TAXI

As far as work and what fills my days...

We are in the middle of our first health survey of Leogane and it's surrounding villages. Our main focus is the nutritional condition of the children between ages 6 months to 3 years and their mother's accessibility to health care and clean water. We hope from this survey we can see what progress the hearth program has made over the past years and what areas we can improve. Moreover, we hope to find other arenas where we can continue to help the families of Leogane.

We have a staff of 9 Haitian translators that we spent 3 days training on how to select random houses and to follow the protocol of a "cluster" survey. I am not very experienced or better yet have very little knowledge of epidemiology, but during the training I grasped enough knowledge to understand the importance of following a strict protocol. In order to survey a smaller quantity of children but obtain an accurate representation of the entire city there must be special attention given to the "randomness" of the houses/children we choose. We also spent time training on how to weigh, measure, and accurately determine the health of the children we survey. At the end of the training the Haitians were divided into 3 groups and 1 American was placed with each group making 3 groups of four.

We randomly selected 33 communities/villages that each day a different team will go to implement the survey until all are complete. If everything goes according to plan we will complete the entire survey in two weeks spending only one night sleeping in the mountains per team.

Today we completed the fourth day of the survey with the long hike and the overnight stay in the mountains on the horizon, that being tomorrow!! I am looking forward to heading up to my village because it is very close to a village that I visited in January and the hike up the riverbed was breathtaking. I hope to take pictures and look forward to reporting back on all the intricate details from the eating to sleeping to sharing times around the fire with the locals.

All in all the survey is going extremely well and with each day that passes teams are getting equally efficient at completing the daily tasks. Although the sun is hot and sometimes the breeze is insufficient we continue to climb up and down the mountains with a great attitude knowing that we are playing a big part in the future for the families of Leogane. Thank you for your prayers!!

One side note, I took my first mototaxi to the beach the other day with a friend of mine I met here, Brittany, to spend Sunday afternoon. We had hoped to read and relax but as always in Haiti as soon as a "blan" is spotted you can't hide!! You know the feeling you get when you feel like you are being watched...well, we were laying on our towels talking and reading and even attempting to polish up on what little Creole we know when I mentioned this feeling. At that moment I arose to see the most beautiful children in the world standing, some with their hands crossed behind their back as if they were patiently waiting their turn to ask us a question. Of course we failed miserably at what attempts we made to communicate, but we spent the rest of the afternoon teaching the children how to throw the Frisbee and of course they had a soccer ball to kick around as well. It was a great afternoon!! The children actually waded a short ways out into the surf to bring back some clams to give to us. I am still unsure what they wanted us to do with them but they insisted that we have them. Although we were looking for a relaxing afternoon these kinds of memories are everything and more than you could possibly want to take away!! I am falling more in love with these children each passing day...

Steven and Koral. I must find Winsky (sp?) and Johnny Lu!!!

Love to everyone!!!