My Day

     Now that I have been here over a month, I thought it might be a good time to talk about my daily routine. There isn’t really a routine but some things are fairy consistent. I wake up about 6 am. The sun is already up and there is movement on the road outside the house. Workers and vehicles arrive for the day’s work. The chickens are making a lot of noise. You get used to it. Did I mention the smells yet? Christianville is a working farm. In addition to the chickens, there is a herd of goats here. The herd moves between pastures next to the lab to down back of the guesthouse. Some mornings I hear the goats, too. Some mornings I’m not sure if what I smell is the chickens or the goats, or both. It doesn’t matter. You get used to that, too.

Sunrise

     I take a shower. I’ve gotten used to taking cold showers. After I shower, I do some pushups, some stretching, some yoga. Some mornings I get up earlier and go for a run. I have not done that too much lately. The road is too rocky and the circuit is basically a boring path back and forth. I take my doxycycline (anti-malaria), hang my bath towel on the line in the yard to dry and walk over to the dining hall for breakfast. We drink coffee while we wait for breakfast to be ready at 7:15 am. Everyone who is present joins hands and someone volunteers to say a prayer. That person gets to be first in line to eat.  There is a long table with the food. We pass along both sides of the table to serve ourselves. Later I will do another post on the meals (with photos) at Christianville. People wander in and serve themselves. We talk about our plans for the day. If there is a mission group present, we’ll talk with them, ask where they are from, what they are doing in Haiti, just get to know them a bit and make them feel welcome. Mission groups come and go. They stay at the guesthouse (also known as the Fish House or Hotel West Virginia) for a week or 10 days. There may be five people or 15 people. As we finish eating, everyone helps collect the dishes and bring them into the kitchen where the ladies wash the dishes.

     After breakfast, Meer and I head over to the lab. The lab techs come in about 8 am. Meer checks to see which clinics called in and where he needs to send Makendy to pick up samples. We get specimens from Léogâne, Petit Goâve, Grand Goâve, and Jacmel. I don’t do anything with the samples. The Haitian techs do all the work. I turn on my laptop and check my email. I pull up the list of emails for which I am awaiting a response. If it is taking too long, I’ll send out another email. I check with Meer to see if we going to meet anyone today. Some days Meer and I drive out to meet people. We drive out to introduce ourselves to the staff at the clinics that we work with. We want to establish a personal relationship with our partners. Sometimes we will drive out to meet someone new to establish a partnership, to learn what they are doing, to explain to them what we are doing, to see if there are ways we can work together. Basically we are getting the word out to the community that the UF-EPI Haiti Lab 1 is here and explaining what we do. It really does help to cultivate that personal connection.  

     Back in the lab, I work at my laptop. I write protocols for our surveillance projects. I review research progress from people in my lab in Bethesda. I write proposals for funding. I write emails to collaborators. I write to my colleagues in Florida and in Haiti. I send out requests to meet with different people and organizations in Haiti as I try to build up my network. I also spend a lot of time setting up projects, developing ideas of things to do. It is crazy and fun!!! Meer and I just toss around ideas of what a microbiology laboratory can do in Haiti. What about parasites? I didn’t think I’d get into parasites but now I’m learning about schistosomiasis and reading up on it. I spent most of the day one Saturday writing a pilot protocol to test for schistosomiasis. I'm not a parasitologist so I need to bring in some people I know at USU and the University of Georgia as collaborators. Why not food studies? Meer and I talked about looking for Campylobacter and Salmonella in chickens. They raise lots of chickens and produce lots of eggs in Christianville.  Maybe we should look and see if the chickens are colonized with Campylobacter or Salmonella. But how do you get cloacal swabs from a chicken? I don’t know but I know a guy who knows chickens – my Ph.D. mentor, Roy Curtiss III. So I sent Roy an email and he told me how (there is a YouTube video). 

