Dr. Tracee Laing and Paul Hammond returned to Haiti on Wednesday,
August 25th for two weeks. This trip will included a visit Leogone, very
near the epicenter of the January 12th earthquake, and to Port au Paix
on the north coast where the Hope for the Children of Haiti school is
located. Much was accomplished during this trip.
The following are posts sent directly from their trip.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Our final day in Haiti this trip, and we were happy to be in Dumay for the morning. Tracee saw patients again, including a six year old girl named Tracee (coincidence, I think not!), pictured at right, and Paul worked with the administrative staff. Relatively mundane work, but nevertheless it's the work that needs to be done.
As we have mentioned before, we have been extremely pleased with how well the clinic has been functioning in our absence. Credit begins with the leadership of Dr. Jacques and Wilberne, our administrator, but we feel all the staff has been performing exceptionally well. One area that has historically been a challenge has been the pharmacy. Keeping medications in stock has always been a challenge and we have had to bring much of the medications we need from the U.S. Fortunately, since the earthquake we have been able to access the majority of medications in Haiti at a lower cost than from the U.S. Dr. Jacques has been working closely with us to set up a system that seems to be working extremely well and the pharmacy remains effectively stocked. Credit also goes to the pharmacy technicians, Suerette and Francoise, pictured above, who have kept the pharmacy organized and operating effectively. Once we are able to move the patient service window from the interior hallway to outside, operations should become even smoother and the interior chaos will substantial decrease.
Our afternoon was spent fighting ridiculous traffic into downtown Port au Prince to the General Hospital to pick up Dr. Jacques, and then to the site of the old U.S. Embassy, where the Ministry of Plantification is now located. Our mission was to turn in our application to be an officially recognized NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) working in Haiti. The process is somewhat byzantine and quite confusing, but we had our tome of paperwork filled out and in triplicate. After clearing th
e several hurdles to actually get into the building, we managed to sit down with a beauracrat to review our materials. We discovered the only missing pieces are that we have to have an open bank account at one of three officially recognized banks, and two letters of recommendation from other NGO's officially recognized in Haiti. Unfortunately, the bank we have our accounts at is not one of the three, so we need to open a new account at a new bank. As for the letters of recommendation, interestingly enough the majority of other NGO's we work with here are not officially registered, so it's a kind of chicken and egg thing. No worries, we have a plan and have already initiated it, so with any luck we'll have an official sign-off by the Ministry of Plantification before Christmas.
Tomorrow we depart Haiti after two busy week and a feeling of great productivity. Fortunately, we leave here with HAM business in good hands.
Tracce & Chris looking for
information at General Hospital
Monday, September 6, 2010
Back to Dumay this morning, a little worse for wear from the previous day's journey and our GI issues, but happy to get on with the clinic business at hand. Tracee spent much of the day seeing patients and working with Dr. Jacques on planning issues and organization. Paul had another two hour meeting with the Fondation committee, negotiating gate placement, patient entrances to the clinic, accounting procedures, and office space use. Aside from the length of time it takes to talk things out here, it was all relatively painless.
At one point in the late morning, as Paul
was working on the computer in the office, Charles came in and asked to
borrow the camera. When asked why, he explained that there was a "Scott
woman" out front talking to the patients in the waiting area outside
about malaria. A "Scott woman," Paul asked, "you mean a woman from
Scotland?" "Yes," Charles responded. This was too interesting to pass
up, so Paul went himself to check things out. Sure enough, there was a
young woman out front speaking in Creole about the dangers of malaria
and what preventive measures could be taken to avoid it, and what
treatment should be sought if infected. The crowd was in rapt attention
and applauded loudly when she completed her talk. I think Charles may
have been confused about the native origins of this young woman, but
hopefully her message was clearly understood.
Paul also met with the various contractors needed to complete the construction work on the clinic so that the HAM team in January can actually live at the clinic while in Haiti. There was the mason who will finish the security wall, set the foundation and short walls around the volunteer sleeping porch, and lay a small cement platform outside the window to the pharmacy, which will become the new patient access for getting prescriptions filled and removing the clutter of patients in the hall inside the clinic. Then there was the metal workers who will build the vehicle access gate in the front wall and the two smaller gates for patients to access the clinic compound, the metal grating that will form the walls around the volunteer sleeping porch along with the corrugated metal roof, and the metal hand rails and sun/rain cover over the pharmacy window. Finally, there was the plumber and electrician to discuss running new water and power lines from the water well to the clinic, about 150 yards. Tomorrow we shall see the bids and do the negotiations, and with any luck, in January the place will be in good enough shape to stay here.
