Three Weeks In

It's already been a week since my last update, and boy, does time fun when you're having flies (or vice versa)!

I've been relatively busy the last several days meeting with people, reading articles, and trying to brainstorm my potential projects. I have two potential projects that my mentor tells me are both very interesting and feasible, so I'm going to stick with them. I won't go into details yet, but one project is a survey on alcoholism, and the other is an educational intervention for diarrhea prevention. I'm starting with the alcohol project, and I have to submit an IRB application (basically to get permission to do research on human subjects) by the beginning of September... which is in one week! So I'm going to have to work really hard the next few days. Hopefully once things get going on that project, I'll start working on the second one. I will talk more about each project as time goes on.

Thankfully, it has not been all work the last few days. This past weekend I went to Chennai with a bunch of international students to do some shopping, eat at (relatively) nice restaurants, and watch a movie (Inception!) at a movie theater. Chennai is a much bigger city than Vellore, and it can be quite a hassle trying to get around by rickshaws. It seems they are much more used to having tourists and charging ridiculously high rates. If it's raining or late at night they would charge double or triple the normal rate! Thankfully we all got around safely despite the fact that one of the drivers was smoking pot before he drove, and another drove full-speed against a one-way street.

There were 20 or so of us all together from all over the place (US, Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Nigeria, and Malaysia). It was a lot of fun traveling with them. It's sad that many of them are returning home soon, and some of them have already left. I suppose I will see a lot of people come and go in the next 9 months while I'm here. In any case I'm thankful that I get to meet interesting people from around the world, and make lots of new friends.

Here are some photos from this weekend:

We took a private bus from Vellore to Chennai.

On our way to Chennai.

This is where we stayed over the weekend.

Eric and I shared a room.

Our toilet and shower for the weekend.
You can't expect much for Rs 250 per night.

Annelie and Laura, two German med students

Xin-You and Vicky from UK/Malaysia and Netherlands.

Craig from Canada, and Fiona and Cionr from Ireland.

With Khalid from UK.

Idel from Ireland and Malcolm from Scotland.

Eric from Nigeria.

"Nachos" without nacho cheese?... um, yeah, nice try.

Grilled tenderloin! First time I had beef in India! They used a LOT of pepper on this.

Shopping at Spencer Plaza Mall

We found Subway at Spencer Plaza. They have two separate lines for vegetarian and non-vegetarian.

Fiona and Rozemarijn at Subway.

Eating my "Italian" sub with lamb salami and lamb pepperoni. 

Trying on some hats.

Three Danish girls and a German girl traveling by rickshaw.

Crammed into a rickshaw. There were five in the back, and I shared a seat with the driver.

With Sofie from Denmark at Copper Chimney Restaurant. Food here was really good. I highly recommend it.

Vigga and Anne from Denmark.

Eric, Idel, and Clionr.

Anne and her chicken kabobs.

My prawn curry. It was delicious.

Brownie with ice cream at the movie theater... yummm...

Getting breakfast at Vasanta Bhavan on Sunday morning.

Ghee roast for breakfast. It's basically a thin crispy crepe.

Annelie, Eric, Idel, and Clionr at breakfast.

More photo from breakfast.

With David and Warren from Northern Ireland.
This one is for Laura, our mutual friend in N. Ireland, whom I met in Haiti few years ago.

On our way back to Vellore.

We took three buses to get back home.

Not sure who she is, but billboards like these with her faces were everywhere for several miles on our way back from Chennai.

A colorful building with the same lady's face posted all over. Can someone tell me who she is?

Some random signs we found at the mall:

  

Luggage

I got both of my checked bags today! I had to take a 5-hour round trip to Chennai on a cab, but clearing customs was relatively painless. They put zip-ties on zippers of checked bags and wrap them in these huge plastic sheets here. I suppose it's to prevent people from stealing stuff out of the bags.

Thank God I have clean underwear now.

Traveler's Nightmare

After a series of unfortunate events, I'm finally at my apartment in Vellore!! But my luggages are still in Mumbai...

So the past 40 hours or so of traveling has been an example of what NOT to do when you travel to India (or most places abroad). Basically, I missed my flight from Mumbai to Chennai, bought a new ticket, and waited until morning for the next flight. When I arrived in Chennai I realized that I had left my checked bags in Mumbai! I guess I didn't realize how absent-minded I could be after a 15-hour flight from Newark to Mumbai. So before you ask "What were you thinking?" let me answer you in advance: I wish I knew!

I'll spare you the details but will share with you some of the lessons that I learned:

1. Keep your carryon-bags under 40 lb. Otherwise you maybe forced to pay extra and/or get a 5-min lecture on why having a heavy carry-on is dangerous (I got away with just the latter).