     There is so much that can be done here. The limiting factors are personnel (getting the right people to work on the project), material (it's not easy to get equipment and supplies into Haiti), and money. At times I almost feel like I’m back in Bethesda writing grants. I spend a lot of time sending out emails begging companies for donations or reduced pricing for material and supplies. We are doing things on a shoestring and the work here really needs a much larger investment. But I love it down here. We're going to get a lot of good stuff done.

     Lunch is at 12:00 noon. Same routine as at breakfast. On my way to lunch I go into our yard to fold up my bath towel and bring it back into the house. After lunch, it’s back to the lab. Sometimes during the day, one of my kids will jump in on Google Chat and we exchange messages for a while. I really enjoy that. It keeps me connected with them and what they are doing. We also Skype. That is great (except when the Internet connection is poor and keeps dropping the call). But I still miss them.

     Dinner is at 5:30 pm. After dinner, I grab a flashlight from the house and head back to the lab and continue working on my laptop. It usually rains. We are in the last month of the rainy season. I work until about 10:00 pm and then pack up the laptop, say goodnight to Meer (he works until after midnight) and walk back home in the dark. The nights have gotten noticeably cooler this week. I brush my teeth and rinse with bottled water from our Gift of Water household water treatment system. I have not used the tap water since I got here. I have not been using the bed net. I think we have our mosquito problem under control since Meer and I spent a whole day taping around all of the window screens with duct tape and did a thorough house cleaning. I am sleeping a lot better.

     Time for bed. 

     Bonne nuit, les enfants. Dormez bien.

Sunset

Post Script to Two Kids (goats), Two Kids (humans), and Two Shots (10-26-13 post)

     About 10 days after the incident, someone came from Port to pick up the dog’s head. Yesterday (Nov. 9) we learned that the dog was rabid. Another wild dog from our area who had bitten someone also tested positive for rabies. It was suggested that the guards be told to shoot any stray dogs that they find on the Christianville grounds.

     I’m not worried about tarantulas, or malaria, or cholera. I can take precautions to avoid them. I worry about rabies and I am more aware now of stray dogs. I stay away.

Camion Mack

     Sometimes I think Haiti is a little boy’s playground. It is full of trucks and construction equipment. Back hoes, front-end loaders, graders, and cement mixers. But most of all, there are the dump trucks. Everywhere you go there are dump trucks. Things are constantly being built up or torn down and the dump trucks are there. Dump trucks rumble down the roads day and night carrying rocks and dirt from one location to another. In many places that’s what Haiti is, rock and dirt. So it seems like the trucks are just re-arranging the island.

Camion Mack

     I asked Makendy how to say dump truck in Kreyol. “Camion Mack”, he said. How true! At least 90% of the dump trucks in Haiti are Mack. I have seen a handful of Ford and International Harvester dump trucks but the big dog in Haiti is Mack. They are all here, new and old (well mostly old). It seems like all the Mack dump trucks ever built have come here to finish out their useful days. And that probably lasts for years.

     The camion Mack is the king of the road. It is not the biggest dump truck but the Mack makes the most noise. Its air horn is the loudest. And like dump trucks back in the U.S., many camion Mack sport names. However, unlike the ones in the U.S., these names are more likely to be “Dieu tout puissant” or “L’Eternal”.

     The camion Mack goes anywhere. I awoke the other morning to the sound of a (yet another) diesel engine powered truck lumbering past the window of my bedroom. It was a camion Mack coming down the narrow road into Christianville. Solomon had ordered two truckloads of fill for the foundation of the UF house being built next to the lab. This Mack was bringing in the first load. So like a little kid, I ran out to watch the truck back up and empty its load. When I was a kid, Mack Trucks were the quintessential American truck. Now the iconic Mack Truck is part of Volvo Group (after first being bought out by Renault which then sold Mack Truck to Volvo). It’s so good to see so many camion Mack still working and hauling their loads in Haiti. I love it!

Camion Mack at work

It’s Haiti v9 – What is a Haitian Dollar?

