chrysalis

somewhere west and north of here, two friends sit on a front porch at twilight.  they indulge the sort of molasses-slow philosophizing that can only happen on front porches at twilight.  thoughful words punctuated by long pauses, scented with citronella and wet-grass-smell.

“did you know,” says the man, “that cocooned caterpillars don’t just sprout wings and become butterflies?”

“oh?” thinks the woman aloud into her glass of wine.

“no,” he continues.  “their bodies actually liquefy inside the chrysalis.  turning to goop, to mush.  with no recognizable structures left.”

woman’s eyebrows raise.  she knows the feeling.

“and then slowly, the cells in the goop reorganize and re-purpose themselves from primordial cocoon-ooze into a butterfly.  from the ground up.  can you believe that?”

“that’s intense,” she says, still staring through the trees to the flutter-filled garden.

“yeah,” he says.

and twilight silence descends again.

***************************************************************

i started midwifery school after finishing a graduate degree in english (with a little women’s studies thrown in for good measure), so i felt prepared, like i was riding the college wave into more college. i’d gone into english because it was something i was good at.  no, i hated teaching freshman writing to the young and beer-soaked, but the reading, the analyzing, the extrapolating, the writing i loved.  i went into it because i loved it.  i stayed in it because i was good at it.  sometimes stoopid good at it.  i don’t like things that i’m not good at.

midwifery school was something entirely different, though i wouldn’t know it until the academic portion of my schooling was done.  that’s something else i’m stoopid good at—memorizing and test-taking.  sure the material was new, but it was just more of the same.  read, memorize, discuss, understand, test, repeat.  sometime during that first year of school, when we baby midwives were neck-deep in theoretics with absolutely no practical application experience or clinical skill, one of the second-year students came up to me and said:

“you know…preceptorship and learning the work of midwifery really breaks you down.  it breaks you down into absolutely nothing and then builds you back up again.  it hurts.  be ready for it”

in case you couldn’t imagine on your own, midwifery attracts its fair share of highly-sensitive-with-a-flare-for-dramatics type folks.  at that moment, i chalked the passing-by-in-the-livingroom comment up to that, mostly because, at the time, i didn’t know the person well enough to think differently.

“ok!” i said, unsure of how to engage the comment.  did this person just *really* need to talk about some bad experiences?  were they just not cut out for midwifery?

i went on about my steady task of racking up grade-wins, confident that i was succeeding *hard* at “doing midwifery.”  a year and change later, after blowing through a 25-page senior research project (english degree ftw!) and completing my course work, i started my first preceptorship at b!rthvillage natural birthing center in kerala with a no-nonsense preceptor from my home state.  i’d had some experience, in the form of a clinical rotation, with birth already, and as second student at birthvillage, my first preceptorship placement was more of the same.  it was comfortable.  i listened a lot, i watched a lot, i learned a lot, and i even did a little.  i didn’t catch any babies, but by god if i didn’t stay up for days taking heart tones every 20 minutes!

before leaving for india, i had secured another position, set to start upon my return, as midwifery intern at the birth house that was attached to my midwifery school.  it was a little serendipitous–i’d happened to hear that the current intern was leaving, and i’d just ballsed up (ovaried up?), walked into the academic director’s office, and asked for the job.  it was way more involved than a typical preceptorship in that it entailed running a birth center, but it came with a small stipend (equivalent to around $3 an hour full time).

she said yes, and i breathed a sigh of relief that i wouldn’t have to move out of maine (and then back to maine) for my training.  most student midwives do.

done and done.

fast-forward to my coming home.  i start my job at the birth center in january of 2014, after two and a half weeks respite post-india.  i have two preceptors for most of my time there (ok, not so hard, eh?).  one of them i know, and one of them i don’t know.  i spend the next few months getting to know them.

i realize they are *very* different.
i realize they have *very* different expectations of me
i realize they communicate very little with one another
i realize that one wants me to figure myself out, that the other wants me to become a mini-her

what i don’t realize, in the beginning anyway, is that one will break me down, will make me feel like i’m an idiot, will correct me in front of clients on matters of no consequence, will hold her ground in an argument even when i show her (gently) that she’s wrong, will hang her head out the car window because the smell of my shampoo makes her want to vomit, will scrap whole classes that i meticulously planned for weeks at 5pm the night before and make me start over to her specifications, will answer questions with “well, we’ve already *gone over* that, but…”

will make me second guess every single thing that i do

will make me timid

*********

which in turn will make me meticulous.

will make me work harder

will make me exacting, a perfectionist

will make me really. know. my. shit.

will teach me the humility of studenthood

which will make be a better listener, even if i bank some of what i hear into the “i will never do that” category.

which will make me a better critical thinker

which will make me, once i can bust through this goddamned emotional prison that i’ve been liquefying inside, a fucking righteous-awesome midwife.

it takes me a year to find myself, but it happens in an instant, without any discernible turning point.  one day, i show up to a birth with the other midwife, the one who wants desperately for me to find my own self and my own way, and i take charge.  i make good decisions.  i ask for less help.  i have good questions.  my goop turns to hyaline cartilage, then to bone.

“what’s changed?” she asks.  “you’ve grown leaps suddenly.”

“i’ve stopped being afraid.” i say.

“it shows,” she says.

midwifery, for me, was not like english.  it wasn’t something i came to because i was already good at it.  i came to it because i was drawn to it.  utterly,  uncontrollably.  and at first, i was bad at it.  blood draws, IVs, catching babies in a tub i could barely reach across, suturing delicate tissues with hands that only knew wobbly needles through chicken breasts and beef tongues.  when do you wait?  when do you act?  how much bleeding is too much?  does my preceptor think i’m an idiot?  did i really just fumble-then-quick-save that slippery babe?  how *on earth* do you get blood in the back of your hair??

there was so much discomfort for me in teaching my hands and body what my brain already knew.  i didn’t know how to just be bad for a while.  to work and let the skills develop.  to shake off the crap from my challenging preceptor.  i didn’t know how to just momentarily embrace being a pile of goo and patiently await my in-due-time cell-differentiation.

i’m bad at being bad at things.  i generally avoid those things.  case in point:  my flute has been a windowsill ornament since high school. ‘nother case:  i don’t own a bike.  ‘nother ‘nother case:  i’ve not become a youtube singing sensation.

*****************************************************

when i first started midwifery school, 55 births seemed an impossibly impossible number.  how would i ever get as many as i needed?  about halfway through completing my numbers, i decided to julienne a few post-it notes into little strips with hearts at the bottom, one for each baby i had left to catch.  i stuck these strips up in straight rows across the side of my office bookcase.  each time i caught a baby, i took down a strip.

for a while, you couldn’t tell that any were going missing.  it just looked like a post-it grass skirt of doom.

i took my last sticky bookshelf heart down almost three weeks ago, after a birth with my third birth house preceptor/friend/mentor.  it felt surreal.  the biggest accomplishment of my life.  i’d eaten the whole elephant, only just then swallowing my last bite.

though i’m done with school, i have three more moms left to attend at the birth house.  i’d taken on three too many to protect against losing numbers through transfers and transports, but i didn’t wind up short in the end.  these three births, then, are the icing on my cake.  the chance to show my let-your-light-shine preceptor (and myself) what kind of midwife i’ve become.

not that any of this means that i know what’s to be known about birth.  i’m still a wee baby midwife–there’s so much i haven’t seen and haven’t dealt with.  i have much, much more to learn, and i’m sure i’ll continue finding and refining my philosophy, my management, my beliefs, my reality, until i catch my very last babe with softly wrinkled hands.

malcolm gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master (mistress?) at something.  if i have 10 appointments per week, 50 weeks a year, it will take me 20 years to master the prenatal visit.  if a birth takes around 20 hours, it will take me 500 births to be wholly proficient.  if a pap takes me 30 minutes, it will take me….wait…..20,000 paps??

birth work doesn’t lend itself to perfection or mistressdom.  each experience makes you better, each makes you wiser.  but never will you get to a point when you’ve seen and know all.  the science of birth is size large, but the art is size colossal.  the professional student in me *loves* this reality.

***************************************************

so the second-year student was right.  birth broke me and rebuilt me.  the bug-goop stage was acidic, slimy, digestive, incoherent…but the breeze on these new wings is reassuring and uplifting,  time to stretch out, take to the air, and explore this yard at twilight.  time to drink in the citronella and wet-grass-smell.  time to find the shade of a sturdy leaf and rest up, because after twilight comes sleep, and after sleep comes fresh dawn.

to be continued…

haiti, chapitre the last (5)

8/15/14—lazy friday and finally momma #3

i feel decadent.  the power is on all. night. long.  hello sleeping in my underwear!  hello fan!  when i wake up,  fiona’s momma #3 from birthmageddon day is still here.  the midwives give her pitocin and break her water to speed things along, and the baby is born by 3:30 that afternoon.  super gentle birth. the baby never cries—it just starts breathing and is calm.

we spend the rest of the day on the porch.  i’m reading a *terrible* romance novel because there’s not enough reading material.  it’s about a woman trying to make a go of ranching in montana whose stubborn will is broken as she falls for the local “bad boy” rancher. the only redeeming quality is that it lends itself to reading aloud, so i make it a point to read to fiona any time there’s something turgid or sinewy on the docket.  blegh!!!

we’re joined today by celeste, a naturopathic student here to do some birth work.

8/16/14—mimi’s gun

gnarly cough attack keeps me up all night, so i head out to the balcony where i can offload my germs away from polite company.  there’s some sort of big national holiday today, so from last night into this morning, you can hear club music rolling over the hills from cap.  i eschew my sofa for a rocking chair.  i cough my brains out to dubstep.

in the pre-dawn hours when everything is quiet, i begin to drift off.  when i’m almost gone, i’m suddenly jolted back into reality by the sound of a massive explosion and the feeling of a shockwave moving through my body.  all in the house are up and scrambling to see what happened.  turns out that mimi, the armed guard, had fallen asleep and accidentally discharged his rifle.  he was sitting by the enormous iron gate, so the sound and the pressure just blasted off and back at the house.  all are fine, but i don’t wander too close to the balcony railing after that when mimi is sleeping.

no moms come in during the night or morning.

fiona and i spend the day catching up on paperwork, and we plan to see several of our birthmageddon moms today for postpartum visits.

no moms in the afternoon, evening, or night.

