Bon Fet Saint Bernadet

     February 18 was the Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous, better known as St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I forgot all about it. I did not even know until I saw the sign Friday in Martissant, a suburb of PauP. John, one of our drivers, was taking Pierre and I to the airport to drop Pierre off for his flight to Miami and then DCA. Pierre was going home to spend THON weekend (http://thon.org/) with his friends up at Penn State. He will fly back to Haiti on Monday. We were riding in the Everest with the broken air conditioner so the windows were open as we moved slowly through the early morning traffic. The smells of the Martissant fish market came through the open windows of the Everest. As John guided the Everest into the merging traffic, I stared out the open window at the line of cars that filled the street. Multi-colored tap taps, SUVs of all kinds, cars, dump trucks, tanker trucks, school buses (for public transport, not for school children), and motorcycles darted their way through any spaces that they could find between the traffic. I had seen the church many times before on trips into PauP but I did not know its name. This day I saw the large banner hanging from in front of the church: “Bon Fet Saint Bernadet”. I sat up, leaned forward and tapped Pierre on the shoulder to point it out to him. He turned around to look. John also turned and he said it was a Catholic church. It was l’Eglise St. Bernadette. Clean and cream-colored with blue trim, the church stands out in the grime and dust of Martissant. You can even see the church quite clearly on Google satellite. Further down the street there were more banners celebrating St. Bernadette, some were signed by local politicians. It looked like it was a neighborhood festival. I tried to look for more details but the traffic has heavy and obscured my view. Soon we were past Martissant and entering PauP.

L'eglise St. Bernadette

     This day the traffic was as bad as I’ve seen it in PauP. It is always bad in front of the main market. This time the traffic jam was not due to container traffic coming out of the port. But there is always something. We were in three lanes of traffic in front of the market heading into the center of PauP. There was little traffic coming from the opposite direction in a single lane. I watched a large, fully loaded truck inching forward towards us in that lane. As it rolled past I could see the two Haitians who were pushing it! No tow trucks here. If your vehicle breaks down, push it along if you can. Our three lanes squeezed down to two, then to one. Trucks and tap taps lined the other two lanes, dropping off people and goods. A man is pulling a wagon filled with sacks of charcoal. The wagon has two wheels and two long poles attached to the side, like the kind of wagon you would harness a water buffalo or a draft horse to. But here in the streets of PauP, it is not an animal but a man who is pulling this wagon filled with sacks of charcoal. I once saw a man pulling a similar wagon that had half an automobile body (the front end of a car) lashed to it. Twenty-first century transportation meets nineteenth century transportation. These wagons are clearly very heavy. The man has a pole tucked under each arm and his hands are closed over the poles. He leans forward and pulls his load forward under the morning sun.

     This place sucks away your spirit. I like to tell people that the longer you stay here, the more you get used to things and you accept things the way they are. There is a danger in that. Traffic jams in PauP? You get used to it. You can’t change it. Mountains of trash along the street and in the drainage ditches? You get used to it. It is such a normal scene that the Haitians probably don’t even “see” it. I’m sure there are things I saw before that I don’t “see” anymore. It’s normal. It’s Haiti.

     I tried to “see” things again. I saw people walking everywhere and crossing the busy streets anywhere they could find a break in the stream of traffic. Vendors walked between the lanes of traffic selling ice water (ice in little plastic bags), bottled water, sodas and energy drinks (yes, there are energy drinks even in Haiti), bread, pastries, cell phone chargers, and steering wheel covers. I saw traffic signals that don’t work. I saw buildings that are under construction or abandoned. It is not always easy to tell which is which. I saw piles of trash burning on the side of the road. I saw young men with rags in their hands walking along the slow moving traffic and wiping the dust off windshields for five or ten gourdes (about 25 cents). I saw a few of the remaining tent cities (“internally displaced persons camps” is the politically correct term) from after the earthquake. I saw hundreds of children in uniforms of different colors and designs going to and from their schools. The girls wear dresses. Many of the boys wear ties. They all have backpacks.

     So what is the connection between the feast of St. Bernadette and PauP? There is none. Bernadette was the firstborn child of a very poor family. Wikipedia claims that Bernadette contracted cholera as a child and suffered from tuberculosis as an adult. No, there is no connection. The UF lab where I am working studies cholera and tuberculosis, but I don’t. No, there is no connection. I’m just writing down a random collection of observations as we drive through PauP on our way to the airport. I’m trying to keep my eyes open. And I am trying to maintain my enthusiasm, my passion for my project.