     The official currency of Haiti is the Haitian Gourde. It is exchanged at about 43 gourdes to the U.S. dollar. So when you see prices here in gourdes, you do a quick mental calculation to get it into dollars by dividing the price by 43 (or 40 to make it easier). We were at the market looking to buy some mangos. The women asked for 50 gourdes for a stack of six mangos. OK, that’s about $1.25 for the six, not bad. A lot better than the 110 gourdes we paid in the grocery store for just three apples. So I’m starting to figure it out. Then I walk into a store where the prices are listed in dollars. Not U.S. dollars, but Haitian dollars. So how do I pay in Haitian dollars? I can’t. There is no such currency. The Haitian dollar does not exist as a currency. It exists only as a manner of expressing a value. Now you need to multiply the Haitian dollars by five to convert the price to gourdes to pay in gourdes. Then you can divide by 43 to get the price in U.S. dollars. And most places will accept U.S. dollars, but not Haitian dollars. Because they don’t exist.
It’s Haiti.

Not a Haitian dollar but a 250 gourdes note (worth about $6 US)

Window Shopping for a Freezer in PAP

     I woke up at 5 am today. A very large truck pulled into Christianville and rumbled noisily right past our house (right past my bedroom window). The truck was filled with chickens, about 570 of them. Pastor Raymond had ordered them to give to a group of people. When I spoke to him later he was upset because things did not go as planned (it’s Haiti). Some people did not show up or they did not come in time. There were fewer chickens than he thought and about a dozen chickens had died in transport. They sat in a pile by the tree. The ones that were alive certainly made enough noise to keep me awake after I was awoken by the arrival of the truck.

     I showered, ate breakfast (pancakes and corn flakes) and by 7:30, Meer and I climbed into the Ford Everest with Makendy at the wheel to drive into PAP. The radio had one of Makendy’s favorite radio stations on: Alleluia FM 98.9. All inspirational music, all kinds, in English and Kreyol. Traffic was heavy and barely moving. Makendy turned off the main highway and down a side street. Soon we were in a narrow alley that ran parallel to the highway. We drove past ramshackle houses, stores, drainage ditches filled with trash, and people watching us drive past. We soon joined the highway again. Traffic and the way people drive in Haiti still amaze me. Makendy does things that one would not ever think of doing back in the U.S. I don’t mean to say he is a bad driver. He is a great driver. It’s just that it takes a lot of nerve and street savvy to navigate the traffic in Haiti. And Makendy is equally adept at weaving through the traffic of PAP as he is in handling the off-road unpaved trails we frequently take.

     We were going into Port to shop for a freezer for the lab. But first we had to stop at the DHL office to check on a package of donated rapid test kits we were expecting. The nice DHL lady checked the tracking number. The package should be in tomorrow. She then called the airport office and asked them to have the package sent to the office in town where we were. Then she gave us her card and told us to call in the morning to be sure the package is in the office before sending Makendy out to pick it up. Great service. Better than my first experience with the FedEx office (they checked the tracking number, the package isn’t here; wait, it is here; let me get it; wait, wait…).

     Back in the Everest, we drove off to visit several stores to look for an ultra-cold freezer for the lab. Something at -30C or -40C would be good but a -20C would probably be all we could find. We were going to the large appliance/hardware dealers in PAP and I doubted that we would find a specialty ultra-cold freezer. A quick calculation by Meer determined that a -20C freezer was a -6F freezer. Only one freezer showed a temperature range. It got down to -6F, so we assumed all the others did the same. After the first store I figured out that the Haitians call a freezer, “freezer” not “congélateur” as in French. And frost-free is “no-frost”. I love this language.

