Roadtrip to Mireblais

A lot happened today! I hope y'all like pictures. 

We currently have a group of nurses and one doctor visiting CONASPEH from Massachusetts. They are helping CONASPEH get their newly approved Nursing School up and running. They have so far compared curriculum with their school in the state's and CONASPEH's and they are quite similar. They were very excited to see and hear this. Next week they will lead seminars Monday-Friday with the nursing students. The group was even able to bring French nursing textbooks that they purchased in Montreal. Madmwazel (Ms.) Fanou and Madmwazel Erline (excuse my spelling) run the CONASPEH nursing school and are ecstatic about the books and the seminars. One of the needs that the new CONASPEH nursing school has, is a place for the nursing students to do their clinical rounds. When discussing this, the new Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante Hospital in Mireblais was mentioned as a possible place for clinical work to occur. This lead to a visit to the hospital! Pictures of the hospital are in the slideshow. Let me just tell you Dr. Paul Farmer and Partners in Health are amazing. They believe in dignity for the patient, so you will see murals and comfortable waiting areas. They also will have landscaped courtyards, privacy curtains, and intake for just women's health issues. The hospital even has digital x-rays so that storage and viewing is not cumbersome. In the operating rooms they will have video access so that doctors can have live video feed to experts and direct through surgery as needed. Again AMAZING!!!!!

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(If you click here, you can see the description of the pictures)

After this we went to a very small local place for lunch at 2. Lunch is always late, if there is lunch at all. Today, I shared a meal with one of the girls in the nursing group. We had white rice, plantains with onion, black bean sauce and legume. Legume is a steamed vegetable dish that consists of carrots, potatoes and other things mashed to the consistency of mashed potatoes. It kind of looks like brown mashed potatoes. Sounds like mush but with the right seasoning is pretty good. However, if I am going to get sick from the food its going to be today. The place would have a health rating of about 50 in Nashville. But it was edible and tasty. 

Patrick Villier, the President of CONASPEH and my supervisor here, is having a hard time with my name. The other day Jeanette and I went to the grocery store, DeliMart, and our checker was named Ketia. I told her we had the same name. I told Patrick if he had troubles he could just call me Ketia. Then he asked my surname or last name I told him Pickens. He repeated and said "Pickens" and then "Pikliz."  Pikliz (pictured below) is a VERY SPICY Haitian side dish. It is cabbage, carrots, very hot peppers an vinegar. The other Haitians think this is very funny! So Ketia Pikliz may be my new nickname.