"Go Commando" Race!!

Okay peoples--the morning of June 25th saw a certain WWV employee careening over hay bales, getting down severely steep hills w/o incident, kangarooing over fire, wading through the end of a lake, and going down a huge water chute thing that flung people into a wet, muddy, sandy area.

Words to describe it?

IT WAS A BLAST!!!!!!!  

Pictures will follow later, unless you want to like the Go Commando race page on Facebook, then you can see a bunch of pics right there.  =)  For now, the official picture-takers of the event (Marathonfoto), are still sifting through thousands of pics, getting the sorted and put in the right place.  Have been able to locate a few of me...but you'll just have to wait for a few weeks.  

If you have never done an adventure race, please consider doing so!  You do not have to be in spectacular shape--the Go Commando was a race for all people.  There was a fire pit, water chute slide, mud pit, two water pits, a maze thing on the side of a hill, a hay bale mountain, a lake to wad through, cargo net crawl, etc.  

So. Much. Fun!!!

So much fun, in fact, that I went through the course three times!  I mean, how often do you get the chance to go down a water chute while people are laughing at the expression on your face (okay, so maybe it got me down the hill just a smidge faster than expected...lol).  How often do you get to duck over those giant spools found in fields and such??  

Add to the atmosphere free hotdogs, and awesome band, and the opportunity to meet new people and have a blast doing so--'twas great.  Definitely an even to repeat!  =)

On my third time around the track (don't worry, I asked several people if I could go multiple times--given that this was not a chip timed event, no one minded), a volunteer asked if I was repeating the track for fitness or because I was training for something else.  Answer?  Yes.  Fitness is wonderful, but there are four more races on the horizon.

Why?

Because I went to Haiti in January and had my heart stolen by cute kids.  Cute kids right now who are worried about drinking their water because they know there are germs that might make them sick.  : (  

ALL of my running this summer is dedicated to those kids.  They thirst so I run.  They are worried about clean water, so I run.  

So what do running and kids worrying about water in Haiti have to do with each other?  Well--with supporter help, WWV can buy water systems that provide clean water to thousands of people per day!!!  Pretty neat, huh?  WWV, however, cannot grow money on trees--we depend on supporter help to bring these water systems into Haiti.  That's where you come in.

Go to the donation page of our website by clicking HERE, and either sponsor my running on the appropriate line, or put money towards water systems.  People are getting sick now.  People are dying now.  People need water NOW.  And so I run.

Oh, c'mon--what are you waiting for??

  

Running for water

So I run. A lot. Blame a good friend of mine from college--he got me hooked on running last summer and now I'm addicted. Six races total this summer (if you know of a good one in the Twin Cities area, let me know...especially if it is an adventure race):

1. May 9th - Hoofin' It For Haiti 5K 
2. June 25th - Go Commando 5K (obstacle race)
3. July 23rd - Warrior Dash 5K (obstacle race--World Wide Village is sponsoring this race, for information on how to volunteer and help us raise $1,000, email me at nromness@worldwidevillage.org)
4. August 21st - Minneapolis 13.1 (half marathon)
5. August 27th - Rugged Maniac 5K (obstacle race)
6. October 2 - Twin Cities Marathon

Obstacle races are a blast--challenging in a different way than just running on a paved course. When I started running last year, my dear brother--Daniel--asked me "Why? A bear isn't chasing you and neither am I, so why would you do that?"

I run because it helps overall health (sleeping, immune system, etc), because God gave me working legs, because this chica is a tad highstrung and it is a way to get energy out. But I mainly run because it is a way to raise money.

As it says all over this blog, I work for World Wide Village, an organization that works towards the transformation of impoverished communities. Right now our geographical focus is in Haiti, and the stories about the water situation down there right now are absolutely heart breaking.

