I slept in til around 7ish and woke up to one of my fav meals with pancakes and fresh fruit. I caught up with one of the Texans before they headed out to the north about 7 hours away. Haiti is such a big place in ways and there are so many placed to serve. I then called United airlines and explained that I was supposed to leave that afternoon, but wanted to change til the next day. I was so thankful and pleasantly surprised when they changed my ticket for no fee. What a Blessing that was and I was looking forward to a stress free last day in Haiti. My friend Renulus came to meet me and we headed to the store for some drinks and then set out on a moto (motorcycle) to check out the Mother Theresa Home for Sick and Dying children at Delmas 31. I guess there is another large orphanage in same neighborhood so we were brought there first unknowingly and ended up touring the place as there was not a name on it. The woman who worked there showed us around and it was a nice well kept, but crowded orphanage and I found it that it was actually an adoption center. It was so sad to see so many children needing homes, one as young as 14 days old whose mom died when he was 3 days old. I got the women’s card for the place as I planned to keep in touch with them. I believe divine providence led me to the place. We eventually arrived at the Mother Theresa home and the Sisters there taught us about the place and how they try and refer to children with other co-morbid conditions to hospitals when there is availabilty. They took in very malnourished children off of the streets regularly and even had a community feeding program. We toured the place and saw the heartbreaking cases of the worst hunger and malnourishment and all the physical components that manifest like edema, altered skin texture, big bellies, changes in skin texture and hair color and of course an emaciated thin appearance. I learned to recognize subtle signs of malnourishment during this trip as I never had before from just textbooks as I saw more of it this time around than I ever had. Some children were so bad they had to be started on just fluids and carefully titrated up to foods or they could die. They had different levels with the sickest children at the bottom who could not tolerate food and we did not get to see them. It was heart wrenching to walk through this place and see so many ill and hungry babies. It was encouraging to see their feeding program and volunteers feeding the babies, some who were on IV fluids, even with IVs in their necks. I had wanted to use some of the funds from the T shirt campaign to do a food delivery and was considering this place and the orphanage/ adoption center as recipients. The staff gave me contacts for places to order bulk food from in Haiti. They invited me to a dispensary called St. Josephs the next day where patients would be seen for healthcare services and medications. This is somewhere I’d like to volunteer at on.

After our visits we decided to go out to dinner and went to this nice authentic Haitian restaurant which was crowded and popular. I liked the dim red and green lights and enjoyed the food, my usual beans 7 rice with plantains for dinner and fruity smoothies with papaya we ordered. The Haitian music was a plus and there was even an attached dance room. We headed back to the guesthouse on a moto and spent the evening hanging out there and on the rooftop.