     The stores we visited included a grim looking warehouse near Cité Soleil, a very bad neighborhood of PAP. On our way there we passed a former Texaco gas station where a tent city had replaced the gas pump islands under the large black canopy. This store had a “showroom” with three or four freezers that looked like they fell off the back of the truck. There were four guys with shotguns at the entrance to the parking lot and a guy with a shotgun on the loading dock where customers picked up their purchases. At the other end of the spectrum was a store in a tidy industrial park across the street from the U.S. Embassy (yes, I finally saw the U.S. Embassy in Haiti). The store was air-conditioned and sold furniture and appliances. We checked out the freezers and I took some notes. There were a few models that looked like they might be okay. On our way out, we passed through the furniture section. It had everything for the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I saw a very nice, black leather easy chair for $3200.  If the chair was there, it is because there are buyers. For me it was yet another jarring shock of seeing pockets of prosperity surrounded by vast zones of poverty. We will come back tomorrow to buy the freezer. I should check and see how much a nice leather sofa costs. 11-05-13: We went back to the store today to get a price quote on the freezer. On the way out, I took a look at the prices for the leather sofas. I saw one for $6750 and another for $9590. I'm sure someone will buy it.

It’s Haiti v8 – What Time is it?

     This weekend Haiti returned to Standard Time just like the U.S. What is the point of Daylight Savings Time here? Because of Haiti’s proximity to the equator, there is little change in daylight hours with the changing of the seasons. So why does Haiti switch back and forth between Daylight Savings Time and Eastern Standard Time? It doesn’t always. It depends on the government in power. Previous governments did not make the time change. When Michel Martelly took office two years ago, he decided it would be a good idea to make the time change to stay in sync with the East coast of the U.S., to remain on the same time as Miami, Washington, DC and New York. So now it gets dark here at 5 pm, and dinner in the dining hall is still at 6 pm. So we walk over there in the dark from the lab. And now the roosters and chickens start making noise at 5 am instead of 6 am.
It’s Haiti.

Boulangerie Eva – The Best Fast Food Around

      Eva is the best fast food around. Eva is also a boulangerie, a bakery. Great bread, pastries, and cookies. You will find Eva on the National Route 2 that runs from Port-au-Prince west along the coast past Gressier, through Léogâne, on past Grand-Goâve, Petit-Goâve, and Miragoane before turning south into and over the mountains down to the south coast. Eva is on the outskirts of Léogâne. As you drive west from PAP, look for Eva on the left just at the point where you turn off the National 2 to go into Léogâne proper.  Everyone stops at Eva to eat. They have sandwiches and cold drinks, cakes, cookies, and bread. Eva is popular. There are even street vendors in and around Léogâne who sell Eva’s bread. And there are stores in Léogâne that sell Eva’s bread.

     Since the Christianville dining hall was closed yesterday, Meer and I had to find something to eat. So when Makendy got back from Petit-Goâve, we got into the Ford Everest and headed over to Eva for lunch. I ordered a sandwich jambon fromage and Meer ordered a cheeseburger (he’s so American sometimes). We also got a couple of “paté” which is a puff pastry with ground meat filling (une pâte feuilletée renfermant de la viande). And a bag of cookies for dessert. My sandwich cost 100 gourdes. The cheeseburger was 115 gourdes. The exchange rate is about 43 gourdes to the dollar, it comes out to about $2.30 for my sandwich and $2.60 for Meer’s cheeseburger.

Boulangerie Eva, Léogâne

     Meer likes Eva because you can see the kitchen staff preparing your food. And they wear plastic gloves like back home. The food is good although my sandwich would probably make my French friends grimace. Le sandwich jambon fromage contained ham and cheese, as advertised, but it also had onions, tomatoes, and a little green pepper tossed in. There was also a splash of ketchup. In fact, the seasonings looked a lot like what was in Meer’s cheeseburger.

     As we ate, I asked Makendy who Eva is. He did not know so he went to the counter and asked. When he came back he told me that Eva is a “notaire”. There is no close equivalent in the U.S. but the notaire in Haiti functions like a notaire in France. Notaires handle property purchases and sales and they validate contracts and agreements. They also estimate property values. So it is close to what a realtor does in the U.S. but more. Not quite a lawyer but more than a realtor. Anyway, Eva owns the whole lot, the boulangerie, the small grocery store next to it, the gas station, and the Western Union office on the edge of the lot. No guns are allowed in Eva and there are no guys with shotguns standing in the doorway. However, like most stores around here, Eva does not accept credit cards. So bring your gourdes or U.S. dollars.