Imagine having to decide between not drinking and dying of dehydration, or drinking and potentially contracting and dying of cholera. This is the situation many Haitian people are in as I type this post. It is rainy season again in that beautiful country. Soil integrity has been compromised by years of bad agricultural practices and now that soil is washing down the sides of hills, taking with it peoples' homes and lives. Cholera is on the rise again as flooding and poor sanitation contaminates whatever sources of water might be available.

Cholera is a waterborne bacteria that draws water out of one's cells faster than the body can replenish hydration. It is lethal, particularly as rampant malnutrition robs the body's immune system of the ability to wage war against this very nasty bacteria. Access to clean water is critical to prevent the spread of cholera and combat current infections. Sadly, many people in Haiti do not have access to this clean water.

In the U.S., we worry about trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in our water that may impact our mood over long periods of time. In Haiti, they worry that their water might kill them.

World Wide Village is able to bring water purification systems into Haiti that can purify enough water for hundreds of people daily. It does this by producing a substance called chloride--a capful of which when placed in the grubbiest water you can imagine kills all bacteria and makes the water completely safe to drink. Seriously--Randy Mortensen, President of WWV, put some chloride produced by this system in water taken from a nearby ditch and drank it and was perfectly fine.

Here is the crux of this post--people are dying from a disease that is easily prevented, we just need to get water systems into Haiti. For that, we need to raise the funds to buy the systems. For that, I am running.

This summer it is my goal to run/spin (stationary bike cycling thing at the gym) 400 miles between June 1 and the day of the Twin Cities Marathon (October 2--by the way, the miles of the marathon totally count towards that goal). Yeah yeah yeah, that's a big goal, but it is to combat a bigger problem. A friend of mine invited me to a biking challenge of similar length during the summer months, but no bike is in this lady's possession. I do have two working legs, however, and a passion to raise money to get water systems into Haiti.

I am looking for sponsors to come along side my running by sponsoring miles. Do you want to sponsor me for a particular race, or for the entire distance? Do you want to sponsor me at 10 or 100 cents per mile (or even at 1,000 cents per mile...that'd be pretty sweet too)? Each water system costs $500 (125 cents per mile). Only $500 is necessary to guarantee clean water to hundreds of people per day! Of course you can always go to the "Donate Now" page of the WWV website by clicking HERE and donate for a water system, that would be amazing as well!

People are dying now. We need more water systems in Haiti now. Won't you help? Email me at nromness@worldwidevillage.org for more info.

Imagine if this were your source of water. The water systems that we

can bring in to Haiti, with your help, can make this water drinkable!!

Lap-Tap

If anyone knows a good way to set down a starving child who just wants hugs, let me know. Like the earlier post says, we went into the mountain village of Cazale today. A bunch of us rode in a tap-tap that belongs to Peter, though it was not nearly as crowded as many that you see going about Port au Prince all the time. Definitely more than one more person would have fit (hint hint...you should come down here!). Patrick is an amazing driver--I certainly could not have gotten the tap-tap up the side of that mountain! When it rained awhile back, they (Randy, Pat, and Peter) very nearly did not make it all the way up because dusty mountain roads and rain do not get along well--kind of gets slicker than a greased pig. Randy said they do not send teams up there when it has been raining for that very reason. Pat noted the possibility existed that we would have to get out of the tap-tap if it started having difficulty. Well, that didn't happen and approximately an hour and a half and lots of dust and bumps later (Charis and I both clocked our heads on rails in the roof and got good brain dusters), we arrived at the Real Hope for Haiti rescue center. Lori and Letia--the people who run the center--are both American women who might as well be Haitian--they have lived here for a number of years, have Haitian husbands and children, and have a heart here. Anyways, Lori gave us a tour of the place and talked about many things:

· The cracks in the walls of the clinic are from the earthquake and have not been totally plastered over yet—the structure itself is safe and sound.

· An organization that provides water systems to rural communities donated a large water purification system to the clinic, and it can produce 10,000 gallons of purified water per day (while a blessing to the clinic, it is massive and non-portable).

