There's no easy fix

Volunteers ask me how I learned Haitian Creole. I tell them that I minored in French in college. But, after Thursday's meeting with Haitian Department of Health and its partners, I think I am going to leave that part out now.

Making introductions at the training. 

Because it was a state-sponsored meeting, the presentations had to be in French, which is the official language of Haiti but not that of the people I might add. I struggled understanding but was able to read the Power Points. Luckily, my interpreter translated general key points during the meeting for me - the Haitian Ministry of Health will be implementing a ten year National Health Policy strategy that will focus on improving community health. The government will fund the training of health agents who will staff community health clinics around the country. The goal is to improve access to health care in Haiti. MFH was invited because we are a partner of the Ministry of Health. There's going to be another meeting in three months, at which we hope to make a presentation about one of our projects. There may be funding involved!

New location - MFH Guesthouse.

Being silly at dinner (my camera's flash doesn't do the
darkness justice).

I'm including some pictures from this week's Matròn Training for Trainers. I described it already in my last post, so you can return to that to learn more about the purpose of the course. The training was supposed to be held in a building at the hospital but the "reservations" that I had for one of the rooms weren't good. So, we had to move everyone to the MFH Guesthouse in the middle of the course. I was a little frustrated about that, but what can you do? On top of that, the head instructor had not informed me about the stack of papers that had to be prepared and copied for the participants. But, we had a solid group of sixteen, who are now certified to train matròns anywhere in the country. 

What a fine group - participants and instructors together.

I almost forgot to mention - we had no power for two days at the house. A part in our generator (which charges 24 large batteries that supplies the electricity for the house) had to be replaced, and so we sent one of our security guards to Port-au-Prince (3 hrs away) to buy the part, return the same day, and then have a mechanic replace it. Talk about an easy fix.