pain and beauty

This morning I made coffee for the first time this week. This is monumental. I have avoided our coffee pot in our apartment here because the last time I used it there was nearly a disaster.

I had just woken up and shuffled my way to the kitchen. Bleary eyed and hair in a very awkward messy bun, I grabbed the coffee pot to fill it with water. As I pulled, something was underneath the pot on the burner (which was off) and it flew with the pot.

It was...a COCKROACH.

I don't think I hate anything more than cockroaches. I am determined to get over my fear of them while I am here, but so far no luck.

Anyways, the cockroach flew into my sink and disappeared from there, making me not touch the counters in the apartment for about 4 days. When I finally decided the dishes were too many and too dirty and soon they would attract more cockroaches, I made my way to the sink.

There, in a coffee cup, was the cockroach. Drowned. Sucker.

But really, I guess it loved coffee.

So needless to say I scrubbed my coffee pot well this morning, and there is a delicious cup of coffee that I didn't have to wait a long time to enjoy alongside every team member here.

On Tuesday we had a car accident come in to the clinic. Our patients didn't come all at once like we usually see. Instead they came at least 30 minutes apart. We normally don't hear about big accidents until the patients start showing up. The story was: the driver of a tap-tap, for some unknown reason, ran over 12 people. 12 pedestrians hit, 2 died instantly, and the other 10 were being brought to hospitals around the area.

Our first patient was 13. She had two large open wounds on her thighs, and as I jumped into the truck to put her on a board, it was very obvious that she had broken both of her legs. They were pointed in very wrong directions, and her knees were facing out rather than straight on.

Our other two patients had head injuries and both had to be intubated. We have no ventilation systems which required us to bag them all the way to the next hospital. The hospital we took our head injury patients to was in Port-au-Prince and is well known for emergencies and critical care.

When I arrived with our last patient, they looked at me and said "We have no open vents". I continued to bag him while the checked him out in their two bed trauma area, then we wheeled him to the ICU. The four bed ICU, probably the size of your bedroom, stuffed with patients and nurses and doctors and oxygen tanks and supplies.

It isn't easy to do anything here. To go buy milk takes at least 3 hours of your time after you get a vehicle and a driver to take you. To take care of patients with head injuries is nearly impossible. And somedays I would rather just scream and refuse to deal with any of it, because it's too hard.

Thankfully, I am surrounded by people who remind me of why I am here. I have a great cloud of witnesses to point me away from my own works to grace. And then I get to share moments like these with them.

Haiti has REAL cappuccinos!

Haiti has practically perfect sunsets!

There is the ocean.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

Our God comes; he does not keep silence...

Psalm 50: 2-3

In this world there is pain and there is beauty. Thank goodness for the beauty, because it reminds me that this isn't the whole story and this isn't the end of the story.