8/17/14—-poolside sans pool

i sleep late today, only getting up when the power clicks off and the swelter sets in under my mosquito net.   we chill on the porch for much of the day, catching up on writing, crushing candy.  i eat vegetable soup for breakfast–it’s not what i want, but the snacks are gone and there are only two meals on sundays, so you do what you do.

the american midwife calls to check on us and offers me a job in the us when i get back.  i’m thrilled but have to turn it down because it’s in texas and i’m decidedly a mainah.

we have one mom come in today, but her BP is off the charts so we transport her.  we spend the early afternoon (modestly) sunbathing on the roof, drinking haitian rum out of coconuts, and then when we’re scorched, we retire inside to make educational posters for the center.

when the light gets too low for more artsy things, we retire to the porch with our headlamps.  i read aloud more key passages about throbbing, straining loins on a montana ranch.

8/18/14—-last clinic day

today is my last clinic day, and i end my time like i started my time–poking an endless sea of fingers for hemoglobin testing.  the women are the same, tittering behind hands at the dramatic shows of pain when fellow patients have their fingers pricked, with smiles instantly dissolving the moment their own number is up.

the afternoon is for buying souvenirs from a local woman, finishing posters, and packing bags.

8/19/14—a whimsical breakfast and travel to pap

so today, breakfast was a hotdog weiner and popcorn.  like ya do.

after last bits of packing, fiona and i say our goodbyes and then the center manager takes us to the cap bus station.  the return journey from cap to pap is a long a tired one.  the bus ride makes me sick, so i am very glad for the stop at the hotel at the halfway point.  we have some lunch, use toilets that are broken and won’t flush (with apologies to those waiting in line behind us) and get back on the bus.

at the pap bus station, goodfried picks us up and we drive though pap in his trakker.  windows down.  the city is hot, loud, muggy, and bustling.  the sidewalks are lined thickly with the plastic of discarded water packets, and everywhere there is space, shopkeepers are selling their wares.  people are packed mardi gras shoulder-to-shoulder on sidewalks, occasionally pouring across the street in large groups (safety in numbers when oncoming traffic is concerned!).  goodfried’s radio is on loud.  the celine dion rendition of ave maria, with its slow almost liquid texture, provides an impossible foil to the cacophony outside the car.  it lends a surreal experience to the ride.

i notice on our drive that almost everyone is listening to celine dion.  she’s quite the thing here.  bummer.

as we wind through the city, i take note of the fact that pap starts in a coastal flatland and then moves sharply up the mountains like a wave of buildings crashing up a rock face.  roads are laid out in a pattern decipherable only to locals, and we wind in and out, up and down as we work our way up the mountain to the royal oasis hotel.

the royal oasis reminds me of some of the hotels i visited in kochi.  at first, it seems like a legit 5-star hotel until you dig a little deeper.  beautiful and comfortable, but whimsical.  our key cards don’t work, there is no water in the toilet, the shower is only heavily chlorinated hot water, they advertise 4 restaurants but only have 2, and although many signs reference a pool, there is, indeed, no pool.

dinner is also very india.  because of the spare fare at the center, fiona and i have a running gag about really really needing some nachos.  when we sit down to dinner in the hotel restaurant, the clouds part and angels sing when we see nachos on the menu.  unfortunately the exchange with the waiter is something out of monty python.

“what will you have madam?”

–nachos!

“very good”

(returns) “no nachos madam”

(sad trombone)

–ok, then the risotto.

“very good madam”

(returns) “no risotto madam”

–sigh

“can i get you a drink?”

–what do you have?

“only coke zero, madam”

(look over and see mixed drinks on the next table)

–can we get mixed drinks?

“no”

–rum punch?

“no”

–pina colada?

“yes!”

(comes back with something godawful–not a pina colada)

wtf.

after “dinner,” we go right back up to the room.  hot shower, a/c on full blast, watch a movie, go to bed.

8/20/14—home again, home again

we request an airport shuttle for 6:30 at the absolute latest. it comes at 7, because haiti.  we load up our bags and blast back down through pap, from mountain top to mountain bottom.  the hotel shuttle van has techno music on full blast, which is hard before breakfast.  the roads are narrow and winding.  i feel like a red blood cell blasting though a capillary bed.

we make it to the airport just in time.  also a whimsical place. we go through full security twice and then get out tickets.  the tickets have no gate numbers on them, which turns out to be fine as neither do the gates.  the place is packed with people and there is no coffee. anywhere.

fiona and i have separate flights to ft. lauderdale but make a plan to meet up at the chilis there for nachos.  one flight is delayed, so we don’t wind up overlapping.  i go to chilis anyway, but am disturbed to find they are also out of nachos. (how is this a thing?).

the flight back to portland is easy and uneventful (and not preceded by an overnight stay in florida!) and i am happy beyond words to get home.

20-ish initial prenatal visits, 35-ish prenatal visits, 20-ish postpartum visits, and 8 births in 18 days.  when i first signed up for this trip i remember saying to myself—two weeks isn’t nearly enough!  how hard can it be?  the truth is, two and a half weeks is my limit.  i’m sick.  i’m tired.  i’ve learned so so so much.  and i’m very ready to come back home to my 2-3 births a month.

and no more pony rides.

to be continued…

haiti, yet another chapitre (4)

8/9/14 to 8/11/14—goodbye to emily, hello to amniotic fluid shoes

i wake early after a rock-solid night of sleep.  no dreams about being taunted.  no in-my-underwear in front of class.  i was expecting it, but it didn’t come.  i woke on the balcony sofa, my new nighttime retreat, to the pinking sun in the haze over the eastern tree-line.

today we’re saying goodbye to emily, one of the students who has been here for around two weeks already.  her suitcase is too heavy (you always want to avoid headaches in developing nations airports) so she spends the morning rearranging and deciding what to leave.  the resident cat, mesami, moves in on emily’s abandoned bunk, dragging her kittens in one by one and tucking them in the corner under the bed.  we bring them back out to their make-shift den on the porch.  gotta draw the line somewhere.

i feel like a vulture when i jump for joy over inheriting emily’s fan, despite the fact that it will only work when the power is on.  and speaking of power, it needs to hurry up and come back on. we’ve run through the pickle buckets, and between 2 students and 3 haitian midwives, 8 showers need to happen today (haitians are twice-daily bathers).  more if there are births.

it’s saturday, and it feels weird not to be doing anything (unless you count drinking instant coffee with cold water, eating mango, and chasing chickens out of the house doing something), but i know that wen monday rolls around, i’ll have been happy for the rest.

fiona is on call because emily is leaving, and i’m up after that.  we decide to max out our experiences and do the rest of the births at the center together, rotating who primaries and who assists.  the moon is full, and we hope it brings our next momma.  other things we hope for:

power (mmmmm cold water!)
rains (which mean no burning trash piles and less diesel fumes)
wind (please whip through and cool this house!)
no stomach problems (no. just no.)
a flood of mommas (it’s been slow–day 7 and only 2 babies for me)

after sunset, at least one hope comes true.  a mom comes in around 9:15.  so far, all of my other moms have come in pushing.  this one is 3cm dilated and 50% effaced, so i’m in it for the long haul. we get her checked in–she has a good support person so she doesn’t need much from us at this point.  i set my watch to beep every 30 minutes so i can listen to baby’s heart tones with the doppler, and i grap some preemptive shut-eye on the bed outside the birth room.  the midwife is napping in the other bed, and our translator is out on the porch chatting with the armed guard.

i’m in sleepy land an hour later when i hear the midwife yell that she’s pushing.  “no way,” i think.  i run in and check, and she’s all the way at 7cm, which is pretty incredible for an hour.  we tell her “pa poussey!” just let her body to the work. an hour later, a fat baby boy, a garson, makes his appearance.  with him comes an enormous gush of amniotic fluid that runs across the bed (and because i’m kneeling with one leg on the bed and compressing the mattress) goes down my leg and *all* into my shoe.  warm, wet, like the liquid from a bubble jar.  blerg.

about the time the placenta comes, i hear loud moaning coming from outside the birth center, and i know it’s going to be a party.  the second mom makes it inside and fiona rushes in just in time to catch the baby barehanded.  i hand her blankets and equipment while monitoring my momma.

du gason!

i shower (and hibiclens the holy hell out of my feet and shoes), and fiona and i decide to split postpartum watches.  i’ll take 4am and then sleep, and she’ll sleep until the 8am check.

just in time for my 4am check, i’m awoken by a third momma.  i check, and her cervix is very high and closed.  we give her the choice to go home or to mache (walk).  she chooses mache and spends the morning and early afternoon walking laps around the center.  she checks in at 1pm when she’s 4cm dilated.  i think she’ll be a while, but i’ve seen so many fast corners turned in my time here that i’m hesitant to bet on a long labor.  i’m hoping for a dinner birth because the night time is guaranteed to bring more mommas to the center.  also on my mind is the fact that we have 50 initial prenatal visits to make it through tomorrow—possibly on little or no sleep.  i wonder to myself what the birth goddesses have in store.

turns out no fast corner-turning with this one.  4-8cm is a very slow transition for her, and she has a cervical lip for hours.  the midwives start an iv, which the mom yanks out twice.  she sings loudly to jesus during transition.

it’s really nice to have fiona there with me for this birth.  a lot of magic happens in the discussion between midwives, and i’d missed that in the struggle to communicate through a translator.  lots of mec and a long crown later, the third baby in 24 hours is born.  “are you tired, abby?” asks the midwife, smiling.  three births in 24 hours and i’ve missed dinner—yeah, i’m pooped.

after everyone is settled, i head upstairs and take a bucket shower with the precious 2 gallons that are left.  i spend some time sitting on the porch, soaking in the supermoon that’s peaking through the clouds.  i’m enjoying a rare cool breeze on my face, and i’m trying to forget that there’s a 4am check, an 8am check and then 50 appointments.

in the night i wake first to the sound of crashing dishes as mesami helps herself unsuccessfully to dinner leftovers and then in the wee hours of the next morning to fiona’s next birth.  i’m assisting, so i dress and head to the downstairs bed so that i’ll be closer when i’m needed.  i have crazy dreams because outside is like roostergeddon.  those things never. shut. up.  i get up at 7 and check in on fiona.  nothing’s cranking yet, so i head upstairs to grab a coffee.  i’m gone for all of 6 minutes and i manage to missing the freaking birth!  i’m telling you—the corner turning here is wild!

monday morning rolls on, as monday mornings do.  we’re juggling two post-partum mommas, hiv and syphilis testing, 51 prenatal appointments, and all on no good sleep in 48 hours.  we’re in appointments until 4:30pm.  even the translator is losing his steam.

i. am. dead.

please birth goddesses: no birth tonight.

prayers answered.

