Vingt-Deux

              Today was my first day without my group.  Angie and I have stayed in country to provide some continuity as well as conduct a pair of long-term projects.  She is working on a community health worker training program and currently has five very motivated students learning from her on a daily basis.  I am about to set off on a community-wide needs assessment.  But as I sit and type I can’t help but think of the twenty people who were down here with us over the past week.  I knew a few of the volunteers, but was unfamiliar with most of them.  We ranged from a 60 year old University of Iowa ITS employee to a 16 year old Canadian who had his first taste of alcohol with the blessing of his uncle, a board certified pediatrician and emergency physician.  Mixed in between were men and women with various levels of education in the United States and a broad range of first-hand experience in Haiti.  Nearly half of us had never traveled here before.  Twenty two of us, emboldened with the desire to help a country continue to recover and develop.

                I might be exhibiting recall bias, but I have to say that this was one of the best, most efficient, most accomplished travel groups I’ve ever been a part of.  I can only speak for myself and how the group made me feel, but I know my productivity benefited from the fact that I was comfortable with everyone in the group.  Those twenty-one volunteers fucking rule.  Pardon my creole.  We cruised through over 1200 patients in our five clinics.  Granted, some of our speed was due to limited diagnostics and treatment options.  You can’t effectively diagnose or rule out a peptic ulcer due to H. pylori without labs.  So we gave what we had, tums, omeprazole and/or ranitidine.  They claimed to have a fever?  We would rule out common causes like pneumonia and pyelonephritis, but would often be left guessing as to the diagnosis.  We erred on the side of over-treating for the benefit of the patients.  But even with our history and physicals being streamlined to focus on what we could effectively diagnose and treat 1200 patients is a ton.  Procedures were performed.  A woman with florid heart failure had a catheter inserted while she sat on the floor, her back supported by another volunteer as her conscious was waning with her dropping oxygen saturation.  If you would’ve polled the room you would’ve been told by most that she had less than a %50 chance of living.  She walked out of the hospital the next day and visited us two days later looking great.  We got shit accomplished.

                I think the most important thing to take from the twenty one volunteers I got to work with is that it is so helpful to be helpful.  There wasn’t a person in that wouldn’t bend over backwards for anyone else in the group.  No one put themselves above the group.  And everyone was there to serve the Haitian people.  It was truly a powerful thing to sit back and witness the true poetry in our group mechanics.

                This group came and served, and as is evidenced by my relative loneliness right now, everyone went their separate ways.  There will be no more Egyptian rat screw games in the morning before loading up the truck.  No more group showings of community on the projector screen.  I can only hope that I remain in contact with everyone, but I know that will not happen.  I will be a part of other groups – hopefully I’ll be lucky enough to work with some of the same volunteers again, and maybe even in Haiti.  But I don’t foresee another group or mission trip having that kind of success of blending people together for such a meaningful cause.  I feel #blessed to have been a part of it.