View of security wall under construction and mountain beyond from the future volunteer sleeping porch.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
It was back to Port au Prince today, meaning another grueling 8.5 hour bounce around in the back of the truck. Paul was feeling much better, fortunately, though Tracee was losing to the tourista two-step, so it took all our energy simply to make the journey remaining in one piece.
Above: New bridge under construction between Gonaives and Port au Paix. Right:Re-painted old U.S. school bus, shuttling people between Port au Pince and Port au Paix. Private operators run these services, and the drivers speed down the terrible roads at frightening speeds.The carcasses of crashed buses can be seen littering the sides of the road.
We are hoping that the extensive road work we saw on route to Port au Paix is beginning evidence of the Haitian government's strategy of economic development in the provinces. HAM, along with many of the NGO's who have worked in Haiti for a decade or more, is of the belief that the rebuilding of Haiti after the earthquake must focus on economic development in the provinces, away from Port au Prince. Creating opportunities for jobs and education will draw people away from the capital and back to the areas their families are from, reducing the population density in Port au Prince and creating more economic diversity and independence. The city was designed for 200,000 people, yet over 2,000,000 were living there when the earthquake hit, dramatically increasing the number of deaths and injuries because of inadequate building standards and overpopulation. Unfortunately, what we have seen during this latest trip is more people on the street and the worse traffic we can remember. We are told that people have been flooding back into the capital because of the many construction jobs here and all the NGO activity, and the lack of jobs and food in the provinces.
Left: Remains of partially constructed bridge, victim of Hurricane Anna in 2008. Above: Tent city on hillside outside of Port au Prince, along national Highway #1 on the way to Gonaives. While there is shelter, there is lack of food and water, and no jobs or schools.
As for the road construction, there seemed to be sections of road and bridges being built all along the route to Port au Paix. Paul traveled this same stretch of road about a year and a half ago, and virtually all the projects we saw were new since that time. We have also heard that several other major roads from Port au Prince to cities in the provinces have been undergoing major construction. Driving into Gonaives, a city about two thirds of the way to Port au Paix, are the remnants of a partially constructed bridge skirting the lake there. This bridge was well under construction when Hurricane Anna hit in 2008, and the project has been shut down ever since. It seemed odd that with all the new road works underway, this one remains abandoned and nothing new has been started. Still, we hope that all the new road construction is part of a comprehensive plan to centralize the infrastructure of this country, while decentralizing the population.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
We're off to a bad start today. Paul is sick, with the GI issues we're all at risk of getting when traveling, eating, and sleeping like the locals without building up the resistance the locals have been developing all their lives.
Tracee attended the morning meeting with the board of the Hope for the Children of Haiti school. (Right: Tracee gives the school board a backpack filled with items for the children donated by Welsh Hills School, Granville, OH). This is the school Charles started next to his house for children pre-school to 6th grade who could not otherwise afford to attend. The cost is 700 gourdes per year (about $18). But even at this low rate, many cannot afford to pay. Charles said that many parents will not attend meetings or come to school with their children because they cannot afford to pay, and they are afraid they will be asked. We decided that it will be mandatory for parents to participate, and that we will institute a sliding fee payment scale, with some families paying no money, but everyone volunteering their time and skills. We also learned that many of the parents and older children in the families cannot read, so we decided to expand the school day: 8AM-1PM @ the current ages, 1-5PM @ 14-20 year olds, and 5-8PM for parents. Charles told us the best student in the school is an orphan who gets straight A's and spends his afternoons volunteering for the school.
After checking on Paul (no better), and giving him a shot, we set off for the mountains to visit Charles' mom, bring her some rice, beans and oil, and hold a small clinic. We were told we could drive the entire distance due to recent road improvements. We made it to within a mile of what felt like 60 degree climb on a walking path to her house. We left the medical supplies in the truck and made the climb with the rice and beans. We could send specific medicine back up the mountain when we left if needed. The views and the cool breezes were wonderful. They did not think we were going to make it, so no one showed for clinic, but we learned Charles aunt who lived down the mountain has been very ill since the death of her husband 8/10/10. We drank some coconut milk (right) and headed back to the truck and to our house call. Next year, we'll hire donkeys to carry our supplies up the mountain and we'll spend the night, so they'll trust we are truly having a clinic.