     We dropped Pierre off at the airport and I hugged Pierre goodbye. Then we got back into the morning traffic and headed back past the market on our way out of PauP. Suddenly the smell of diesel fumes was replaced by the smell of freshly squeezed chadek (Haitian grapefruit). I glanced over and saw piles of chadek, peeled, squeezed and whole, on the side of the road. We were passing through the produce section of the market. I breathed in deeply. I was hungry. We had left Christianville before breakfast. I could use a little ji chadek (chadek juice) right now.

Baby Rose

     I first saw baby Rose shortly after she arrived at the orphanage in November.

Rose at four months

Sue, the orphanage administrator, walked into the dining hall with Rose cradled in her arms. Rose was four months old and weighted four pounds. She was all bones. Her mother had been visiting a clinic and had received baby formula for her but Rose was not gaining weight. The mother was clearly not feeding her. So Rose was brought to Sue’s orphanage. Rose was so weak that Sue had to feed her with an eyedropper, a little bit at a time. She gained almost a pound and a half in her first 10 days at Sue’s orphanage. Rose is one of the fortunate babies. She is at an orphanage.

     A conversation with Sue at lunch one day provided a look into

Rose at four months

how babies like Rose end up at the orphanage. A mother sometimes comes to the orphanage to give up her baby. She might have two, three or more children already. She is poor, too poor to be able to feed all her children. And now she has another child to feed. These are difficult choices for the mother. So she brings the newborn to an orphanage and asks the orphanage to take care of her baby, because she is unable to care for her. Do these mothers ever return to reclaim their child? I don’t know. I’m hoping that sometimes, yes. But realistically, more often, no.

     Earlier this month, Sue received a newborn baby just 10 days old. The mother brought the baby and gave her to Sue. “Just like that?” I asked Sue, “No regrets, no explanation?” “Oh, I already have two of her babies from before”, Sue explained. I was stunned. Two babies already? “Oh, yes”, Sue said. “The mother was not going to feed her. If I did not take this baby, she’d be dead in less than a week.”

     Sue went on to explain that the mother had tried to abort this pregnancy twice using drugs she bought on the street. Abortion is illegal in Haiti so young women and girls turn to herbal concoctions and drugs that are readily available on the street. As a result, post-abortion complications have become an emerging public health problem in Haiti accounting for as much as 30% of maternal deaths. NPR’s Michel Martin interviewed Jacqueline Charles, of the Miami Herald, about the issue back in December
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=248990602). Contraception is available in Haiti, but is not widely available. So against this backdrop, the babies, like baby Rose, keep arriving at orphanages like Sue’s.

Rose at seven months

     Today, Rose is almost seven months old and weighs about 10 pounds. Rose is doing very well. She has a home. She is well fed. She receives medical attention when she needs it. She will go to school when she is older. Rose is loved. Rose is at Sue’s orphanage. Of all the babies born every day in Haiti, Rose is one of the fortunate ones.

Post Script to Baby Rose

I asked Sue about the other children at her orphanage. Most of her kids eventually are adopted. All but a few of her current 26 children are in the process of being adopted. But not Baby Rose. It is too soon. Her mother may still come back for Rose. I doubt it.

It’s Haiti v14 – On-line Shopping, Anyone?

     We take a lot of things for granted in the USA. It is instructive to reflect on how quickly things change and how, after some initial resistance, we become very used to a new way of doing things. The Internet Age provides many examples. We were initially suspicious about “on-line shopping”: going to a web site, choosing an item, entering in a credit card number, clicking and then expecting what we just purchased to arrive within a week via FedEx, UPS or USPS. I think Amazon was the game changer that led more and more people to embrace on-line shopping. It even quickly became a fixture of our post Thanksgiving Christmas gift buying frenzy. Early on in the Internet Age most people had Internet connections at work but not yet at home. So when people returned to work after the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, they booted up the computers in their office and started buying their Christmas gifts on-line. Cyber Monday was born. Now we think nothing of going on line and buying anything we want, any time, day or night.

