On Tuesday my clinic job was to get as many photos as I could of our clinic operations – thought this’d be a good chance to show you how we’ve been running the mobile medical clinics, and hopefully give you a good “visual feel” for what it looks like…
(Photo above: Young teenage girl just finishing up at the clinic – even the older kids get lollipops 😊)
This week’s clinics were designed to have our American team members working together with the See Him Ministries’ Haitian medical staff, in order to see as many patients as possible in some of these remote areas. Tuesday’s clinic was in the village of Bourg Dumas, about an hour’s drive east of Cap Haitien, and only 10 miles from the border to the Dominican Republic. (Honestly, this was probably my favorite place we’ve been to this week – for lots of different reasons – more about that later in a separate post.)
In Bourg Dumas we treated multiple groups of school children, some for wellness checks but most for sick visits – and, unfortunately, a ton of Covid.
Waiting area out under the trees:
Lining up to see the nurse:
Two little girls at the nurses’ station, where our See Him nurses are getting vitals and triaging the patients:
Waiting to see one of our docs:
Dr. Dulta Dorvil, one of See Him’s medical staff who’s been working with us this week:
There’s a really great backstory on Dr. Dorvil: She’s one of the many See Him medical staff and leadership team who grew up in the orphanage I referenced in a previous post (https://thehaitifund.org/2021/10/12/one-pretty-cool-thing/). I mentioned to her that I had visited that orphanage in 1990 – she laughed and told me that was the year she was born. I have no idea at what point she was actually brought to the orphanage but I do remember rocking some babies there, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I may have actually held her as an infant (which I thought was quite a hoot, and also made me feel very old!).
Mallory, the PA on our American team, along with Alex, her translator:
Waiting to see the pharmacy staff:
Our pharmacist Kenny and our pharmacy techs, hard at work (honestly, Kenny probably has the hardest job of anyone this week – ordering, organizing, packaging, and distributing meds is a massive undertaking):
It was Hayden’s turn to do prayer station today, assisted by one of our translators, Raymond:
The whole gang – our American team, the See Him medical staff and translators, and the preacher at Bourg Dumas (more about him later – he’s quite a guy):
One final thing that struck me: From what I’ve been told, in the past these trips have always been conducted by Americans only, with no Haitian staff other than the translators. The smallness of this year’s U.S. team – just 9 of us total – necessitated a change to that, and the addition of several See Him medical staff. In our team debrief last night, all of our U.S. team members were commenting on how much we LOVED working side by side with our Haitian brothers and sisters, and really getting to know them as friends – which is exactly what our Haiti Fund team members have been saying for years! The decision was made last night that this would be the new model moving forward – intentionally using an integrated team of Haitians and Americans, working together on these medical trips.
