Row Your Boat

We are back from our last session at the Home for Sick and Dying Infants. I was worried to find that two of the children I had bonded with on Wednesday were no longer in their cribs. I feared the worst but was happy to find that they had been released to go back to their homes. I hope that they are healthy; just because they are released doesn't mean that they are well. The first child I held today was an infant who was running a fever and had a noticeable rattle to his breathing. However, after changing his diaper and putting a fresh outfit on him, a staff member put a knit wool hat on him and sent him home with some formula. Now that my first baby got sent away, I got right back on the horse and grabbed a new baby. I don't know if I chose wisely or not because I ended up grabbing one that, although was cute at first glance, ended up being covered in diahrea from an ill-fitting diaper and from not having been attended to in too long. Although I have changed many diapers in my life, I have to say that changing a diahrea diaper of a baby in a Haitian hospital got the germophobe in me's attention a bit. Wipes were scarce. There are no gloves and there is no hot water to wash your hands off afterwards. To add to the degree of difficulty, when taking the diaper off, I discovered the baby was a boy. I have a lot less experiencing changing boy diapers; he was able to get poop in places my girls never could. I got the heebie jeebies a little bit and that surprised me since earlier today I had been cutting out pieces of a guy's leg. What? Stop talking about diapers? Okay, I'll just let you know that everything got cleaned up in the end.

I spent the rest of the day in the wing where I had been on Wednesday. As I mentioned, a few members of the Jeff's Leg Gang had been sent home. I was greated by two old friends though. The older girl who loved to through stuffed balls in my face ran and greeted me with a big hug. I was also greeted by the last remaining member of the Jeff's Leg Gang. I had to ask a nurse what his name was because he would never tell me. His name was Lukelou. Lukelou is a cutey (not necessarily sweet though; he clocked another kid who wanted my attention). Lukelou would not answer any of my questions; he would only repeat what I said. Not in a way that kids repeat what you say just to drive you crazy way, it was more out of shyness and curiosity. A "je m'appelle Jeff" would get the same in return. If I asked him in French or Creole if he spoke French or Creole, he would just say the same sentence back to me. After giving up on small talk, I took Lukelou outside and knowing that he would just repeat whatever I said, I turned to singing. Remembering a favorite from Elaina and Lucy's youth, I sang "Loving You" to him and got him to sing the do-do-do-do-do ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah's along with me. Couldn't be sweeter. Then we sang Row, Row, Row Your Boat which worked very well and a repeat song. And after we finished it, I would ask him "encore?" and he would indicate yes so he enjoyed that as well. I held him in my arms and he hugged me and I hugged him for about an hour as we sang together. You know things are bad in Haiti when listening to me sing is a good alternative.

Leaving the hospital was hard because we won't be back. This afternoon was our last service session. Tomorrow we will go back to Grace Village for a church service and then we will be taken on a tour of some of the earthquake devastation and some Haitian landmarks. Our tanks are getting closer to empty so a light day before we return to the States will hit the spot.
- Jeff Gerst