· People line up to get into the clinic and then they wait in an area where people talk about the Gospel with them while they wait. Sometimes people will sleep outside the gate so they do not lose their place in line.

· They have seen 160,000+ unique individuals—people come for miles around to visit this clinic as the people who run it are becoming more and more trusted in the community.

· The number of people in the clinic fluctuates on a daily basis and with local crises, just like clinics in the U.S., but here they fluctuate with differing numbers of cholera and malnutrition patients. STD and prenatal care are also in high demand. Lori would like to train Haitian women as midwives and send them into some of these remote villages, but the logistics on that are just not quite working.

· They see people who have cholera, malaria, malnutrition, tetanus, dehydration, colds, flus, broken bones (one woman who came in had a metal and plastic contraption sticking out of her arm that was holding broken bones stable so they could heal), etc.

We walked all over the clinic and looked at basically everything. There is a women’s health room where they have private discussions with women regarding sexual and reproductive issues. They have a pharmacy area and receive about 60% of their medications from a group of Mennonites in the States. This is in addition to a massive water treatment system, exam rooms, recovery areas, etc. As we were walking around, a group of Haitian men were applying spackling to a wall. We saw a little girl who has cholera, another little girl who is “simply” malnourished, and another young girl whose entire body is wrapped in bandages because her clothes caught fire while she was trying to light an oil lamp--thirty to forty percent of her body is covered in third degree burns.

After visiting the rescue center, the team split up and went different places. Ben and Candice were called over to do medical work with people in the cholera house that was just up the hill. Ali and I sat with the children for just a little while longer—they were awfully hard to leave (described in a minute). Mariley, Corben, Carter, Charis, and Sharon worked on putting together hygiene packets to hand out to people (a key to preventing the spread of cholera is proper hygiene practices—even if it is just washing hands). Then Ali, Dessy, Cindy, and I went into the back pharmacy area with Pat and Sharon, who were packaging pills. Dessy and I put together packets of chlorine (so concentrated that it was granulated) in varying weights depending on what the packets were designated for decontaminating (varying chlorine concentrations are used for various things—you would not drink water treated with a chlorine solution that is strong enough to decontaminate the medical equipment). I was working with a bucket that was basically slop because it had gotten wet via a crack in the bottom of the bucket—it wasn’t supposed to get wet. Chlorine is chlorine though, so it will still work. Dessy and I probably had the cleanest hands of the place given that we were working directly with the chlorine! J My poor paws were feeling a little raw after while from handling the raw chlorine, but I can’t complain—every patient there is suffering from much, much worse.

The rescue center is a place where people bring children who are malnourished, ill, or simply not wanted (a young girl was simply left at the gate recently, and this was not the first time this has happened). Medika Mamba (Haitian for “medical peanut butter”) is a highly fortified peanut butter substance that was formulated by a group here in the States. The peanuts are grown in Haiti, thereby supporting local farmers. The peanuts are ground up and mixed with vitamins and other physical fortifications and then fed to the children. The kids love it and it is extremely good for them (win win all around). Children have literally been brought back from the brink of death with this mamba.

Upon entering the rescue center, immediately to the left you can see a long table with lots of little kid chairs in it—this is where they seat kids during meal time. We had not even made it all of the way into the rescue center before we were mobbed by lots of little children who wanted to be picked up. They love being held! Cindy had one little boy who would not let go of her legs--I picked him up as she was already holding another child. Turns out he is five years old and just started walking recently. On those scrawny little legs he has, I’m surprised he was walking at all. People, you do not understand hunger until you have seen these children. Ten-year-olds who look like they are three simply because they have not had enough food to eat during their short lives. A six-year-old who I thought was only two for the same reason. They are so unbelievably little for their age! We walked into the area where the children were and were immediately completely overwhelmed with little ones looking for some attention. I think lifted arms must be the universal “pick me up” sign. I already had one little boy in my arms, but wanted to be right with the kids and so I sat down on the floor. Within a few minutes, there were four children in my lap and one behind me playing peek-a-boo behind my shoulders. I kind of felt like a lap tap-tap—how many kids could fit in my lap? One more.

