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Teagan, Tap Tap’s, and Tossing & Turning

02-22-2012

My sweet Teagan is sick. It started the end of January. The 30th to be exact. She complained that morning that her head hurt. I felt her head and I didn’t think she had a fever so I sent her to school. She complained after school and the next morning but I sent her to school again. By that afternoon when she got home I knew she was feeling really cruddy so I kept her home from choir. She stayed home the next 3 days and did nothing but lay in my bed complaining about her head.

Saturday evening we went to the Concert With A Conscience and within an hour of being there she was in tears because it hurt so bad. Sunday we went to church and in the lobby afterwards she was crying again. I took her to urgent care on Monday where they tested for flu (negative), strep (negative) and did a CBC. Her blood work showed that she probably had a virus. But she was the same all week. Low grade fever (99-99.5) and a headache, so I took her to her pediatrician on Friday. She did a mono test (negative) and a test to see if she had the same cold/crud that Eli and I had (negative). By Sunday the spunky Teagan was starting to come back and after Monday’s snow day she returned to school on Tuesday.

That was last week and she did pretty good most of the week but then on Saturday, after watching Sadie’s dance competition all day she ended up in tears at dinner because of the pain. In an effort to make it feel better she was holding her drink on her head and spilled it all over herself. Bless her heart. Sunday she was decent, but then Monday night it got so bad that I considered taking her to the emergency room. That’s the night that she had yet another break down because of the pain but for the first time she said that it was a “10”. Meaning, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being just an itty bitty amount of pain and 10 being the absolute worst pain you could ever imagine. Through tears she whimpered to me, “Why does Jesus want my head to hurt?” I talked, we prayed and thankfully she fell asleep.

She made it through yesterday and this morning we went back to the doctor. More blood draws and a migraine pill were on today’s agenda. I’d heard, and the Dr. today confirmed, that if you take a migraine medication and your headache doesn’t go away then it wasn’t a migraine. Well, it didn’t help her. So migraine is out. The blood work they did has all come back normal so far. I’m just waiting for the Dr to call with results on the sed rate but I’m assuming that will be normal.

So, right now we are still trying to figure out what is causing this. We got a prescription of Lortab for her to take but she obviously can’t take it and function at school so that stinks. We’ll try it this evening and see how it works. Then she is scheduled for an MRI Friday afternoon. I’m just praying for some answers and relief for my sweet girl. She’s just pitiful.

In other news, I tossed and turned last night. As in: All. Night. Long. If you know me then you know I’m a sleeper. I can generally fall asleep within just a few minutes, and if you don’t bother me I can stay asleep as long as possible before I realize it’s nearly lunch time and I should probably get up. If you do bother me and wake me up, then I’m generally able to fall right back to sleep. So when I got in bed and tossed and turned trying to fall asleep it was odd. I prayed. I went over lists in my head. I prayed some more. And at some point I would fall asleep only to wake up again within an hour. Often when that happens I get to thinking that someone needs my prayers. So every time I woke up I would pray for the first person who popped into my head. My cousin Taylor who is 41 weeks pregnant. My friend Danyelle. My husband (who happened to be tossing and turning just as much as me!). All the orphans I know and the ones that I don’t.

By about 5:00 Brad was already up and awake because he obviously couldn’t sleep. Shortly after 5:30 I gave up myself when it was obvious there was no way I would be able to sleep anymore. I’m curious though. Do you ever think that you wake up for a reason on nights like those? I do. So when it happens I generally talk to God about whatever is immediately on my heart. Sometimes I’ll wake up and feel mad that I can’t get back to sleep and then suddenly just think “Oh! God wants to chat!” So I’m curious about today. I wonder if someday I’ll look back on 2/22/12 and know why last night was so restless for both Brad and me.

And now, ladies and gentlemen….for your Haiti lesson today I give you…the tap tap.

It’s a car.

No, wait. It’s a truck.

There are no seat belts, air conditioning or padded seats. After a week of riding one down insane Haitian roads it is quite possible to come away with a “tap tap tattoo”. That’s what I did. A metal bar at the same spot on my back bouncing around all week long left a pretty rad bruise. Wish I’d gotten a pic of that!

And now for a lesson in what you can do on, in and around the tap tap.

You can stand or even ride on top of a tap tap.

You can hang off the back of the tap tap.

Giggle in the tap tap.

Take a nap on a tap tap (watch out for the dust!). Reach out and touch the car next to you from the tap tap.

Cram a bunch of people in the tap tap.

Use the tap tap for shade.

Take pictures of other tap taps.

Wait until you are driving away and throw goodies from the tap tap to those in need. (Sadly, all we had left at the time to throw to this sweet girl was a pencil.)

So see, lots of fun on the tap tap. On the bumpy road. In the crazy traffic.

