This week was my first trip out to a field site - an island just off the coast of Haiti called La Gonave where we have a mix of emergency, water and education projects. Landed there Wednesday morning after a pretty hair-raising flyboat ride across the water where I spent the whole 45 mins preying to whatever is out there that my suitcase (with my personal laptop, camera, ebook reader and portable DVD player - I travel tech heavy) wouldn't topple over into the water wtih our boat hoping at full speed from breaking wave to breaking wave. And that was apparently a calm crossing...
La Gonave itself is miles away from the craziness that is Port au Prince, or even Petionville. It's calm and serene and has this slow pace of life that's pretty attractive at first but would probably start getting rather old after a while. Still it was great to be able to walk around even in the evenings - not that there was much time for that. From talking to the staff there, La Gonave was a bit of a haven during the Duvalier years - so isolated that the turmoil of those times didn't touch the inhabitants of the island.
I was pretty impressed by the office and the administration of it - the two administrators there do a fantastic amount with pretty limited resources, and work extremely hard. It was also great to see the Project Managers and how they operate, and there's nothing to actually being on a field site to realising how our whole operation really works in practice. I had a good two days with the admin staff Wednesday and Thursday talking about our procedures and thinking up ways of correcting and improving them. So pretty succesful trip from that point of view.
The residence, however, is another matter: dirty, dark depressing lighting, filled with insects and flies, few personal touches, and with only two shared bathrooms for about 10 rooms - something that become a bit of a nightmare later on. What really pissed me off about the residence is that a lot of the problems were completely solveable - it doesn't take much to spray the space, give it a good clean, replace the light bulbs, and put some more personal touches. The more you work in the field, the more you realise that baring emergencies, there's no need/excuse to live in filth. Even the straw huts that I've seen field staff work in in Darfur were cleaner than the kitchen in that residence. Think the main problem with La Gonave is that most of our field staff living there are men who really didn't give a shit about where they were living. I mean, I'm not the most domestic of people (and for those who know me, that's a laughable understatement) but I would have kicked up a huge fuss before now...
To get back to the plot: Thursday evening, our communal dinner was big chunky poisonous fish. These fish are apparently notorious for causing food poisoning due to the toxins that they ingest in the waters around La Gonave and store up in their bodies as revenge against those who later eat them - not a bad ploy, have to say. Anyway, after eating I went back to my room and worked on our USAID project until about 2am in the morning. When I finished, I found myself feeling lightheaded, nauseous and altogehter pretty ill. I thought this might have something to do with the heat and the work but that was soon dispelled by a trip to the bathroom. To put it as delicated as possible, that trip, along with the lack of water available for flushing was the first clue that not only was it food poisoning, but I was far from the only person affected. After procuring a tub in the kitchen to vomit in should I need it (didn't in the end but was a near thing), I made my way back to my room and literally fell into bed into a pile of vertigo and self-pity.
I must have had some sleep as when I woke up, I found that the whole house had been affected and that I was actually one of the lucky ones. Three of our staff had to be hospitalised and the rest were not exactly feeling 100%. Spent most of the morning in the local hospital which was one of the better hospitals I'd seen in a developing country. I imagine being obviously private had something to do with it but the nurses there were competent and our staff were treated as soon as they arrived, and were actually given private rooms more or less immediately. All staff were hooked up to IV fluids more or less immediately and two of them seemed to feel better within a few hours. However, Roger, a lovely ex-teacher in charge of our eduation project, was so still throughout the whole morning that I was really getting worried about him. The doctor didn't help matters by saying that people with his low blood pressure had fallen into comas and died from this sort of food poisoning before, and that it was really unpredictable. However, good news is that Roger did wake up in time for our medevac and was well enough to laugh at my outrageous atttempts to flirt with him. More on my womanly wiles later...
And this is a pic of the plane that our Country Director sent down to us to pick us up and bundle us back to the capital. Have to say that it made us feel pretty important to be airlifted out in such style (our own plane, bless...).
I must have been running pretty much on adrenaline that morning as I didn't think I felt that bad apart from slight muscle weakness, a migraine from dehydration and some mild vertigo. I was therefore pretty resistant to being evacuated out as I still thought I was well enough to make my afternoon meeting with a partner - I think it was telling that Carine pointedly told me that the medevac included me as well. Retrospectively, she made the right decision as I rather doubt I would have been able to travel two hours into the field and back again, have a professional meeting with a partner, spend another night in La Gonave, and then travel by boat and car back to PaP without becoming a complete wreck. When I got back to Port au Prince, I basically collapsed and spent a very uncomfortable next 12 hours feeling as though all of my muscles in my body were aching all at once. And that was in the comfort of my own bed.
Anyway, it's now Sunday afternoon and feeling almost 100%. Still a bit weak but managed to keep down (or up) dinner last night and lunch today so think tomorrow will be fine.
In the interest of full disclosure, the doctor at the hospital was a very cute 38 year old Cuban who was 8 mths into a year's contract there. Very very flirty with me, despite admitting to having a girlfriend out there with him. I obviously had to reciprocate - I mean, it was for the good of the team afterall. I got him to pay more personal attention to the staff that were in hospital as well as getting him back to the residence to check up on our staff who had milder symptoms. The things I'm prepared to do for Concern. I should get a raise.So there you go: my first vist to the field and my first medevac. Going off to Cuba next month so need to keep an eye out for those Cuban doctors...
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