“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” Psalm 37:5,6
Hi! This has been a busy week with the medical program. On Monday we brought Benson and Jameson to the drop off point on Delmas 91 to join 3 other children who would be traveling for plastic surgery to the Hinche area. The transport didn’t come through so we had a change of plans and I transported the 5 children and parents in the pickup truck. It was a good trip and a chance to get out of Port-au-Prince. There is a lot of road construction work on Goat Mountain (Morne Cabrit) and the finished part looks good. It will be some time before the road-building project will be finished though. Equipment has to eat at the sides of the mountain in order to widen the road. One of the children was carsick and ended up vomiting up her breakfast but it was a good thing her mother was there because then she could clean up the mess! It was while she was cleaning up the mess that the mother told me that her daughter gets carsick quite often. In Haiti the people have their own home remedies for different illnesses. Lukner, one of the workers here was with us and he said that the cure for carsickness is very simple. Before starting out on a drive the person who gets carsick needs to kiss the tire 3 times. After this is done they can enter the vehicle and don’t have to worry about getting carsick during the trip. Since she already got sick, I didn’t make her kiss the tire before getting back into the truck after the mess was cleaned up. We arrived in Mirebalais and dropped the children off at the World Food Program building and the hospital picked them up later to travel the rest of the way. Jameson was operated on Thursday. There is no word yet on when Benson will be operated on for his burn contractures on his leg and foot. In total 60-80 plastic surgeries will be done. Pray for the efforts of the plastic surgery team and healing mercies for the children.
On Tuesday morning I was driving a couple of people to different medical appointments when I got a call to pick someone up at the small airport. I knew the baby was a spina bifida baby but I didn’t know at the time how sick he was. I was told over the phone that the baby had a device around the neck. I thought this device might have been a neck brace. I told them that I would drop off the people at their appointment and then stop by the airport. When I got to the airport I saw what this “device” was. Jubert, a 6-week baby boy was hooked up to an oxygen concentrator. He comes from the mission Children of The Promise located in the Cap Haitian area. Mary, an American nurse was looking after him. We spent the next couple of days doing the passport and visa paperwork. Wednesday evening between 8 and 10pm the breathing turned bad and the baby almost died. Thursday morning the breathing was better but he had a couple bouts of breathing problems in the truck while we were driving to the visa appointment. The visa appointment was arranged for Thursday at 7:00am and we had the visa in hand by 8:00am. We rushed to the airport and Mary was able to change to an earlier flight. The baby was in very poor shape. I don’t know yet how Jubert is doing. If he is alive he is in Austin, Texas and in the care of a pediatric neurosurgeon at the hospital there. A transport team was going to be on hand to rush him from the airport to the hospital. If he died we know that he is with the Lord. Pray for those who are helping him and also his mother. His mother is young and thankful for all that is being done to help her son. She is also a Christian and has been doing her part by praying for him.
Naphtalie Bazile, a hydrocephalus baby also had the opportunity to travel to the United States on Wednesday morning. The same pediatric neurosurgeon who operated on Phara Simeon will be doing her surgery. Pray for those who will be responsible for her care and for healing mercies. An American airlines stewardess was the escort. There is a program called Airline Ambassadors and airline personnel donate their time to escort children for medical treatment at no cost. We are thankful for this program. This program helps many children get to where they need to go for medical care.
Dieunette Lormintus is a 5-month-old baby with a bulge (encephalocele) at the back of her head. We have started her passport paperwork this week. Hopefully she will be traveling to the United States before the end of March. Pray for the paperwork process. The mother is from Gonaives and is staying at the Missionaries of Charity mission on Delmas 31.
Pastor Pierre called this week to tell me that Jaquelere Derilus, a hydrocephalus baby on our medical search list had died this week. From what he described the baby died after having a seizure. They live in the mountains and are about a 5-hour walk to the closest hospital.
The ravine that is on Delmas 31 is becoming a dumping ground for bodies of children. On Monday morning driving down Delmas 31 I saw people looking into the ravine and knew that there was probably another body in the ravine. When I drove back up Delmas 31 I saw some Haitian people I knew at the side of the road. They were looking inside a cardboard box. Inside was the body of a 1-year-old child. The people in the community are upset with this practise of dumping bodies. A month ago when this happened the body stayed in the ravine the entire day with no attention by the authorities. Not wanting the same thing to happen, the people removed the body from the ravine and set it in the cardboard box by the road. In this way the authorities could not ignore the body. Pray that people stop dumping bodies into the ravine.
The UN has announced that it will fund 6 projects with the objective of providing temporary jobs to more than 7000 people living in the Cite Soleil and Martissant slum areas. At least 522,000 US$ will be spent on these projects which will focus on street paving, sanitation and the rebuilding and improvement of public spaces.
Rising food prices causes problems for the poor in Haiti. Another problem is in the form of rotting food aid stuck in Haitian ports because of red tape blocking shipments from being released. In news reports, a container full of 40,000 pounds of beans was thrown away because of these red tape delays. Haiti imports 75% of its food supply. The red tape delays are causing problems for the Haitian economy. In a 2002 report, the UN Food and Agricultural department says that almost 50% of the Haitian population was undernourished. The World Bank recently ranked the Haitian port system as the 2nd worst in the region, ahead of only Guyana. Pray that the port problems get solved and that food aid can get to the hungry.
That is all the news for today. Have a good weekend!
Karen Bultje
Coram Deo
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