4 Mar 2004 Update

Dear Friends,

 

Today was the day that I started doing the clinics again so I guess it’s time to catch you up on our comings and goings. 

 

The very strange part of the week here in Haiti started on Sunday morning with the announcement that Jean Bertrand Aristide had chosen to leave the country and relinquish his presidential power.  That wouldn’t have been so strange if we hadn’t been hearing all week that the president would stay unless he was killed.  Then later that night and through Monday the question was raised as to if President Aristide had resigned and left of his own free will or if he had been railroaded into it by another country’s representatives.  The question of who is responsible for the resignation of the president still hangs in the air without yours truly knowing what actually did happen.  I have my ideas but I’ll let you to have your own ideas without my coaching.

 

Monday we stayed around the house and did lots of clean up and communication things, including another interview with a reporter from the Indianapolis Star.  This day was the first time that I felt that we may have been in any type of danger.  Although there were many who were happy to see Aristide go, I had the thought that his supporters might blame the Americans for his departure.  I did contemplate a way over the mountain to get to the Dominican Republic but later decided that we were probably safe, since they would be dealing too much with their political opposition to worry about us.

 

On Tuesday we went down to a meeting for the Staff of Quisqueya Christian School.  That’s the school that Jessica is a student and where Jodie teaches kindergarten.  It was so nice to be able to go down and drive without the massive traffic jams or having to worry about running into gangs of young crooks on the streets or the burning barricades on the roads.  But there was, and still is a sense that this question of who was responsible for Aristide’s resignation was hanging in the air and all didn’t feel very “safe”. 

 

In the school meeting it was decided that school would begin again on this coming Monday.  They have a number of short term volunteers to make it work since at least 15 of the staff had left the country and would be unable to return until they decided it was safe enough.  Jessica’s class should have about a little more then half the students and Jodie will probably have almost all her students.  In addition to just kindergarten Jodie will be responsible for the high school music class.  The regular teacher is not going to be able to come back to Haiti for at least three weeks since her father is having a liver transplant.  This has Jodie scrambling for ideas of what to do. 

 

Today, Wednesday, was my day to reopen the clinic.  I picked up Eden, my nurse, and we had a fairly ordinary drive to Prospere.  There were many areas where garbage was stacked on the side of the street since no trash trucks have been able to get around for quite some time.  Although the roads were fairly clear there were many areas that still had pieces of car carcasses from the roadblocks and the occasional bolder sized rocks in the road. One of those carcasses was sitting on Delmas, one of the main thoroughfares of Port-au-Prince.  It had obviously been set on fire (which would have been tough since it was a diesel) and then left in the road as though people were afraid to move it. 

 

The clinic was fairly small because people didn’t know exactly when I would be returning.  We only saw seven patients.   This should set us up for tomorrow though.  They know we’re coming so I would expect the numbers to go above forty. 

 

One really neat thing happened before we started seeing patients.  A young lady that I didn’t recognize came in and asked if she could talk to me.  I told her to sit down and asked what she wanted.  She said “You saw me a few weeks ago and I wanted to say think you for what you did for me.”  That wouldn’t have surprised me except that Haitians just don’t do those kinds of things.  It’s not that they aren’t thankful but they don’t tend to verbalize it.  Then I looked at Mary Claude and it hit me who she was.  I had seen her about a month ago and she was almost dead.  I wasn’t sure of what was going on with her but it seemed that there were a number of problems so I used the “shotgun” form of treatment.  That is “use whatever you have to treat whatever they might have.”  I was so surprised to even see her alive again.  Isn’t it amazing how God can use someone with my little knowledge to give Him glory?  Please pray that Mary Claude will continue to increase in health and strength.

 

We are still finding some problems getting fuel for the generator and the cars.  The last few weeks of turmoil in the streets made it next to impossible for the fuel trucks to get out to make deliveries so now most of the stations are empty and many of the cars are approaching that level also.  The propane that we use for our stove and heating our water are also in short supply.  We are hoping that since the streets are a little less “crazy” next week may see the resolution of these problems. 

 

We hope you have a great week

 

Because of Christ,

 

John, Jodie, and Jessica Ackerman