8/12/14—sick, sick, sick

i’m coming down with something (no malaria! big money! big money!), or maybe it’s just exhaustion.  i have a sore throat, a stuffy nose, and i feel crappy.  i load up on echinacea, elderberry, usnea.  no time to be sick!  i wake up in the wee hours in a puddle of sweat and head back out to the balcony.  the roosters give me crazy dreams.  i wake again in the dark to the sound of the squeally iron gate, but no one calls up for a student midwife.  i eventually hear the sounds of a mom though, and i venture downstairs.  she’s only 1cm and she’s past 42 weeks, which is outside the scope of care here.  we’re going to let her labor here tonight, and then we’ll take her to the hospital in the morning,

since this was a false alarm, i’m still on call.  i head back upstairs and take a pre-dawn bucket bath to de-sweat myself.  just that small task wears me out.  i’m wearing thin.

and i’m definitely getting sick.

later this morning, the power comes on for 10 blissful minutes.  i hug the fan to my face and enjoy being able to start my day at a reasonable temperature.

i’m moving slow and am feeling sicker.  my throat hurts, my chest hurts, there’s green snot, i’m hacking up a lung, and i feel feverish though i’m not.  all i want to do is sleep.  i try to make it though some appointments because the day is slammed and they need me.  i make it through 6 prenatals and 3 postpartums (and a bottle of hand sanitizer).  i a preeclamptic mom, a cyst so large that a woman thinks she’s 20 weeks pregnant, a malnourished baby who’s mom was at home tied to a chair because of a voudou “illness.”  the baby hadn’t been allowed to nurse and the mom had been tied up because she had “the sickness that makes you squeeze your baby too hard.”

“what do we do?”  the family asks.

fucking untie the mother and let her nurse that goddamned baby, i think.

“you’ll have to formula feed until the mother can breastfeed,” we say.

i try to hold in my snot during the appointments, but by lunch i am unsuccessful.  i call it quits and head upstairs.  i have a fever.  i look in the merck manual to see if i have malaria.

i don’t.

what i do have is world’s worst cold, and to make matters worse.  i think i’m developing a weird red rash under my boobs.  i hit the storage room and leave with echinacea, elderberry, usnea, and nyquil for my cold, and antifungal cream for my jungle boobies.

holy smokes.

8/13/14 to 8/14/14—-birthmageddon!

i get a good night’s sleep on the couch despite the nightly rooster-off.  i’m vaguely aware of a momma coming in near sunrise, but the midwives know i’m sick, so they do the early labor support for me.  i get up around 7:30 and am sick to my stomach at both ends.  the coffee doesn’t go over well, but fiona’s ginger works wonders.

i head downstairs at 10 to check in on things.  the midwife asks me to do a vaginal exam on the mom that’s been there since dawn.  i’m checking, checking,  i, for the life of me, cannot feel the opening of her cervix to gauge her dilation.  usually, the baby’s head is low in the pelvis and you feel the soft, thinned cervix over baby’s scalp like the freeze frame of someone putting on a tight mock turtleneck. i have nothing.  then i feet it–what we call an empty sleeve cervix.  this baby’s head wasn’t descending, so the cervix was just hanging there like an empty sleeve. kind of like a warm cannelloni.  we need to move the mom to move the baby, so we get her up and to the toilet and then we have her walk.

i consider the rebozo butt-jiggle, but as i play over in my head that exchange between me, the translator, and the midwife, i decide that it just isn’t worth it.  besides, the midwives here are not what you might consider adventurous in what they’re willing to try.  luckily, the mache works like a charm.

it works like the miconazole is working for my jungle boobies.

while the first momma is hard at work, a second mom flies in, pushing her baby out.  i see the opalescent white/blue of a bulging bag of waters.  they don’t “let” babies be born in the caul here, so the midwife breaks the mom’s water and i get ready to catch.  beautiful birth.

another mom comes in.  fiona is assigned to her, and i am doing postpartum for the fast birth momma and labor management for the sleeve-cervix momma.  she labors on slowly, slowly, and she pushes for almost 3 hours.  her tissue is edematous from all of the pushing, and despite my best efforts at perineal support, as baby’s head is born i feel the pop/crack of swollen skin splitting beneath my hands.  mom will need some serious stitches.

baby’s appearance at birth shocks me back into my body.  white, floppy, eyes wide open but totally checked out.  no respiratory effort, weak heart beat.

stimulate, stimulate, stimulate.  nothing happens.

then the stargazer eyes blink once.  stimulate, stimulate.  please come into your body, baby.

i reach for resuscitation equipment.  the midwife stills my hand.

baby begins to cry weakly, and slowly comes around.

mom has a deep and complicated second degree tear that the senior midwife has to stitch.  we tuck everyone into bed after and check on them frequently.  both mom and baby are fine.  i head to bed eventually, leaving fiona with mom #3.  by 5am, fiona has checked in a fourth momma who was pushing and soon after welcomes another wee soul.  we tuck mom #4 in, i tuck fiona in, and i head back to be with momma #3.  clinic starts in two and a half hours, and i don’t know how we’ll make it.  we’re exhausted and the midwives are exhausted, and we’ve still got a baby on the way.

clinic winds up being blessedly small, so we power through.  mom #5 comes in but is only 1cm dilated, so we send her home. fiona returns to tending to mom #3, who’s still laboring.  she’s walking around downstairs and outside singing a religious song at the top of her lungs.  we listen to her song, waiting for that tell-tale catch in the voice that lets you know a mom’s body is ready to push.

i’m hacking up a lung on the porch, but all’s not lost because i’m doing it in a great breeze.  i manage somehow, despite baldwin (that’s what we call the marlboro rooster), the cows, the chickens, the singing mom, and the heat, to get some sleep.  fiona has had two hours of sleep in the past day or more, so she’s out like a light.

i have 4 more days here at the center before i head home.  fiona and i have booked a nice hotel in pap for the night before we fly out. (one hotel reviewer gave it a “poor” because *gasp* the power was out for a while one day.  the horror!)  i’m looking forward, after my confinement-punctuated-by-a-disastrous-outing, to be back in that bus zooming over mountains.  i’m happy to have the company of fiona as opposed to my previous bus mate, the quiet old woman who stuffed washcloths in her bosom because the bus a/c was freezing her out.

in the mean time, i’ve got to beat this cold, and momma #3 has *got* to have her baby!

to be continued…

haiti, chapitre trois (or, the little pony that could, but shouldn’t have had to)

top of the citadel

8/8/14—-the citadel

on friday morning, the american midwife at the center leaves haiti for home.  her last words to us are, emphatically “you MUST see the citadel.  go up on horseback.  nothing like it.”  understatement of the year, turns out.

l’histoire:  around the time of the american revolution, haiti is fighting for l’independence from the french (who had taken the land from the spanish who had taken it from the native tainos).  post-revolution, self-declared king henri christophe builds a structure he calls the citadel, a fortress/castle atop a 3000 foot mountain.  he arms the mammoth tower with dozens of massive iron and bronze cannon, painstakingly (for the horses) brought up miles of clear-cut switchbacks. the facility is staffed with the children of the revolution, ex-slaves who work for food.  now it’s a cultural landmark and a monument to haiti’s successful revolution.

so we decide to go and see this place, more than a little scared and excited to leave the confines of the center, but happy that one of the translators will be accompanying us.

armed with water (not too little—it’s sweltering.  not too much—there are no bathrooms anywhere) fiona, emily and i pile into the center’s tap-tap and head out of the squealing, rusted iron gates and into the daylight world of cap haitian.  the citadel, which you can see from the center’s rooftop, is about an hour away.  the ride through town and country is bumpy, dusty, and diesel-y (makes me miss kochi).  bikes are following close behind, interested to the point of nearly wrecking.

BONJOU!!!!!

we stick out like sore thumbs.

we wind through the city past a sea of auto parts stores, construction material yards, barber shops, fruit on sidewalk blankets, simmering cauldron cooking pots tended by squatting grandmothers, men driving, women (always women) carrying heavy loads, goats, donkeys the size of goats, burning trash piles, the young listening to loud music and overlooking the old and the infirm lying on sidewalks, on every corner young bellies heavy with child, spray-painted political signage, walls of concrete topped with razor wire and embedded broken glass, lonely jutting rebar awaiting better times more money for more concrete, jugs of hooch everywhere.

out of the city, the chaos turns to sugar cane and banana trees.  homes in the country trade concrete and broken-bottle walls for walls made of trained vegetation.  people on the road–most wave.  one shoots us the bird.

l’histoire ii:  fair enough about the bird.  in 1915, the us invades haiti (in line after the french and the spanish) and starts a 20-year occupation. we want to “stabilize” it because of its proximity to panama (918.5 miles is just too close for comfort!).  we decide that it will be a splendid idea to use forced haitian labor gangs to build infrastructure and to realign the economy toward american interests.  about 1000 haitians are soon killed in an uprising against this take-over.

fast-forward to 2004, when president aristide is kidnapped by us agents and bundled out of port au prince.  we say no, this was not our doing, and yes, the overthrow was nonetheless necessary.  the us-favored latortue takes power.

spanish.  french.  american.  american.  rinse.  repeat.

this informs and shapes the perception of my presence here in profound ways.  in ways that i can’t fully understand.  in ways the perceivers can’t fully understand.

we arrive at the base of the mountain, and all of haiti is there, selling the usual fare–paintings, beads, wooden machetes with scenes burned into them, plastic pouches of water, hats.

“non, mesi.  non, mesi.  non, mesi” is our refrain.

fiona on the steps to the palace

we have a guide for the citadel, but we’re swarmed instantly with men who tell us they’ll give us a better tour.  some ballsier guides (the young ones) just start talking like we’ve already hired them, and they want tips.  it’s hard to ignore “i have to feed my family.”  this game goes on up the first little hill, past a great domed church, to the palace at the foot of the mountain, then the hangers-on slink away defeated.  our guide is pleased.

emily on tap-tap. these “horses” are basically big dogs.

just after the palace, we come face-to-face with our “horses.”  and i mean face-to-face quite literally.  these aren’t horses—they’re barely ponies.  these are the tiniest, haggard-est, most underfed little beings i’ve ever seen.  i instantly want to crawl out of my skin.  i want to back out.  i want to walk.  am i really going to inflict my heft on this poor creature?  as pack animals on the street, i saw them carry much, much more, but this feels like shit.

