It kinda takes your breath away.

I'm talking about the shower. The guesthouse doesn't have hot water, and really the cold shower is refreshing, but when you first put your face in, it really takes your breath away. But it's worth it to wash away the sweat and the smell and the crazy crazy dirt. Today's dirt was amplified because our drive was so far. We went to a tent city called Canaan on the outskirts of Port Au Prince. In this picture, the shiny part in the middle that looks like it might be a pond is actually a section of actual tents in tidy rows, probably provided by foreign aid.
















Here's where we set up our clinic today:









It was an unfinished building, although it was unfinished in odd ways. But, since Anne and Jenny were sharing the otoscope ...









It's a bit of a shame that today was our last mobile clinic, because we've really fallen into a rhythm as a team. It's truthfully the rhythm we started with last Saturday, but it has revealed itself to be highly effective and solidified nicely.

Courtney and Evans take histories and write it on a piece of paper. They let us know if any patients particularly need to see Jenny.










Next, I take blood pressure on the adults and weigh the children, and then keep order until there's a free spot with Jenny and Kesse in Exam 1








or with Anne and Kensley in Exam 2







(although this is Evans in the picture, curiously). They get a diagnosis, which today was more intestinal worms than anything else. Yesterday it was tons of scabies, today intestinal worms and STD's. It doesn't matter what it is, if they have it they pass it around.

Next they go to the pharmacy, where they meet today's Bomb-diggity-of-the-day award winners, Karren and Kathy, plus Stefanie who whipped out her high school French to give medication instructions to everyone who came through.








They win the award because not only did they dispense multiple medications to almost every single person that walked through the doors, they actually administered many of them, too. They didn't sit down for even a minute, or have lunch, or use the restroom. Ok, in fairness, no one used the restroom because there wasn't one. There was a pit full of goat bones, but it was way too out in the open for any of us to be willing to straddle it. (hee hee)

I didn't get a photo of Stefanie today, which is a serious shame because one of the Haitian women staying at the guesthouse did her hair this morning and she looked really fly!

What struck me most about Canaan was that it oddly seemed more full of hope than any of the city part of Port Au Prince, and certainly more than Cite Soleil. There was a lot more construction happening as we rolled in, and, while I wouldn't trade my life for this one, doesn't it look more appealing than a lot of what I've posted this week?








The other thing I noticed was that the people we saw were much harder to keep in line, not because they crowded each other, but because they grouped around and visited together. They also didn't leave right away after treatment because they hung around waiting for friends. Stefanie had a harder time engaging the kids, but they were really happy engaging each other.








It was just a different sense of community. The thing I found most positive was - don't laugh - one of anne's patients had the primarily complaint of ... acne. And school children started showing up just to see the doctor. "stomachache - started today" or "headache - started today." It just felt less desperate to me than so many of the situations we've seen this week!




Canaan is not without its sadness


















But it was nice for our last clinic to end on a positive note.