Paul is a little better this evening. We're getting an early start back to PAP, so we can drive slow and stop often.
Friday, September 3, 2010
We went to Charles school today and Tracee examined 64 children while Paul played pharmacist. Charles provided us with two wonderful translators. Marvelous assisted Tracee (Top right: Tracee and Marvelous seeing patients at school
) and Guillaume helped Paul (Below right: Guillaume working in the pharmacy
with a patient)
. These two men are another example of how involved Charles is in raising up his community, as he taught them both to speak English in hope of helping them further themselves. Guillaume, whose English is excellent, would like to work with a missionary or humanitarian group to help others and feel of value to his country and himself. It is sad to see such smart and motivated people with no job or options to be productive when there is over 80% unemployment here.
Still, there is great hope as people 
like Charles, Dr. Jacques, Dr. Joey, and many other Haitians give so much of themselves to better their communities and country. And there are the people here from all over the world who come to volunteer their time and energies to help, with organizations such as Hands On and Healing Art Missions. And let's not forget all of you who have enough interest to follow us on this website and learn about life in Haiti, and invest in supporting such work to make the world as better place. You only have to look in the mirror to see there is hope for Haiti to have a better future.
Below: Street market shopping for the family after the clinic.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
260 k, 8.5 hours, and this was the better stretch of road.
At the end of the road, Port au Paix. Tracee and Paul need a bath...badly!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010:
There are hymns and Christmas carols being sung outside, from a makeshift church in front of a red tagged house just down the street, as we write this. It's September 1st,right? Since the earthquake one sees such informal worship gatherings all over Port au Prince, just another reminder of how peoples lives have been turned topsy turvy and the struggle to find sense and peace out of such devastation.
We were back in Dumay today, with Tracee seeing patients and Paul meeting with the Foundation Committee. That is the committee of nine community leaders representing the three diffe
rent areas of Dumay: Pont, Campech and Gallette. Among Tracee's patients today were followup visits from two memorable past patients. The first was Jamesley George, a little boy Dr. Leslie Mihalov saved last year when his mother brought him in severely malnourished and close to death and is now a fat and happy kid with a hopeful future. The second was a teenager named Donald, who came to us in January of last year with a compound fracture of the tibia that was protruding from the skin several inches. He had broken his leg three months prior and had come to see us as his mother had heard an American doctor was at the clinic. What was just as astonishing as his survival was that our friend Dr. George Beauvoir, a Haitian orthopedic surgeon, volunteered his services performing surgery and saved the leg. Amazingly, today Donald, pictured on the right with his mother, appears to be a normal teenager with just a slight swagger to his stride.
Paul's meeting with the committee was quite typical of all Haitian meetings, overly long and complete with oratory bombast and internal bickering. Patience and fortitude are required here, and all ended relatively well. We get to meet again on Monday, something to look forward to.
Pictured at left is the rear of the clinic where we will begin building the new volunteer sleeping porch soon. The 10' x 30' structure will roughly follow the footprint of the shadow in the picture.
After the clinic closed at 2pm, we headed to Croix des Bouquet, the center of the Haitian metal art world. We visited a few of our favorite metal artists and purchased some wonderful pieces to bring back for the Asheville art auction in November. Pictured right is metal artwork being created by hand, a very labor intensive process.
Tomorrow morning we are off to drive to Port au Paix on the north coast of Haiti. We have a seven plus hour drive to look forward to, much of it over river beds and poor excuses for roads. We are going to visit the Hope for the Children of Haiti school that was started by our faithful friend and employee Charles and which HAM funds. We have gifts to deliver from Welsh Hills School in Granville, where the kids put together personal items for the students at Charles' school. Tracee will also do some clinics and we will check out the expansion to the school we funded. It is likely we will not have internet access while we are there, so we might not be able to post anything so no worries if you don't see anything new posted here for a few days. We'll be sure to share our experiences with you upon our return to Port au Prince on Sunday night.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010:
Our morning in Leogone was spent with both of us at the school working on the self-composting toilet system where Paul worked on Monday. He was elevated to apprenticing the local mason and helped finish setting the cement blocks for the childrens urinal and began on the teachers toilets. While he played with mortar and blocks, Tracee worked with two new HODR volunteers, one from England and one from Belgium, sifting sand and mixing concrete. It was great to see she has skills other than medicine. It was sad to have to leave the HODR base so soon after arrival, but we bid our farewells to old friends and several new ones pleased that we had at least been able to help out in some small way. We hope to be able to use the techniques we learned, building composting toilets and bio-sand filters in future projects with HAM.