     Internet access is available in Haiti but on-line retailing has not yet arrived. Some Haitian stores have a presence on the Web but they usually have bare bones layouts. For example, the few that have an on-line catalogue may not list prices, or don’t have a full listing of their inventory. Another interesting example is C&I Office Supplies. On a visit to their store in Delmas (a section of Port-au-Prince), a salesperson showed me their catalogue. I asked if the catalog was available on their web site (my rookie mistake was assuming that they had a web site). Yes, they said. When I asked for the web site address, they gave me their email address. They have no Web site. I sent them an email and asked for a copy of the catalogue. I received the catalogue, a 25 page pdf file. It had no prices. However, each image did have a clickable link. Wow! I thought, maybe they do have a web site but I just could not find it. I followed a link for an office chair. It took me to the web site for Valerio-Canez, a different store that sold the same item! I clicked on another chair. It took me to the web site for Office Star, another different store. I clicked on a third item. Same result. Apparently C&I Office Supplies created its catalogue by copying and pasting images of items that appeared in catalogues on web sites of other office supply stores. The images still had the hot-links embedded in them and they were not removed when C&I Office Supplies assembled its catalogue.

     I have not found a single store in Haiti that has an on-line shopping portal. Sometimes you can click on an item and save it to a virtual chopping cart, but you cannot buy the item on-line. When you check out, you are directed to fill out a form with your contact information and given the assurance that a representative will contact you within 24 hours to confirm your order and the price total.

     On-line shopping? Not yet. It’s Haiti.

The Dodge

     Makendy does not like driving the Dodge. The Dodge is one of the Christianville vehicles. The Dodge is a turbo diesel, 4x4 Dodge Ram 2500. Makendy does not like the Dodge for two reasons. First of all, it is too big. The oversize nature of the Dodge makes it hard to maneuver on narrow mountain roads and, in particular, the narrow streets of Port-au-Prince. The second reason that Makendy does not like the Dodge is because it has an automatic transmission. Makendy prefers a stick shift. Makendy does not like driving the Dodge.

The Dodge

     Thursday morning Meer went looking for the Dodge. We needed the Dodge because we were going into PauP to buy a refrigerator/freezer and some chairs for the lab. But the Dodge was gone. Roodly, the logistics manager for Christianville, had already taken the Dodge into PauP to pick up Sarah. Why he took the Dodge is unclear. He did not need it for its cargo space and it looked like there were other vehicles available. So Makendy grabbed the keys to the Everest and drove us into PauP. We met Roodly at the store and swapped vehicles. Makendy slid behind the wheel of the Dodge, started the engine, and gingerly moved the shifter on the steering column several times through the gears. Makendy was familiarizing himself with the Dodge again. He slowly backed the Dodge up to the loading dock where we loaded up the refrigerator and chairs. We were ready to roll. Makendy met his first challenge before we even left the parking lot. A water tanker was pulled up on the sidewalk blocking half the parking lot driveway. It was broke down waiting for a mechanic who arrived just as we were leaving and who promptly blocked the rest of the driveway with his truck. Makendy rolled the Dodge forward and leaned tentatively on the horn. The mechanic moved his truck. With barely enough room to squeeze past the broke down tanker truck, Makendy pushed the Dodge through the opening and joined the rows of cars and trucks and tap taps that moved slowly along the road.

The Dodge

     We hit a traffic jam at la Marché de la Croix des Bossales, the PauP market. Meer gestured to Makendy to take another route. Makendy began gingerly jockeying the Dodge into position to make a U-turn on the chaotic street. Pierre encouraged him. “It’s a Dodge”, he said, “a big American truck. You can be a bully”. People got out of the way and let the Dodge through. Makendy pushed the Dodge through the narrow streets of PauP, driving so close to the other vehicles, I could reach out my window and touch them. And I really could since the air-conditioning was not working and we drove with the windows open all day. The open windows let in the thumping rhythm of the Dodge’s turbo diesel engine as well as the dust and smells of PauP in the dry season. Makendy navigated the Dodge through left hand turns across three traffic lanes of on-coming traffic at intersections with no left hand turn arrows. He zipped down narrow side streets to get around traffic jams. He crossed over into on-coming traffic lanes and gunned the Dodge to pass slower vehicles in front of us. By the end of the long, grueling day, Makendy had tamed the beast that is the Dodge. Now Makendy loves driving the Dodge. He calls it “machin boss”.

Can I Get Some Help Here, Please?