“i think i want to walk” i say.

“if you walk,” the translator says, “the pony will not eat today.”

fuck.

fuckittyfuckfuckfuck.

so i hoist myself onto this poor animal’s back, onto a ramshackle saddle with rope-hanging triangles of thick wood for stirrups.  the stirrups instantly dig into my shins.  the pony is so small that my feet are halfway between my ass and the ground.

stirrups grind in harder.  penance.  old-fashioned-style.

i have another true moment of mortification before we set off, when i notice all of the haitians by-passing the ponies for the road.  everyone else (besides the uppity white bitches) walks the 6km straight up the mountain.  so here we are, the picture of privilege and oppression, torturing ponies because we’re lazy.  but we can’t turn back.

fiona on suzuki

i am on sank etwal (five-star).  heh.  holy baby jesus.
fiona is on suzuki
emily is on tap-tap

so we set off up the mountain.  far from the leisurely walk i’d imagined, there are two guides for each horse, one pulling the bridle and one swatting the horse with a stick.  “allay etwal!!!!!”  allay, allay!”

can i just die right now?  maybe i’m still asleep.  i touch the animal’s fuzzy nape and send a silent “i am so incredibly sorry, etwal” reikiing down my arm.

the ascent is impossibly steep in places.  i’m thankful for good balance and riding experience, though i would give my right boob for real stirrups and a western saddle.  as we ascend, i have to learn hard forward.  the momentary dips down mean leaning all the way back.  etwal plods along on tiny strong legs.  the guides space us out so that they can hound us about when it is customary to tip (we’ve prearranged the prices—they don’t seem to care).  stop in the shade–tip!  resting the horses—tip!  nearing the top—now you buy us cokes and cigarettes!

the scenery is breathtaking.  i spot coffee, cacao, banana, coconut, avocado, mango, papaya, date palm, goats wandering, chickens with winding snaking strings of chicks in tow, houses sprung up along the trail (coke? water? necklace? machete?)  on the switchbacks, we’re flanked by impossible mountain vistas on one side and sloping foliaged mountainface on the other.

ass-to-horse ratio is reaching max capacity!

we stop halfway up to rest and water the horses.  etwal is a little foamy.  holy balls.  he stares blankly at me from the shade, plotting my fat demise.  we’re swarmed with women selling things.  “non, mesi” doesn’t cut it this time—a small old woman with cataract-gray eyes holds necklaces in front of my face.  they’re lovely, but i didn’t bring money (wasn’t this supposed to be like a hike??).  painfully awkward.  she’s like the jesus that follows you with its eyes, only she follows you with necklaces.

etwal is sweating.

we get back on our horses and press on, every now and then catching glimpses of the towering citadel at the mountain summit.

then things get bad.  then i wish i didn’t speak french.

we come up behind a group of well-to-do haitian youth making the climb on foot–maybe 15-20 of them.  one sees me and calls to the others to turn around.

hysterical laughter.

in haitian kreyole “look at that poor horse carrying that enormous white woman!!”  “she’s so fat!”  “how don’t it’s legs break??”  20 young adults pointing and laughing. “good thing she doesn’t know french!”

bam.  a lead weight to the solar plexus.  it stings.  i haven’t felt that searing heat rising from my chest to my cheeks, combined with the viscerally overwhelming desire to be utterly invisible, in *such* a long time.  i’m not ready and it catches me off guard.

the laughter dies away as we overtake the group, who are leisurely on foot.  for the duration of the hour, i have the same reaction from from every group of 20-somethings i pass.  at one point, it becomes so overwhelming that it doesn’t feel real, and that helps…i think.

the other blunder was putting  my white scarf over my head and shoulders as i felt my skin burning to a crisp in the equatorial sun.  “holy virgin mother!” they called.  i guess it’s an improvement, but the spirit feels the same.

i’ve never felt so painfully obvious in my whole life. in india, when school buses full of children passed, they all waved and squealed with delight, but this maniacal laughter is lethal, deeply informed by centuries of abuse.  to them, i am an an effigy of everything wrong—fat, white, and leisurely at the expense of others.

a lesson to me, though.  i need to let them laugh and reclaim their power, even if it’s in an ugly way.  i need to understand, like really understand, history and power differentials before doing something as simple as choosing a mode of transportation in another country.  it never occurred to me that a ramshackle pony would feel so goddamned elitist.  lesson learned.  if you’re going to do something, bother to find out how everyone there does it.

the view

regardless of my mortification, i am rewarded at the mountaintop by incredible vistas stretching from the ocean on one side to the dominican republic on the other.   the citadel is enormous–perhaps as many as ten stories tall in places.  it’s made from stone, both hewn from the mountain top and painstaking carted up from away.  much of the mudbrick and limestone has recently been fortified with concrete mortar during an unesco renovation.

three midwives

our tour guide (a wise, wise man indeed) has taken a moto up rather than the pony express, and he meets us at the top.  with a genuine pride and appreciation for the history of the mountain, and in very broken english, he gives us an amazing tour of the place.  pyramidal stacks of original cannonballs litter the grounds around the citadel.  there are both short and long-range cannon everywhere–some with the original woodwork from the 18th century.  there’s a governor’s quarters with a jail (4.5-foot ceilings) below it (i guess he liked to see his prisoners regularly), a rainwater reclamation system, a drawbridge, a tomb containing the king’s sun-in law—-or, well, his hands and one foot anyway—he met a nasty end during a magazine explosion, god love ‘im.

short rest

the view is stunning.  in every direction there are mountains beyond mountains, and the enormity of it all lends a surreal painting-like quality to it.

with the change that we have, we buy cokes for us and for our guides.  they aren’t thrilled—they seem to expect cokes, money, and cigarettes.

the ride down is harder physically than the ride up.  one’s ability to lean waaaaaaaaaaay back in a saddle is, in large part, dependent on there being decent stirrups.  being able to brace yourself with your feet and thighs means less stress on your low back.  my stirrups are too high, uneven, two different sizes, and have clearly been made by someone who had stirrups described to him over world’s longest game of telephone.  deeper and deeper they dig into my shins, rubbing off little rolls of dead skin, leaving shiny red spots and new bruises below.  i didn’t feel at all sturdy, but etwal is sure-footed the whole way down.

halfway down the mountain, emily’s saddle comes loose, sending her, feet-stuck-in-stirrups, careening toward the stone path like a lead weight.  like a diamond-heavy ring that’s too loose on a finger.  head and shoulders first.  her guides catch her just before impact.  the casualty of the accident is her horse’s belly—it’s been burned bloody by the sliding saddle rope.  emily insists that the horse is hurt and that she’ll walk, but the guides hoist her back up in the saddle saying “look here, don’t look there.”  they tighten the rope against the abraded, bloody belly.  they insist she not walk.

this whole thing is a nightmare, up one side and down the other.

at the bottom, we pay the guides our established amount of money.  they balk and ask, offended and angry, for ten times as much.  they walk away still offended, still angry.

after we dismount and see the poor ponies to their food and water, we decide to visit the palace, a plan that’s soon abandoned as we realize that the prime minister is about to speak to a large crowd that has since materialized.  the bulk of the crowd is gathered around an enormous ancient tree.  there’s singing, dancing.  there are all manner of instruments and horns made out of painted pvc pipe.  voudou priests and priestesses lead the songs.

we skip the throngs in favor of a rest in the great domed church.  i retreat inside, away from the searing sun, and thank goddess-as-mary for a safe (if incredibly fucking humbling) trip up and down the mountain.  we close our eyes and cool off under the watchful eyes of a white, smiling jesus.

citadel dress code!

on our tap-tap journey home, a young boy jumps on for a free ride through the city of milot at the base of the mountain.  we wind back home through fields, then villages, then the old orleans town of cap hatien, then back through vaudreuil and through the squealing, rusted iron gates of the center.

resting spot

horn honks.  gate opens.

we wobble out of the tap-tap with sore legs and bottoms.  my shins and spirits are purple and peeling.

we spend the afternoon in the regular fashion.  i’m thankful to be out of public view.  tucked safely into my balcony sofa.  i rot my brain playing candy crush on fiona’s phone and i teach the haitians card tricks for the rest of the afternoon.

i am spent.

to be continued…

haiti, chapitre deux

8/4/14—-clinicnado!

my eyes open bright and early, and i have no idea where in the hell i am.  two sleepless days of travel ending you up in another country will do that.  my fellow students fiona and emily are still asleep in their bunks, so i peel back the mosquito net quietly and head out into the common area for a look around.  a breakfast of egg, banana, and coffee (coffee-ish) awaits me on the table, and after a shower, i avail myself of it.  the power is back on, so the well pump is running—woohoo for flushing toilets and proper showers!  having been on a well myself for the past 4 years in maine, i’d become intimately acquainted with water tied to power.

as emily, fiona, and i sit around the table, scrub-clad and bleary-eyed, we can hear bustling in the clinic below.  mondays are initial prenatal visit days—first-time visits only—for between 30 and 50 women.  all other mommas come later in the week.  the haitian midwives are already downstairs and have started an educational session with the mommas.  i begin to catch up with the other two student midwives over breakfast remnants, and they tell me the who’s and how’s of the center.  we know the downstairs session is over when we here the lord’s prayer in kreyole incantation drifting up the stairs.  next comes singing “how great thou art” and it sends tingles up and down my spine.  and that’s our cue.  after singing comes clinic.

