Haiti - Setting Up

     I slept well the first night and as I lay in bed I noticed the day brightening. Then there came a knock on my door and David asked if I was up yet. I thought to myself “What time is it?” as I glanced down at my phone and realized my alarm had gone off 40 minutes ago but made almost no sound. I mumbled something about being awake to David and promptly got out of bed. Fortunately, we had plenty of time since my alarm was set for 6am and breakfast wasn’t until 7:30am. We were allowed to use the scrubs stocked in the residence building so I tried to find a matching set that fit well. Maybe it was because I woke up too quickly, but I realized I was taking a long time to decide what scrubs to choose so I grabbed a medium set and tried it on. In the meantime Lumarc stopped by, greeted us and offered us some coffee which he had prepared in his office next door. Coffee sounded great even though I wasn’t tired. I had feared my body would complain if I didn’t get coffee and didn’t know if there would be any so I brought some instant coffee from home. I was thankful to have Haitian coffee instead which is so much better than instant.

     After this we went to breakfast which consisted of: scrambled eggs with peppers and tomatoes, melon, pineapple, and toast. David and I walked to the biomed shop on other side of street and surveyed equipment. This side of the street had buildings for maintenance, post-op, housekeeping and the biomed shop was located behind a vehicle bay with a lift. I expected we were going to work in there with the two biomeds but they were able to set us up in a classroom on the second floor around the main hospital courtyard. There was plenty of space, two big tables and even air conditioning.

     The guys insisted we wait while they brought the Philips V60 ventilators over which are what we decided to start testing. We had a little trouble figuring out how to set things up with the first one and referred to service manual step by step. I was a little worried we wouldn’t have everything we needed, but the testing went more smoothly after that. As expected we found a few that had problems which we set aside for later. We planned to take good parts from non-functioning devices to try to get as many working as possible. Parts and supplies are hard to get down here. I heard the shipping containers are usually taxed by the receiving dock when they take a percentage of the cargo (like 20%).

     I didn’t really need lunch but I decided to go with the guys anyways. The portions are very generous though David said it’s because they expect all Americans eat a lot. It was pinto beans mixed with rice, a vegetable goup (not quite soup), roasted plantains and some mystery meat. I asked one of the biomeds “Do you know what kind of meat this is?” and he said he didn’t know the English word for it but proceeded to look up a picture of the animal. I guessed it might be goat, but it was lamb instead. I enjoyed all of it and finished all but the plantains. They were rather dry - similar to a roasted potato - and I had no water.

     We made some more progress after lunch, but found a couple V60s that had some internal leaks. At first I thought I didn’t have things set up correctly but confirmed with another one that the setup was right. Though I wanted to keep working, we wrapped up around 4pm because for the regular biomeds this is a normal work week and they needed to head home to their families. We decided to start tomorrow around 8am and finish tending to the V60s - not a bad start to the work week.

     We had nothing in particular to do for the rest of the day other than dinner at 6:30. I decided to read some more of Disciplines of a Godly Man and once I couldn't focus on that due to drowsiness I took power nap for 20 minutes. Sister Ann stopped by and I talked with her briefly about joining her to visit some of the homes later in the week. There was a nice gazebo just outside our residence building and I joined David out there until it was closer to dinner time. Dinner consisted of mashed potatoes with meat and veggies (like shepherd’s pie) with lettuce and tomato on side. I enjoyed my conversation with David as we talked about equipment we worked on, our coworkers, TV, and cultural shifts in America. I thanked God for the opportunity to be in Haiti as I went to bed for the second night.