     I’m just trying to do my work here in Haiti. Some people back home don’t understand. Instead of helping me, supporting my work, they seem to be getting in the way. No, I don’t think anyone is deliberately being mean. I think they are probably following the rules. All I know is that I’m living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere trying to do my work, trying to help Haitians, and some people back home don’t get it. This is not the U.S. This is Haiti. I’m working in a country that for over a century and a half has been racked by disease, poverty, political instability, and natural and man-made disasters. Haiti Health Ministries is a medical clinic not far from where I am living. People start arriving at the clinic before 7:00 am. The clinic staff cannot see everyone so about 8:00 am they tell the people who won’t be seen to go home. Nevertheless, the people stay all day long hoping to be seen by a doctor. They won’t be seen. They will come back again tomorrow and still won’t get to see a doctor. They hope. There are 26 children at the Christianville orphanage. Parents frequently appear at the orphanage to ask Sue, the administrator, to take their child. They cannot afford to feed or clothe the child so they come here to give them up. They hope they can manage to feed and clothe their other children and maybe send them to school. People live in ramshackle huts with walls made of empty sacks of rice donated by USAID or Samaritans Purse. They hope that maybe someday they will be able to live in a home that is more than just a canvas shelter. There are hundreds of wells in the Gressier-Léogâne area. The UF lab tested the water quality in over 350 wells and found 34% of them to be contaminated. For three months after I arrived in Christianville, we treated our drinking water because the water coming out of the faucets was not safe to drink. There have been roaches, lizards, mice, and a tarantula as big as my fist in my house. I take anti-malaria drugs every morning to avoid getting malaria. Every day I am bitten by mosquitoes. Every day I worry if the next mosquito will be the one carrying the malaria parasite or, worse, the virus that causes Dengue fever. As if these diseases are not enough, six Caribbean nations have now reported cases of chikungunya. Haiti can’t be far behind. Every drive into PauP is far more dangerous than driving on the Capital Beltway at rush hour. Am I out of my mind? Why am I here? I’m here to help Haitians and to do some good science, that’s why I’m here. So, can I get some help here, please?

     Back in December, I asked the Henry Jackson Foundation (HJF), the organization that manages my grants, for a credit card so that I could buy supplies for my project from Haitian vendors. I see no point in ordering things in the U.S. and having them shipped to Haiti if I can buy them in Port-au-Prince. It is more convenient and it supports the local economy. All I asked for was a credit card to use for purchases charged to my grant.  Initially, the answer was no. We kept pushing. HJF asked if I could order the items and pay on the Web. No. I have yet to find a Haitian merchant with a web site that has a complete catalog much less on-line shopping. At best, you can place an order and then go into PauP to pay for it. As far as I can tell, on-line commerce does not exist in Haiti. HJF asked if Haitian merchants would accept a credit card number over the phone. No. They always ask for photo ID when you use a credit card. HJF asked if Haitian merchants would accept payment by check. No. HJF asked about all sorts of alternatives to giving me a credit card. None will work in Haiti. After six weeks of negotiating with HJF, Team Micro (my administrative support at USU) came through. HJF agreed to give me pre-paid debit cards to use. Success! But hold on. Just when we were about to get the cards, the email arrived. The bank issuing the cards said that the cards could not be used outside the U.S. Back to square one. More of the same questions came by email. HJF even suggested that they send me money by wire transfer and that I pay with cash. Unacceptable, I replied, too dangerous. Robbers and thieves and "gangsters" watch for people (especially blans, i.e. anyone not Haitian) who come out of the Western Union office or banks. They know those people have received money, cash. They are easy targets. I won't take the risk nor will I ask anyone else working here to do that. This is so aggravating. How many times do I need to explain? This is Haiti. Can you hear me? This is Haiti.

     I received funding from AFHSC-GEIS for my STI study. Notification of the award came on October 1, 2013. Because of the Federal Government shutdown and the absence of a budget for fiscal year 2014, AFHSC-GEIS only released first quarter funding for the project. I adjusted my budget and waited. And waited. And waited. I wrote emails, and more emails. Week after week, month after month. Soon it was December and, unbelievably, still no money had gone into a cost center (the mechanism that would allow me and my staff to begin purchasing materials and equipment) for my project. The first quarter of my project ended on December 31, 2013. Still no money. Finally on January 13, 2014, I received an email stating that the budget was approved and that funds had been loaded into a cost center.

