CHE class in Fontina

Trip to Fontina

We planned a trip to Fontina for continued teaching. It was cancelled two times... first a conflict of timing for our translator/trainer and then Lowell came down with the stomach "yuck" as we have started calling it. So we prayed lots and tried again. Saturday morning all was moving along as planned and we left almost on time to head to the mountains. After about a half hour of driving we heard tapping on the window which means someone needs help in the back of the truck, so we stopped to find out what was needed. The news wasn't good. We had a flat tire, it was the same tire that has gone flat multitudes of times and is rebellious to being fixed. So we just stayed there in the middle of the "road" (it was more like a rock pile with a drop off on one side) We all climbed out and 2 men started working on taking off the tire. The jack wouldn't go high enough and so they searched for rocks to help get the truck up higher. Finally success or so we thought. The tire was off and the other one brought from the back of the truck only to find out that the rim would not fit. Now there was 6 men trying to figure out how to make the tire fit!! By now, we had a line of people sitting along the side of the road watching and two motorcycles stopped. One of the bikes had a flat tire also, so there we were on the side of the mountain fixing trying to fix 2 flat tires. I watched as the men all helped each other and fell in love with this people a little more as I watched them give to each other. Since our truck could not be fixed at the time they all focused on the other tire. On the back of the bike was a piece of an inter tube that I thought was just a strap to hold the belongings of the passenger; I was wrong. It had a duel purpose. They cut a strip off the side of the tube, pinched the hole in the tube and tired it off with the strap of rubber. After putting it all back together our friend and translator Jean Bena along with the 2 adults and infant that were on the motorcycle before headed off down the mountain. The plan was that Jean Bena would ride with them into town, get a new spare and bring the other truck up to Fontina where we would go after pumping up the tire. Well things never go as planned.... the tire would not pump up, the air was going out almost as fast as they were putting it in. Over 2 hours later we learned that the "taxi bike" wasn't going into town and Jean Bena had to walk most of the way back. When he got there he found that the other spare had two holes that had to be fixed before he could start back up the mountain. And so we waited... Lowell pulled the truck off the road under a tree near two small huts. The family joined us as we waited, I am sure it was something new to do so why not. Most of our observers walked on their journey carrying water and bundles. We saw several donkeys go by and I started to think we should look into the possibility of this primitive type of travel. Several of us took naps, some read books, Maddie played with the children, we took 2 trips in the woods to find a isolated spot, Lowell took lots of walks down the road looking for cell to call and find out were the other truck was and time stood still... or so it seemed. But just as bodies where steaming and spirits where dropping, Jean Bena came around the corner and before we knew it we were on our way again.

Then we arrived! It was so incredible, the people are so excited about what this Community Health Education program can do for them. They had met all the requirements and invited 5 people from each of 4 surrounding villages to come hear what was being taught. The next couple of hours were spent teaching, questioning, discussing and planning. They have their next assignment of choosing a leadership committee to oversee the training and have decided that lack of good water and health issues are the first needs that should be addressed. Lowell plans on making one more trip there before we go to do the next step of teaching. God is so great!! He knows why the delays. He makes it so easy to trust him because he works everything out for the good of those who trust him and call on his name.

La Saline, which means the salt, is a hot dusty place. The land is free to use, because part of the time it is under water. So the poorest of the poor build there. A couple of weeks ago we held a clinic for the school at the church in this town. About 100 children and a few adults were seen and treated. This church also does a feeding program for the children of the Saline, so we gave them vitamins to distribute as a supplement to their diet of beans and rice. We returned with a new team, and this weekend the land was dry, as it had not rained in 4-5 days. This was a blessing, because when it rains, mud and garbage wash into the flats, making it unpleasant to walk through. A medical team from South Florida and Martin Memorial Hospital came to help with a two-day clinic for the general public. As you looked out the window of the church, across the dry, hot, dusty salt flats, you could see the ocean only 200 yards away. This gave us a nice breeze to help keep us going in the extreme heat. Advertisement was word of mouth, so we started out slow but by mid-morning, we were quite busy. We had one doctor who was a Pediatrician and another who was Internal medicine; there was also a PA, who saw mostly adults. We split the patients into two groups—children and adults—and there were three stations set up for physicals and treatment, with a fourth station set as a pharmacy. My job was crowd control and the triage of patients. No one was life or death sick, but many people came with colds, headaches, back pain, ear aches and coughing. Malnutrition, worms, high blood pressure and asthma were also common problems. We saw and treated over 450 people in the two days that we were there. If we would be charging for our care, we would have gotten a big bonus from our employer; but we are not here for the money, rather to help those in need. The needs here are real, and many times, desperate. People need jobs. In the States, we complain that our unemployment rate is 8-9%; in Haiti, unemployment is 70%. We complain that our employer doesn’t offer eye and dental coverage; but on La Gonave, two-thirds of the Island does not even have a clinic or hospital close enough to reach if their life was at risk. Many do not have clean water, or soil suitable to grow food. We have started a project fund through Global Partners to help with these basic needs, and provide training so that they can solve these life-threatening problems themselves. We have called this project, La Gonave Community Health Evangelism. How can you help these people? You can come to give of your time and your skills. We need many different skills taught to help train the Haitians to help themselves. We also need financial help to be able to do this work in Haiti. We would like to introduce to you the new project number, WM06-1337. This is the project fund to help pay the expenses of our emerging community health and development mission. This is the venture that we have started in Fantina, and hope to develop across the Island. It is a training program that teaches community leaders to identify the local needs, and to identify local resources to solve those needs. It then teaches local Community Health Agents the needed skills to teach and help the community to put the identified solution to the local needs into practice.