GO!

midwifery on a large scale has to be a well-oiled machine.  no languorous hours spend delving into hopes, dreams, fears, and joys—efficient, thorough, to-the-point care.  all women have height, weight, demographic info, and BP taken, and then they come to me, finger-poker extraordinaire, for a hemoglobin test.  my station is set up around a table, two chairs, a pile of sparingly split cotton balls and alcohol pads, and a pretty brutal box of lancets.  onlookers giggle and talk behind their hands when moms dramatically close-eyes-squeezed-tight and turn their heads away, shrieking with the finger poke.  and then they don’t giggle when it’s their turn.  funny that this part seems to bother them so.  still, i hate being designated finger-poker.  we check hemoglobin with eldon cards and dole out iron supplements where needed.  then on to hiv and syphilis testing (hooray!).

after a trip through the assembly line, moms return to their seats and wait to be called by either a midwife or a student midwife and translator for their appointments.  two appointments happen at once in each room, one midwife and one student/translator pair—helpful for supervision and for the million questions that inevitably arise.  i work my first day hand in hand with an american midwife who runs the center.  she shows me how to use my translator to obtain obstetric and medical histories and to determine (as best we can) estimated due dates.

the histories are frequently heartbreaking:

do you have any other babies?
—yes, 10.
what are their ages?
—(tears) i don’t know.

have you ever had any early babies?
—i had a baby at 7 months in the woods on the way to a hospital.  it died before i could get there.

have you been sick recently?
—i had chikungunya a couple of months ago and tyhoid too.

the questions and stories go on until 2pm when clinic is over.  i’m hit square in the heart and gut by what i didn’t know about birthing, about being a woman, in a developing country.  we eat sandwiches and then melt into puddles on the balcony sofas. i spend the afternoon feeling sick.  sick that i’m so goddamned privileged.  sick that neither choice between leaving well enough alone and waltzing my white ass down here to “help” feels like an ok thing to do.  sick that being a woman has to mean chlorox douches and rape and oppressive family structure.  sick.

so we sleep.  and sleep.  this is the afternoon routine: give all that you can, then eat and sleep.

and then we wake up for dinner.  tonight it’s a kreyole rice dish that we absolutely devour.  the power is back off again (i think i figured it up and power is on between 5-10% of any given day) and i’m introduced to the most crucial midwifery tool at the center:  the headlamp.  if you’re going to do anything after dinner, and if you’re on call for births, which each of us was 2 out of every 3 nights, you *have* to know exactly where your headlamp is.

so armed with out headlamps, phones, books, notebooks, etc.  we re-retire to the couches on the balcony and wait for two sounds:  the creaking of the iron gate, and then startling blablablablablablablabla of the generator:  the sounds of birth time.  emily is on call tonight, so she zooms downstairs to deliver a baby.  another mom comes in, but she’s in very early labor, so she is sent home to come back later.

fiona has wicked food poisoning and it down for the count, but i don’t get called to any births tonight.

8/5/14–prenatals and gas station beer

tuesdays are regular prenatal visit days.  at 7:something, before breakfast, i lean over the balcony railing and see half a dozen women waiting on the 9:00 clinic start time.  most are pregnant.  a few are postpartum with babes in arms.  the clinic’s first-come-first-served rule means early arrivals.  everyone is seen, but on a busy day, arriving at 9 can mean being seen at 4.  breakfast then with students and staff.  the language barrier means lots of “bonjous” exchanged between midwives and students, but not much else.  the midwives are a mystery to us.  we’re probably an annoyance to them.  who knows.

the lords prayer and how great thou art signal to us that it’s time to head down and get started with clinic day.  i’m on my own for the first three appointments today (in ear shot of a midwife).  it’s just me and my translator.   the translators are amazing humans—they are all young men with great english skills and fairly extensive knowledge of pregnancy and women’s health.  today, my translator helps me get my footing, helps me figure out what to say and how to say it.  how to be less touchy, feely, smiley, and more simple and straightforward.

“some of these women don’t know simple things, like telling time” he says.  “you have to reach them where they are. i will help you.”

my favorites are the young women who have a hard time containing their excitement.  i don’t see many, but it’s nice to have little opportunities to be happy for and with other people.  the hardest are the ones who shed tears when they hear the heartbeat, or the ones who pray for boys so they won’t have to raise girl children.

after some morning appointments alone, i start working with a midwife.  i feel like there are too many issues that i can’t counsel on (chikungunya, malaria, voudou practices) and i want someone with wiser words than my own close by.  i use the translator to learn from what she says to the clients.

lunch is goat with beans and corn, followed by more napping on the balcony couches.  i’ve done 11 prenatal visits before lunch and i’m wiped.  i’m chugging water as fast as i can–water loaded with emergen-c because i’m constantly pouring sweat, all through the day, and all through the night.

water against dehydration
sweet annie against malaria.
coffee against insanity.

we don’t really leave our iron-and-concrete gated haven, but it feels ok.  drifting in and out of sleep in the afternoons, gazing out at the vast mountains in the distance, we have an immense sense of space despite confinement.

afternoons are full of sleep punctuated by slamming metal doors, bus horns, two (sometimes millions of) roosters, one of whom sounds like the rooster version of a marlboro smoker, turkey gobbles, and cows.  it is so constantly loud that a quiet moment might have been suspicious.

one our our few outings happens tonight—a trip to *gasp!* the gas station!  we all pile into the center’s vehicle and the ancient armed guard with the shotgun on a rope opens the gate to let us out.  we wind through the powerless but nonetheless bustling streets of vaudreuil, gatherings on every corner, food being cooked and shared, to the familiar site of an american-esque gas station.  inside, the shelves are haphazardly stocked with both american and haitian items.  we choose our beers (prestige!) and drink them in the gas station at fast-food tables.  pouring sweat.  a beer has never tasted so good.

8/6/14—hot haiti nights, a first birth, and chicken at denny’s

there are few things as challenging to the american traveler as sleep indoors with no power, no moving air.  none.  air so thick you could drag your fingers through it like tight-packed hot pasta noodles.  you pray for a breeze to waft in your window, but then you remember that the mozzie net would stop it before it got to you.  you wish somebody would tell your body that all this sweat, in the absence of a breeze, is pointless.  slick and dripping around your neck.  slick and dripping everywhere.

i get up, exasperated, around 3am and head to the porch.  there are no mosquitoes.  only twinkling stars and a blessed cool breeze.  i fall asleep on one of the sofas.

…and am awakened in the pink of dawn by our soft-spoken nighttime translator.  there’s a momma who has just arrived.  i’m up for call because fiona is still sick and emily is exhausted from repeated early mornings of labor checks.  i throw on scrubs, run a brush though my sweat-mangled hair, and head downstairs.

“mesamiiiiiiiiii”  i hear her scream.  they all do.  in the same way an american woman might say “oh my god!”  she’s lying prone on the birthing bed with no support person.  she seems sure in herself though, not reaching out with her eyes and hands for help as i’ve seen so many mommas do at home.  we have no due date on this woman, no hiv status (later confirmed negative, but hello universal precautions!)  i feel completely inept without fiona or emily here with me.  i have no idea what procedures are here, how i’m to work with the midwife, what equipment we have where.

i’m a mess.

i’m trying to put sterile gloves on sweat-soaked hands (which goes about like you might imagine).  the midwife checks the mom (9cm with a lip) and says “pa poussey!  pa poussey!” don’t push! don’t push!  to the mom.  i’m still fiddling with the goddamned gloves while the midwife supports the incredibly fast birth of the baby’s head.  glove go on, i catch the baby and put her on mom’s belly.  the placenta comes shortly thereafter with little fanfare.

and then, after a quick breakfast and bucket bath, my day starts.

50 women are already queued up outside.  20 of them have babies.  today is prenatals, postpartums, vaccines for both mom and baby, hiv and syphilis testing for prenatal moms, *and* keeping tabs on my mom who has just delivered.  and i’m a student.  talk about balls to the wall time!

all said, we’re done by around 2pm.  striking things from the clinic day today all have to do with babies.  many of them have peeling rashes from being constantly wiped down with rubbing alcohol.  it may seem odd at first, but when you’re in a place where even the water can kill you, the idea that disinfecting your baby is a good thing is not too much of a logical stretch.  we gently advise against it, knowing that it won’t change anything.  babies are all overdressed and overheated.  even in the jungle heat they come in clothes, hats, socks, and bundles of blankets.  we reassure moms that the fevers are not illness, they’re overheating.  i see my first cases of both spina bifida and polydactyly today.  apparently, as long as supernumary fingers don’t have bones, some tight string and time is all it takes for a fix.  who knew.

back to the porch at 2 to get tonight’s call schedule.  i’m off, and emily and the still-ill fiona get to figure out who’s on.  fiona is still not well enough it seems, so emily goes to rest up for the night.

the american midwife asks me if i want to go out with her and some other folks to denny’s for chicken.  i wonder how on earth there’s a denny’s in haiti, and then am relieved to find out that it’s just a dude named denny, in cap hatien, who puts out tables and chairs at his home/storefront and sells really excellent grilled chicken.

driving out of vaudeuil and into cap haitian is quite the deja vu experience.  it looks uncannily like the old french quarter of new orleans, albeit in a rode hard and put up wet sort of way.  cap haitien, once the richest port in the western hemisphere because of sugar, slaves, and indigo is now the ramshackle product of countless rebellions and revolutions.  you can clearly see the architectural parallels between the two places, but you also get the sense that cap never really recovered from its raucous history.

on the hot and bustling nighttime street corner, denny brings us prestige beers and, hands-down, the best barbecue i’ve ever had.  on the plate with the amazing, juicy chicken is fried breadfruit, fried plantains, “picklies” (hot mayo-less coleslaw), macaroni salad, and avocado slices.  in the middle of dinner, we get a call about a mom in labor.  she’s just come to the center and is measuring big (polyhydramnios?  multiples?) so they decide to transport her to the hospital.  some of the staff members take the car back to the center to use as the ambulance, and they come back later bearing more staff members.  we have more beer and talk a lot about life in haiti and the future of the center.

all of us, fed and happy, return to the center when we can’t eat any more.  we come home to a powerless birth center on a night without so much as a breeze. (isn’t this hurricane season??)  i go back out to the deck to sleep.  chikungunya be damned—I need some fresh air!  i sleep on the porch for almost the rest of the trip.

as i’m drifting off to sleep, the midwife yells “come now!!” and emily pops up out of the bed.  i’m up for call, but there’s nothing else all night.