     Last month, I had to file a progress report for the first quarter to AFHSC-GEIS. Under the Results section, I wrote “None”. Under Issues/Difficulties, I wrote “No funding was available to the PI during quarter 1. Money was not transferred from USU to HJF (“budget approved and baselined”) until January 13, 2014.” I did not know what to write for the Reason for Delay section. Despite numerous email inquiries I still do not understand the reasons for the delay. Whether the cause is administrative or otherwise is not my concern. Whatever the cause of the delay, I find it unacceptable that three months after the award was made, I was still unable to spend the money for needed equipment and supplies to carry out the project. I am developing long-term collaborations with my Haitian colleagues and my colleagues at the University of Florida. The situation has been an embarrassment for me and reflects poorly on my institution.

     Right now, I just want to do my work. Can I get a little help here, please?

Crazy Busy Week

     Some days it seems like I’ll never get it all together and get my sexually transmitted infections (STI) surveillance project organized and started. There are so many details that need to be addressed on the science side, the administrative side, and the logistics side. I never realized how complicated the whole process would be (but that’s why you do a sabbatical, to learn new things). Since the beginning I have

been very concerned about four things: obtaining IRB (institutional human subjects research) approval;

Cepheid GeneXpert

obtaining the GeneXpert platform (the very expensive instrument I want to use for testing for Chlamydia and gonorrhea); getting the GeneXpert (as well as other equipment and supplies) into Haiti without long delays and without having to pay outrageous customs fees; and lining up the clinics for the study (memorandums of agreement to use their space, getting sufficient space, hiring study staff, getting the drugs for treatment, etc.). There’s so much to do.

     Then some days it seems like all the pieces are falling into place.

     Last Sunday morning I did my run then Pierre and I Skype’d with France. After brunch I took a chance and followed up on a contact I had at UCLA (someone who had done a medical mission last spring to test women in Petit Goave for STIs). I wanted to ask about the GeneXpert, an instrument I plan to use to diagnose Chlamydia and gonorrhea. I have been trying for several months now to convince Cepheid, the manufacturer, to donate or loan a couple of GeneXperts for my project. I sent the email. My contact replied a couple of hours later and asked me to call him at home to talk about my project. We had about a 15-minute Skype call while his kids waited for him to take them somewhere. It turns out that he knows someone at Cepheid and he promised to talk to this person about my project on Tuesday. The week was off to a good start. We’ll see where this lead goes.

     Sunday night, Josh Udovich, the Carl Zeiss Microscopy Account Manager for USUHS, emailed to tell me that his manager approved my request for donation of a Primostar iLED microscope. This is a very nice, rugged microscope with a battery pack that was developed for use in developing countries.

Zeiss Primostar iLED Microscope

     Tuesday, we had a visit from David Fitter from the CDC. David was passing through on his way back to PauP and asked if he could stop by and see the lab. David arrived with four Toyota Land Cruisers. Security rules for Embassy personnel, including the CDC people, require them to travel with at least two vehicles when going outside PauP. We had a very good visit. David works on TB so he was very interested in seeing the BSL3 lab that is almost finished here. That is where the TB work will be done once the BSL3 lab is commissioned later this month. UF will also train technicians from the LNSP (Laboratoire National de la Santé Publique).

     Wednesday morning, Jeff Deal and his wife Hart arrived. Jeff is the Director of Research for Water Missions International (http://www.watermissions.org/). Water Missions provides sustainable safe water and sanitation systems for people in developing countries and disaster areas. Jeff is interested in determining the impact that the Water Missions systems have on public health on a broad scale. Basically Jeff wants to study two groups. One group which has the Water Missions safe water and sanitation system. The other group with no water and sanitation system but which is in line to get them from Water Missions in the future.  Thus, the idea is to monitor water borne diarrheal disease pathogens before and after installation of the Water Missions systems. Jeff came to pick our brains and see if we could collaborate. This is a great opportunity and Water Missions can prove to be a tremendous resource for our projects here. It is well established and present in many regions in Haiti as well as in Central America and Africa. As if that wasn’t enough, Water Missions even has a project in Baradères. We are in an ideal position to work with them in Baradères since that is where I will be setting up the new UF lab. The timing is perfect and so is the partner. Coincidence?

     We had some great discussions with Jeff and Hart. They both spent quite a bit of time in Africa, most recently in South Sudan. Since Jeff is also a tropical medicine doctor, he spent time working with Kevin, the UF student who is looking for schistosomiasis in Haiti. Jeff is also an anthropologist. He has done a lot of work in Africa. I have been convinced for a long time now that it would be a really good idea to get an anthropologist involved in the survey component of my STI project. Jeff agreed to help out and look at our survey questionnaire.

