Petit Trou de Nippes

It's about 9:30 Haiti time on Thursday night and I'm in my tent. I decided to get to bed early tonight as we wake up around 5:30 with the sounds of roosters and children each morning. We have not had internet in the evenings (the generator here is turned off in the evening) and have been too busy to even check during the day (did check once yesterday but it was not working), hence no blog additions for a few days. I thought I'd write a simple text blog so that everyone knows we're OK, and then try to run up to the internet cable during lunch tomorrow and post it.

We are in Petit Trou; we got here on schedule (in Haiti, less than 2 hours late officially counts as "on schedule"), and have been doing well. Yesterday I taught some "women volunteers" and schoolteachers about expected reactions to trauma in adults. It was well received. "Twóma" is a new word in Haiti- my understanding is that the word has emerged since January 12- and yet even the women from the very rural areas of de Nippes had at least heard the new term and had some associations even if they did not have a fully formed definition. I think it's a really unique opportunity and important responsibility to help them form that definition. I used the analogy of poison- that a disaster is like a poison for the mind and that there are predictable and normal reactions to disaster, but like a poison must be expelled from the body, the trauma must be expelled from the mind through communication and expression or the predictable reactions can become long-term problems. I went over some basic neuroscience which the teachers especially seemed very eager to learn about. Afterwords, the teachers called me "Doktor Twóma" which was a term of respect but I couldn't help but think it was an awesome name for a James Bond movie villain. I also taught them some mindfulness meditation techniques (many studies have shown neuroendocrine and stress/fear circuitry changes in folks with PTSD after learning these simple techniques)- or rather I taught them to Muríelle, a psychologist from Port-au-Prince who works with Mercy Corps there- who then did a masterful job of communicating these strange and foreign actions and concepts in Creole and in a culturally appropriate way. Muríelle has a "License" degree in Haiti (4 year degree) and has been counseling in Port-au-Prince. The earthquake destroyed her office. Since then, she has been working pro-bono and has been extremely busy.

By the way, she's hoping to get a scholarship to study child psychology and English in the United States so she can be better trained to continue working with traumatized Haitian children. She bought a piece of land in the small village where she was born, in the hopes that she can raise money to build an orphanage there. Somebody give this girl a scholarship. Write to me for her contact information VANELZAK -at- Colorado -dot- EDU

After her office was destroyed, Muríelle took a job with Mercy Corps and came along with us from Port-au-Prince to help us, learn from us, and to see our group give the first Mercy Corps-based trauma training outside of Port-au-Prince. Maxéne is a young man from Mercy Corps Port-au-Prince who met us in Petit Trou for the same reasons. He is trained as a sociologist (and also studied English for 2 years at a prestigious Haitian language academy), but hopes to earn a Master's in counseling in the United States. He is also looking for a scholarship and is quite deserving. The fact that Mercy Corps is expanding its trauma work beyond Port-au-Prince is a very good thing. Driving through the massive slum of Cite Solei ('Sun City'- the largest slum in the world other than the favelas of Rio de Janeiro) on the way to Petit Trou from Port-au-Prince it was quite apparent that the damage- and the trauma- from the Haiti earthquake was not isolated to Port-au-Prince. Cite Solei was so jam packed with refugee camps that even the median of the one road in and out of the city was filled with tents, right up to the traffic's edge. Sanitation there seemed to be absolutely non-existent. We also drove right over the epicenter and needless to say, there were a lot of piles of rubble and UN tents and one can assume that traumatized human beings are in those tents.

What we're doing here is definitely based on Mercy Corps' work, but we've expanded it quite a bit. One expansion was to include specific "What you can do about it" ideas and strategies, which is what the people of Petit Trou specifically asked the Colorado Haiti project to help with. Not surprisingly, during our first day here they also asked us for "what to do during an earthquake" advice (on January 12 many, many terrified Haitians ran IN to their homes for safely) so it was lucky that I expected that question and did some research on the topic, which we'll go over Sunday after everyone gets out of church.

Today, Lauri went into the Mercy Corps program concepts and added her own "What you can do about it" section from her own area of expertise with some art therapy projects, basically some specific art therapy based program/curriculum ideas for the schoolteachers to give to their students. The women volunteers especially did the art therapy exercises earnestly and with an openness which said to me they took our words seriously and also knew intuitively that their grief needed to be expressed. Tomorrow Sara will talk about predictable reactions to trauma in children at different developmental stages and will also give the teachers some curriculum materials. Beverly and Pat have been busy setting up a women's clinic in 2 different areas of the village: every woman in the village has a painful vaginitis so there will be a microscope to figure out what is happening and medicine to make it better. I would assume that we'll also have to start thinking about how to treat the well water.

-Mike.