2. Keep your checked bags under 50 lb (or whatever airline's limit is). Usually you can get away with 2 or 3 extra pounds, but some people are very picky, and will ask you to take stuff out until it's exactly 50.0 lb.

3. Be aware that you can become very disoriented, absent-minded, and careless after a long flight. Try to think straight, and don't assume things. Don't forget common sense.

4. When traveling internationally pick up your luggage from baggage claim and clear customs at the port of entry (e.g. Mumbai), even if some Continental Airline staff tells you that they will go straight to your final destination (e.g. Chennai).

5. Don't exchange currency at the first foreign exchange booth you find. Find couple others, and compare their rates. There can be huge differences.

6. In some parts of the world (e.g. India), you can't checkin to your flight until couple hours before the flight, and some flights have designated counters. But just because the flight doesn't have a designated counter number, don't wait until 30 minutes before the flight to see if you can check in. You have to check in at least 45 minutes before the flight, and you can go to any counter as long as the flight is open for checkin.

7. Don't put cash in a clear ziplock bag and put it in the outside pocket of your luggage. And don't be careless to think that it won't get stolen, because it will. Keep cash with you.

Learn from my mistakes and hopefully you won't have to go through what I did!

In any case, praise God I've arrived safely!

Consolidation

Now that I'm about to travel to India, I'm going to start blogging again. I've combined this blog with my old Haiti blog (Zanmi Haiti), and redesigned it to simplify things a little. From now on I'll be posting on this blog for all general topics, rather than making a new blog each time I travel. I never got to finish writing about my Haiti experience, but hopefully I'll be able to keep it up this time.

I'll be flying to India on August 2, and will be spending about 10 months in Vellore for an intensive clinical research training at Christian Medical College through Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars Program. I'm so blessed to have such an amazing opportunity! Praise God!

Stay tuned for updates!

Haitian Courier #6: Pieces of My Memoirs

[This is a copy of the latest issue of my newsletter Haitian Courier, which was sent on July 26. To subscribe to the newsletter, please visit http://groups.google.com/group/haitian-courier]

Bonjou Mezanmi!

My last newsletter was a brief update just to let you know that I'm alive and well. This time I wanted to give you snippets of what I've been doing in Haiti for the past 6 weeks. Throughout this newsletter, you'll see words with web links, which will take you to corresponding entries on my blog.

First of all, I wanted to let you know that my return flight has changed from August 9 to July 31. The reason is that my older brother Sundo is getting married on August 2. So now I only have a few more days before I go home! Seems like my plans always change on the fly (last year I decided to stay an extra month in P-au-P). I can't believe my time here is almost over!

Secondly, I wanted to put a word out that the clinic here needs an X-ray machine to replace a broken one. Please let me know if you know anyone who needs to get rid of an old machine to replace it with a new digital one or for whatever reason. The one we have here has been broken for a while, and it would help so many people if we had a working X-ray machine.

Cap-Haitien Tour, Bargaining, and the Twelfth

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Today we went on a tour of downtown Cap-Hatien. Amy, Wadner, Laura, Evan, and I drove over to Enoch's house and walked around the city from there. Enoch is a Haitian ergonomist who deals with agriculture and works with an organization called Hope Seed. He plays piano at the English Bible Fellowship on Sundays. He was our tour guide for the day.

First we went to the city square (see it on Google Maps), which is between the Notre Dame Cathedral and the city hall. We went inside the cathedral and looked around for a bit. Then we visited a few private catholic schools. I guess it's no surprise that schools and buildings funded by the richest church in the world are the prettiest attractions in this city.

We also visited the Justinian Hospital (Google Maps), which is the biggest hospital in Cap-Haitien and the one we usually send patients to in case of emergencies. At hospitals in Haiti, patients have to pay for every single equipment that is used for them, even gloves. With the food crisis, less and less people can afford healthcare, and more and more people are becoming sicker. Just when you thought the US healthcare system was bad...

After that, we walked through the Iron Market, which is probably the biggest market in Cap-Haitien. If you look up Cap-Haitien on Google Earth (or Google Maps), you will see a big brown square the size of 4 blocks put together. It was so crowded, smelly, and dirty that we were busy just trying to get through, so we couldn't see much of it when we were inside. Watch out for pickpockets!

Then we went to the Boat Market (Google Maps), where you will find a number of tourists. There is one long row of shops that sell paintings, sculptures, jewelries, dresses, and all sorts of souvenir items. I wanted to buy some paintings, so I went scouting down the entire row, then went back to the shops that had ones that I liked.

