This is a post from last years trip. Very good thoughts and these feelings will be felt and shared again this year.
Where do I start? This has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I think I can speak for every single person in our group when I say that we came back as different people than we were when we left.
Being in Haiti is not something you can just explain to anyone. You can’t fully understand Haiti until you smell it, see the beauty, feel the love, enjoy the happiness, and embrace the essence of Haiti.
As a new nurse, this trip was a chance to share what I have to offer. To share my knowledge and skills with nursing students in another part of the world. To share my ability to assess and help treat with children and adults who don’t always receive the medical care they need. To share my love and passion for what I do. And to share who I am with people that embrace it as much as I embrace them, their passion, their happiness, their culture, and their world.
It has been an exciting journey and a new adventure every day. It’s sometimes difficult to communicate with students that don’t understand you, but we loved it, and they soaked up everything we said. The heat of course was different from Wisconsin weather, but we adapted, and learned to work with it. The food was “interesting” sometimes, but definitely worth trying. Even the rain was taken in with praise. There’s not a thing I would change; except maybe learning more Creole, but the children seemed to enjoy teaching us and laughing at us “trying” to say it back, which hardly ever sounded the same.
We ended each day with what we called “happies and crappies,” so as our trip comes to an end, I’ll end with my happies and crappies.
Happy: changing the lives of the children, nursing students, people of Haiti, and those I traveled with; and being changed by the children, students, people of Haiti, and those I traveled with.
Crappy: coming home to homework, and a suitcase full of dirty laundry.