I just sat with the kids for awhile. Anyone who knows me at all knows that kids and their welfare are my heart and the call on my life. To protect my heart, I didn’t even go into the back room with other people where the sickest of the sickest children were. Maybe that made me a bit of a coward, but my heart would not have survived…not just yet. And besides, the kids in the room where I was needed love too. At one point the staff had the children singing in Creole and I recognized the song. “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. I only recognized one word, “blanc” or “white”. To hear these children, to whom life has dealt an unbelievably unfair hand, singing about the love of Jesus Christ—then and there they officially stole my heart away. I may go back to the United States to live out my life, but a piece of my heart will always remain with those singing children.

One of the children sitting in my lap just looked sad and would start crying instantly if something did not go his way. Another was all smiles and giggled a lot. Another just stared at me. Eventually it dawned that he was not staring at me, he was staring at my glasses—he kept trying to take them off. I guess that makes sense, the only other person I saw wearing glasses was another American. Several kids came up behind me and kept playing with my hair, which I had left down. Little fingers rearranged the tiny clips holding my top pony in place, and at one point I was using my hair as a shield to play peek-a-boo with one of the kiddos (okay, so super long hair has its advantages).

It was obvious that some of these kids were just not feeling well. Rather than being smiley, trundly little kids, they just laid where they were and stared around with sad little faces. They have seen too much, been through too much for how young they are. I saw several old little people, if that makes sense. At the same time, however, these kids are the future of Haiti. Though they have seen a lot, you can just tell in several of them that they are going to grab life by the tail and make it work. “Degaje” – “make it work”.

When it came time for me to go into the backroom and help out, I had to wiggle my way out of this pile of kids. They did not want to let me go, they did not want to let any of us go—when we tried to set a child down, we were met with resistance in the form of an arched back that would not let you set them down without fear of breaking their neck or arms, hands, and legs clinging to our clothing. All they want and need for now is love and food. Thank the Lord that they receive both in that place.

Someone just asked me, as I sit typing this post in the guesthouse back in Port au Prince, if I was okay because apparently I seem “off”. The kids hurt. Seeing legs barely bigger around than my thumb hurt. Seeing utter despair in the eyes of several children too young to remember these years hurt. At the same time, I saw hope in their eyes and in the eyes of those caring for the children. I saw a strength that many woosified Americans can only dream of. There may be hunger, but there is also a future for this great nation. As long as the people are empowered to do for themselves, there is a bright future ahead of this people.

Side note before I forget: Lori also showed us a birthing kit they put together for women to take home with them. In the States, we picture this grand elaborate thing that would fill a backpack at least. In Haiti, this birthing kit fills a sandwich bag and contains string to tie off the umbilical cord, a clean razor to cut the cord (many women and babies were contracting and dying of tetanus from using dirty can lids and shards of glass to cut their umbilical cords), some gauze, cotton balls, and some antiseptic. We were also told that Haitian women are not told to go to the hospital--many births are perfectly safe happening at home, so long as the women do not try to yank the placenta out of themselves before they birth it naturally...that causes life endangering hemorraging.

AMONG THE THINGS I SAW TODAY:

· School children walking home in their uniforms.

· Four people riding a moto.

· A woman walking with a full-sized cooler balanced on her head.

· A young boy who was flying a kite made of a plastic bags and some sticks.

· A boy named Denny who has a condition where his head is huge, but he does not let that prevent him from being a little boy.

· Trash fires on the side of the road.

· People living in garbage piles alongside a river, picking through the trash to find something, anything, that they might be able to sell on the street.

· Kids laughing with hands interlocked as they walked back home.