As usual, I had to bargain like no other. The first seller offered me three paintings for 3000 gourds ($80), but I bargained it down to 1100grds ($30). I probably could have got them for less, but at least it was quick. The second seller offered three paintings for $300US(!), claiming that one of the pieces was done by a famous painter, which is total bull crap, but I didn't want to offend him by calling him a liar (not good for bargaining) After a long negotiation he offered them for 2000gds ($53), but I only had 1600gds ($42), so he just took that. I probably could have paid less if I had been carrying less money... Bargaining takes so much energy out of you.

Then we walked over to La Kay restaurant (where we ate yesterday) and had lunch. I got chicken spaghetti this time, but it was very salty... I still ate it though. I should have gotten cheeseburger again.

In the afternoon, Amy, Evan, Laura, and I went over to Gavin's house to celebrate the Twelfth of July (an Irish tradition). We tossed around a rugby ball for a while, then ate food prepared by Gavin. For dessert we had caramel ice cream, which was probably the best ice cream I've ever had in Haiti.

Diphtheria Discussion, HIV Support Group, and Flight Change

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

A huge contrast from yesterday, today was a pretty slow day.

After the morning devotions, about once a week we have a meeting to discuss interesting cases and to educate the staff, and diphtheria was the obvious topic for today. It was a miracle that the boy made it to the hospital, and thanks to Dr. Stefan, they were able to speed things up. Gavin talked about different diseases that could present with similar symptoms, and others that we should be able to distinguish.

For the first couple hours at the clinic, Laura and I sat in with the HIV support group. First, the HIV counselor checked in with each patient to see how they were doing, and I tried to translate for Laura. It wasn't so difficult to understand when the conversation was mostly one-on-one between the counselor and a patient, but then I could hardly understand anything when everybody began to talk.

What I caught were something about eating well to stay healthy, coming to the clinic right way if you're sick, and using a condom every time even if both you and partner are HIV positive. At one point they were talking about food and beverages, so I wonder if they were talking about back when they used to get something to eat and drink at support group meetings. Since the government has been cutting the budget for the program we haven't been able to give them food during the meetings for a while now. But honestly, I don't really know exactly what they were talking about.

Near the end, one of the ladies stood up and sang a song about having hope in Jesus Christ. I wish I could understand more of what she was singing. In any case it was good to see the patients having a lively discussion about living with HIV. At the end the counselor asked us if we wanted to say anything, so we just thanked them for letting us sit and listen to the discussion.

About two weeks ago, my older brother Sundo emailed me saying that he and Rachel got engaged and that they are getting married on August 2. Exciting, yes. But the problem with that was that my flight back to the States was on August 9! My brother explained to me that it was the only date that could work for both of them and the families, and that he really wanted me to be there. I was bummed because I was really enjoying my time here in Haiti and also didn't want to miss my brother's wedding.

At first I thought that God wanted me to stay in Haiti, but what changed my mind was when my mother said we are to serve God for His glory all our lives, so coming back a few days early would be acceptable. Also, she wanted me to spend a little more time with the family before I went back to med school in the fall. So I agreed to come back early to be able to attend the wedding.

So today I spent some time on the phone (Skype) with American Airline to change my flight. I ended up paying $170, but I think it's worth going to my brother's wedding. My new flight is on July 31.

I had a Creole lesson with Wadner this afternoon. I hope I'm getting better at listening.

Mobile Clinic, Day 2

Sunday, June 29, 2008

We went to Ms. Prudence's church this morning. Her husband is the pastor there, and this is the church where we did our mobile clinic yesterday. During the service Gavin introduced us to the congregation, and each of us said something briefly. I said something in Creole, and I almost choked up, but I hope I said what I meant to say.

Just as we got out of church, there was a crowd of people gathered around something on the ground. It turned out to be a 14-year old girl who had been carried in on a stretcher from a village far away. She had a big laceration behind her left thigh. Some old man hit her with a machete on Tuesday, so she had an open wound for the last 5 days. Since it's been too long since the injury, we couldn't suture it. Instead we cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and brought her down with us. She'll be treated at our clinic everyday.

I'm in awe of how people here can just carry heavy loads on their head and trek over a mountain barefoot. Many of them were so willing to help out as well. On the way back, it started to rain a bit, and then it poured when we got on the truck. It reminded me of the time when I went to Zanmi Lasante, and rode through the pouring rain on a open-back tap-tap for over 2 hours. It felt good to be in the rain.

We got back around mid-afternoon, and I took a nice hot shower. Oh, I never mentioned, but we have hot shower here. It's amazing. After dinner we finished watching Enchanted at Laura's place. I think we all have the song "How does she know that you love her" stuck in our heads.