And when you are beside yourself, because you are going home and don’t know when you’ll be able to come back again, you can have a party on the tap tap and find joy.

(We had left the orphanage at Thomazeau and traveled to another orphanage for a bit. This was on our way back to our house for our last night in Haiti. Towards the end of the video, when you hear us scream…we are passing our friends in Thomazeau one last time.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grcA9uETX6I&list=UUqc1tFbNLIGtbo00gSEK-7A&index=1&feature=plcp[/youtube]

Ten On Tuesday

02-21-2012

Before I went to Haiti I didn’t know a whole lot about the country. Wasn’t even really sure where it was. (It’s on the island of Hispaniola. I know that now.) I basically just knew that it was a third world country and that it had recently experienced a massive earthquake. I’m guessing that there aren’t a whole lot of people who DO know statistics about the country that I’ll be traveling back to. So today’s TOT is 10 facts about Haiti. Ready, set, go!

1. Haiti, as I said, is on the island of Hispaniola. It covers approximately 1/3 of the island while the Dominican Republic takes the other 2/3. Haiti is approximately the size of Maine. Although Haiti’s population is just shy of 10 million and Maine is about 1.3 million. Yep. It’s kinda crowded there.

2. That “massive earthquake” I mentioned? When it was happening everyone was tuned into what was going on. Since then however there are a lot of final statistics that you may not know. Like, 316,000 people lost their lives. Over 300,000 people were wounded. 1.9 million families lost their homes. Total number of people affected by the earthquake: 3 million. Wow. (Source)

3. According to the World Food Programme, half the country is “food insecure”. That means that they didn’t have basic food needs because they lacked money or other resources for food. Half the country. That’s a whole lot of people. (Want to read more? Check this out.)

4. WFP also states that half of Haiti’s population lives on less than $1 a day. Additionally three quarters of the population has less than $2 a day. Let’s put that into numbers that I can understand… I spent $30 last Wednesday on pizza for the youth group’s apologetics class. I kinda thought that was a pretty good deal to feed that many people. Especially since my family of 6 can do way more damage than that on a typical night out to eat. So let’s see, $30 for ONE meal for youth group is the same amount of money that 3/4 of the people in Haiti have for TWO WEEKS. Um. Wow.

5. Trusty old Wikipedia tells me that “In rural areas those without access to an improved water source got their water primarily from unprotected wells (5%), unprotected springs (37%) and rivers (8%). In urban areas those without access to an improved source got their water from “bottled water” (20%), from carts with drums (4%) and unprotected wells (3%). Those without access to improved sanitation either used shared latrines or defecated in the open. According to the Demographic and Health Survey 2006, 10% of those living in urban areas and 50% of those living in rural areas defecated in the open.”

6. Education in Haiti isn’t much better than the food, finance and water situations. According to Haiti Partners 50% of primary school age children are not enrolled in school. One-third of girls over six never go to school and a whopping 98% of Haitian youths never graduate from high school.

7. You know what else Haiti Partners has to share? Over 7% of children die at birth. If they make it into the world, 80 out of 1,000 Haitian children never see their first birthday. For every 100,000 births, 523 women died in Haiti. (Compared to eight maternal deaths for every 100,000 births in Europe.)

8. Haiti has the highest incidence of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) outside of Africa. Sex tourism and lack of health education led to the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s. Estimates vary, but the United Nations projects the national prevalence rate to be 1.5 percent of the population. Other estimates place the rate as high as 5 percent in the urban population and 3 percent in rural regions. Annually, 5,000 Haitian babies are born infected with the AIDS virus. The disease causes a fifth of all infant deaths and has orphaned 200,000 children. Source

9. This article is old. So stats may be different now but at the time of the article (1/2010) it was estimated that 97% of all land in Haiti was deforested. This site has some great information on deforestation.

10. Finally, UNICEF estimated there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti before the earthquake. It is believed that post earthquake that number has doubled. Sadly, according to USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, many of the children have been abandoned or simply left on the street by their parents because of extreme poverty or disease.

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer. It’s just the cold hard facts.

And it’s ugly.

Remembering

02-20-2012

Today is President’s Day so the kids are home from school. Which I normally love, and I did for the first few hours this morning. But after one too many outcries of “we have no food!” and “I’m bored!” and a certain someone drinking the last of the Diet Pepsi even though he doesn’t even LIKE Diet Pepsi…I’m having one of those days. So between periods of dealing with the kids and doing my work, I’ve been reading through my old blog posts that I put up during my trip to Haiti last April.

