Port-au-Prince trip

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of events that culminated with our trip to Port-au-Prince this weekend. Fellow volunteer Melissa Chappell and I made the arduous bus trip with our friend and lead medical translator Santo. Five hours on a school bus with 71 of my closest friends sitting six to a row driving at an average speed of 60 mph was an experience I will not soon forget. Neither will my neck, back and gluteus maxima. Once arriving safely after only getting into only one head on collision with a truck (everyone was fine) we drove to the Oloffson Hotel. There we were greeted by a close friend of Melissa’s, Stuart Farmer who owns and operates Open Air Cinema. The company manufactures large inflatable screens for movie watching and has invented a smaller, lighter prototype to travel overseas. They were contracted to come to Haiti and to work in conjunction with Film Aid to show the National Debates interspersed with educational videos on nutrition, sexual abuse hotlines, prostitution and other key issues. The viewings were a major success and the reason for the trip on my part was to try and secure this equipment for use in Cap Haitien and the surrounding areas. One thing we have found is that there are so many common issues and misconceptions regarding health, nutrition and family planning that we are   coming across in consultations. Though we can educate each patient during the visit, some key issues such as Cholera prevention, food introduction, coffee intake in infants and sexual education topics that are seen across the board would be most effectively taught to large numbers of people, empowering the community as a whole. This is where Open Air Cinema comes into play. Stay posted for more of our collaboration with them as they are planning to come up and show some videos here at MamaBaby!

We also took this opportunity to tour the tent cities where those displaced by the earthquake reside. These aid tents have morphed into miniature homes and the entire area feels like a community of houses. This pleased me though to my dismay there is still so much to be done regarding reconstruction of homes and reassurance that people are safe and they can return to living in buildings, something many are too scared to do. Maybe it is too soon, I will never be able to truly understand as I did not have to go through such a traumatic experience. Either way I know that I was in awe at how ‘normal’ life was in PAP. Among the fallen buildings and rubble were school children walking to school in their uniforms, taxis going to and fro as well as street vendors selling their wares. All of the documentaries I have seen so far have highlighted the devastation in PAP and although it was present, the more palpable feeling was that of a community bonded by this catastrophe and whose resilience shines through.