Home Again, Briefly

As I write this, we’re on a plane somewhere over Florida, flying toward Kentucky, remembering how cold airplanes are in relation to Haiti’s smothering heat and humidity. Couldn’t seem to find time to post anything until just now.

The past few days have been something of a blur, clouded by our lack of sleep. My return to the Far West region of Haiti was a bit easier than the first – amenities like concrete stalls in which to take bucket baths were a nice touch.

It didn’t work out too well with the goat families, because Haitians and goats are apparently a particularly difficult combination to photograph compellingly (goats are terrified of cameras, and so are some Haitians, so put them together…). But I did pass the rest of the day shooting portraits of some folks I met. I took an American missionary (Curtis Rogers, a great guy and a good friend) and went walking through town in search of interesting faces. Almost immediately we stumbled upon a Haitian cowboy who had ridden nearly 30 miles to come to market. He gladly let us photograph him, which was the find of the day for me.

I spent another day wandering the rural dirt paths of Beau Champ, visiting families there with a pastor and an American nurse.

Two of these house calls impressed me most: The first, seeing a man who most likely has TB and has been ill at home for days, unable to work. Haiti’s Northwest Zone has among the rates of TB and AIDS in Haiti, according to a doctor from Port-au-Prince we met at an airstrip near the mission. I can’t back that up with hard data at the moment, but I would believe it. Unfortunately for TB patients in extremely rural areas, treatment is hard to come by – a government-run clinic is just a short walk from the man’s house, but has almost no medicine on its shelves and certainly does not stock antiretroviral drugs.

The other visit was with a woman named Masala, an elderly paralytic who has not left her home for years. She sleeps next to a bedpan on a tattered mattress, in the still, hot air of a Haitian country house. The pastor prayed with her. A day later, he bought her a wheel barrel that her family could use to push her around town. On Sunday, they pushed her to church. When the service was over, she laughed loudly and said she did not want to leave.

Erika stayed behind at the mission, helping interpret for a Cuban doctor who works at the mission clinic but speaks little English. She got to know a number of the American staff quite well. She shot portraits of the Haitian nurses who work at the clinic, and helped an American nurse who just moved to Haiti create a blog and get settled in. As a bonus, she helped teach an English class one afternoon to Haitian teens. All in all, she kept herself pretty busy, just as I knew she would. :) She shot photos of activities that a number of the American groups were conducting.

If it is not obvious, she had her hands in a lot more activities than I did. I’m so proud of the way she thrived during our time in Haiti and am so grateful for her super help.

In the end, I felt like it was one of my more productive trips to Haiti and we came away with a lot of decent images that will be put ot great use. Though I’ve only posted a few here, they’ll show up in various places in coming months.

We’ll be home for two days of enjoying our own bed, then we fly back to Florida to shoot a beach wedding and take a few days of long-overdue down time. Looking forward to it.







Photos: The Haitian cowboy; a nurse examining the daughter of the potential TB patient; Masala, the paralytic who now cruises around town in a new wheel barrel.