"I'm a Doctor!"

Last weekend the DTS split roughly into our outreach teams for a 5 day mini-outreach in Haiti! Team Jamaica left with the Benin team for the first day working in City Solei, the largest and most dangerous slum/tent city in the Western Hemisphere. There we worked with 2 doctors and 2 nurses, who'd come in from the States, running a medical clinic for the residents. It was a crazy day and we saw everything from severely malnourished children, infected wounds, STDs, drug addicts, broken bones and hundreds of people just wanting something from us.  At times the UN police would have to come and keep people from full out rioting against our clinic because they were unhappy because we weren't giving them all the attention they wanted.

Patients waiting to be admitted to the clinic in City Solei.

The next morning my team and our doctor from Washington, Dr. Noel, rose early to begin the voyage to Kenscoff - a beautiful remote mountain village. We arrived Sunday morning in time for church and then spent the afternoon hiking up a muddy mountain and hiding from the cold rain in our host's home and planning out the next day when we were to begin our clinic in the church. After a Freezing night of "sleep" we rose and headed up to the church at 8am to find the pews filled with waiting patients - before we'd even begun! The next 2 days in the clinic we saw everything from skin funguses; intestinal worms; nasty infected wounds, a boy that had a pin placed his elbow a year before whose mother had not been able to take him back to Port-Au-Prince to receive physical therapy and who therefore was unable to move/bend his arm; 90 year old men and women with pains we clarified as arthritis; youth and children with vaginal and prostate infections; asthmatics; anemia; diarrhea; flu; fevers and more... I have never experienced anything like it. 


The mountains were beautiful but even beyond the scenery were the villager who so graciously welcomed and cared for us during our stay. Here are a few pictures from our time in Kenscoff, Haiti.

 [Pictures coming soon! Hopefully... if the electricity comes on again... lol]