8/7/14–busy day and a second birth

dear patron saint of indulgent things:  please give me a daytime baby today.

birth!! (ask and ye shall receive).  a mom comes in fully dilated at the end of a busy clinic day.  she’s my first arom (artificial rupture of membranes–ie. we break their water).  it’s all the rage here at the center because it makes birth happen faster and opens beds more quickly.  i have no translator for this birth, which is hard, so i try to intuitively follow the midwives’ leads and not get in the way.  easier said than done when cultures collide.

we finish the day in the regular way, with hours of napping and notebook journal scribbling on our balcony sofas, and we make plans to visit the citadel tomorrow.  see the citadel, they said.  take a horse to the top, they said.  it will be fun, they said.  holy moly.  more on that disaster soon.

to be continued…

haiti, le premier chapitre

8/2/14—-leaving

i start, as i always do when leaving for birth, by taking off my wedding rings and laying them on the nightstand.  only this time, i’ll be gone for 18 days.  on the finger goes a cheap silver band.  it’s best for birth.  it’s best especially for travel.  stephen drives me to the airport in portland, the sting of india all too close, but this time i’m gone for weeks instead of months.  with mumbai airport and the clusterfuckery of international travel still fresh in my brain, i’m nervous as we enter the airport.  i’m sure the zillion-ounce iced coffee doesn’t help matters any.

i approach the self-check in desk (it doesn’t work at the grocery store for chrissakes–why do they put these in airports?)  “ticket not found” the machine says.  of course it isn’t.  i approach the desk for some human-type help, i’m looked up and found, and then i’m promptly told “oh, ma’am, you aren’t going to make your connecting flight because your first flight is delayed!”  the flight desk attendant and i exchange confused looks (mine is probably nudging toward rage at the prematurity with which this trip is going pear-shaped).  “oh” she says, shocked.  “you’re sleeping in ft. lauderdale and leaving the next morning???  umm i guess you will make it then.”

yep, that’s me.  professional airport sleeper.  couldn’t be worse than mumbai!

she checks my bags.  “ma’am is this all?  first class can check five bags for free.” (i’m flying first class because of a massive ticket snafu.)  holy hell–five bags???? and the rest of the pleebs have to pay for just one?  jeebus.  i’m awkwardly carrying a huge postal tube full of rolled poster boards–a strange request from the birth center in haiti–so i ask if i can check that as well.  she advises against it–it most definitely will get lost or be destroyed by a careless bag handler–it will never get there.  i love it when the filter between brain and mouth is a little lax on customer service associates.

i say goodbye to stephen, which is easier than it was for india.  though with sean and emma leaving earlier that morning, i’m acutely aware of too many goodbyes for one day.  i spend the rest of my time at pwm in a white rocker, listening to a string of announcements about my late plane.  getting ready, like an american asshole, to fly first class to the third world.

8/2/14 (later that day and night)—-ft. lauderdump

after leaving portland, our plane makes a quick stop in washington dc for refueling.  we’re told that we can leave our carry-ons on the plane but that we should take our personal belongings with us.  i make the poor choice to leave my sunglasses in the magazine pouch in front of my front-row seat, so naturally, absolutely no glasses greet me upon my return to the plane.  i’d been last to leave the plane, so some cleaning crew asshole had availed themselves of the only protection my eyes had heading to the tropics. sitting back down in my seat, furious that i’d been robbed in full sight of the cabin crew, i start to tear up.  the stewardess must think me crazy, crying over glasses, but the anger over being robbed is just the tiny tipping point to waterworks.  i’m heading away from home and husband for 18 days, hot on the heels of india, i’ve just said goodbye to friends from away, and i’m about to embark on a hugely adventurous and emotionally demanding endeavor.

once the tears start, they just wouldn’t stop.  fucking glasses.

late that night, our plane approaches ft. lauderdale.  the lights below make my view look like a surreal neon map of coastline as we swing wide over the water to approach the runway from the east.  i’ll be in ft. lauderdale for the rest of the night because there’s no money for a hotel.  let’s go, girl scout.

i walk out of the arrival tunnel to an airport construction zone (are airports ever not under construction?).  there’s a snaggle-toothed drop ceiling missing more panels than not, a grimy floor covered in the sad memory of a teal and purple floral carpet, huge chunks missing, and there are makeshift plywood walls hastily erected as far as the eye can see.  the attempt-at-walls are punctuated by hinged plywood “doors” secured by padlocks.  mumbai, anyone? at least i haven’t seen any rats! at the end of the corridor, there’s a painfully ironic sign–a time-faded beach scene with the the words “you’re already in paradise” printed below.

ever noticed how seating in airports looks like it’s designed for two main purposes?  in order of importance: 1.  preventing sleeping at all costs.  2.  holding butts

          *almost* secret sleeping spot

i can’t find any seating that’s not angrily punctuated by you-can’t-sleep-here armrests, so i tuck into a corner in the terminal and set up for the long haul.  my next flight leaves at 6:30—about 7 hours from now.  i stick my ever-present tube-of-poster boards behind me, i crawl into my cotton sleepsack (great investment!), wrap my arms through the straps of my backpack/pillow, and try to close my eyes.

my exhausted trying-to-nap-under-bright-lights is punctuated by interesting exchanges between members of the cleaning crew.  the ft. lauderdale airport seems to be staffed largely by haitians, and i’m introduced to the cajun-ish/french-ish kreyole in the form of a screaming argument between an elderly woman and young man, both custodians. i’ve never heard people argue that loudly on the clock before.  i’m honestly waiting for one to swing a punch at the other, hoping that they stay engaged enough with each other to overlook my clandestine sleeping spot.  they do.

but the security guard doesn’t.

                   no rest for the wicked

“hey there, sleeping beauty” the booming voice jolts me awake.  i’m caught.  i had figured that sleeping in the terminal was too good to be true. i have to pack up my camp-out and head back to the main entrance of the airport.  i can go back through the checkpoint at 4am, he tells me.  which means 4 hours to kill.  there are piles and piles of people in the main lobby.  there’s really nowhere to camp out.  the dunkin is. not. open.  i spend the next four hours wandering ft. lauderdump, huge first-day-of-kindergarten backpack hanging off my back, cardboard tube (by now, the bane of my existence) in hand.

i pray silently to the patron saint of airports:  dear saint who-ever-you-are (maybe jude can handle this one):  mumbai was bad, but i’m counting on a miracle here.  i know that i’m headed to the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but i would really, really appreciate no ak’s in my face, no cat-sized rats, and no logistical rediculousness in port-au-prince.  impress me.

8/3/14—-j’arrive en haiti

on the plane from ft. lauderdale to pap, i actually get 45 good solid minutes of sleep, lullaby of kreyole conversation x200 soothing my weary brain.  the only other white woman on the flight is OCD about the emergency door.  “excuse me!! excuse me!  i’m not familiar with this particular model of emergency door and i’m going to need you to go over VERY SPECIFICALLY again how to use it!! no, wait……what???  show me again!”  i doze back off.

                              airport!

pap airport is quite nice and very small.  returners home (and i) are welcomed with singers, a trumpet, a banjo, and maracas.  there are posters everywhere depicting tropical beach scenes and hibiscus flowers.  the only bend-over-a-barrel comes in the form of a “us passport fee” of $10, no credit cards accepted.  glad i brought cash.  thanks for the heads up.  after customs, i bypass a long and winding line of haitians and join the other foreigners in the ask-you-more-questions line.  i stand behind a family of painfully earnest midwestern american missionaries.  so many souls to save, dontcha know?

at the baggage claim i have a small heart attack waiting on my bag (dead last) and then head out to find my ride, goodfried.  we say hello with smiles.  “abby lucca” his sign reads.  we head out to his car, heat blasting down, wandering between a maze of jersey barriers (are they called that in haiti?) and overeager cabbies.  the airport is surrounded by a high concrete wall topped with rolled razor wire.

i’ve never been in a situation before when i can’t communicate with the people around me.  i feel like an idiot for not speaking kreyole.  i feel like an asshole for wandering around life assuming everyone speaks english (not really, but you know what i mean.)  once i realize that goodfried can understand my crappy french, we connect.  it feels good to find little conversational victories, even if they’re simple.

a short drive from the airport brings us to the bus station where i will wait for a bus to cap hatien, my destination city.  the heat inside the little painted concrete building is stifling.  there are wild bump-and-grind videos playing on an old wall-mounted tv, but the sound coming out is from different music altogether.  my tired brain tries to make sense of it.  goodfried is my sherpa here. i’m painfully dependent on him.  he shoos grinning men and sales folk.  i try very unsuccessfully not to stick out like a sore thumb.

goodfried disappears twice, once coming back with water for us, and once with a bus ticket and baggage claim number.  when he’s gone, all eyes are on me, and all sales pitches are at me. “please madam, my family”  “please madam, hungry children.”  i feel like an asshole when i say “no money.”  it’s true–i haven’t brought extra, i don’t have any.  but how shitty and cheap i must look.  men are grinning and kicking up their chins at me.  my heart is racing and i’m desperately trying to squelch the good southern girl in me who makes eye contact and smiles at strangers.  if you’d stuck coal up my ass when goodfried left, a pile of diamonds would have jingled out 20 minutes later when he returned.

once my bag is checked, we leave the scary waiting room for the comfort of an air-conditioned tickets-bought-and-paid-for waiting room.  i feel more comfortable amongst a crowd of old women.  i spend the rest of the hour watching looped commercials in kreyol, and then i board an enormous air-conditioned (seriously, 12 degrees c) bus.  goodfried doesn’t leave my side until the bus departs, and i’m grateful for that.

haiti left, dominican republic right.

i’m sitting in the front left bus seat, so i have a panoramic view of the drive.  pap is a post-apocalyptic francophone india,  mountains clear-cut entirely bald for wood to make charcoal, glinting with mazes of corrugated tin homes connected by an invisible maze of dirt paths. there aren’t many people out and about in the heat of the day.  the roads are in pretty good shape and look a lot like american roads with proper painted lines, but they’re driven more like indian roads.  lines are simply ignored and both lanes go both ways.  cars pass uncomfortably close and make their presence known through a symphony of horn-honk.  noticeably absent auto-rickshaws are replaced by tap-taps, elaborately painted pick-up trucks with hutch-covered bench seating in the back.  you get on and “tap tap” on the back window of the truck when you want off.  there are people in and on the tap-tap wherever there’s room. sometimes where there isn’t.

tap-tap

the drive out of pap is a near-perfect gradient of returning greenery.  further out of town means greener, save for the hilltops which are all bare as far as the eye can see.  roadsides are more populated as we get into city outskirts.  churchgoers all in white (haiti is 80% catholic, 20% protestant, 100% voudou), charcoal sellers are laden with impossibly large sacks of blackened wood gleaned from hilltops, and there are brightly painted corrugated tin “banks” big enough to shelter one lottery ticket salesman from the midday sun.  everywhere there are huge hand-painted advertisements.