     Thursday morning, Madsen (who arrived late Wednesday) and I drove over to meet Dr. Celestin, the head of the Centre de Santé, Gressier, one of the sites where I plan to do my STI study. We talked (in French) about the logistics and how the study will be set up. I explained the project’s goals (being careful to call it a project and not a program; in the Haitian mindset programs are long term with more money) and how we would be testing men and women and getting same day results for immediate treatment of the patients who test positive. I let Madsen talk about salaries and whether we might hire the same staff that did the pilot study at Dr. Celestin’s clinic last summer. Space is a concern but Madsen thinks Dr. Celestin will find the space we need. The meeting went very well. Madsen and I were very satisfied.

     As soon as we returned to Christianville, we met up with Andy Camilli, a friend and colleague from Tufts University in Boston. Andy was in PauP for a few days to meet with Dr. Boncy, the head of the LNSP. One of our goals is to promote the UF-EPI Haiti lab and its work and when Andy emailed me that he would be in PauP, I immediately asked him to come out to visit the lab. Since Andy could not arrange a ride, Meer sent Makendy and Pierre into PauP to pick him up. Andy is a cholera investigator so his first question to Meer after getting out of the Everest was, “Is Vibrio cholerae entrenched in the environment in Haiti?” This question is a very hotly debated one right now. Some groups don’t believe that cholera has established itself in environmental reservoirs in Haiti. Meer’s recently published data say otherwise (http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/20/3/13-1293_article.htm). So Meer invited Andy to take a look at his data. Now Andy is a believer. We gave Andy a tour of the lab and a tour of Christianville after lunch. Andy was blown away by the UF-EPI lab and the projects going on here. He also was amazed at Christianville and all its activities.

     Thursday evening, Madsen, Pierre, and I got a ride over to the Haiti Health Ministry (HHM) compound. HHM is the other site I want to use for my STI study. Our meeting with Sandy, the HHM Administrator, went very well. HHM is going to one of our study sites. Sandy took us on a tour of the new clinic building which is almost complete. We met a Tibetan carpenter who was finishing up cabinets for the new clinic (you meet people from all over the world here). I also almost bumped into a cow on the road as we walked back to Christianville in the dark.

     Thursday night, I got an email back from my colleague at UCLA. He said to expect to hear from Cepheid about my GeneXpert donation request.

     Friday morning, Madsen, Meer, and I drove into PauP for a meeting at the LNSP. La Direction d’Epidémiologie, de Laboratoire et de Recherches, the epidemiology, laboratory and research branch of the Ministry of Public Health and Population, holds monthly meetings to teach and inform about the newest research findings. Meer’s talk on the presence of Vibrio cholerae in the aquatic environment in Haiti was a big hit and had a huge impact. The timing was perfect. He got about 15 minutes of questions (for a 15 minute talk) and handled them all brilliantly. I was especially impressed with how Meer responded to the questions about how his research findings might influence the national cholera elimination efforts. Such questions are really policy questions and Meer very nicely deflected them saying that they are really questions for people higher up in the national policy chain. It was a good thing that I already had seen Meer’s slides and knew his data since Madsen told me about a half hour before Meer’s talk that he wanted me to interpret for Meer. I told Madsen that he should do it, not me. Madsen insisted. So I ended up interpreting Meer’s talk and the question and answer period as well. Believe me, being an interpreter is not an easy task. It is not like translating where you have plenty of time and can think and write and re-write the translation. It was a little stressful. But at least the LNSP people now know me: I’m the blan who speaks French with a Philadelphia accent.

Kevin Talbot at the Ocean Grill

     Saturday, things slowed down. I needed the break.  We got a group of people together to go to the Ocean Grill for dinner.
Meer, Curtis, Solomon, Pierre, Kevin and me climbed into the red Nissan and Solomon drove us down to Léogâne. Jacques (the owner and chef) greeted us outside. We introduced him to Pierre and Kevin who were dining at Ocean Grill for the first time.

Pierre Maurelli at Ocean Grill

We had a great meal, as usual. Before heading back home, we stopped at Eva’s little store to see what we could find to bring to the Super Bowl party that Ken and Marsha and Kirk were going to have at their house.






     I got back to the lab and found an email from Cepheid. They will give me a loaner GeneXpert and reduced pricing on the instrument as well.

     All of the pieces are falling into place. It was a crazy busy week.