Saturday, February 11, 2012

Awaken Haiti

Today I had the chance to meet with the organizers of a group here called Awaken Haiti. They have an orphanage here, but have more recently gotten set up with a minister here who works in a really large tent city. The tent city is in an area called Canaan, an estimated 5,000 people live there. Awaken Haiti works within a small "community" serving about 130 families. They have built a school that functions as a church on the weekend. The school serves about 120 children and offers a feeding program so these children are fed everyday. This is not your typical post-earthquake tent city. It was founded prior and is mostly people who are getting out of the city, it ca be found on the mountain side on the way to the beach. Most people have been given or purchased land there and are trying to build a house. If you look back at the picture from the beach,I took one of the area that I believe is Canaan.
So how did I get involved. Long story short. They had a nurse working with them who was injured and had to go back to the States. They have teams come in once a month and they try to "run medical clinics" for the people of their "community in Canaan". So I was asked to help. Today I went to their house and was in awe of the pharmacy and mini-ER they have. It was field hospital heaven. So next week while my sister is here we will go out with a team who will be building houses. We will run the medical clinic. Don't fear too much for these peoples lives, the minister pre-screens the people and only those with very obvious, treatable disease processes will be brought to me. Apparently he hands out tickets in advance and then those are the people we see that day. So not a lot of "urgent care" per say, but I am super excited and continue to be amazed at the wonderful service opportunities here.

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