Dust and Smoke

The smell of smoke envelops me while I lay in bed tapping this out on my Blackberry. I don't get it either, I took a shower, changes my clothes and everything. Maybe its just stuck in my nostrils like all that dust from the "road". Maybe its my backpack or my hat next to the bed.

The smoke is from the process of making charcoal that the locals sell in the markets. Some of them make their entire living by burning wood to charcoal the carrying it miles on their heads up and down these crappy mountain roads.

My patients routinely complain of headaches, back aches, stomach aches (mostly worm infestations and Giardia) and hypertension. Draw your own conclusions of the living conditions of Haitians... and we've been working in some of the most developed parts of southern "Ouest" Haiti.

These locals cook over these little charcoal fires. Choking the smoke in their cramped poorly ventilated one bed room homes. My eyes stung the entire time I was in the little cement church. There were no fans and ventilation was screen-less and glass-less windows, the same windows through which the smoke from the charcoal fires was entering the building. My nose is rejecting the smoke by creating a thick crust around my nostrils that feels like a stalactite hanging precariously from those hairs that I now grasp the purpose of.

And the dust. Dust is everywhere. Its part of life in Haiti. The road are dust, our ATVs kick up dust. The wind blows dust. Guys sits on giant piles of rocks on the side of the road with hammers breaking big rocks into smaller rocks and those smaller rocks into pebbles, and those pebbles into dust.

It cakes onto your hair giving it a texture similar to that of a horse. The dust is so incredibly intertwined into the lives of Haitians that I had two patients todays tell me that they were eating is because they were anemic.

I asked them why they didn't just eat some lettuce or cabbage (which is literally in every single family garden and market stand) and they just looked at me incredulously as if to say "hey idiot, don't you think that, if I could afford it, I'd rather eat a green salad than a friggin dirt biscuit!" That wasn't supposed to be funny.

Crap it all makes my head hurt. I hate thinking about this stuff. It pisses me off to such an extent that I almost want the trip to just end. Almost. We smile and laugh and joke around a lot. It helps. Even our translators have to decompress from this stuff. They laugh so easily!

One woman today hadn't eaten in over a week and neither had anyone in her family of 5. That was her medical complaint: "My stomach hurts because I have no food." Yes, we did what we could, but we don't have the ability to provide any long term solutions. In case you're wondering what that feels like, its like getting kicked in the stomach.

On a more positive note, one 15 year-old kid came in right at the end of the day, we were wrapping up and he approached Darla and her translator Hubron. Darla asked what he needed to see the Dr. for, he told her that he just came over because he needed someone to tell him about Jesus. He wanted salvation. That's it. That's what we all want for him. That is what this is all about. He prayed with Hubron and came into an unbreakable relationship
with Christ right there.

I could fill you in on all the other details of my day, but nothing could compare to this great victory of God.
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