A visting friend tells highlights from his Haiti experience

Well, as most of you know, missions trips have been part of my life for about 6 years now; but one thing that I haven’t done much of, is write day-by-day journals. Now that I’ve looked back and regretted not writing things down, it makes me want to record every special moment on every one of my trips.
Another awesome part about this trip is that Lexi, the second child in my family, is along with me to make a difference in the lives of the people here. We set off from home around noontime on June 1, 2010, to the Newark International Airport. Our flight was scheduled for 4:45pm on American Airlines, but it got cancelled because of the nasty storms that were brewing up. AA set us up on another flight on the same route on Continental Airlines; so we said our good-byes and got into the security line.
We figured since we had 12 hours of layover in Miami, we might as well get to know the airport a little bit and try to have some fun.About 5:30 we were able to get our luggage and headed off to check in at our gate. After a safe flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we stepped out into the blistering heat and boarded the shuttle bus to get to the immigration stations. . After finally getting our bags, we held hands to stay together, and headed out into the black wilderness. It was a different experience for Lexi, knowing that every person around you was eyeing you head-to-toe; but after a few minutes, we saw some familiar white faces and rushed over in glee to Robin and Cassie Adams…..

…..As we jumped into the “Contair” (big pick-up truck with caged-in bed), we found out that Robin and Cassie came with a Haitian driver, named Judain; and that they had been there since the day before getting groceries. Driving through Port-au-Prince, we saw a little bit of what the earthquake had done, and how much there is yet to pick up and rebuild. We saw a “tent city”, where thousands of people are living in simple tents because their homes were destroyed. Also on the way, we stopped at a plant to pick up some boxes of frozen chicken to take over to the island to eat. Some other sites along the 2 hour drive to the boat port were: massive grave sites where the whole family is buried in the same little grave house; little towns with very little infrastructure; wide-open fields with tents and animals scattered throughout the land; beautiful beaches along the coast; and high, majestic mountains all around us. The roads outside of the city got a lot better, but the driving didn’t…We were constantly yelling over horns beeping and trucks and school buses flying by. It was an amazing contrast between the hectic, crowded city, and the beautiful, tranquil countryside. There were Haitians everywhere, and as soon as they figured out that there were white people in back of the truck, all eyes were directed towards us. We arrived at the dock after a while, and for the first time, we got some relief from the heat by wading into the bath-water-temperature bay....

... After about 6 miles into the boat voyage, we had the awesome opportunity to watch a school of dolphins play around near the boat. Everyone else came up to the roof in the front to watch the show. They said that it was the biggest gathering that they had ever seen of dolphins on the way over, so it was pretty amazing. They jumped for us and even scooted along the top of the water on their tails like they do in the Sea World shows. :-) Also on our way over, we had the privilege to get acquainted with the famous flying fish…They are pretty cool to watch as they jump up and skim across the top of the water. As blue as it was, the ocean water was contaminated with garbage all along the current that traveled through the channel. We learned that the trash comes out of Port-au-Prince as the rain comes down at night and washes it around. Anyway, we arrived to the island dock around the middle of the day and were greeted by Lowell and Maddie Adams, along with some other Haitian guys. We loaded up the truck and jumped in to head up to their house on the missionary compound. We asked lots of questions and found out that the island is around 30 miles long and about 10 miles wide. It has 40 to 50 different communities living on it and the population drastically rose after the earthquake damaged so much of Port-au-Prince.

