Futurama

So Tomas turned out to be pretty uneventful for us, here in our house. We saw more and heavier rain once Tomas had actually left than during the hurricane itself. Overall the capital was spared from the high winds predicted, but there was major flooding in some of the areas already hit hardest by the earthquake. Leogane, where my mother and her nursing friends are going in January to treat patients, saw heavy flooding (see a map here). There is a photo from the BBC's website here. More concerning is that cholera has been confirmed in PaP. This is definitely not good news, but it's also not as though this hadn't been predicted. The good news is that it might be easier to get to people with enough time to treat them and to have the supplies more readily available to treat them in the capital than up country. The bad news is that there are more people living in crowded, unhygienic conditions than up country. If you're wondering what, exactly, all this cholera stuff is about, check out the CDC's very useful and easy to understand website.

My organisation has no plans to do anything cholera related. That's not "what we do" and we don't have any supplies or money to be of any help anyway. This is when it is a shame to be such a focused organisation (malaria and dengue fever prevention in humanitarian crises) because it leaves you feeling a bit helpless and silly being so focused when there is clearly a much bigger, more urgent need right in front of your face.

As horrible as it is to say, though, I'm feeling a bit checked out of it all. I reached my boiling point of frustration long ago with this organisation and have now passed the point of no return when it comes to re-finding my motivation, I think. The fact that we never received a single email about cholera or the hurricane (even to ask if we had done any preparation or if we were ok after the fact) has led me to believe that they've forgotten they even have a program in Haiti. We could set ourselves on fire to get their attention and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't notice. My contract is up with them on the 24th. I fly in to Boston around 10pm the night before Thanksgiving (if all goes according to plan, which I'm sure it won't) and as of now have not even been asked if I want to stay with them. In fact, none of the three of us has. That's probably because they forgot we're still here.

Anyway. Unless they beg me (and pay me really well) I don't anticipate coming back to Haiti with them. At most it would be about 2 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas to hand over to someone else, but since there's no way they'll have someone hired by then, I don't think that's happening. It will be sad to leave our national staff. They LOVE each other, are such a great team, and have worked hard together. Even when us expats have been at each others' throats, the national staff continue to have the best time together and to come to work every day with smiles on their faces. Some of our drivers, I'm pretty sure, would take a bullet for us. So that will be difficult and if I do return to Haiti with another organisation I already know I will most likely be disappointed with a new national staff. I will not, however, miss this job even a little bit.

My plan in my head right now is this: go home to Boston and be there until Christmas. Maybe work a short temp job for some money, maybe just hang out. The day after Christmas hopefully fly out to India where a friend from London is getting married. I've never been to India and, really, how many times in my life will I have the opportunity to attend an Indian wedding in India? I'm going with one. I have another good friend in Bangladesh, so between India and Bangladesh and maybe some other countries on that continent I am hoping to be gone and travel around for 4 - 5 weeks. THEN, depending on how I'm feeling, I might look into coming back to Haiti with a different organisation, hopefully more sexual and reproductive health focused.

But that's the plan in my head. We'll see what actually transpires. If anyone has some amazing opportunities out there for me, do tell! I like Haiti a lot, although PaP is starting to get a bit dull, now that I've visited pretty much all of the restaurants multiple times. There's no movie theatre or bowling alley or anything, so you basically end up eating a lot, drinking a lot, getting fat, and spending a lot of money. Having the opportunity to travel more outside of PaP for work could be a solution for me, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. So I will put out some feelers before I go, but also want to see how I feel about returning after some time away (and no paycheck).

Speaking of travelling more outside of PaP...for the two weekends we have left in Haiti we've made plans to get out of PaP. Dieu merci. I've only left ONCE in four months, so it's definitely time. I don't want to have been here for four months and only have seen Jacmel, the touristy beach town. Hopefully it all works out, and if so I'll post pictures.

Hope to see many of you over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and maybe in between as well.