Wednesday, May 25, 2011 

Hal in Haiti: Finding Scneider













In April 2010 the surgical team from Forward in Health noticed a newborn with a birth defect. It was determined that the protrusion in on the middle of his forehead was filled with cerbrospinal fluid. We promised the mother that we would try to find a way to her son. We have been trying and are getting closer. Now we needed to locate the child who lived in a village outside of Les Cayes. The following is Hal Seifert's story on how he found Schneider.

Finding Scneider

Last Saturday Evens, Zico, and I drove our motorcycles to an outlying area, towards a very well put together town- Camp Perren. Our goal for the day was to locate a boy (we thought at the time we were looking for a girl) that had been born a year ago, almost to the day. Forward in Health was doing a clinic in Les Ceyes and delivered Schneider, a healthy baby, with the exception of a unicorn type growth between his eyes. It was determined at the time that the growth was in fact spinal fluid.

For most people living in Haiti, disappearing into the slipstream is the norm. We had a number for the family, but in time it was lost. So off we go, dropping into full detective mode. It didn't take long for the road to go from paved to dirt. This means dirt biking at it's best-mud, gravel, oncoming dump trucks at warp speed, all a great work out for the adrenal gland. As the road became a trail, we starting inquiring about the whereabouts of our child. It's funny how our minds work, initially people drew blanks, then the more we talked the brighter the light bulb got.

Eventually we came to a small rustic house in a beautiful setting. The family poured out, bringing all their chairs with them. We had the right family, including Grandma. We called the father in Port Au Prince and made arrangements for us all to meet at Grandma's the following Saturday. So yesterday we headed back out, except this time Evens was on the back of my bike, and the boy needs to start exercising. Much as I love him, handling those roads was much more challenging. But we got there in one piece, and Schneider was there.

The first thing that struck me about him, wasn't the fact that, indeed, he had a unicorn growth between his eyes, but how sweet he was. He appeared lethargic, but in fact is shy. He also appeared to have a fever and lung congestion, which he suffers from chronically. The more I held him, the more he wiggled, he could not get over the hair on my arms. The boy and his father were obviously quite close. The father has been trying to resolve this for some time, he had x-rays and reports. We took every scrape of information we could glean, everything. We also took measurements of his head, which was challenging because he really became the wiggle worm then, and lots of photos.

The next step is to try and get Scneider, and hopefully his Mom or Dad medical visas. There is a surgeon from Boston that has agreed to do the surgery. I suspect finding a plastic surgeon won't be hard.
A great day indeed.

3:38 PM | |

Sunday, May 22, 2011 

Hal in Haiti: Compassion




Compassion

The project of building a medical clinic in rural Haiti is proving to test just about everything I've learned along the way working my way through Life. The people here do things the way they do them because it's what they know and have always done. Uh-oh looks like somebody is riding in really fast on a white horse, yep, just what I was afraid of, an American. Don't get me wrong, I'm American, and am very proud and thankful to be. You have to admit, we think we know what's best, and in many cases we're right. We've been blessed with constant progress, innovation, and being able to pretty much shape our own destiny. Sometimes that has been a hindrance, but mostly it's allowed us to find better solutions to our problems. We've been brought up to believe if we have a problem, it's within our ability to find a viable solution. Sometimes it turns out very different than we thought it would, but the point is believe we can better ourselves.

Haiti has a very different mindset. They have been oppressed since they were brought to this island as slaves. Even after they won a long and bloody war of independence, they have been exploited. Their natural resources have been stripped to serve the needs of people very far away, who had little or no regard for the Haitian people's well being. Few schools were built, few medical facilities, nothing that they could count on to be sustainable. The forests were literally stripped bare, top soil tumbling to the ocean, ruining streams and rivers in the process. So they've been swimming upstream for sometime now, 1804, to be precise.

People come here from all over the world to help, and help they do. There are people trying to improve every aspect of life here, education, water quality, agriculture, medicine, spiritual awakenings, all aspects of life, many of which we've come to take for granted. Education, for example, when we were galloping across the US heading west, when we stopped to settle in, the first public buildings were schools and churches. We take for granted getting an education, whether we agree with it or not, that all of our children will go to school from 5 to 18 years of age. Not so, here in Haiti. I'm not sure the ratio of schools versus children, but my guess is there is less than half of the kids have a school to go to, never mind being able to afford it. Kids here have to pay to go to school, on top of having to buy uniforms. Even if there was enough schools to go around, people have no money to pay for. Most people don't have enough money to feed themselves or their families.

