Cholera in Haiti

Breakfast in front of our tent.

Most of the time we don’t have electricity or internet here in Haiti, so communication has been quite a challenge, but so many things have happened already, that we’ll give it a try!

The school is going really well. The students keep surprising us and we are very proud of them. Carla, one of our co-workers who is specialized in bereavement, did a post-trauma counseling with them, and over the last two days the students applied what they learned with more than 100 children of a local primary school. It was so moving to see them in action!

The infection in Johan’s knee and eye are very well under control, and I haven’t even had the slightest pain in my back so far; we are very thankful!

But we do have a special prayer request for the health situation of the people here in Haiti. On Thursday a number of cases of cholera appeared in the St. Marc region some 80 km from Port au Prince. There is a big YWAM base there. The director, Terry Snow, was taking a patient to the hospital that died on the way to the hospital. On the same day 135 people died of cholera, a sickness with heavy diarrhea and vomiting which can cause death in a few hours because of dehydration.

The epidemic did reach the city of Port au Prince yesterday, but we hope and pray that it won’t start spreading although the risks are very high:

• There is a big lack of sanitation systems.

• Everywhere you find little camps with 10-20 tents, mostly without toilet facilities.

• The bigger camps have mostly chemical toilets, but those are difficult to maintain clean, with so many people using them.

• There is almost no running water anywhere.

Some Dutch friends have been assisting in some clinics around St. Marc, but they were telling us about the lack of the most basic things, like IV-fluids, needles, gloves etc…. We hope to be able to help them a little bit through contacts we have with American Doctors, Brazilian army et.

We did buy some extra sanitation hand gel for our students and extra bottles of bleach.

Please pray for protection against cholera, and that the outbreak will be under control very fast.

May God bless you all,

The church and the primary school run by the father of one of our students, collapsed during the earthquake, this is the temporary building.

Our students were busy counseling the kids.

This little girl drew four of her family members who died during the earthquake.

They are having class on the broken pieces of their old church and school.

Johan kept the little ones busy, while some of our students taught the principles of bereavement and trauma counseling to the teachers.

This little three year old girl had been taking care of her 2 year old sister who had come with her to school. At the end of the morning she was soooo tired and fell asleep in my arms. Her mother had died in the earthquake...