this is what you might call a full-body-engagement bus ride.  the icy charter behemoth swerves side-to side at full speed to miss massive potholes and to navigate missing chunks of road, passing within inches of other buses, cars, and people.  my core is in max stabilizing mode as i sling front to back, side to side.  the little old lady next to me weathers the ride like nothing is happening, while i look like a horrible youtube video of a fat girl on a mechanical bull.  i guess practice makes perfect.

we spend most of the first half of our trip, once we leave the outskirts of pap, on an unbelievably beautiful coastline.  palms, sand, impossibly clear and calm seas like teal glass. crazy contrasts.  india all over again.

our 4 hour trip is punctuated by a lunch stop at a gated hotel with restaurant.  without goodfried, i’m deaf and mute.  luckily, there’s a menu that’s easy enough to read.  “sandwich?”  nods no.  “pain oeuf?” nods no.  ok, so this is a hotel restaurant that’s out of food.  i buy a gatorade.  can’t possibly starve to death in half a day, and i’m honestly too tired to be hungry.  (remember me leaving portland yesterday morning?  yeah, it feels like a million years ago to me too).

over the course of lunch, an identical white bus has pulled into the hotel.  when they round us up to leave, i get on the wrong bus but realize it immediately.  my eyes almost cross and my knees go wobbly at the thought of explaining, frustratedly in a foreign language, that i’d gotten on the wrong bus and REALLY needed to get to cap hatien. holy christ that would have been bad.

mountainside

the second half of the bus ride takes me from the southern coast over three mountain ranges to cap hatien.  a repetitive maze of mountain switchbacks, the snaking road truly accentuates what a terrible idea a full sized charter bus is for this trip.  mountains beyond mountains.  up around, down around.  whoever (car, bus, oil tanker) makes it to the blind switchback corner first lays on the horn so that oncoming traffic gives way and doesn’t bash them off the road and send them careening thousands of feet to the ground.  sometimes we’re barreling along at full speed, and sometimes we’re stuck behind a tap-tap or pick-up truck laden with as many as 17 grown men.  the bus driver is brutal, nipping at the loaded trucks’ heels, wailing on the horn until they pull over and let us by.  when they see me, they wave.

the switchbacks don’t seem to end.  i’m not sure ahead of time of the duration of the trip, so that doesn’t help.  between the mountains come beautiful and alien landscapes, roads so dusty that their surrounding cities (and residents) are coated in white powder.  water-spraying trucks try to keep the dust down, but the heat makes it a sisyphean task.  the rains start as soon as we pull into the vaudreuil bus station, and the dust turns momentarily to mud. i can’t feel my arms and legs after the subzero bus ride, and the wall of humid heat hits me in the face like a heavy pillow as i step, a little nauseated by the ride, back on to terra firma.

the birth center manager meets me at the bus station in an old land rover.  the damsel in me is harshed when he doesn’t offer to help me with my three bags (and fucking poster tube), but whatevs.  not in kansas and all.

after a short ride through vaudreuil, a cap suburb, we arrive at the birth center.  it reminds me very much of something from india–a concrete and razor-wire walled, iron-gated, and concrete-rebar-constructed building with tiled floors and a balcony.  the downstairs of the building is clinic space for classes, prenatals, and births, and the upstairs is living quarters for staff midwives, management, and students.  the other students and director are out at the beach when i arrive, so i avail myself of leftover lunch grab an all-too-familar and incredibly refreshing bucket bath, and get ready to go the hell to bed.

there’s no power today, so the still air inside the mosquito-netted bunk is sweltering, but i don’t care.  compared to the ft. lauderdale floor, this bed is heaven.  there’s prenatal clinic tomorrow, so i am eager to sleep.  there are no babies in the night, and for that, this fat girl is thankful.

to be continued….

a pal visits

_prologue_

i like to imagine that people’s souls are little sparks of flame from a common fire.  we are, essentially, the universe experiencing itself as human, simultaneously from billions and billions of vantage points–and throughout our (relatively speaking) short experiences, we often recognize pieces of that one big uniting flame in others around us.  these people are our friends.

some of them come into our lives and are fixed tightly to us but only for a short time.  this doesn’t cheapen the connection, but it can cause sadness when we grow apart and no longer recognize (or are recognized by) those we once held close.  these are the people we try so desperately to catch up with later in life, only to realize that we now have so painfully little in common that re-forging the connection becomes impossible.

others become so permanently connected to us, both physically and emotionally, that we become two flames burning together as one.  these kinds of pairings little victories for the universal fire that seeks, at its core, re-connection with the disparate parts of itself.  these are the friends that become our husbands, our wives, our life-partners, who experience at our sides what it means to be human, who share is our every joy and sorrow, and who finish our sentences and read our thoughts.

and then there are those with whom deep bonds are forged, and although life pulls you in opposite directions, each reunion is a re-cognition of connection.  each time you see these friends, it as if no time has passed at all, though months, years, or decades separate you.  i have a few of these friends, many of whom i go years and years without seeing, and each time we meet up, it’s a kind of magic.  this blog is a journal one of many re-connections with one of those pals.

March, 2004, University of Hull

***************************************

7/25/14–guests arrive

when i went to school in england a decade ago, i met some genuinely fantastic people.  my auckland ave house was home to 5 with an extended family of perhaps 25, and what a motley crew we were–4 continents and at least 10 languages mashed together into a beautiful mix.  i’ve lost touch with many of those who crossed my path at that freezing victorian house in hull, but i’ve remained connected to two of them over the years.  one, steve, i don’t get to see nearly as often as i’d like despite the fact that he immigrated to the wilds of montana, but my other pal sean and i have managed to see each other about every other year since i left.  i returned to england with my sister the year after i left school there, he came to america later that year for a couple of weeks, he and his brother came back two years later, stephen and i went over to england together a couple of years after that, and this summer, after 3 years apart sean and his lovely girlfriend (now fiancee!) emma came to visit.

note:  though the first two trips were redeemed by stays in new orleans and this last by new york, boston, and montreal, sean’s claim to travel fame is that he is perhaps the only person who ever came to america expressly to visit alabama and maine for fun/on purpose.

sean and emma arrived in naples after a week or so in new york and boston (about as big of a city/country contrast as one could hope to have) and, like you do in america, we immediately went out for fish and chips.  food at bray’s brewpub was immediately followed by beers at home–thrilling for me both because this was my first stint off-call since march and because i could rib the hell out of sean for *requesting* bud light despite all of maine’s fine beverage options.  i guess it’s a fancy import when you’re not from here?

it was great to get started with our catch-up.  despite all of the growing up both he and i have done since 2004, not that much has changed…not really.

7/26/14–the lane-duigan’s

saturday saw a trip to the laundro (oh for the days of having a washer and dryer!), but that did afford us the opportunity to check out the black horse tavern next door.  (now that i think of it, england was the last place i’d sassed it up while waiting on clothes to dry–how appropriate).  for anyone in the bridgton area, i’d highly recommend the rosemary-pear-infused vodka with water and a slice of lime.

               lake beauty

after the laundro (which included sean and emma drying clothes in the sun on their rental car), we headed over to the lane-duigan’s house in bridgton for a day and night of merriment.  the first thing that we did was stake out a semi-secret swimming spot on long lake.  all of us piled into the back of shane’s pick-up (childhood memories, anyone?) and headed down the road to the sandy long lake shore. my latest maine rude awakening had been that indeed one cannot find and purchase a bathing suit in july–even at walmart–so i went for a dunk in a sassy red sundress.  the summer camp that also used the swimming spot wasn’t there that day, but their massive inflatable water slide was!

after our swim, we went back to the l-d’s house for some bbq (filets, steak tips, chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, soooooooo muuuuuuuch meeeeeeeeeat) and a laughing-til-you-choke game of cards against humanity (sidenote:  this is a game everyone should own, unless you’ve got a prudish sense of decency.)  the evening also included plenty of drinking–beer, wine, and bitch drinks were the name of the game until tyler brought out the tequila. in the interest of keeping nudity and fist-fights to a minimum (unless of course, it’s that kind of night), it’s always wise to enjoy tequila in moderation–which is hard to do when the person wielding the bottle is a liberal shot-dealer like tyler.  meagan and emma were good sports about the first shot or two, but after that, some sleight of hand subbed bud for booze and saved each of them several shots.  the whole table was in stitches over emma’s incredibly realistic tequila face and about the fact that meagan didn’t remember to make a face until about 10 seconds after her faux shot.

7/27/14–tour of portland

sunday was our tour of portland with mom and randi, and we decided to take a duckboat tour (QUACKQUACK!).  if you’ve been to portland, you may have seen these wacky amphibious creatures toodling around town–they have a bus top and a boat bottom with wheels and are manned by a tour guide who quacks loudly at passersby while regaling tourists and locals alike with the hidden histories of portland maine.  chewing gum was invented here, the city burned three times, and inexplicably, red hot dogs are like a religion to mainahs (*wretch*).  the city part of the tour was great, but the water part was a bit of a let down. the boat moved so slowly that i think we were actually passed by canoes (and floating seagulls).

after the duckboat (QUACKQUACK!) we went to ri ra’s irish pub for some brunch.  the torrential (like alabama hard, y’all) rain made for some lovely dock views out the window, but the rain was less than lovely when it soaked me to the bone on my way back to the car.  i mean, how often do you ever really need an umbrella in maine? apparently today.

7/28/14–uhg, work.

because there’s no rest (or vacation, apparently) for the wicked, i had to go in to work on monday to tie up loose ends around the birth house, to prep my administrative director’s report for ame, and squeeze out my last few crucial vacation dollahs.  after work, i had plans to head to walmart (an annoying utilitarian necessity for americans, and a fantastically exciting foray into one-stop shopping for brits, it turns out) but oddly familiar yellow skies prefaced a tornado warning in windham (really? torrential rain and now tornadoes?  in maine?) so i settled for heading back to the roost for some relaxing, catching up, and the swilling of mass quantities of guinness.  later that night, as high winds and rain battered windows yet again, we ate our fill at damned-near the only mexican restaurant in maine (unless, of course, you count pedro o’hara’s, the inexplicably irish mexican restaurant in lewiston).