A by-product of not going to school is the lack of development of critical thinking skills. Even if we aren't paying attention in school, we learn how to figure things out. One of the frustrating things people from other lands complain about here is people just don't get it. The majority of people haul their water, from a young age, don't have a clue what a toilet is, don't have electricity, don't even have the word leftover in their vocabulary. All of these facts can make it very frustrating for people with the same values as ours. If you loan something to someone, it now belongs to them. Hey, where's that wrench I loaned you? Huh? We look at them as thieves, they look at us as confused and misguided.

In spite of many of these gaps there is progress being made. The clinic I'm building is designed and engineered by Americans. If I turn my back for two seconds they go right back to what they know. The minute I assume they are getting it, they disappoint me. I constantly have to adjust my expectations. The thing is they are inherently really good people, incredible workers, many of them working through the day with little or no food. They are tough yet compassionate. Many of the problems they have really aren't their fault. All of us working here have to bite our tongue and embrace the broad spectrum of wonderful qualities these people have.
Posted by Hal Seifert at 8:44 AM

10:35 PM | |

Friday, May 20, 2011 




Evens, our head translator and Hal's right hand man, recently wrote the following on the FIH Facebook. This is Evens in the raincoat from earlier in the month.
"Work is progressing after the post and the doors; we will go to the roof which will be a major step towards achieving that dream cherished sine many years. Together, hand in hand we're going forward"

9:19 AM | |

Sunday, May 15, 2011 

Construction Progressing



Construction of the FIH clinic in Fondfrede is progressing at an excellent pace, Hal Seifert's report this week was as follows.

"Things are going well. Walls are going up. Half of the window headers got poured yesterday, the rest Monday."

Hal and his right hand man in Haiti, Evens, traveled to Camparen to try to locate a 1 year old boy with a birth defect. The FIH surgical team was there when he was born in April 2010. He has a protrusion on his forehead that connects to the cerebrospinal fluid around his brain. He requires neurosurgery to repair this. Hal and Evens did find the boys grandparents and will return next Saturday to speak to the parents. If the parents agree FIH would like to arrange a medical visa to bring him to the US for the surgery. Hopefully more news to come.

8:52 PM | |

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 

Last fall Forward in Health was the beneficiary of a raffle, top prize lunch for 4 with favorite former New England Patriot Troy Brown courtesy of Narragansett Beer. The raffle was limited to 500 tickets. Well lightening has struck twice. Troy has agreed to a raffle for FIH paid for by Narragansett Beer. This year the number of tickets will not be limited. There will also be consolation prizes; not Troy Brown, but hard to find treasures none the less. More details as they become available.

8:53 PM | |

 

Winchendon School Interview

Two key participants in our recent Medical Trip to Haiti are Alex Magay and Jacques Delorme.  They are faculty members at the Winchendon School and were interviewed for the school upon their return.

Alex Magay relaxing with some of his new-found friends.

 
Were you prepared for what you saw when you arrived?
Alex Magay: I did not have any preconceived expectations for what we were about to experience. We had seen many images of Port-Au-Prince through the media, but seeing it in person, smelling and tasting it, left us feeling shocked and amazed, as one might feel the first time they enter a war zone.
Jacques Delorme: I guess I was prepared from watching the Forward in Health video. We also met as a group, and they gave us specific details to pay attention to.

What shocked you the most?
AM: Definitely the day-to-day living conditions for the common man, which includes lack of appropriate shelter, shortage of clean water, and the abundance of rubbish and pollution.
JD: The most shocking thing is the smell. Nothing prepares you for the smell of so many people living in substandard living conditions, rubbish everywhere, open sewers, and people.  

Describe a typical day:
AM: Wake up early eat breakfast, put our scrubs on and travel to a clinic that would have over 100 people waiting patiently with tickets under a hot tent all day to see Forward in Health for free medical assistance. 
       Our clinics had five different components: first we had the patient waiting area and we had one man there for crowd control, the second station was patient intake station-where we would screen each patient with the help of an interpreter to acquire personnel information and a description of their medical problems. In the third station, patients’ blood pressure was taken. The forth station was the doctors treatment area and in the fifth station was our pharmacy.
       After a long hot day we would ride home in the pack of a pickup truck, on a motor cycle, or a van to our hotel were we would meet as a team and discuss how the clinic went and how we could make the next one better. Then we have a dinner usually rice and beans and chicken.

What was the hardest thing to deal with?
JD: At the end of the day, to say no to people, especially young kids with parents, who did not have a ticket and were desperate to receive medical attention.
AM: Yeah, having to say no to patients that arrived after we had treated the scheduled 150 patients, and we had to say no to needy patients because we had to stick to our schedule to get to our next location on time.