Tracee and crew sifting sand Paul begins his apprenticeship
The afternoon turned out to be extremely frustrating. We had left the HODR base at noon in order to make it back to Port au Prince in time to meet Dr. Jacques at the Plantification Office where we need to be registered with the Haitian government as an official NGO working in Haiti. Having such official status will help us in doing business in this country and give our organization greater credibility here. It is a long process which we had already begun, and today's visit was intended to make sure they had received our official U.S. non-profit paperwork and to review the official paperwork we prepared for them and the Ministry of Health. As we mentioned in a prior post, we were also hoping to stop at Einstein Albert's wood working studio on the way to tour the studio and shop for a few larger pieces of his work for the upcoming Asheville art auction. Once again, traffic proved to be a nightmare because of road work in Gressier, where we encountered such delays on Sunday. We decided traffic was delaying us so much it was best to skip stopping at Eistein's workshop, sadly, in order to be sure we would make the Plantification office before it closed at 4pm. After sitting in traffic in Gressier for 45 minutes, and the HOT sun in the back of the truck, we hit a clear spell of road for about 15 minutes before being stopped dead in traffic once again in Carfour. After inching along for another 40 minutes we recieved a call from Dr. Jacques saying that we needed to postpone the meeting at the Plantification office because there were other documents we needed from the local Croix des Bouquets government, the district where Dumay is located. Sunburned and sweating from our slog through traffic, we headed back to Petionville having lost all productivity for the entire afternoon. Ah, such is life, but tomorrow is another day.
Monday, August 30, 2010:
It is REALLY hot in Leogone! We're told over 100 degrees before the heat index, and it certainly feels like it. It poured rain for for about an hour last night and everything was wet at dawn, but bone dry 2 hours later. It's flat here and just a bit too far from the ocean to get a breeze, so it's much warmer than in Port au Prince. In the morning, Tracee went to an orphanage where HODR volunteers do art therapy with 30+ abandoned and orphaned children. She evaluated 31 of them, treating 15 for the usual respiratory infections, typhoid fever, malaria, parasites, and the trauma associated with the loss of parents. In the afternoon she worked with a team that is developing Bio-sand water filtration systems to be installed around the Leogane community. These are large concrete tanks filled with sand and gravel that will be used to filter well water in homes and schools, providing clean drinking water. She is interested in how we might be able to set up such systems in the Dumay area, and today's experience was most educational.
Paul spent the day with a team that is building a prototype self-composting toilet at the first elementary school HODR built, with plans to install them at each of the eight schools they have committed to build. The work was very physical, involving removing concrete forms, sifting sand and mixing cement, and setting cement blocks. Quite satisfying work, but the heat made the work more of a challenge.
HODR crew working on building school urinals. Local boys watching the installation of bathrooms.
It is great to be able to see all the different projects HODR has developed in this community, and to be able to participate, even minimally for a day and a half. The organization and culture of base camp, where currently 60 volunteers are working out of, is amazing with people from about 24 different countries having been here. The diversity and enthusiasm of so many people giving of themselves is truly inspiring.
Tomorrow we work half a day and then head back to Port au Prince to meet with the Plantification Office to work on the process of formally registering the Dumay clinic with that office.
Sunday, August 29, 2010:
The road to Leogone was a snarl of traffic off and on most of the way there. The plan was to stop at Einstein Albert's workshop on the way. He had given us directions part of the way there and then was to meet us and lead us the rest of the way when we purchased 4 bowls earlier this week. As is often the case in Haiti, plans change. The map he drew was wrong and when we called he said he had a flat tire and couldn't meet us. So, we have rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon on the way back. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
Our morning was spent with Dr. Joey, away from clinics and patients and interruptions so we could talk about the chronic care program and his most recent endeavor. He has been most interested in what life is really like for the people living in the refugee camps and decided to actually live in one for a few weeks to experience the realities. His idea is to develop a paper, with Paul's help, identifying the realities of the camp situations to distribute to NGO's. We hope to be able to share his stories on this website in the future.
