered seamlessly through the crowds with baskets delicately balanced on their heads. A few men carried live chickens under their arms like an outdated man purse. In going about their daily routine, people walked around the UN barricades and gave way to patrol vehicles full of men in uniform and semi-automatic rifles. The air was stifling with the stench of burning waste. Pigs, goats and an occasional cow lined the streets, eating out of mud puddles and piles of garbage. Traffic lights, street signs and sidewalks are nowhere to be found. Traffic is directed with a series of hand signals and the universal honk of the horn. Each tap-tap (a taxi-like vehicle) is colorfully decorated with religious symbols and other recognizable icons. Despite all the chaos, there was an innate sense of beauty that lined the mountains of Haiti.

I came to Leogane with two other students, Katie and Matthew. We are interns with Family Health Ministries, a non-profit organization based in Durham. Our task for the summer is to help Dr. Delson Merisier (the OB-GYN physician at Hopital Sainte Croix in Leogane) to conduct a study to develop a HPV detection kit for Digene. In conjunction with the study, I will complete a community-based research project as a part of SOL, to be presented to FHM at the end of the summer. Since we arrived, however, we learned that Digene was bought out by another pharmaceutical company. Consequently, not only will our study not start until mid-August, I had to redesign my research question and methods.

As it stands now, my research involves evaluating the supply and demand of healthcare services in the area by interviewing professionals in the district of Leogane and a subpopulation of residents that live in the Miton community.

Leogane is a quiet city surrounded by mountains, just west of Port-au-Prince. HSC acts as the main area hospital and serve people who live up to 7 hours away. There are a few smaller hospitals in Leogane and many private clinics and alternative medicine providers. But nothing comes without a price. After shadowing several physicians at HSC and traveling with a mobile clinic for a week, I got a better grasp of the healthcare system in the area. In order to see a physician, a patient must identify which specialist he would like to visit and pay 50 gourdes (roughly US$1.50) for a consultation at HSC. From there, every piece of equipment (from gloves to syringes) and every dose of medication (from ibuprofen to an IV drip) must be paid in full before it is administered to the patient. It became obvious that preventative care is not a major concern and a visit to the hospital could be pushed off until it was absolutely necessary (or sometimes, until it’s too late).

I have yet to start collecting data for my research. Everything here runs on the ever flexible “Haitian time” so I have faith that despite the easy-going pace, something worthwhile will come of all this.

For whatever reason, having fun was the last thing I was expecting to do in Haiti. In retrospect, that was really silly of me. Despite cultural differences and a language gap (but I’m learning Kreyol!), we’ve become very close with the staff of the hospital and the guesthouse. Along with Matthew and Katie, there were also four students from the University of Notre Dame and several other Americans in town. Notre Dame has a lymphatic filarisis research program in Leogane and owns a giant mansion-like guesthouse about 15 minutes away from the hospital. We were kicked out of our guesthouse at the hospital last week when a medical mission group that came through. As a result, we moved into “the Residence Filarisis” for a week—what we like to call “The Real World: Haiti.” When we’re not pretending to be doctors, we frequented the surrounding beaches, watched salsa dancing on Saturday nights, attended Catholic mass, and spent every night on the roof of the house—watching the electricity go out in the city over a few good conversations and bottles of Prestige (think Red Stripe, but Haitian).

Three members of our rat pack left to return to the States, where they will each start their first year of medical school in the next few weeks. Since then, Matthew and I moved back to the hospital grounds, where we were given the fully furnished and decorated two-bedroom apartment adjacent to the guesthouse. Just being here for the past two weeks has changed my perspective on many things and I’m curious to see what the next few weeks will bring.

If you’ve read this far, I want to thank you for being a true friend (even if you skimmed through a lot of it). I know that you are all doing some pretty amazing stuff right now. I’m quite out of touch down here and would love to hear from you! I promise to reply with a more personalized message ☺

With love,
Ming

And so...

Hi all!

I intended to sit down and write a long time ago, but my schedule (read: laziness) got the better of me. So, here goes. Like Christen, I love hearing about what everyone is doing, and I wish Letters Home were all public (Karmel: I loved your thoughts on magic, and my subsequent letter was actually a response of sorts. I am, of course, in the birthplace of Harry Potter). After such an intense semester, I miss everyone!

I think my experiences here in Europe are a bit different from those in, say, Costa Rica or Africa; there is so much to do here that my work feels secondary at times, but I really want to know what life is like elsewhere. I just rolled in on the Eurostar from a weekend in Paris a few hours ago-I had less than 48 hours to conquer the major points of a huge and amazing city-and I am pretty sure that my new goal is to spend some time in France at some point. My flatmate and I took a great night bike tour, which included a cruise down the Seine with a great view of the brightly-lit Eiffel Tower. Interesting story: I am walking down the street on Sunday morning and walk right past three people who went to my high school. Weird?

Aside from Paris, I have visited Prague (heading down to Seville in a few weeks) and tried to accomplish as much as possible in London. It requires a go-go-go approach, and I now feel like I have lived here forever.

As far as work goes, I am not doing at all what I imagined. I didn’t get IRB approval until 4.5 weeks in, which was pretty rough, but in addition to doing interviews I am also working on planning an event for the graduates of the MEND program. It isn’t nearly the scale of Karmel’s amazing festival, but it is all me, which is hard given that I don’t know anything about England and how things work (or even geography-everything ends in –ham or –shire-that has been a blast). We are using a cricket club field to hold sessions on street dance, Nordic walking, football (known to us as soccer), and food competitions. I am really excited about it, but I didn’t realize how difficult, yet fun, it is to organize the details for parties. Makes me wonder how anyone pulls off huge carnivals or sporting events or even weddings.

Well, keep in touch everyone, and please post pictures as well. Due to the obvious limitations of typing story after story, we are going to need some major debriefing sessions when we get back to Duke.

As the English say at the end of every conversation, Cheers!