Day one in Haiti

This morning has been something else. First, Ali and I got up at 3:45am (after spending most of yesterday flying) to prepare to board a shuttle to the airport at 4:30am. Shuttle came on time (thank you, Lord!) and I was impressed at the driver’s skill at maneuvering through the traffic mess that faced him when dropping us off at the airport (I now have a whole new appreciation for the orderly scene at the Minneapolis airport)…and we hadn’t even left the country yet! Directions in the airport itself were a smidge confusing, but navigable. Ali and I discovered that wearing a skirt through TSA security checkpoints can apparently arouse suspicion amongst impatient TSA employees. Ali and I were both thoroughly checked for anything that we might be hiding in our skirts (note to self, wear shorts when in airports going home). I can’t blame the TSA employees for being impatient—it was very early and passengers were tending towards a flock mentality more than they were listening to directions being bellowed above the din. Well, we eventually got to the gate and sat down. I’m sure we were quite a sight—two young women pacing around, wide awake despite the desperately early hour, anxious for the journey to just be done and to just BE THERE!

On the plane, I sat between Ali and a Haitian woman who was obviously on her way home. This woman saw me looking out the window beside her, and she opened up the shade and sat up taller while making sure I was looking out her window. She seemed proud to show off the country that I probably had just as obviously never been to before. It was a little unreal to realize that we traveled less time today than yesterday, but this time the plane touched down in a completely different country/world. Literally less than a two hour plane ride from Florida, a state in the richest country in the entire world, exists Haiti--the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Travelers are immersed in Haiti almost as soon as they get off the plane. Announcements on the plane are in English and Creole. A band was playing lively tropical music at the end of the walkway as we exited the aircraft. The heat and mugginess in the air was evident as soon as the plane doors opened (let’s just say the Alaskan in me is more than a little melting right now—January 4^th and 89 degrees outside…as much as I love Haiti, I'd probably have to think twice before coming down in the summer!). Suddenly I could only understand one or two words for every thousand that were spoken around me. I have a whole new respect for people who immigrate to a new country and start a new life—being somewhere where you can barely communicate about the basics is just plain unnerving. But I digress…

After we got through immigration and customs, Ali and I needed to claim luggage. As our plane was the only plane of any major size landing at that time, we knew the bags coming in had to have come with us from Ft. Lauderdale. There was only one carousel, and men were lining baggage up in a roped off area. Dahmon (my husband) once told me that when he was on a trip to Europe, the tour guide told him “You Americans are too polite, push and shove as necessary!” That was kind of how I felt when collecting bags. If you stepped back and waited for someone to go by, you would be waiting forever because people do not stop going by. Being assertive was the key, but that only goes so far when you do not speak the language. Luckily for us, most of the airport employees speak some English, so we were okay. We gathered our mountain of luggage (we had brought every piece of luggage the airline would allow--no, we didn't need that much stuff for the time we were in Haiti, but we were also bringing in supplies for students in the schools that WWV administers), put it on a cart, and trucked our way outside.

That is where things got really interesting! Apparently Ali and I missed the memo that people flying in with WWV are not supposed to leave the baggage area until Alexi, a gentleman who works for WWV comes and finds them. We just shoved our luggage mountain out the doors, squinting against the very bright sun light, and immediately a crowd of men started hanging onto our luggage and insisting we needed help. We kept repeating "we are fine, we have a ride" as we walked towards the parking lot. Alexi found us, hollered something at the rest of the men around us (I really wish I could understand Creole just to know what he was yelling!) and led us to where Randy and Pat were waiting.

Speed limits? Forget them. Road laws? Don’t hit someone, avoid getting hit, and stay out of the potholes *cough* caverns. Traffic in Haiti is something else—people walk in the road much closer to moving vehicles than I would be comfortable with. Cars get extremely close to each other. Public transportation is in the form of “tap taps”—gaily painted vehicles that can always hold “one more”. People zoom around on “motos” (motocycles), weaving through traffic conducting traffic tricks that would make movie makers proud. To drive through downtown Port au Prince is to see open air markets lining the streets, people bustling about. Peter said that people collect and sell whatever they can—nothing goes to waste.