Our guest accommodations at the HODR base, complete with swimming pool.
Tonight we have settled into the Hands On (HODR) base here in Leogone. Paul has been volunteering with HODR since the Hurricane Katrina and first came to Haiti in 2008 with the group in response to the four Hurricanes that swept through Gonaives burying the city in mud. In fact, it was during that time that Paul met Tracee and began working with HAM. When we were in Haiti after the earthquake in January, we met with HODR when they were first setting up a base in Leogone, and we visited the base for an afternoon when we were here in March. Though we will only be able to be here until Tuesday afternoon, we are excited about helping out with the terrific program they have set up here. There are currently about 60 volunteers at the base working on projects as diverse as rubble removal, building sanitation systems in school, working at orphanages, and many more. We strongly suggest to check HODR out at their website, hodr.org.
Saturday, August 28, 2010:
It was off to Dr. Joey's hospital off of Del Mar 33 first thing this morning so that Tracee could see patients and we could meet with Dr. Joey about the chronic care program he runs that HAM funds and catch up a bit. The community he serves is a poor urban neighborhood, his hospital being located off the main roads with access via a labyrinth of rubble strewn back streets. Interestingly enough, the government has just begun to rebuild the "main road" into this neighborhood, which was good as the erosion from recent rains has begun to undermine what is left of many house foundations.
Erosion of street in front of Hospital Haiti Medicare Inside the courtyard of Joey's hospital after quake repair
Dr. Joey's hospital, Hospital Haiti Medicare, is tiny and has no surgical facilities, but one we support, because like our clinic in Dumay, he will not charge patients who can not pay. Tracee worked the entire morning, seeing several critically ill patients, including a young boy with a fever of 106.2. Dr. joey is
Haitian American and is one of the most committed and busy doctors we know. Besides running his own hospital, he is the medical director of the LAMP clinic in Cite Soleil and volunteers for a slew of other groups. HAM is just completing the first year funding a program he started to address the needs of chronically ill patients, principally elderly. After the earthquake, the number of younger patients suffering from hypertension and other chronic diseases skyrocketed, so we have adjusted the program to address all patients in his community with such chronic illness. Today we had the opportunity to talk with him in more detail about how the program was proceeding and how the neighborhood was coping in the aftermath of the earthquake. Tracee treating patient at Hospital Haiti Medicare
In the afternoon we headed to downtown Port au Prince to the recently reopened Communautaire de Artisans de Haiti, the artist collective where we have bought art for our art shows in the past. It was terrific to see the place open again and we were able to acquire several lovely pieces to include in the Asheville art auction this November. We then met Dr. Jacques for lunch and to work on completing forms for the Ministry of Health at the Olofson Hotel, a wonderful and famous old gingerbread mansion that fortunately survived the earthquake. On the way back to our guest quarters at Carolyn's, we stopped to resource some of the furnishings we shall need for the new volunteer living quarters at the clinic.
Tonight we are looking forward to a nice dinner out in Petionville with some friends, and tomorrow we have several meetings before we leave for Leogone to spend a few days working with Hands On Disaster Response hodr.org.
Friday, August 27, 2010:
It was nice to get back to the Dumay clinic today and see the staff and the progress of the security wall. To our delight, the pharmacy was filled with medications, now that we have worked out a system for purchasing most of them in Haiti at more affordable prices than in the U.S., and patient flow was organized and effective. It feels great to see the clinic operating so well in our absence, a testimate to the management abilities of Charles, Dr. Jacques, and the clinic administrator Wilberne. Tracee was able to see patients in the morning while Paul installed a battery monitor module on the solar system. The security wall is almost complete and work will begin soon on the volunteer sleeping porch. Our goal is to have the facilities ready to support a volunteer team staying at the clinic in January.
