Turns out that internet access is pretty sparse here in Haiti, which isn’t really a bad thing. This could be the last time I check before returning in January. Anyhow, I still have my cameras and notebook to fill in the bullet-point memories and observations of the trip so far.
In short, we’ve been staying at an apartment on the mountainside overlooking Port-au-Prince. Some doctors at the public hospital have been gracious enough to let us round with them this week and see some serious, dire, and desperate states of health. At the public hospital your bed and physician consult is free. The beds are random, come with or without sheets, and are packed into an open-air hall. Health-care professionals, about three or four per hall, do their best to round the beds, examine, and move the treatment to the next step. If a procedure or test is needed, it is the patients or their family’s responsibility to go and get the x-ray, lab results, medication or cast/plaster material from a pharmacy or lab. There just isn’t the infrastructure or human resources to provide the connections.
Everything medical is bigger here. People wait until the very last minute to seek care. Due to lack of education and/or money, voodoo and spiritual reasons are explored first. We rounded through the emergency, internal medicine, and surgical wards, to see many infections with the only option left being amputation because they were able to progress too far and risk poisoning the entire body.
Aside from that, one says that Haiti is like crazy-glue, once you touch it you’ll always come back. Today being Christmas, we’ve made the rounds to family house parties, greeted far too many aunts and cousins, and had some thrilling conversations. Just a few hours ago I met someone who met Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they visited Cite de Soleil, the large shanty-town outside of Port au Prince. Incredible!
Yet another great thing about film is traveling months back in time. I moved on to a new roll this week, revealing an old roll with pictures from travels through D.C.
My final jetBlue getaway flight for the month was relatively close, making a two-day excursion down to Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was a splendid weekend of walking through reclaimed railroad tracks as urban parks, eating pork sandwiches from the back of a Chinatown jewelry shop, touring brand new museums, and even finding authentic chebu-jenn at a small version of Senegal on 116th street among other things.
With many sights, sounds abound, my favorite hours were spent on top of a friend’s apartment building in mid-town. Checking in at 28 stories, it was a great view up the east river of all three bridges. The full moon was out and at times I felt like I was in Michael Wolf’s Transparent City exhibit seen earlier this year at the Look3 festival — truly remarkable and to be remembered.
- Hosting people from couchsurfing, warmshowers, and prospective med students. In a way, stories, the world and travel comes to my door each week. Perfect.
Yesterday Mandy and Ryan stopped in on their transcontinental2 bike tour (out and back from San Francisco!) Check out their work they’ve been doing exploring and connecting different sustainable efforts across the country.
Travel over a year back in time on this blog and you’ll meet a friend of mine. Matt and I both lived and volunteered at the Fauzi Azar Inn which is nestled in the old city district of Nazareth, Israel. Anyhow, he hails from Orlando and I thought it was high time for a visit. I left the early-fall weather of upstate New York for the weekend and landed in the hot humidity of central Florida.
Years back, Matt’s dad left the city life and relocated to a houseboat (imagine an RV on the water) on the Saint John swamp/river. We first drove to the middle of nowhere, but before a swamp bridge we found a restaurant-bar at a landing where “shoes and teeth were optional.” The gator tasted like any meat would when fried up with bread and oil — not much different than a chicken nugget.
After our gator diner, Rich took us out on his small 8′x10′ pontoon boat (imagine a wooden deck with plastic chairs and an outboard motor on the back) that he keeps parked next to the houseboat. It was quite dark (note the picture above) but we had a spotlight to catch the red reflections off the gator’s eyes. The water and marsh was flatter than the plains, with heat-lightning visible miles off in the distance. You could see the stars reflecting off of the surface of the water, a new sight. As we headed back, we spooked a blue heron from the marsh. The warm evening air on that boat was the best study break I’ve had to date.
Addendum: this trip was made possible in-part by jetBlue. Towards the end of the summer, I heard of jetBlue’s all-you-can-fly pass and just had to partake. It was a matter of principle, really. Apparently, many others across the country thought the same and jetBlue soon had to pull their offer from the table after selling it only for a couple of weeks. Two guys also cashed in on the pass and embarked on spending at least 12 hours in all of the cities that jetBlue flies to. I checked out their blog today, twelvehoursinacity.com, to see that they had also recently been to central Florida.
I remember my dad telling me that music is all about the story of our human experience. We were making another drive to Pennsylvania and tuned into the WSCP while passing by Syracuse, a classic country station that’s since gone off the air. Sure, it’s a simple statement but I like to let it sink in a little.
For me, it’s been about learning the ear and pitches of 4-part harmony hymns at church, the oldies radio shows on Friday nights while doing chores in the barn. Goodness, the radio was always on in the barn. Old and nearly broken amplifiers and tuners from the house would always live out their last days delivering us and the cows the six small town radio stations, two of them country music.
I also worked to keep music operational in our field tractors. It was a great luxury for the endless hours each summer harvesting the hay. One had only an FM radio, another an old eight-track player, while only the John Deere had a CD player that I installed — it skipped alot.
My access to the music industry went digital when I left the farm. For the past five years I’ve worked through many software editions of iTunes, shared music via BitTorrent, and gravitated to the novelty of Pandora internet radio. Everything and anything is available these days and in the constant chase and appreciation of something new I forgot and abandoned the old standby of radio. I haven’t owned one in years [until last night].
It was late evening as I was walking Chaco and found a pile of discarded goods by the road for the morning trash pick-up. Delighted, one of the finds was an old record player that has a radio and small amp built in.
The reception and sound is excellent. Sure, there’s no touch screen and it’s not nearly as portable as the iPod that sits next to it, but is equally adored with the metal knobs that don’t turn smoothly from years of dust and rust building up inside.
It’s been bringing in weekend edition on NPR all morning.
Up next is browsing at the flea market for old LPs.
A buddy of mine [and fellow dude-bomber] finished up his RN nursing degree, passed his NCLEX, and took off to work for several months on the south pole as a janitor at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
Jon’s video blog updates are quite exciting to watch. Honestly, It’s hard to imagine -40 degree weather without seeing it — and I still can’t quite fathom appreciating it first-hand. Until then I’ll enjoy watching with the buffer of 10,000 miles and 100 degrees and I hope you do too.