The World Wide Village guesthouse is in a gated community that is much quieter than downtown—well, except for the roosters. Roosters are everywhere and they sure do announce their presence! We dropped off our bags, met some people, did some office work, and then it was back to the car to go visit the clinic in Rosembert. Randy is an excellent driver and maneuvered the traffic with the skill of someone well practiced in the art of driving on Haitian roadways. I peppered Peter, Randy, and Pat with questions about what I was seeing. Why is there smoke coming from the river bank? The people are burning trash to get rid of it. Were all of these buildings standing before the quake? Most of them. Were there any tent cities before the quake? Nope. We drove past buildings with crumpled walls, past fencing walls that have mangled rebar sticking out at bizarre angles (Peter later told me that was a sign of earthquake damage), past buildings with earthquake cracks in the walls that had been sealed with plaster. Past people who have far too many years behind their eyes.

We arrived at the clinic, and went inside to look around. There is a vision team with WWV at the clinic right now, so they were in treating patients alongside a Haitian doctor. There were children with runny noses, one baby they are pretty sure has pneumonia and as such needs to go to the hospital, a man who is so dehydrated that no one is entirely sure what is wrong with him, a woman who was walking around with an IV coming out of her hand, etc. The house that the Builder's Association of the Twin Cities group built was very close to the clinic, so we walked over there and looked at it (I just have to say—it is a wonderful house, bigger than the cabin I grew up in). On the way, Ali and I apparently became curiosities (I assume that Randy and Pat are here enough that they are recognized whereas Ali and I stick out like new, sore thumbs). Between Ali’s blond hair and my tattooed foot/ankle, we were garnering quite the stares. In Haiti, staring is not rude and people do so unabashedly.

After walking around for a bit and returning to the clinic Randy and Pat started looking around for Peter, who was nowhere to be seen. Randy called his cell phone, and found that he had been walking around in the community and found a woman who was bedridden…or in this case mat ridden….due to illness. We found Peter and the woman, spoke with her for a bit and found that she has been ill for a long time. Her name is Fleura, and she had been going to the doctor, was on medications, and then had to stop both due to lack of money. Fleura is dehydrated due to lack of drinkable water. There was a ditch filled with grubby water next to the tin shack she is living in, and we were told it is highly likely that this grubby ditch was her water source. I cringed, and quite literally was choking back tears, when looking at the trash floating in this water source—the fish swimming around in it, goats wading in its shallows, ducks taking baths, etc. I thought of the water purification systems that donors have allowed World Wide Village to purchase for various Haitian communities—Randy said he would drink the water out of that ditch after it has been treated by one of these systems, they are that effective. But Fleura does not have one and is too weak to travel any great distances. We laid hands on and prayed for her—but no amount of good intention will do anything without action. God takes action unseen, Randy and Peter arranged for her to be seen at the clinic tomorrow morning. After leaving her side, we heard an ice cream truck version of the "My Heart Will Go On" song from “Titanic” start playing at the far end of the road. Hark! A water truck was coming! A mini-semi looking thing appeared with big smiley faces painted on the side. We waved it down and purchased a five-gallon bucket of water for Fleura. The cost of providing a woman with enough clean drinking water for one day? Approximately 60 cents USD.

We walked around the neighborhood a bit, looking at destroyed houses, goats that run all over the place but return home at night, and talking to people we walked past. I asked Pat if Peter knew all of the people he was talking to, but apparently that is part of Haitian culture—everyone talks to everyone and has no bubble whatsoever. We drove out to glance at some land that WWV is trying to purchase (having to swerve around a rather obnoxious bull that jumped onto the road)—and I saw there is cactus here too! Hot weather and prickly plants, good grief. J

Driving home, we got a lesson on how to say “Tomorrow, if God wills”…or something like that. I’ll have to ask Peter again. For now, the smells of Surret’s amazing cooking coming from the kitchen is sufficiently distracting enough for me to close this post. Type later…