Next Gen

Tania is gone out early to try find avocado to go with breakfast and plaintains (a cooking banana, not sweet). She returns without those ingredients but everything else including corn tostados. Sony takes the sweet bananas and some of the eggs to add a Haitian twist to this mornings repast. Ailish is making scrambled eggs and heating the refried beans. Hold the coriander/cilantro, many of the team and especially the Danish students don't like it. Once ready we fit out the breakfast bar for a help yourself approach. Unfortunately the coffee is a fail so Umberto the hotel owner helps out with a back up supply. Another nice meal shared together and as Jair points out the start of another perfect day lady!. We clean up the kitchen, the other hotel guests can also use this facility. We are a string of volunteers heading up the road in our twos and threes. We dot the road in the bright morning sunshine. Just about this time of the morning is warm but not too hot although the bad ass hill puts the internal temperature up.

The clinic courtyard looks the busiest of any day this week. After the conversation last night we organize the consultation space for the post-op patients in a better form. It is Amalie and Simon's turn this morning and Cheryl supervises their handling of the post-op process. She and Eric attending to each stage. They are here to volunteer and also to take opportunities to learn. These patients did not sign up for a trial; they are getting the double treatment first from the doctor and are then happy to let the students examine the eye condition post operation.

The first five post-ops are barely finished when the next three arrive. They wait around for each other, a shared experience, a chance to meet someone else who like them is getting their independence back. Their gratitude is amazing and casts a lovely mood over the clinic and all of the waiting patients. A memory of the week is one couple heading out of clinic, hand in hand. She with a post-op bandage on her right eye; he with a post-op bandage on his left eye. A split second snapshot in the sunshine of the type of a jokes a couple together for over 60 years might make about being able to see each other again; children and grandchildren's faces now clear and all the attendant daily activities they can do again. Smiles of joy.

With light hearts we all go back to our daily routines. The numbers attending are higher today and Cheryl assures Anne we will try to see everyone. We have all shapes and sizes and the surgical team screen for any potential cataracts. Antonio is in his seventies and is brought in by a friend. He has no sight to speak of with what seems to be cataract. He has around 14 languages from his days as a tour guide and if he got his sight back, although his mobility no longer allows him to be a guide he would maybe find something to do. Something that would help supplement his pension which is barely enough to exist in his older years. He speaks Spanish of course; some Mayan dialect; fluent French; English; and has enough of German; Japanese and other languages to manage a tour. Ailish teaches him a bit of Irish and he endears himself to the team with his gentle manner as he moves through the exams. Eric refers him to surgery. As the morning wears on he is still sitting outside the room without the telltale sign of an eye bandage. Eventually we see him leaving and we go to meet him. Yes he has cataracts but with a rare complication that requires laser and surgery; something we cannot offer. The operation will cost him somewhere between $750 and $1000. It is at times like this we wish we had a surgical fund to pay for special cases.

More patients are waiting and work continues. There is an invasion of howler monkeys as they congregate in the trees over the clinic rooms. The noise goes on for a half hour before the family of monkeys move off. The students mention the morning is going okay, they've only had 3 patients to be gently reminded that it is not even lunchtime and they have helped restore sight for 3 people and all that means. Context; perspective. Not every day can be an 8 patient but it doesn't mean a 5 patient day cannot in itself still be perfect.

Lunchtime is welcome and the meal in the co-operative is as good as usual. There is lots of chatter and banter and each day it seems the table expands to fit one or two more who join our merry band. The surgical team look to be finished early again today with 5 patients on the list. The optometry clinic will go right to the wire and around mid afternoon we have to tell Londi not to take any more patients. We are over the 70 mark along with the post-op work. There's a limit to what even the most motivated can manage in a day. Tania is to go to Flores so Amalie; Alex; Helena and Simon will go with her for some shopping and a meal. The rest of us are part of the Haiti team and its in some ways a natural split of the team. We stop for a cold beer on the way home. There are some tears as we talk about a Haitian friend we lost unexpectedly in 2024. The ties that bind this group run very deep.

A quick change at the hotel and we gather again to go to a local restaurant bar for dinner. It is easy, a group that know each other for years. We check in with the 'kids' every now and again, the next generation of doctors in the making. It is a relaxed evening back at the hotel on the verandah. Tania and the students are back in time for a 'close to curfew' bedtime.