Good News x 3

1-Lixier’s surgery was a success. He and his mother will be spending the next 30 days in the states so that Lixier can get the proper follow-up treatment he needs. I saw Lixier’s father the other day in town. He couldn’t stop thanking me for everything we’re doing for his baby boy. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for him to remain in Haiti while his wife and child are away. He misses them very much.

2. The bed bug project is underway! The first 10 houses of the 20 houses in the children’s village have been sprayed with insecticide, caulked, sealed, locked and painted. They’re beginning to actually look like homes! I’m still trying to raise some funds for the malaria program to get window screens put in all of the houses.

3.Hannah Winkler, a librarian at University of North Carolina in Greensboro is down for 6 weeks helping to establish a library for the children. She’s been working every day, cataloguing hundreds of books, organizing, processing and shelving them according to language, binding old books painting bookshelves and lots more. She’s fun and excited about being here. 25 years old, passionate and motivated, she’s already experiencing the difficulties involved in trying to get anything done down here.

Mark Brodie, a recent graduate of Dartmouth College. He’s also down here for 6 weeks helping me out in the public health field. He’s been a huge help in developing the bed bug project plan and is a big sports guy. He loves to play soccer with the kids and attracts quite the crowd when he goes for his morning jogs around the soccer field. The kids don’t seem to understand why someone would run just to run.
Mark’s parents came down last Sunday and will be leaving tomorrow morning. They are both physicians and very nice people. Dora is a gastroenterologist and Bruce is a cardiologist. Having never been to Haiti before, they wasted no time getting settled in. Their second day here, they were getting dirty with the rest of us working to fix up the children’s houses in the village. They worked all day long every day and never once complained. They fly out tomorrow morning to head back to the states. I wish they could stay longer. They’ll be missed.