A quick read through the handful of posts I was able to put up about my trip has me totally remembering. I planned on sharing all about my trip when I got home but it never happened. At first, it just hurt too much. I couldn’t look through the pictures and remember details of our time there without crying. Then somehow, although I swore it wouldn’t happen, real life crept back in. Our every day routine slipped right back into place for me and then it hurt to remember for completely different reasons. Reasons like how I was here in Oklahoma cleaning up my house or taking a child to one of their many activities when I knew that back in Haiti my sweet friends still didn’t have homes and being involved in activities like dance class and choir and sports were things they didn’t even know existed. So now here it is, nearly a year later and I still haven’t shared.

I’m ready now. With our next trip just 2 weeks away there are things I want to share. I hope you’ll come along with me as I remember last years trip while preparing for the next.

That first day, as we arrived in Haiti, it was just sort of overwhelming. I remember there was a whole lotta waiting. Waiting in the customs line at the airport. Waiting to find our supplies. Waiting for our ride to get there. Waiting to figure out how to load everything once our ride was there. Waiting in traffic. And then we finally made it to our “home”, which I described as the Taj Mahal in a message home to Brad. Our accommodations really were terrific. Except for the rooster that crowed every morning at 4am. Wish I was kidding. I coulda done without him.

Seriously though, the place was awesome. Not at all what I expected. The whole house was surrounded by a tall wall and I never felt like I wasn’t safe while I was there. Especially after I found out that there was a ginormous killer dog that was let out at night time. Thank goodness I never decided to take an evening stroll!

This was the girls bedroom. It was huge. Shelby and I somehow scored the bed and Jill, Cindy and Jen had air mattresses that were scattered around the room. It was very comfortable. Except for the rooster I mentioned. And the fact that it was super duper hot and muggy. I was always so exhausted by bedtime though that I had little trouble sleeping.

Our room again, shot with my fish eye lens.

This was our bathroom. I couldn’t believe how huge this was! The cabinets stored lots and lots of supplies that had been sent and/or donated.

Our room had a little balcony that looked out to the surrounding neighborhood. We could also look down directly to the clothes on the line. I spent a lot of time searching and wondering where the one towel I had taken could be. I never did find that thing. Thank goodness for friends willing to share their towels!

Shown here with our laundry line is the front/side of the house and the back steps where we would gather in the morning when we were ready to leave.

This is a little sitting area at the top of the stairs that was right outside our room. I would go out on that balcony to talk with Brad when he called.

This is the front balcony. Several of the guys in our group would sleep out here to get a breeze because it was so hot in their room. That’s Wayne hanging out just taking it all in. He’s pretty cool, and will be traveling with us again next month.

From the balcony in the previous picture, this is the courtyard. You can see how tall the wall surrounding our home is. There was a little gazebo and several of the Haitian women that were cooking and cleaning for us stayed in the tents under the gazebo and in the courtyard.

The picture on the left is of a couple of the guys hanging out downstairs waiting to leave.  That’s my buddy Alan and Pypo and Doudy are with him.  One thing about our Haitian friends, they all go by nicknames.  I took this picture while Pypo (pronounced Pee-po) was trying to convince me that his name was pronounced Pie-po.  Alan already knew him and was telling me he was fibbing but he was still saying “I’m PIE-po” so I told him I would call him Mike.  And I did.  On the right is an image shot from the upstairs down through a big opening.  That’s Kendall and Garry G. standing by the front door.  And yes, it’s wide open.  When you don’t have AC you can do that.

The front porch, taken just before we were leaving to go celebrate the election of the new president. More on that to come.

Another view of the front courtyard. You can see the tap-tap (our vehicle) there on the left.

Another downstairs living area. The girls will LOVE that I’ve shared this one. We spent a lot of time in this area organizing supplies for the following day.

This is the driveway area leading under to the that back entrance I showed earlier. It’s actually the side entrance though. Anyway, this is where we’d hang waiting to leave in the morning.

And…our supplies would hang here too which made for nice spots to sit and hang in the evening. This is Shelby with the goat that I’m pretty sure became a meal for our medical trip that went in August. Shelby fed him licorice this night. He liked it.

And finally, this is the morning we left to go home. Sad times. We didn’t have the tap tap to ride to the airport but I didn’t know it. When this truck pulled in I joked about us all fitting in it. Little did I know we really would. All of us, plus some Haitian’s, plus our luggage. Good times.

And finally, here is a little video of our house. Sorry I’m sort of annoying. Brad had asked me to send him a video of the house so I did this one morning before we left for the orphanage. Then I tried and tried and tried to send it to him and I never could. But, you can get a little bit more of an idea of the downstairs of the house here. Especially the back as I didn’t have any pictures from that area. Also, the white guy in the tap tap at the end was a doctor from another country who joined the house the last two days we were there. He was in my seat. It was kind of a big deal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rhOMFq11pE&list=UUqc1tFbNLIGtbo00gSEK-7A&index=1&feature=plcp[/youtube]

When we go back next month we’ll be staying closer to Thomazeau so our daily commute won’t be quite as long. That’ll be nice!