Thursday January 31, 2008

I have time for a quick note before breakfast. It was another night of tossing and turning in bed. I will be so glad to get back home for a good night’s sleep. I am not sure if it is the mattress or the location of the bed that causes a problem, but whatever the reason I have not slept well these past few days. I suspect it is the mattress as I have been experiencing some back and shoulder pains during the day. I suppose I could take something for that. Guess I’ll run down to the corner store for some shopping! Speaking of that, I think that the white wine has been a hit with everyone, it is almost gone. I’ve been asked by Larry to purchase rum at the airport for the golf outing. I understand that Eric has the money for it. That will make transferring it to our checked baggage in Ft. Lauderdale interesting.

The night before last, many of the team played a card game called “Spoons”. It was a noisy bunch. Last night they played scrabble and it was a lot quieter. I spent some time on the roof watching the stars and airplanes overhead. I must get a star chart for here. We had another wonderful dinner of spaghetti with both red and white sauce. It seem strange to say that while the news coming from Haiti to the general public is about children eating mud cakes, we are eating so well here. If you ever get the time, reading about the poverty here in Haiti is sad but interesting and the poverty seems to be getting worse as he prices for corn and grain escalates due to the demand for it to make biofuel.

In a little while we will begin our last day of clinic. The gates will close at 10:00 or 10:30 AM and I hope we have the Haitians through the pharmacy line by noon. After lunch, I will have a crew of 6 people taking inventory for me. I use two in each room, one to count and the other to record on the sheets that I have prepared for them. After that, I’ll ask them to cover the inventory and otherwise protect the medications from dust and mice. I’ll tabulate the sheets here so that I can check if there are any strange numbers that occur. Because we have sent many more than 12 patients each day a supply of medications to last until the May clinic, and because of the record number of patients we have seen, I have used much more medications than we had planned for. My hat is off to this crew. Everyone has pitched in and worked very hard. There are VERY FEW sharp words even when you have 16 people giving you orders, as we had last night when the reservoir valve caused water to come shooting out of the holding tank. Poor Dick had just stepped into the shower and everyone was calling for him for help, even on his cell phone.

Breakfast is on so I’ll wrap this up. I am not sure how much more time I will have to write to this blog from Haiti. We have been requested to have our bags and carry on luggage ready for overland transport to the Port-Au-Prince airport by diner time this evening. The airplane we will use to fly to PAP is rather small and cannot accommodate much more than our backpacks. I’ll need to get packed and ready and that might just include my laptop. I will be posting pictures of this mission after I get some at our picture party. I did not bring a camera in this mission. I would not have had time to use it. The weather forecast for Chicago and Peoria for the next few days sounds cold and snowy. As I read it, we can expect to see 7 inches or more of fresh snow. BRRRR! I only hope it does not mess up our flights, especially that last leg from Chicago to Peoria. Larry and Kay are flying from PAP to Miami to St Louis to Chicago and meeting up with us for the last flight into Peoria. They used frequent flyers miles on this trip and their itinerary is different that ours. So food on and I’m out of here. By the way, thanks for reading my blogging.