What is something that you will never forget?
JD: How friendly Haitians are despite living in horrible conditions...and the fact that that some of them(especially men) do not seem to care about it. How fantastic it is to work with people who share the same passion, where HARMONY replaces Egoism. Quite a feeling!
AM: Playing soccer with the children in the orphanage in the hot sun on a rocky field in the country and seeing the children’s excitement on their face when we gave them our school’s left over soccer balls. Despite the hardships that were everywhere in Haiti, I will never forget the incredible human spirit, dignity, and pride displayed by the majority of Haitian people we met on our trip.

Would you ever go back to Haiti?
AM: In a second, I hope that I can return soon to continue our work, and I know that Mr. Delorme feels the same way.

5:36 PM | |

Saturday, May 07, 2011 

Construction Progressing




Construction of phase 1 of the FIH clinic is progressing under the supervision of Hal Seifert. Engineered to be earthquake resistant under the guidelines set forth by John Thomsen and Brian Twomey from the engineering firm Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger. As you can see there is a lot of rebar being used. It is also all tied together horizontally as seen in the first picture.

Today Hal emailed us, "Work is progressing very very swiftly. We will be close to forming the second floor by end of week or next, I think. Things will slow down a little around the doors... the blocks are up to and into the windows."







9:40 PM | |

Wednesday, May 04, 2011 

Hal in Haiti


Rough Roads in Haiti

Last week the medical team returned to resume their lives in the states. When they left I thought I was allergic to something, my lower lip was quivering. The week was spent organizing, pouring over the engineers plans, meeting with the foreman, trying to figure out how to get temporary housing for the orphans we are caring for, and generally preparing for getting the clinic in the air. The children were evicted from their house and are living under a tarp, AND, it's raining a lot. We are trying to re-register the orphanage, the most recent one expired. Our goal right now is to house them within the walls of the clinic site. There are many NGO's offering transitional housing, we just have to connect with the right one. We met with an attorney who is helping get the correct papers filed.

This week we are at the site, with 12 workers, working on laying the bricks for the walls. The crew is really quite competent and efficient. Paula sent down gloves for them all, first they fought over them, then when they figured out they all get a pair, they were happy happy. The laborers laugh all day long. The masons are a little more serious.

I go there at 7 to open things up, at about 9 a local woman comes and sells bread with peanut butter and coffee. Getting there this morning was particularly challenging, slipping and sliding in the mud, I buried the rear wheel almost to the axle. At least I know my adrenal gland still works. Ah, all roads are rough in Haiti.

Hal

5:07 PM | |

Monday, May 02, 2011 

Hal Seifert, overseeing construction in Haiti

Medical Team

A group of people, including two docs and six nurses, from the greater Boston area, Gardner (Gadna), Worcester (Woosta), Westminster (West Minny) and others, recently returned to the states. They were here to conduct clinics in several locations, many of which were far from any definitive care. Some patients had never set foot in a clinic. The way it worked was: there was an intake table, usually staffed by two people, each with excellent translators, the patients each got their vitals taken, weighed, then off to the diagnostic center, four stations, two with docs and two with nurses, then they went, with their intake sheet, complete with diagnosis and treatment, to the pharmacy, and a fairly complete pharmacy it was, drugs on wheels, their order was filled along with soap, lotion, toothbrush, toothpaste, vitamins, and suckers for the youngsters, they then went to see two more nurses with translators to explain to the patients what and how to take their meds, then off they went.

This is a great start, but it doesn't offer any continuity of care. And THAT is the point of building the clinic and surgical center in Les Ceyes, to offer follow-up care to these wonderful people. For many people, when their medicines are gone their condition will revert, and THAT is really unacceptable.

We also went out into the true middle of nowhere to see the orphans we are care taking of. They are now living under a big tarp, having been evicted from their home by the Department of Health for substandard living conditions. They did a musical/dance performance that was nothing short of amazing. The music was provided by a lone trumpet, a bass drum and a snare drum, played with two sticks. Their ages ranged from four to eighteen. After the performance every child was looked at and treated accordingly.

I am trying to track down some transitional housing kits, which are in evidence all over the country since the earthquake and put them up on the property of Forward in Health. We can get by with two or three, and hopefully we obtain them before it starts raining too much more. They will be living in a mud puddle if we don't. We'll see.......

The crew of people were great, we got along like extended family. We ate and played well together, laughed a lot. The docs and nurses had about two hundred years of experience between them, an incredible level of competency. It was a privilege working with them.

9:37 PM | |