Brief report to update CHE

The last week of April, I completed training with 3 men that will help me do community awareness and training. Our first assignment was to visit a community call Fontina. There is a church, from Canada, that wants to partner with that community in doing school clinic and primary health care. We have taken two visits to Fontina to do community assessment. There is good potential there for development and community health training. The church is the center of community. Population is about 3000 people and covers over 5 square miles. The area school is run by the local Wesleyan church partnering with Compassion International and has 257 students. There is no clinic in the area and the hospital it over an hour away so preventative medicine is greatly needed. They already have a community counsel, this coupled with the fact that they seem to be a motivated farming community, causes us to believe that we could have good success starting our program here. One of the first problems is that they have two wells that have good water but both hand pumps are broken. Deep Water Wesleyan church is interested in fixing them but we must first establish local ownership of the wells and develop a way to collect funds for future repair. The soil is good in this valley and there is real potential for Ag business /micro-enterprise.

We also have traveled west down the coast via speed boat to find access to the village docks. We are looking for easy and affordable ways to get medical teams to coastal villages to the west. We plan to go east to look for access to docks and do some community assessments within the next week.

Tuesday we are going to a community meeting for the Saline Church to explore CHE on the Saline. One possible project is "back yard" raised gardens. One of the problems on the Saline is that you get high tides and standing water after rains that is brackish or salty. So by creating raised beds on a base of rocks we can keep the salty water out. There are lots of plastic bottles around that we will collect and cut in half and lay out flat on the rocks. Then we will overlap them creating a semi permeable barrier to hold soil and moisture. Topsoil will then be put on top and seeds or plants planted. We will the cover with a palm branch shelter for those plants that need shade. There is also need for health education and micro enterprise. Of course all of the projects are to be community lead.

Pray for us this week as we present to the Saline community and also to Fontina the vision of Community Health Evangelism. We need them to see this as a community lead project and not some rich outsider who is going to feed everyone and make everyone happy. This is the first requirement for us to begin work in these areas. Also, on Saturday we have 30-40 people coming to a CHE training on Soil and Composting. I’m not an export on this but I’m the teacher so pray that I will have wisdom and the ability to present this information in a way that will make it easy to understand and embrace.

Mothers Day

It was probably the most unusual Mother's day that I have had. We started out by going to church and then came home and packed to go out on the boat. With plans to leave by 11:00 we were on our way around noon. First we went south to the next village down the coast. We were greeted by several teens and children. We learned that the village has a school building but not teachers. There is a teacher that lives there but travels into the town we live in to teach so that she can help support her family. I don't know if the numbers are right, but the story is there are 200 children in the village and surrounding hill that don't have a school. They have a water system which gets turned on every afternoon for a few hours to make sure there is enough water for the next day. Yet, it was a orderly, clean little community. We met the pastor of the Wesleyan church there and have plans to go there for service sometime in the near future. I was afraid to ask, but found out church is from 6am until 11am.... quite sure sitting that long will be beyond me. Glad I have Maddie as an excuse to have to go outside some.



Then we headed north to see how long it would take to get to the village of La Souse. We drove there a couple of weekends ago and it took nearly 4 hours going under 10mph most of the way over extremely bumpy roads. So we were pleasantly surprised when 45 minuets later we were flying by it.... OK so that is the part that troubled me, the flying by part. This was the plan. Time how long it would take to get to the village by boat for future teams to do a medical clinic and then stop for lunch and some snorkeling. But we didn't stop... Lowell was having way to much fun flying in the speed boat. After several hand motions and confused looks, he stopped and asked our guide how long to get to the end of the Island. With a mixture of laughs and moans we persuaded him to turn around and let us eat!! We explored a new reef and saw several flounder, sea slugs, jelly fish, star fish, sand dollars and a rainbow of beautiful tropical fish. Cassie and I paddled around in circles an inflatable kayak (with plans to get to Cuba but we don't know why) and laughed at our lack of coordination.



We returned home tired and sore and happy. What make it a strange Mothers Day? It wasn't until we were getting ready for bed and Cassie hopped on to Facebook and saw all the mothers day posts that we realized it was mothers day... She said the traditional "Happy Mother's Day" but what made it happy was just being with her and laughing and exploring and living my life. The cherry on top was when just as Maddie fell asleep she looked at me and said, "Your my Mommy and I love you"

La Source Adventure

getting passed by a horse

Picnic by the beach

Back seat of the truck

Wild life


Coconut juice

Village well


Swimming