New internal gate in clinic to close off volunteer living quarters View of clinic through rear gate opening in new security wall
We left the clinic late morning to go to a USAID/CHAMP meeting in Croix des Bouquet with Dr. Jacques and Nurse Carmel. USAID/CHAMP (Community Health and AIDS Mitigation Project) is a U.S. government program to promote and coordinate TB, AIDS, and maternal health in community health clinics such as ours. The meeting was conducted completely in French, so much of it was lost on the two of us, but we were mostly showing support for our staff and the clinic and we were able to make some good contacts while there.
Much of the afternoon was spent shopping for art at the U.S. Embassy, where local artists were showing their pieces and selling at most reasonable prices.Once again, we want to thank our good friend Carolyn for arranging our entée to this event. We are shopping for the upcoming Art from the Heart show in Asheville and found some wonderful pieces including two beautiful small beaded flags, stone carvings, and some unusual metal pieces. Most exciting of all is that we were able to meet Einstein Albert, whose carved wood bowls sell at Neiman Marcus have been a great hit at the past two art shows. We bought a few pieces from him, but more importantly we received an invitation to visit him at his workshop, which we will be doing this Sunday on our way to Leogone.
Thursday, August 26, 2010:
We remained in Port au Prince today and started off dealing with the business of acquiring equipment and service to be able to access the internet from the Dumay clinic. Our Haitian staff have to find an internet cafe from which to email and send us reports, which is extremely slow and cumbersome, and it's become a priority for us to get the clinic wired for the internet. Our attempts to acquire equipment and service in March and April failed, relating to the aftermath of the earthquake, but today we were successful and are scheduled for installation on Monday…keeping our fingers crossed.
We had some time before a meeting with our clinic medical director, Dr. Jacques, so we stopped by St. Joseph's Home for Boys, which also had a guest house where the HAM teams stayed before the earthquake. St. Joseph's seven story structure was destroyed January 12th. Though none of the boys or staff were killed, one guest died in the collapse. We had visited there back in March and saw the destruction, but the boys and staff were not there as they had been relocated. Today we were most fortunate to catchup with the founder and director, Michael Geilenfeld, and got see and hear what was going on there.
St. Joseph's in March, destroyed from earthquake St. Joseph's today, digging out for a new foundation
An adjacent property was purchased and the new building will be three times the size, with an expanded footprint though only 5 stories. For more information on St. Joseph's, visit the website for Hearts With Haiti at http://www.heartswithhaiti.org/index.html.
Our afternoon was spent meeting with Dr. Jacques and then visiting the new offices of the Ministry of Health (MOH) in downtown Port au Prince. We have visited several temporary offices of the MOH since the earthquake, having to complete paperwork registering and re-registering our clinic, and today's trip was to make sure we were correctly registered and to discuss an operations report they had requested from us.
Ministry of Health after earthquake Ministry of Health's newest temporary offices
There was a marked difference in today's visit, as the new office was a large, inflatable tent with air conditioning and rows of new desks outfitted with new computers, and much more organized in function as well. The Clinton Foundation is assisting the MOH now and it seems to be of excellent effect, and we left the meeting feeling reassured. Tonight Tracee is working hard on the report they have asked for.
Wednesday evening, August 25th:
It's been four months since we have been in Haiti. In some ways it feels like much longer, and in others it's like we were just here. The airport remains a chaotic mess, though there are now signs that structural repairs have begun on the damaged buildings behind the facade being used. A fence now separates the exit from baggage claim and one has to walk close to 100 yards to actually get out into the parking lot, but traffic is no longer backed up in both directions on a major thoroughfare while people fight to load baggage and bodies into waiting vehicles on the street. Though the tent cities we pass on the way to Petionville remain as plentiful as in April, there are signs of rebuilding and it seems as though more rubble has been removed. Some of the roads have actually been repaired to an improved state from before the earthquake, definitely a positive. As we were driving up to Carolyn's house, where we stay in Petionville, it was nice to see the house two doors down that was left leaning from the earthquake at a steep angle onto the house next door, had been torn down. Replacing it is a temporary structure made of materials bearing the USAID lable.
There is a great amount to be done this trip, getting the infrastructure of the clinic to a level that will support volunteer teams staying there starting in January. We also plan to cover a lot of Haitian ground, visiting Leogone to the west and volunteering with Hands On Disaster Response for a day or two, and driving seven hours to Port au Paix, on the north coast where the elementary school we fund is located. While Paul has been there twice, this will be Tracee's first trip there and she is really looking forward to it.
Aug/Sept 2010 Mission