7/29/14–the people of walmart/minigolf tradition

               a win for the girls’ team

tuesday was a bit of utilitarian day–stephen washed clothes, and sean, emma and i went to the unscathed-by-non-event-tornado walmart.  i had supplies left to buy for my haiti trip (p.s.–don’t ever plan a vacation that ends the day before you leave for a third world country) and sean and emma marveled at both the people of walmart and the shear heft of economy-sized cheetos bags.

after chores were handled, we decided on a whim to go for a game of mini golf.  little did we know a tradition was being born.  a game in windham was followed by lunch at bray’s, ice cream at the causeway on long lake, and a second game of mini golf in naples.  in a neck-and-neck battle of the sexes, the girls took the day all-around.

7/30/14–mount washington

at the foot of the mountain

one downside to always being on call is the fact that, despite all of the splendor and beauty of new england, i’ve seen very little of what’s around me.  one of the things about this visit that i was looking most forward to was the trip up mount washington.  after a french toast breakfast (maple syrup–another maine must-have checked off the brit to-do list!), we all piled into the little rental car (not my brakes, no sir) and headed to the while mountains .

mount washington, the tallest peak in the presidential range of white mountains, is a familiar sight to naples residents who almost daily, except for when it’s cloudy, see it’s oft-snowcapped peak in the distance over the expanse of long lake. this would be the very first time that i’d actually been to the mountain, and i was thrilled.  (i was also thrilled that it was a rental, not my car, that would be burning its brakes to a crisp in the 6000 ft descent on the way back down the mountain.)

                       view from the top

at the foot of the mountain, we were given a listen-as-you-drive cd that told the harrowing story of the creation of the mountain auto road to the peak of washington. the eerily narrow and un-railed 8 miles of switchbacks first opened in the 1860s after having been cleared by hand and horse (and a fuck-load of ballsy determination).  stephen and i were both thankful that sean had decided to drive, especially as the paved road transitioned to dirt, with blind turns and barely enough girth for two cars to pass.

as we exited the tree-line towards the top of washington, we found ourselves in a very alien-looking alpine wilderness where miniature, wind-shaped trees and rare flora clung to jagged rock.  it felt like another world there above the clouds.

                i think we could see naples

at the top of the mountain, we were met by the far more adventurous who had decided to hike the mountain to the top.  while the crumbling shale near the peak didn’t boast a proper trail, a dotted line of cairns led from the car park where we stopped down into the cloudy treeline.  one day perhaps, but today, my knees say no way.

on the top of mount washington, there’s a weather observatory–fitting as the mountain boasts the worst weather in the world.  since it was the height of summer, the weather was cool and breezy, but the harshness of the winter was insinuated by the yards of thick iron chain that held down older buidlings like the gift shop.  crazy–i guess with 231 mph winds, chaining a building down is a wise idea.

                                                                                                     mountain art

after enjoying the vistas, stretching all the way from mainland northern new hampshire to the atlantic ocean, we took the trip back down the mountain.  despite gearing down, you have to ride your brakes so hard that there are cooling stations every couple hundred yards, and the air is full of the smell of burning rubber.  i wondered what poor schmuck necessitated the sign that read “do not pour water on your brakes, as they may shatter.”  that would be a long walk down.

                                                                                lovely and freezing

after our descent, we resumed the trip north-west toward the us/canada line.  my first trip to canada was facilitated by a very inquisitive border guard who wanted to know all the who, what, when, why of our trip to canadia.  he laughed at us in disbelief when we told him we were headed to montreal because we heard they had indoor blacklight minigolf. (clearly he didn’t know how badly the boys needed to redeem themselves with a high-stakes win.)  i was momentarily terrified they would search the car and find the vials of expired pitocin that i’d forgotten to take out of my purse.  not licensed to carry it, and it would look quite suspect to someone who didn’t know anything about birth meds.  i wonder if anyone else has ever considered offloading outdated anti-hemorrhagics out the car window at the canadian border before…

after letting the madge (our magellan gps) get us waaaaay lost in montreal, we finally found our hotel (which shall remain nameless since we had to put so much effort the whole stay into NOT looking like 4 people staying in a 2-person room).  it was in a frou-frou part of town and did not disappoint.  after entering separately, dropping off bags, and leaving separately (being cheap is so much trouble!) we met up outside and set off on foot to explore montreal as evening fell.

montreal from our hotel roof

montreal is truly a striking place.  amazing architecture, incredible diversity (which is a welcome change when coming from maine), impeccably clean streets, and a symphony of languages.  the avenues were lined with designer boutiques and cafes, with more questionable XXX offerings off the side roads in red-light pockets.

after we’d explored for a bit, we stopped at a place called les 3 brasseurs…because beer.   we had fries and flights.  the flights were 7 beers arranged from light and crisp to dark and hearty, and they took us from bright and bubbly to happy and sleepy.  if i closed my eyes, we could be back in hull–many of our old songs played on the stereo, and the smell of beer and fries combined with the big-screen soccer to give me a major england flashback. noisier than the gardener’s arms, but all the charm.

after a very long walk home, we all crashed into bed.  later that night, i learned an amazingly wicked hotel-room game.  it’s called “let’s set the alarm clock to midnight, set it to radio, and turn it all the way up so we can scare the bejeezus out of whoever stays here next.”  well-played, previous hotel guest.  well-played.

7/31/14–montreal and honey booboo

*a note of warning:  if you ever stay at a hotel and notice that the shower head brand is “tingle king,” please understand that by “tingle,” they really mean “exfoliate” and that the water will blast out so hard that it will create curtain-rippling *wind* in the bathroom.  i shit you not.

             the blessed saint somebody

with our shiny new skin, we all set out for breakfast and sight-seeing the next morning.  we were basically in culinary mecca, but tight budgets meant tim horton’s for breakfast (hey, it’s canadian at least!).  after a bite, we headed for notre dame basilica.  the church had an impressive exterior, but the interior was so breathtaking that you could imagine people being inspired to believe in god just by looking up.  we wandered through the church, threading through throngs of tourists, supplicants, photographers, devotees, and the like.  i stopped at a shrine to the virgin and child and lit a candle for the moms about to be in my care.  i’m not a catholic, but i am certainly a devotee of the goddess-in-all-her-forms.

                              winders

when we left the church, we wandered through town past government buildings, houses of ill-repute and nuru massage parlors (google that, if you’re daring.  not. safe. for. work.) to the subway station and then caught the train across town to our ultimate goal: indoor blacklight mini-golf.

for emma and i, adding another round of mini-golf was a risky endeavor.  since we’d won the first two, we had a chance either to drive our win into the ground or share our crown with the boys.  aided in part by the fact that, after hitting 12 tries at one of the psychedelic outer space-themed holes i just had to give up, and mostly because stephen putted his best game of the week, emma and i did lose to the boys.  still, 2 outta 3 ain’t bad.

blacklight minigolf!

on our way home, we tried to go to the museum of art, but because canadians don’t know how to price museums (what do you mean $40 to look at art??) we had to pass it by.

dinner was faaaaaantastic indian food at star of india, which we almost didn’t find.  i realized there how much i miss eating with my hands, and what normally would have seemed like hovering by the waiter was modulated by my new-found understanding of waiters at *actual* indian restaurants.  given my recent time in kerala, i realised how much restraint the guy was exercising even though he refilled out water glasses perhaps 15 times.  madam.  madam.  madam….

after dinner, we changed into pajamas, got into bed, and drifted into the can’t-look-away-horror that is a “here comes honey boo boo” marathon.  i’d never actually seen the show before.  dear god.  dear god.

8/1/14–home via ben and jerry’s

we played the sneak out game again when it was time to leave the hotel, swooping in to pick sean and emma up from the curb after check-out.  on the way home, we altered our route to travel through the great “north country” of vermont, which turned out to be a vast and sparsely populated expanse of farmland where the only radio options were country music and rambling preachers who warbled in emphatic tones about topics like “the nnnnnnature of womannnnn.”

ice cream wonderfulness

but it was all worth it when we reached our next destination:  the ben and jerry’s factory.  we took a tour, ate WAY too much ice cream (cherry garcia for me), wandered through the flavor graveyard filled with headstones for failed flavors like vermonty python and tuskeegee chunk (one can only wonder), and then headed for home.

our new hampshire route took us through crawford notch, truly one of the most beautiful places on earth.  we missed most of the view this go-around though, as we spent the duration trying to tell a fellow driver that they had a flat tire.  funny how hard it is to communicate via note-pressed-against-window.

                             lobster boy

after yet another trip to the laundro (this time because i was about to leave on another trip) we went for the crowning glory of any maine experience–lobstah dinnah.  in all the time i’ve been in maine, though i’ve had plenty of lobster, i’d yet to have *a* lobster, red, steaming, whole hog.  this was a first.  we went to a place right down the street called the lobster pound.  the building was an odd, incredibly slanted and off-kilter contraption that felt something like the resulting offspring of a union between summer camp and a wooden boat.  sean and i were the brave takers.  whole lobsters.  we’d prepped first by watching youtube videos on how on earth you actually eat a lobster, which helped a little.  with great bravery and a little trepidation, we cracked the red shells, sending a flood of lobstah juice all over the table and our other food.  then we fished around with tiny red forks for the amazingly delicious meat (and when i say meat, i really mean drawn-butter-sponge).  blueberry pie served as a nice ending to probably the maine-est dinner that ever was et.

8/2/14–goodbyes and 2 departures

let me preface this day by saying that i’ve learned my lesson.  never again will i EVER plan to leave for a third-world country on the same day as my out-of-country company leaves. too. much.

because i’d not finished packing for haiti, saturday morning saw me up with the sun treating clothes with mosquito-repellant, packing bags, and obsessing over what i’d forgotten to get.  i realized quickly that one of my major travel maxims (“if i forget it, no sweat–i can buy it!”) didn’t apply here in a big way, so i was a little neurotic about the whole packing process.  if i might even think about needing it in the next three weeks, i had to have it with me.

after i had packed, it was time to say goodbye to emma and sean, who were setting off that morning for new york and their flights home.  after all of these years, goodbyes are still hard, but i do think they get a little easier each time.  leaving steve and sean that first time in hull was devastating.  with connections so incredible but distances so vast, you really never know at first if someone will stay a part of your life or not.  we’ve all stood the test of time in some pretty incredible ways though, so there is a good deal of comfort in knowing that you’re connected even when apart.  it’s made especially easy for us because we’re so good at making and keeping plans.  next plan:  scotland in 2016 🙂

*****

this was just the start to my day, but the rest is really another story entirely.  my next few blogs will pick up where i left off and will take you through my wild and woolly time in haiti!

to be continued…