Day 21 - Changing of the Guard

Our medical teams have been busier than usual as we received a substantial amount of vaccines and other medications this week. We have a clinic in Cité Soleil that doctors and nurses run each day, and we have various other locations that vary by day. Our shelter building program has almost reached it's goal of 100 shelters per day, and with an average of four people per shelter, we can be putting around 400 people in a home every day! We're creating communities of these homes, some even with a simple road system - it's really amazing.

I wish I was able to take more photos at of the food distributions, shelter sites, and other areas for you all to see, but many times I can't bring myself to because I feel like I would be making a spectacle of their situation - it's just to awkward. I don't know how professionals do it.

My replacement, Rob, arrived on base last evening. I gave him a quick tour of the compound and a brief description of our systems here. We then ate dinner and watched the 1981 classic: Road Warrior on someone's laptop. This morning I completely went over everything with Rob and let him handle half of the work for the day. I spent the remainder of my day helping Reyas finish up the construction of an Alaska tent that our new long term people will be living in. Tomorrow I am taking Rob to our Grand Goave base for a brief rundown of their systems and to meet everyone over there, and hopefully Friday will be a day a relaxation before the day of traveling on Saturday.

Three weeks have flown by quicker than I ever could have imagined, yet enough has happened in these past three weeks that could have filled six months. My time is almost up, and with mixed emotions I find myself counting down the last few days. I've worked with some people here for my entire duration, others for just a few days, and with many it feels like I have known them for years. I am quite despondent to know I will be walking away from these friendships at week's end - with great probability of not seeing them again. It's strange to think about having this fragment of life - full of people, places, and memories - with no ties to my everyday life, isolated from everything before and after it; turned on and off like a light with a switch.