Now We Begin

     Sunday, I flew back into Haiti with two suitcases full of material for the STI surveillance project. My flight out of Washington was late arriving in Miami; I had 10 minutes to get to the gate for my connecting flight to PAP. I made it in time. But would my bags make it? This flight was the last one out to Port-au-Prince for the day. My hopes sunk. But as I sat on the plane, the captain announced that they were waiting for the thunderstorms over Miami to clear before we could take off. That left enough time for connecting baggage (mine!) to get loaded on the plane. I found my bags on the Prestige beer carousel (the baggage claim carousel is covered with advertisements for the Haitian national lager beer) after customs and I grabbed them and walked out into the early evening heat and humidity. Meer was there to greet me. We waited for Maha, a student from UF who is working on malaria, to come out and then we loaded up the Everest and headed back to Christainville. It was the start of another stay in Haiti but this time we begin the STI project.

     Over the past year I have felt squeezed on all sides with the difficulties of getting my STI surveillance study underway. I have frequently found myself spending so much time dealing with issues of a completely non-scientific nature. I am caught between two unyielding forces: unrelenting poverty (in Haiti) and inflexible bureaucracy (everywhere). It has been a succession of daunting tasks to overcome to get this far. Many times I have just felt that it was not worth all this effort for such a small project. Even today, I felt that way. Why am I still trying to do this? What good can we accomplish? How much data can we get? How useful will it be? Can we continue beyond the original funding period, that is, will the project be successful enough that my sponsor will agree to continue to support the surveillance long term?

     But during this trip, we start. I am both excited and anxious. Excited to finally begin and anxious about what will happen when we actually begin the STI surveillance. What can go wrong? How well prepared is my staff? Do we have all the materials we need? What can go wrong?