Today was another amazing day in our public health clinical rotation. We woke up early and headed to the Haitian Health Foundation for our introduction to the KOMBIT project, the program working towards reducing maternal and neonatal mortality (for which our clinical instructor was the director!). It was great to see the staff perform two modules from the Home based life-saving skills program. This is a program designed to for community education purposes to teach village birth attendants, expectant mothers, and families the proper care of mothers and newborns and the danger signs surrounding pregnancy, delivery, and the postpartum period. The teaching session was great to see--the performance was amusing and educational at the same time, and it was impressive to see the participation of the audience of waiting patients.
Once this orientation was down, we toured the Akamil mill. Akamil is a food product made of two parts cereal (rice, corn, millet) and one part beans that is ground together to create a powdery substance that provides appropriate nutrition. We have purchased a good deal of this to give to the girls who attend the health fairs, and it was great to see this being made.
We then headed off to do the second of our health fairs. This time, the site was Fond Rouge Dayere, a village located up a steep, rocky mountain road. After a bumpy ride getting there, we were rewarded with cooler temperatures and beautiful views. We proceeded with our "usual" activities: the girls sang a welcome song for us, we performed our skits on first aid techniques and the Heimlich maneuver, and then performed the health screening. Our skits went very well today, and the girls seemed to learn well. We even saw the girls teaching each other the things that they learned later! The screening process (heights, weights, blood pressures, hemogloblin checks) went smoothly. The girls received their first aid kits and loved them! They were easily able to identify the items in the kits, which made us happy for our evaluation for our final paper!
With our health fair complete, we headed down the mountain to see the Jeremie wharf. Today was the day that the large boat is filled with people and every good imaginable to head to Port-au-Prince. What a sight to see! We then broke off into groups to divide and conquer our tasks needed for tomorrow.
Tonight we celebrated quite an event--Sheila's birthday! We had brownies, special cookies made only in Jeremie, M&Ms, a new straw hat as birthday gift, balloons, and oragami! We'll post pictures soon!
Overall, it was quite a day. The scenery continues to be beautiful, and our experiences continue to impact us! We will look forward to posting more pictures tomorrow and sharing more of our stories. For now though, it's off to bed for most of us before the start of another early day tomorrow.